Our weekly updates are put together by folks deep in the crypto scene, giving you a clear picture of what's happening without overwhelming you.
To Watch This Week
AIRDROPS + ALPHAFeb 7, 2024
Markets
Monero Makes Comeback Following Binance Delisting Price Dip
Privacy coin Monero (XMR) has shot up again after experiencing a plunge following news that crypto exchange Binance would delist the controversial coin. XMR is now priced at $130.54, according to CoinGecko, up more than 23% in the past day. It hasn't erased its post-Binance losses, however, and over a seven-day period is still down 21%. Zooming out further, and XMR is hurting bad over the month, having shaved off nearly 15% of its value in 30 days. The world's biggest crypto exchange Binance ann...
Feb 6, 2024
Coins
Monero Drops 17% as Binance Delists XMR
Binance will delist privacy coin Monero (XMR) along with a handful of other assets on February 20, the company said in a blog post Tuesday morning. The XMR price dropped 17% on the news and is currently trading for $138.00, according to CoinGecko data. With a market capitalization of $2.6 billion, it's easily the largest asset among the others being delisted. The other coins include Aragon (ANT), Multichain (MULTI), and Vai (VAI). Aragon is a code-free DAO creation and management platform that a...
Jan 26, 2024
Coins
Did Law Enforcement Crack Privacy Coin Monero? It's Complicated
Earlier this week, an article in Finnish publication MTV Uutiset claimed that Finland's National Bureau of Investigation (KRP) had succeeded in tracking transactions made using the privacy preserving cryptocurrency Monero. However, it's unlikely that Monero itself has been compromised, a former member of the MAGIC Monero Fund committee told Decrypt. Csilla Brimer said that investigators were likely able to trace some transactions because of faulty operational security on the part of users, rathe...
Jan 4, 2024
Business
Privacy Coins Monero, Zcash, Horizen 'At Risk' of Delisting by Binance
Crypto exchange Binance has added a "monitoring tag" to a list of cryptocurrencies including privacy coins Monero (XMR), Zcash (ZEC), Horizen (ZEN) and Firo (FIRO). In an announcement, Binance said that tokens with the monitoring tag "exhibit notably higher volatility and risks compared to other listed tokens," and are "at risk of no longer meeting our listing criteria" and being delisted from the exchange. It added that tokens with the monitoring tag are subject to regular reviews. Criteria con...
Nov 23, 2022
Business
Bitcoin Will Become ‘Less Important’ for Cybercrime Payments: Kaspersky
Cybersecurity company Kaspersky reported that ransomware negotiations and payments may soon come to rely less on Bitcoin as a means of payment. The Russian-founded firm attributed this transition to improvements in the technology that detects the flow and sources of Bitcoin, as well as increased sanctions and market regulation. The firm added that cybercriminals will instead look towards other digital currencies to facilitate their illicit payments. With the price of crypto dropping, threat ac...
Aug 15, 2022
Technology
Monero Rolls Out Enhanced Privacy Features With Hard Fork
Popular privacy coin Monero (XMR) completed a hard fork introducing new privacy and security features over the weekend. The non-contentious hard fork, completed at block 2,688,888, was first announced by developers in April this year. Initially planned for July, it was subsequently delayed to August 13. One of the main changes introduced with the fork is an increase in Monero's ring size from 11 to 16. In order to protect user privacy, Monero merges the digital signature of the individual signin...
Apr 21, 2022
Coins
Monero Rallies 22% in a Week Amid Hard Fork Announcement and 'Monerun'
Leading privacy coin Monero (XMR) has rallied 9.56% in the last 24 hours and 22.8% in the last week after developers confirmed on GitHub that a hard fork is due on July 16. Monero currently trades for around $278 and has a market capitalization of more than $5 billion, according to data aggregator CoinMarketCap. This makes XMR the clear leader in privacy coins, with more than double the market capitalization of its nearest rival, Zcash. Privacy coins vary in method and utility, but broadly sp...
Apr 17, 2022
Coins
Monero Faithful Coordinate ‘Bank Run’ to Test Exchanges’ Reserves
A group of Monero enthusiasts, apparently fed up with centralized exchanges, has said on social media that it’s planning an XMR “bank run” on April 18. The so-called Monerun, on the eighth anniversary of the coin's launch, is a reaction to what community members see as a lack of transparency over Monero, including allegations that central exchanges are suspending XMR withdrawals and misrepresenting reserves. "Looking more and more like exchanges are paper trading #Monero and lying about how much...
Apr 12, 2022
Markets
Bitcoin Recovers $40,000 Amid Wider Crypto Market Slump
Bitcoin has rallied to reclaim the $40,000 mark following a crash that saw it drop 15% in 24 hours. At time of going to press, the leading cryptocurrency by market cap stands at $40,119, down 4.7% on the day, according to CoinMarketCap. Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, has similarly reclaimed the psychological level of $3,000 after dropping below it overnight. It currently stands at just over $3,000, down 4.2% on the day. The cryptocurrency market remains emphatically i...
Mar 9, 2022
Business
Privacy Coins Monero, Zcash Lead Crypto Market Rebound
Top privacy coins like Monero and Zcash are surging in price today, with several of them posting overnight gains of 10 to 20%. The largest privacy coin Monero, which has a market capitalization of over $3.5 billion, shot up 18.8% in the last 24 hours and trades for around $195.43. Despite the rise, that’s still about 64% short of its former all-time high of $517, set back in May 2021, according to CoinMarketCap. Zcash is up 17.6% today and trades for $131.87 at the time of writing. Like Monero,...
Feb 10, 2022
Technology
Ransomware Payments in Bitcoin and Other Crypto Hit at Least $600M in 2021: Chainalysis
Chainalysis—a blockchain data firm—has found that value stolen through crypto ransomware attacks likely rose from 2020 to 2021—it just hasn't accounted for it all yet. According to a preview of the company's 2022 Crypto Crime Report, it's identified $602 million in ransomware payouts for 2021, compared to $692 million for 2020. However, it believes the 2021 figure to be an "underestimate" given that it has revised its initial 2020 estimate upward by nearly 50%. "Anecdotal evidence, plus the fac...
Dec 24, 2021
Technology
'Spider-Man: No Way Home' Pirates Caught in Web of Monero Mining Malware
Pirates attempting to download illegal copies of the latest Spider-Man film are exposing their computers to crypto-mining malware. According to researchers at cybersecurity firm ReasonLabs, copies of "Spider-Man: No Way Home" circulating on torrent sites have been packaged with malware that diverts the user's computer to mining the "privacy coin" Monero. The affected file is named “spiderman_net_putidomoi.torrent.exe,” which translates from Russian to “spiderman_no_wayhome.torrent.exe,” hinting...
Dec 10, 2021
Business
White Supremacists Turn to Bitcoin for Financial Lifeline: Report
Bitcoin has played a central role in financing the white supremacy movement, according to a new Hatewatch analysis published by the Southern Poverty Law Center. “Hatewatch identified and compiled over 600 cryptocurrency addresses associated with white supremacists and other prominent far-right extremists for this essay and then probed their transaction histories through blockchain analysis software,” the SPLC said. “What we found was striking.” According to the SPLC, Greg Johnson, editor in ch...
Dec 2, 2021
Technology
This Monero Malware Is Targeting Enterprise Networks
We know, we know: Your blockchain is unassailable. But you still need to update your antivirus software. Otherwise, this Monero miner could eat into your network. In a new report released today by cybersecurity firm Sophos, which boasts over 500,000 businesses as customers, says a new variant of the Tor2Mine crypto-miner is infecting company networks to mine Monero (XMR), a popular privacy coin known for being hard to trace. “All of the miners we’ve seen recently are Monero miners,” Sophos threa...
Nov 8, 2021
Technology
US Treasury Adds Bitcoin Exchange to Sanctions List Over Ransomware Links
Remember when President Joe Biden vowed to go after ransomware actors? Not only is it happening, but it's bleeding over into the cryptocurrency ecosystem. The Office of Foreign Assets Controls (OFAC), the U.S. Treasury Department's enforcement agency for economic sanctions, today placed global cryptocurrency exchange Chatex on its sanctions list alongside three companies that allegedly provide it with infrastructure support—Estonia-based IZIBITS OU, Latvia-based Chatextech SIA, and Hightrade Fin...
Oct 27, 2021
Technology
Privacy Blockchain Putting Up $100 Million to Compete With Zcash and Monero
You likely haven't heard of Findora, a privacy-centric blockchain that "makes it possible for users to share information without showing it." But if its strategy pays off, the under-the-radar blockchain being developed by Discreet Labs could be in competition with well-known privacy coins Zcash and Monero. Today, it announced a $100 million ecosystem fund to be used for research, development of new applications, infrastructure such as staking, and liquidity. The money, to be deployed over the n...
Sep 28, 2021
Business
Far-Right Activists Raise Millions in Bitcoin, Monero: AP
Far-right activists are raising millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency, according to an Associated Press (AP) investigation. One of the chief beneficiaries of cryptocurrency donations is Andrew Anglin, founder of the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer. “The Daily Stormer website advocates for the purity of the white race, posts hate-filled, conspiratorial screeds against Blacks, Jews and women and has helped inspire at least three racially motivated murders. It has also made its founder,...
Aug 23, 2021
Markets
Monero Surges 15% Continuing Last Week’s Rally
Privacy-focused cryptocurrency Monero (XMR) today continues its price rally sparked by the launch of atomic swaps last week. At the time of writing, Monero was trading at around $328, up nearly 16% over the past 24 hours, according to crypto metrics platform CoinGecko. Notably, the price of Monero has been steadily growing since August 17 when Monero developers announced that atomic swaps between Bitcoin are now available on the mainnet. “XMR <-> BTC atomic swaps are live on mainnet! We're delig...
Aug 2, 2021
Business
Ex-Monero Developer 'Fluffypony' Has Been in Jail For Two Weeks Over Theft at Cookie Company
Former Monero developer Ricardo Spagni was arrested on fraud charges nearly two weeks ago, according to documents filed with a Tennessee district court. The charges have to do with invoices filed over ten years ago, when Spagni was working as an employee of a South African company called Cape Cookies. Authorities are alleging Spagni created fake invoices from other companies (some of which didn’t actually exist), filed them to Cape Cookies’ finance department, and made off with the money—nearly...
Jul 27, 2021
Business
Monero Developers Disclose ‘Significant’ Bug in Privacy Algorithm
The developers of privacy-focused cryptocurrency Monero (XMR) have disclosed a “rather significant” bug that could impact the privacy of users’ transactions. “If users spend funds immediately following the lock time in the first 2 blocks allowable by consensus rules (~20 minutes after receiving funds), then there is a good probability that the output can be identified as the true spend,” Monero developers tweeted today. A rather significant bug has been spotted in Monero's decoy selection algor...