04-26-2018: Exchanges Suspend ERC20 Token Trading

Daily Crypto - Bitcoin, Blockchain, Ethereum, Altcoin & Digital Cryptocurrency World News

First up today, an update on yesterday’s news regarding DNS hijacking attack on My Ether Wallet, it’s now been reported that over $150,000 (USD) worth of funds had been stolen during the two hour window that the attackers were rerouting traffic to their malicious server. It is unlikely that my ether wallet was the only target during this attack as this was a very sophisticated attack requiring a lot of computing power and timing. They had also not bothered to have a valid SSL certificate for the malicious MEW site (which is very easy to obtain) so users being redirected here had to click past a SSL error in their browser to continue. Users are advised to be aware when using these online services, make sure to check the url and the ssl’s authenticity (Medium).

Multiple exchanges have suspended ERC20 token trading due to a potential overflow bug in smart contracts. This bug had been reportedly found (CVE-2018–10299) within over a dozen erc20 smart contracts as a research company’s scanning software picked up a suspicious token transfer on the Beauty Chain token (BEC). This sparked some interest and after a bit of research an overflow bug was found. A scan of public smart contracts revealed over a dozen contracts with the same bug. Poloniex Exchange posted a tweet on the vulnerability stating “We’ve temporarily suspended ERC-20 token deposits and withdrawals while we review all smart contracts for exposure to the reported batch overflow bug. We take any reports of vulnerabilities very seriously to ensure that customer funds remain safe. Thank you for your patience!” Many other large exchanges have followed suite until the issue is resolved (cointelegraph, medium).

16 registered cryptocurrency exchanges in Japan have formed the “Japan Cryptocurrency Exchange Association”, looking to self regulate the Japanese cryptocurrency exchange platforms. The JCEA is planning on ensuring strict compliance with rules and regulations that will be set forth by the association to ensure that customer confidence is restored in exchanges and firm rules and penalties will be applied to services that do not follow the regulations (Bitcoinist).

Blockstack, “The internet for decentralised apps”, is partnering with shapeshift, a digital currency swapping service, to offer a $50,000 bounty to the developers who can create a universal wallet. They are looking to create a decentralised universal wallet focusing on interoperability within the dapp ecosystem. The blockstack blog post states “Increased interoperability and collaboration between projects will only hasten the pace of innovation — and making each project’s atomic unit of value accessible across communities is critical. That’s why we are partnering with ShapeShift to enable an open source wallet where users can hold and exchange most, if not all current and future forms of tokens, all in a decentralized manner.” The successful wallet is envisioned to include features integrating Blockstacks storage, authentication and encryption along side with Shapeshifts token exchange API to create an easy to use universal wallet that is open source (Bitcoin Magazine).

As the Chinese are continuing their crackdown on the cryptocurrency market in their country, law enforcement in the city of Tianjin have reportedly confiscated 600 bitcoin mining machines following reports of irregular electricity use. The Gemini Trust Company, a digital assets exchange which was founded by the Winklevoss twins, has partnered with Nasdaq to use their market surveillance technology (SMARTS) to surveile ETH and BTC markets for unusual trading patterns and behaviours. This has come about to attempt to reduce the amount of market manipulation that happens within the crypto markets (Cryptocurrency News).

And lastly, Nexon, a South Korean gaming company, is negotiating a take over of BitStamp, a cryptocurrency exchange, for $350 million USD. Bitstamp ranks #13 in the worlds largest cryptocurrency exchanges. This news comes just after Razor announced the Purchase of MOL, a malaysian based e-payments provider to integrate with its own virtual credit system, zGold, to create the largest virtual credit platform for gamers (CoinGeek).

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