SANCTIONS RULING: Craig Wright will likely be ordered to turn over half of his bitcoin holdings and intellectual property to the estate of Dave Kleiman, a magistrate judge recommended Monday. The ruling, if approved by the federal judge overseeing the case, would apply to holdings and IP from before 2014. Wright will also not be entitled to a jury trial and cannot oppose the order, though he can appeal, a CoinDesk source said. Full story
GAMING MALWARE: A new piece of ransomware called Syrk has been found encrypting files on the open source Hidden-Cry program, an encryptor that appeared online last December and has been the basis for many bits of malware over the past year, as well as some 250 million Fortnite players. Syrk targets Fortnite users by masquerading as a cheating app for the game. If a ransom isn’t paid in crypto the app starts deleting one important folder after another. “Combining game malware with ransomware was inevitable,” said Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra. Full story
LENDING CRYPTO: Binance, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges by trading volume, has launched a lending business in its bid to attract customer deposits. The company said in an announcement on Monday that Binance Lending will be available for customer subscription starting from 6:00 UTC on Aug. 28, on a first-come, first-served basis. Initially, users will be able to lend their U.S. dollar-pegged USDT, ethereum classic (ETC) and Binance’s BNB cryptocurrency in order to earn interest, payable from Aug. 29 to Sept. 11. Full story
ALGO FUND: Algo Capital, an investment firm exclusively focusing on the Algorand blockchain ecosystem founded by MIT professor Silvio Micali, has raised $200 million for a new fund dubbed the Algo VC Fund. The company said in an announcement on Tuesday that the fundraise includes investments from NGC Ventures, Arrington XRP Capital and tZERO investor 11-11 Ventures, among others. The firm said the fund will focus on projects that are building applications and infrastructure on Algorand to accelerate the adoption of the blockchain’s native cryptocurrency Algo as a means of payment. Full story |
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| DEEPER DROP: Bitcoin’s price could fall below $9,000 if it closes below the 12-week exponential moving average ($9,940) on Sunday. The average (EMA) has served as a strong support over the last six weeks. However, the slide could also recharge engines for a subsequent move above June’s high of $13,880 should it occur. Full story |
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