| Bitcoin | $22,820 | 7 day: +19.1% | | Ethereum | $613 | 7 day: +5.6% | | All crypto | $636B | 7 day: +13.7% | | Bitcoin dominance | 66.2% | 7 day: +2.7% | Prices as of 9:30 a.m. EST
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 Elon Musk Elon Musk again pumped Dogecoin (DOGE). Musk, whose self-deprecating Twitter profile reads, "Former CEO of Dogecoin," tweeted the following text: "One word: Doge." An instant $100M: - That Sunday tweet at 1:30 a.m. California time was enough to send Dogecoin 20% higher one hour later.
- With Dogecoin still rallying on extraordinary volume, Elon thanked his followers for their participation in the pump: "i love all u crazy ppl out there."
- The tweet added over $100M to Dogecoin's market capitalization within an hour.
- Musk has proudly pumped cryptocurrencies before, including a quick 14% pump of Dogecoin on July 17, among other examples.
Possibly bitcoin, too: - After pumping Dogecoin, Musk inquired about converting "large transactions" of Tesla's balance sheet into bitcoin.
- "Are such large transactions even possible?" Musk asked.
- His conversation with MicroStrategy (NASDAQ:MSTR) CEO Michael Saylor left Twitter and continued offline.
Coindesk 
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 Xi Jingping on a billboard Chinese police claim to have recovered over $5B for victims of the PlusToken Ponzi scheme. If true, it is the largest recovery for victims of any crypto scam. However, victims still await actual payouts. - For background on PlusToken, the largest cryptocurrency scam in history (possibly excluding the hack of Mt. Gox), see prior editions here and here of Inside Cryptocurrency.
What we know: - For the first time, Chinese authorities have formally filed a declaration in court of exact cryptocurrency amounts seized by law enforcement during their PlusToken investigation.
- A court filing dated Nov. 19, 2020 declares police custody of 194,775 recovered bitcoin; 1.4M Litecoin (LTC); 833,083 Ethereum (ETH); 27.6M EOS (EOS); 487M XRP (XRP); 74,167 Dash (DASH); 79,581 Bitcoin Cash (BCH); 6B Dogecoin (DOGE); and 213,724 Tether (USDT) from seven perpetrators.
- According to a Sept. 22, 2020 ruling, PlusToken's operators duped more than 2 million investors globally out of $7.6B before they exit scammed.
- In August 2019, 8BTC revealed that perpetrators proceeded with a mass BTC sell-off on Binance for five days incessantly, causing bitcoin prices to dip under $10,000.
What happens next: - According to Chinese news, the Ministry of Public Security arrested 109 individuals connected to the PlusToken Ponzi scheme on Jul. 30, 2020, of whom 27 were "primary suspects."
- Chinese judges have convicted 15 people so far, with sentences ranging from two to 11 years in jail, and fines ranging from $100,000 to $1M.
- Other PlusToken ringleaders remain at large.
- The Jiangsu Yancheng Intermediate People's court filing says that authorities will "process" the seized cryptocurrency assets according to local law.
- Notably, China is arguing that any "gains" produced by the appreciation of the cryptocurrencies' value should be forfeited to the nation's treasury, worth several billion dollars at today's prices (over half the $5B, depending on how the Chinese government decides to calculate "gains").
The Block Crypto
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Attackers have been stealing from MetaMask cryptocurrency wallets as the result of a successful phishing scam that exploited Google search ads. Some users who fell for the phishing scam reported losing tens of thousands of dollars from their accounts. More: - MetaMask is a browser extension for accessing Ethereum's ecosystem and a private key manager for cryptocurrency wallets.
- Victims said that their wallets were emptied after they clicked on a bogus Google search ad posing as the MetaMask site.
- In its phishing warning, MetaMask advised users to use direct links to the site rather than sponsored links.
This story first appeared in Inside Security. You can read the full issue here. Bleeping Computer
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Kaspersky forecasts an increase in bitcoin-related crimes in 2021. Bitcoin is a popular denomination for ransom demands because bitcoin node holders do not often reverse or freeze transactions. Also, bitcoin can be easily washed in "tumblers" and converted into private cryptocurrencies like Monero (XMR). The report: - The 4,000-employee cybersecurity giant published a report, "Cyber Threats to Financial Organizations in 2021," suggesting a rise in bitcoin-stealing attacks next year.
- Kaspersky highlights the criminal uses of privacy-centric cryptocurrencies, especially XMR.
- According to Kaspersky, pandemic-induced poverty in underdeveloped nations will increase cybercrime. Kaspersky also highlights declining fiat values, attracting criminals to harder assets like bitcoin.
- Kaspersky also predicts rising extortion cases where criminals utilize either ransomware or DDoS (and sometimes both) to take a company's online platform "hostage" and make demands.
Kaspersky
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The RubyGems hosting service has removed two gems that contained malware able to run persistently on infected Windows computers. The gems — pretty_color and ruby-bitcoin — had malware that replaced cryptocurrency wallet addresses in the clipboard with an attacker-supplied address, enabling the attacker to steal the victim's funds. More: - RubyGems is a package manager for the Ruby programming language that provides a standard format for Ruby programs and libraries, known as gems.
- Security firm Sonatype analyzed the malicious gems and found that pretty_color has legitimate files from the open-source colorize component, which made detection difficult.
- A plain-text variant of the malicious script used in the gems was discovered on GitHub under an unrelated account called wannycry.vbs. Researchers could find no hard evidence that it is connected to the WannaCry ransomware attackers.
This story first appeared in Inside Security. You can read the full issue here. Security Week
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QUICK HITS: - You don’t need to have any experience in crypto trading to reap the benefits. eToro has found a way for non-traders to copy experienced ones.*
- The fallout continues from November's whistleblower reports inside Coinbase. Black team members experienced racism and discriminatory treatment; the San Francisco based exchange continues to deny allegations and is going public anyway.
- During a government meeting on Nov. 26, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin acknowledged rising interest in digital assets, encouraging Moscow to protect residents.
- The Diem Association (f.k.a. Libra) aims to launch its first stablecoin next month, according to a Financial Times report. The Facebook (NASDAQ:FB)-led non-profit will announce a specific launch date after securing a payment service license from FINMA.
- Crypto analytics company Arcane Research tweeted that CME Group (NASDAQ:CME) surpassed China's OKEx cryptocurrency exchange as the largest bitcoin futures market. CME enjoyed a record $1.16B in open interest on Nov. 30, 2020, according to Skew data analysis.
- On Nov. 25, 2020, U.S. investment management company VanEck launched a bitcoin exchange-traded note (ETN) on the Deutsche Börse Xetra marketplace after failing to list a bitcoin exchange-traded fund in the U.S.
- Are you a seed-stage startup? The IRS could owe you tens of thousands of dollars in R&D tax credits – it's free to see how much you're owed.*
*This is sponsored content.
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 |  | Curated by Associated Press fanboy, eye-strained news terminal watcher, and bitcoin follower since $1, Aaron Wise. Temporarily listening to news squawk boxes in Florida while awaiting the construction of cryptopia. |  | | Editor | Charlotte Hayes-Clemens is an editor and writer based in Vancouver. She has dabbled in both the fiction and non-fiction world, having worked at HarperCollins Publishers and more recently as a writing coach for new and self-published authors. Proper semi-colon usage is her hill to die on. | |
