According to Robert Mitchnick, head of digital assets at BlackRock, investor demand for Bitcoin ETFs is now higher than that of Ethereum funds.
With 20,000 cryptocurrency fans anticipated, the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville coincides with exchange-traded funds that now provide exposure to the two biggest cryptocurrencies, Ethereum (ETH) and Bitcoin (BTC).
Spot BTC ETFs have been trading since January and have accumulated almost $60 billion in assets under management, while spot ETH ETFs are the newcomers to the market. It’s still early, and flows don’t yet show if investors would transfer money from Bitcoin funds to Ethereum exchange-traded funds (ETFs), according to Mitchnick.
79% of the overall flows on day one that spot Bitcoin products reported were obtained by spot Ether ETFs. Grayscale withdrawals and other data reduced that percentage to 16% as investors fled the company’s ETHE vehicle. In response, the price of Ethereum plummeted, falling as much as 7% on July 25.
When spot BTC ETFs were introduced in January, similar movements happened. At the time, investors also moved away from Grayscale converted GBTC. Markets can see days or even weeks of Grayscale outflows if the trend keeps happening. Then, sell fatigue may develop, and if spot ETH ETFs meet Wall Street demand, overall flows may turn positive.
However, a lot of people in the cryptocurrency space believe that ETFs for Ethereum and Bitcoin would encourage additional American cryptocurrency funds to open shortly. Companies such as VanEck have submitted applications for a Solana SOL Trust that is modeled around current spot ETFs.
Mitchnick stated that BlackRock does not currently see demand for cryptocurrency exchange-traded funds (ETFs) other than Bitcoin and Ethereum in an interview with Bloomberg’s James Seyffart.
BTC vs ETH ETFs Day 1 Comparison:
Total ETH flows ($108M) were 16% of BTC flows ($655M), but 79% if you exclude the outflows from ETHE ($484M)/GBTC ($95M) conversions.
ETHE outflows likely larger because it was already trading at NAV on conversion, while GBTC was still at… pic.twitter.com/7E4iGKA7Vr
— Juan Leon (@singularity7x) July 24, 2024
dYdX exchange releases postmortem on $31K squarespace account hack lost
On July 23, dYdX, a well-known cryptocurrency exchange, declared that its version 3.0 website had been hijacked.
It has been recommended that users stay away from the version 3.0 website and refrain from clicking on any links for the time being. Users are reassured by the team that version 4.0 is unaffected and operating as usual.
A thorough postmortem on the Squarespace account hack has been made public by dYdX, detailing the incidents and their resolutions. In an effort to stop similar events in the future, the exchange has chosen to switch domain registrars and is still collaborating with SEAL and other partners.
dYdX exchange website compromised due to social engineering attack
The domain registrar for https://t.co/Ym1dFLMmm5 (previously Squarespace) has confirmed that on July 23rd, dYdX Trading’s Squarespace account was accessed by unauthorized individuals after they successfully social-engineered Squarespace customer support.
— dYdX (@dYdX) July 25, 2024
The postmortem states that the breach happened as a result of a social engineering assault on Squarespace customer service by unauthorized users who gained access to dYdX Trading’s Squarespace account.
In the course of the two-hour exchange domain hijacking, two customers lost almost $31,000 in total. In order to make sure the impacted users receive compensation, dYdX Trading is in contact with them.
All domains from the now-defunct Google Domains were purchased by Squarespace in 2023, and they were migrated over many months. On June 15, 2024, dYdX Trading migrated the dydx.exchange domain to Squarespace.
Hackers took control of the dydx.exchange domain on July 9 and changed the DNS nameservers from Cloudflare to DDoS-Guard.
DNSSEC settings helped to minimize the first assault by preventing users from visiting the infected website. By rotating passwords and two-factor authentication (2FA), DYdX was able to swiftly remedy the issue.
SEAL, a security team that focuses on cryptography, launched an investigation after hearing about similar assaults on sites dedicated to cryptography. Following the discovery that an OAuth vulnerability had been exploited, Squarespace responded by fixing it on July 12.
In spite of this, on July 23, there was another hack of the dydx.exchange domain. By altering the DNS Nameservers and removing DNSSEC settings, the attackers were able to run a rogue website that deceived users into sending Ethereum and ERC20 tokens.
dYdX worked with SEAL and other partners at this time to block fraudulent websites on well-known cryptocurrency wallets like Phantom and Metamask. Two customers lost $31,000 during the assault in spite of these attempts.
dYdX exchange recovers website following squarespace account hack
After re-securing the domain, additional controls have been added to ensure this never happens again, including migrating the domain to Cloudflare.
— dYdX (@dYdX) July 25, 2024
The postmortem also showed that the attacker had changed the domain admin email address to an outlook.com address, using a username that was identical to the actual billing administrator’s name on dYdX’s account. The fact that the attacker utilized a legitimate email account raised the possibility of a social engineering assault.
In its correspondence with Squarespace, dYdX claims to have learned that the takeover was started by a human error during the account-recovery procedure.
Bypassing 2FA, the attacker changed the account email without supplying legitimate security credentials. Before making these adjustments, Squarespace’s customer support made no attempt to get in touch with any of the other stated administrators on the domain.
To improve security in reaction to the incident, dYdX moved its domain registration to Cloudflare. The transfer went quickly, taking only six hours to finish.
As a consequence of the occurrences, dYdX verified that there were no security flaws in its backend systems, smart contracts, or the dYdX Chain.
https://t.co/Ym1dFLLOwx website has been recovered by dYdX Trading Inc. 🙏
Please note that your machine may still be caching the compromised site.
Make sure to clear your cache and restart your browser before connecting to the website.
— dYdX (@dYdX) July 23, 2024
In order to be sure they were not viewing the hijacked website, the dYdX team advised users on social media X to clear the cache and restart their browser before returning to the website.
Arkham Intelligence integrates with Coinbase Wallet
Users may now link their Coinbase Wallets straight to Arkham Intelligence’s platform thanks to a new feature that the blockchain analytics company has released.
Users can effortlessly track their cryptocurrency holdings and transactions on Arkham because to this connection.
The technology developed by Arkham specializes in de-anonymizing blockchain transactions and connecting them to actual people and things. It has a reputation for locating users who have transferred significant volumes of cryptocurrency over the blockchain.
Announcing Arkham X Coinbase Wallet!
You can now connect your Coinbase Wallet to Arkham to track your holdings & transactions directly on the platform. pic.twitter.com/YcROT9Itpi
— Arkham (@ArkhamIntel) July 25, 2024
Users of Coinbase Wallet may now obtain comprehensive statistics on their cryptocurrency activity, including information on counterparty relationships, fund movement, and transaction level data, thanks to this integration.
Through the utilization of Coinbase’s large user base and onboarding procedure, the relationship expands Arkham’s potential to offer a wider spectrum of users.
Arkham’s blockchain analysis and intelligence
Blockchain and on-chain data are deanonymized using artificial intelligence by Arkham, a blockchain analysis platform. It is made up of two main parts: the Intel Exchange, which enables users to execute intelligence-related transactions, and the Analytics Platform, which includes analytics of various exchanges, money, and tokens.
Arkham found a U.K. government wallet in March that had 61,245 Bitcoin, which is estimated to be worth $4.1 billion. This wallet was probably taken from Chinese citizens who were involved in investment fraud in 2018.
