Today's news tips:
Trump accepts Republican presidential nomination
Market news: Biden has informed campaign officials of his decision to withdraw from the US presidential election and will formally announce it before Sunday
OpenAI launches new GPT-4o mini for free, replacing GPT-3.5
Binance HODLer Airdrop Launches the First Phase of Banana Gun (BANANA)
Pixelverse announces PIXFI token airdrop plan, with airdrop allocation accounting for 30% in total
SlowMist Warning: Platforms using security defense software CrowdStrike need to pay attention to various attack risks
Blockchain data provider Allium Labs completes $16.5 million Series A funding
Polymarket data: Biden's chances of withdrawing from the election have risen to a record high of 88%, and his chances of winning the election are only 5%
Regulatory News
Trump accepts Republican presidential nomination
According to the National Business Daily, on the evening of July 18 local time and the morning of July 19 Beijing time, at the last day of the Republican National Convention, former US President Trump officially announced his acceptance of the Republican presidential nomination. Earlier news reported that former US President Trump received enough party delegates at the Republican National Convention on the 15th and was officially nominated as the Republican presidential candidate for the 2024 US presidential election.
Industry insiders: Trump may announce Bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset for the United States at the Bitcoin Conference
According to Cryptoslate, industry insiders revealed that former US President Donald Trump will make a landmark statement at the upcoming Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville, and may plan to use Bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset for the United States. Satoshi Action Fund co-founder Dennis Porter and BnkToTheFuture founder Simon Dixon both shared the rumors on social media and said the sources were reliable. However, these claims have not been confirmed by Trump, his team, or any external public sources. Until official confirmation, these assertions should be considered speculation.
Market news: Biden has informed campaign officials of his decision to withdraw from the US presidential election and will formally announce it before Sunday
OSINTdefender, an open source intelligence detection organization, said on the X platform that there are reports that US President Joe Biden has informed campaign officials that he has decided to withdraw from the current presidential race and will officially announce it before Sunday. Despite his announcement of withdrawal, he is not believed to resign from the presidency or support other candidates, such as Vice President Kamala Harris; instead, the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August is expected to be the first convention to be produced by proxy voting since 1952, and dozens of Democratic candidates may compete for the nomination.
South Korea’s first cryptocurrency law takes full effect, focusing on investor protection
South Korea's first cryptocurrency regulatory framework is now fully effective, with a focus on investor protection, The Block reported. The new law, the Virtual Asset User Protection Act, was officially approved on July 18, 2024, and a one-year grace period was given to refine the regulatory details. The bill imposes stricter requirements on digital asset exchanges, and South Korean crypto exchanges are now required to store at least 80% of user deposits in cold wallets, thereby isolating user deposits from the exchange's own funds. Exchanges must also entrust user cash deposits to local licensed banks for safekeeping and hold cryptocurrency reserves of the same amount and type as customer deposits. In addition, crypto services in South Korea are now required to purchase sufficient insurance or establish reserve funds to deal with hacker attacks or liquidity crises. In addition to measures to protect user funds, the bill also requires exchanges to establish a real-time monitoring system to report abnormal trading activities that may be illegal. Companies that fail to comply with the new regulations may face penalties from the Financial Services Commission (FSC) of South Korea or have their services suspended.
SEC Chairman Gary Gensler issues fraud warning involving “crypto-asset securities”
Gary Gensler, chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), issued an investor warning on the X platform, saying that fraudsters may use five methods to lure victims into participating in scams involving crypto asset securities, and that fraudsters often use emerging technologies such as encryption to commit investment fraud. The link cited by Gensler is an investor alert issued by the SEC on May 29 this year. The five methods mentioned include contacting victims through social media platforms or text messages and winning their trust, using the hype of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), fraudsters impersonating or using reliable sources, raising prices and then selling, and paying additional fees to falsely claim that they can help victims withdraw cash.
AI
OpenAI launches new GPT-4o mini for free, replacing GPT-3.5
According to Titanium Media, in the early morning of July 19th, Beijing time, the US OpenAI company launched a new AI model "GPT-4o mini", which is a smaller parameter and simplified version of GPT-4o. OpenAI said that GPT-4o mini is currently the most powerful and cost-effective small parameter model, with performance close to the original GPT-4, and the cost is more than 60% cheaper than GPT-3.5 Turbo. It supports 50 different languages and replaces the GPT-3.5 version of ChatGPT, but the company did not disclose its training parameter scale information. OpenAI said that at the API level, GPT-4o mini supports 128k and 16k input tokens (images and text); at the price level, GPT-4o mini is 15 cents (about 1.09 yuan) per million input tokens and 60 cents (about 4.36 yuan) per million output tokens. According to the plan, GPT-4o mini is now open to ChatGPT free users and ChatGPT Plus and Team paid subscribers, and will be open to ChatGPT Enterprise customers next week. In addition, OpenAI will also open a fine-tuned version of GPT-4o mini in the next few days. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also revealed that just two years ago, the best model in the world was the text-davinci-003 version of GPT-3, which performed much worse than today and was 100 times more expensive. In other words, in just two years, the cost price per token of the GPT large model has dropped by 99%.
Google and other tech giants launch safe artificial intelligence alliance
According to Jinshi, Google launched the Coalition for Secure Artificial Intelligence (CoSAI), whose founding members include Amazon (AMZN.O), Intel (INTC.O), Microsoft (MSFT.O), Nvidia (NVDA.O), IBM (IBM.N), Cisco (CSCO.O), Paypal (PYPL.O), OpenAI, artificial intelligence startup Anthropic, Cohere, cybersecurity startup Chainguard, WIZ, GenLab, etc. Google pointed out in a blog post that artificial intelligence needs a security framework and application standards to keep up with its rapid growth. This is why it shared the Secure Artificial Intelligence Framework (SAIF) last year. But to implement any industry framework, you need to work closely with others. Therefore, Google launched CoSAI together with its industry peers.
Project News
Binance HODLer Airdrop Launches the First Phase of Banana Gun (BANANA)
Binance announced that the first phase of the HODLer airdrop project Banana Gun (BANANA) will be launched. From 8:00 on June 23, 2024 to 7:59 on July 6, 2024 (Eastern Time 8), users who use BNB to subscribe to the regular and/or current products of the coin earning platform will receive airdrop allocations. The BANANA HODLer airdrop page is expected to be launched within five hours, and the new tokens will be distributed to users' spot wallets 1 hour before trading begins. Binance will list BANANA at 17:00 on July 20, 2024 (Eastern Time 8), and open BANANA/BTC, BANANA/USDT, BANANA/BNB, BANANA/FDUSD and BANANA/TRY trading pairs.
Grayscale Reduces Fee Rate for Ethereum Mini Trust to 0.15% in Revised S-1 Filing
Bloomberg analyst James Seyffart said on the X platform that Grayscale has just submitted a revised S-1 document, reducing the fee rate of its Ethereum Mini Trust (code ETH) from 0.25% to 0.15%. Grayscale also changed the details of the fee reduction: initially, similar to BlackRock, the fee was reduced to 0.12% for 12 months, but now the fee has been reduced to 0% for 6 months.
Fuel: Mainnet launch is tentatively scheduled for early Q4, testnet snapshot completed
Ethereum modular execution layer Fuel shared a review of the Fuel Points community conference call on its official Discord. The main contents are as follows: 1. The mainnet launch is tentatively scheduled for the beginning of the fourth quarter; 2. Fuel The Points program is designed to provide liquidity to the network, empower Fuel developers and the entire Fuel ecosystem, and launch DApps when the mainnet is launched; 3. Users will not lose points for participating in other programs such as Renzo, Ethena, EtherFi, etc. If they participate in different programs, their points will continue to accumulate; 4. The Renzo team supported the Fuel team in the early days and helped launch the program, so ezETH has these multipliers. Similar actions may be taken for other assets in the future, but they have not yet been confirmed; 5. Points are not transferable and cannot be transferred to any wallet; 6. The asset list will be expanded in the coming weeks; 7. Users should lock all assets to the mainnet launch to be eligible for any program rewards; 8. There are no restrictions on deposits and there are no plans to change them at present; 9. The testnet snapshot has been completed, and new users will no longer receive incentives in the future. The qualification criteria will be announced as soon as possible after the team analyzes the snapshot data; 10. Users are eligible for rewards if they are not residents or citizens of a specific jurisdiction. For testnet users, the qualification criteria will be announced later and may change; 11. Once the Fuel mainnet is launched, users will have the opportunity to earn more rewards by participating in various activities.
Layer3 Foundation: The L3 token airdrop query page will be launched on July 24
The token distribution protocol Layer3 Foundation announced in its official Discord community that the Layer3 Foundation will release the initial L3 token distribution checker on July 24, but the token will not be launched on that date. Earlier on July 5, the token distribution protocol Layer3 announced the token economics, and the initial airdrop increased to 7.5% of the total supply.
Pixelverse announces PIXFI token airdrop plan, with airdrop allocation accounting for 30% in total
Telegram eco-crypto game Pixelverse announced its airdrop plan on the X platform, with 10% of PIXFI allocated to holders of rare, epic and legendary NFTs, and 20% of PIXFI additional rewards to Pixelverse and Pixelchain users, distributed over time. Free collection through Dashboard and PixelTap applets, and automatic staking for additional rewards. Regarding NFT rewards, all users will receive their NFT rewards: PixelTap and Dashboard users as of July 18 will receive NFTs based on their participation, which can be collected on July 25. It is reported that the PIXFI token was launched yesterday. In addition, Pixelverse also announced a staking mechanism, where immediate withdrawal of PIXFI can only get 10% of the total airdrop, and the remaining 90% will be recycled to the community incentive pool to reward the Pixelverse community.
The project owner of the Ethereum Meme coin FIGHT announced a donation of 10 million FIGHT to Trump’s campaign
The Ethereum-based meme project FIGHT TO MAGA (FIGHT) said on the X platform: "10 million FIGHT tokens have been sent to support Trump's campaign, which is about $470,000 at the current price." The FIGHT token is a meme coin with the theme of "Trump's attack". The current price is $0.06809, a 1-hour increase of 22.41% and a 24-hour increase of 43.26%.
SlowMist Warning: Platforms using security defense software CrowdStrike need to pay attention to various attack risks
SlowMist Technology Chief Information Security Officer 23pds said on the X platform that the top security defense software CrowdStrike has just experienced a global failure. Currently, all Windows PCs installed with CrowdStrike are stuck in an infinite loop of blue screens. The CrowdStrike team is working hard to solve the problem. During this period of defense gap, please use CrowdStrike's related platforms to pay attention to various attack risks. Note: CrowdStrike is the only threat service provider that integrates next-generation antivirus, endpoint detection and response.
Later in the news, Crowdstrike said that it recommended affected users to boot their computers into safe mode or recovery environment. The CrowdStrike problem caused IT disruptions in banks, airlines, and hospitals in many countries including the United States and Japan.
Queenbee project team members arrested and charged for allegedly defrauding $22 million in South Korea
According to News1, the Seoul Southern District Prosecutor's Office and the Crypto Crime Investigation Department announced that they have arrested and prosecuted four members of the Queenbee (QBZ) token project. They are accused of defrauding about 4,000 individuals through fraudulent listing and market manipulation, involving a total amount of 15.1 billion won (about 10.9 million US dollars). In addition, the team is also accused of selling all their remaining tokens through a sophisticated token scammer between March and April 2021, making an illegal profit of 15 billion won (about 10.9 million US dollars).
WazirX called the attack a force majeure event but is working to track and recover the funds
Crypto exchange WazirX released preliminary findings of a cyberattack on the X platform, saying that one of its multi-signature wallets suffered a cyberattack, with funds lost exceeding $230 million. The wallet has been operating using Liminal's digital asset custody and wallet infrastructure services since February 2023. Regarding the wallet configuration and attack mechanism, the wallet has six signers - five from the WazirX team and one from Liminal, who are responsible for transaction verification. A transaction usually requires approval from three WazirX signers (all of whom use Ledger hardware wallets for security), and then final approval by Liminal's signer. To enhance security, WazirX also implemented a policy of whitelisting destination addresses. These whitelisted addresses are marked and set by Liminal on the interface, so the WazirX team has the ability to initiate transactions to these whitelisted addresses. Regarding the nature of the cyberattack, the cyberattack stems from the difference between the data displayed on the Liminal interface and the actual transaction content. At the time of the attack, the information displayed on the Liminal interface did not match the actual signed content, so it is suspected that the attacker replaced the payload to control the wallet.
WazirX said: “This is a force majeure event beyond our control, but we are working tirelessly to track and recover the funds. We have blocked several deposits and contacted the relevant wallets for recovery. We are working with the best resources to help us complete this task. While this is the result of our initial investigation, we will continue to provide further updates.”
Injective Labs and 21Shares Launch First INJ-Pegged ETP on Euronext
According to Cryptoslate, Injective Labs, in partnership with 21Shares, announced the launch of AINJ, an Injective pledge exchange-traded product (ETP) linked to INJ, which will include a pledge function. The fund will enable users to access INJ tokens through major traditional financial exchanges and brokerage firms while earning pledge rewards. The ETP will be traded on Euronext Amsterdam (AINJ NA) and Euronext Paris (AINJ FP). It will be supported by 25 different banks and brokers, including Interactive Brokers, Saxo Bank, Swissquote and eToro.
Founder of crypto exchange Bitzlato sentenced to 18 months in prison
According to Bloomberg, Anatoly Legkodymov, founder of the crypto exchange Bitzlato, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for operating an unlicensed remittance business and laundering more than $700 million in illegal gambling and drug trading proceeds. Given that Legkodymov has been detained since his arrest in January 2023, his sentence has expired and he will not have to serve any more time in the future. Last December, Legkodymov pleaded guilty, admitting that he had known for years that Bitzlato was used as a conduit for dark web transactions, including the notorious drug market Hydra Market, which was shut down by authorities in 2022. Prosecutors from the office of Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Breon Peace believed that Legkodymov should be sentenced to at least four years in prison because he "established a clearing house for dirty money." But at the sentencing hearing, Judge Eric Vitaliano called the Metropolitan Detention Center, where Legkodymov was held, "a terrible place," a factor in the decision not to let him continue to serve his sentence. In the past five weeks, there have been two cases of murders of detainees at the prison. The judge also said Legkodymov was "aware of the illegal nature of what he was doing" and called him "an entrepreneur and a visionary" who had "led an admirable life" before his arrest. Legkodymov, who had lived in Russia and Shenzhen, had moved to Pennsylvania at the time of his arrest. As part of his plea agreement, he also agreed to waive his claim for $23 million in cryptocurrency seized by French authorities.
Bloomberg Terminal has added some Ethereum ETFs in preparation for next week’s trading
Bloomberg analyst James Seyffart said on the X platform: "We added a number of Ethereum ETFs to the Bloomberg (terminal) today. These include ETHW from Bitwise, CETH from 21Shares, and FETH from Fidelity. Other funds will likely be added tomorrow and Monday. Trading is still on schedule to start next week."
Musk: I did create a political action committee, but I didn't promise any donations to anyone
Musk responded to the news about political donations on Twitter. He said that he did create a political action committee (PAC) focused on supporting US presidential candidates, but did not promise any donations to anyone. So far, the funds donated are "well below" the previously reported level of $45 million per month.
LI.FI releases security incident report, saying "human error" led to protocol attack
In its latest security incident report, cross-chain bridge protocol LI.FI said that "human error" during the smart contract update process exposed the protocol to an attack. An estimated 153 wallets were affected, with a loss of approximately $11.6 million in USDC, USDT, and DAI stablecoins. The team went on to say that they quickly detected the security vulnerability, launched an "incident response plan," and disabled the faulty code, thereby containing the threat and preventing "any further unauthorized access." According to the report, the vulnerability occurred shortly after the new smart contract was deployed. A vulnerability in the upgrade allowed attackers to gain unauthorized access to user wallets within minutes of the contract being deployed. The vulnerability stems from the ability of contract callers to arbitrarily call any contract without verification. Due to human error in the oversight deployment process, verification checks were missing. LI.FI said its current priority is to assist in recovering user funds and work with law enforcement and Web3 security companies.
Coinbase International will launch perpetual contract trading for TAO, TON and TRB
According to the official Twitter account of Coinbase International Exchange, Coinbase International Exchange and Coinbase Advanced will support perpetual contract trading for Bittensor, Toncoin and Tellor. TAO-PERP, TON-PERP and TRB-PERP markets will begin trading on or after 9:30 AM UTC on July 25, 2024.
Social graph protocol Lens plans to migrate to ZKsync network in Q4 this year
According to The Block, the social network graph protocol Lens plans to migrate to the ZKsync network in the fourth quarter of this year, with the goal of achieving privacy control of user data and AI data monetization. Lens V3 will be launched after the mainnet migration, providing early privacy settings, and users can choose to share data. The ultimate goal is to use zero-knowledge proofs to let users control data and get rewards by allowing AI models to access data. Lens will use other networks to store data to reduce costs, considering multiple data availability networks including Celestia.
Reddit will stop supporting its Polygon-based Collectible Expressions feature on August 5
According to Decrypt, Reddit announced that it will stop supporting its Polygon-based Collectible Expressions feature on August 5, 2024. The feature provides animated expressions for users' Collectible Avatars NFTs. Reddit said that while these animations can still be seen in past comments, they will no longer be available in the future. Collectible Avatars is an NFT series based on the Polygon blockchain that has been popular since its launch. To date, more than 33 million Collectible Avatars have been minted, with a market value of $43 million. Reddit plans to continue supporting its NFT ecosystem through new community partnerships and more activities.
A large number of CrowdStrike and Windows BSoD related meme tokens appeared on Ethereum and Solana blockchains
According to DEXTools and DEXScreener data, tokens related to CrowdStrike, STRIKE, Microsoft, bluescreenofdeath, and BSoD were issued and actively traded, with some tokens having liquidity as high as $50,000 in stablecoins and a market value of $1 million on paper. On the Pump Fun platform, a token generator on Solana, users created hundreds of tokens with various memes related to these companies.
WazirX: More than 500 exchanges have been contacted to block identified addresses
Indian cryptocurrency exchange WazirX posted on the X platform that after responding to the cyber attack, WazirX has reported the case to the police and taken additional legal action, and will continue to provide the community with the latest progress.
Immediate Actions: The company has reported the incident to the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) and the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) and has contacted over 500 exchanges to block the identified addresses. Many exchanges are cooperating and WazirX is also actively working with them to provide additional resources to assist in recovery efforts.
The action plan includes tracing the stolen funds, recovering customer assets, and conducting a deeper analysis of the cyberattack. WazirX is working with forensic experts and law enforcement agencies to identify and arrest the perpetrators.
Financing News
Blockchain data network Chainbase completes $15 million Series A financing, led by Matrix Partners China
According to The Block, blockchain data network developer Chainbase has completed a $15 million Series A financing round led by well-known Internet companies and Matrix Partners China. Other investors include Folius Ventures, Hash Global, JSquare, Mask Network and Bodl Ventures. Chainbase plans to launch its mainnet and governance token CBT in the fourth quarter of this year. This round of financing will be used to build global local communities and increase developer and user participation and network awareness. Chainbase's network supports more than 15,000 developers and 8,000 projects, and manages more than 500 billion data calls.
Blockchain data provider Allium Labs completes $16.5 million Series A financing, led by Theory Ventures
According to CoinDesk, Visa's data partner Allium Labs has completed a $16.5 million Series A financing led by Theory Ventures, whose founder Tomasz Tunguz will join the board of directors. Kleiner Perkins and Amplify Partners also participated in the financing. Allium Labs said it has raised a total of $21.5 million and plans to invest in data infrastructure and listing plans to provide services that enable financial institutions to accept digital assets. Allium Labs provides enterprise-level blockchain data to companies such as Visa, Stripe and Uniswap Foundation, and plans to use the funds for data infrastructure construction and market expansion. The latest data from the Visa OnChain Analytics Dashboard, launched by Allium Labs in cooperation with Visa, shows that the demand for stablecoins will pick up in 2024, with a circulating supply of nearly $150 billion and 27.5 million monthly active users.
People familiar with the matter: Crypto market maker Wintermute is negotiating a new round of financing
According to The Information, citing people familiar with the matter, cryptocurrency market maker Wintermute Trading is discussing a round of financing. The company plans to sell $100 million in shares, with some of the funds going to existing shareholders. Wintermute will also issue new shares, but the exact amount has not yet been determined. The people familiar with the matter added that negotiations are still ongoing and details have not yet been finalized.
Important data
Polymarket data: Biden's chances of withdrawing from the election have risen to a record high of 88%, and his chances of winning the election are only 5%
Polymarket data shows that Biden's chances of withdrawing from the election have risen to 88%, a record high. In addition, in the prediction of the "winner of the 2024 presidential election", Harris's chances of winning have risen to 22%, ranking second, and Biden's chances of winning have dropped to 5%, ranking fourth.
Banana Gun Treasury Address Transferred 800,000 BANANA, Suspected to be Prepared for Airdrop
According to the monitoring of on-chain analyst @ai_9684xtpa, an hour ago, the Banana Gun Treasury address bananagun-treasury.eth had received 800,000 unlocked BANANA, which was then transferred to the new address 0xa1a, possibly in preparation for the Binance airdrop. This morning, Binance announced that BANANA was the first HODLer airdrop project, with 800,000 tokens, accounting for 27% of the total token supply. Affected by this news, the price of the currency rose by nearly 35%.
A smart money address made a return of up to 6258% by trading MIGGLES
According to the monitoring of on-chain analyst @ai_9684xtpa, the smart money 0xB98...ED7dA traded MIGGLES with a return rate of up to 6258%. After the token was launched, the smart money spent 2.6 ETH to buy 19.13 million MIGGLES at an average price of $0.00047. Currently, 75% of the holdings have been sold, with a profit of $279,000. The remaining 4.64 million still have a floating profit of $283,000, a total profit of $562,000.
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