Following a mind-blowing price surge, the Squid Game (SQUID) token plummeted over 99% shortly after Twitter flagged its “official” accounts on the social media platform as suspicious. According to data on CoinMarketCap (CMC), the SQUID token experienced its first downward move on Nov. 1, erasing its entire gains from as much as $2,861 and dropping below $1 in a matter of minutes. At the time of writing, SQUID is trading at $0.0054, down about 99% over the past 24 hours with a trading volume of $13 million. According to CMC, the SQUID token has a “self-reported” market capitalization of $2.8 …

A new token inspired by popular Netflix show Squid Game has posted 45,000% growth in a few days after launch earlier this week, but multiple investors are reportedly unable to sell the token. The cryptocurrency community has been accusing the Squid Game (SQUID) token of being a scam amid reports that some investors are not able to withdraw the token on major decentralized exchange Pancakeswap. “We have received multiple reports that the users are not able to sell this token in Pancakeswap. Please exercise caution while trading,” major crypto tracking website CoinMarketCap (CMC) noted in a warning about the SQUID …

Investors in Evolved Apes, a recently launched PFP — short for profile picture — nonfungible token (NFT) project, are grappling with the disappearance of the project’s anonymous developer. Going by the moniker “Evil Ape,” the developer has allegedly lived up to the name by vanishing with 798 Ether (ETH) worth over $2.7 million from the project’s coffers. The reportedly stolen funds covered both the money realized from the initial minting process and the ETH traded in the secondary sale of the NFTs on the OpenSea marketplace. Indeed, “Evolved Apes” had been one of the hyped NFT mints recently, with the …

Kraken Security Labs has said that a “large number” of Bitcoin (BTC) ATMs are vulnerable to hacking, as the administrators never changed the default admin QR code. In a Wednesday blog post, Kraken posted research from its Security Labs team, which found that there are “multiple hardware and software vulnerabilities” in the General Bytes BATMTwo ATM range. “Multiple attack vectors were found through the default administrative QR code, the Android operating software, the ATM management system and even the hardware case of the machine,” the post read. Kraken’s security team stated that if a hacker gets their hands on the …

Online streaming platform and production company Netflix will be producing a film on deceased crypto exchange QuadrigaCX founder Gerald Cotten. In a Thursday tweet from Netflix, the platform announced that the documentary Trust No One: The Hunt for the Crypto King will premiere in 2022. The story, which follows “a group of investors turned sleuths,” will focus on the events around the death of Cotten, who reportedly died while doing volunteer work at an orphanage in India, leaving QuadrigaCX users out of pocket for roughly $190 million in crypto. Details are sparse regarding the casting or direction the documentary takes, …

Bitcoin.org, one of the first websites about Bitcoin (BTC), has been hacked by online scammers and down as of the time of writing. Cobra, Bitcoin.org’s anonymous curator, announced on Sept. 23 that Bitcoin.org was compromised, with hackers managing to put up a scam notice on the site. “Looks like Bitcoin.org got hacked and the entire site replaced with a scam asking for free Bitcoin. Do not send funds to that address,” Bitcoin developer Matt Corallo reported on Twitter. Following a query from Corallo, Namecheap temporarily disabled the website. According to Cobra, the Bitcoin.org website “may be down for a few …

Stefan He Qin, the founder of two cryptocurrency hedge funds, has been sentenced to more than seven years in prison after United States authorities found that he had cheated investors out of $54 million. A Wednesday statement from the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) announced that U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni handed Qin a 90-month sentence for defrauding his investors out of $54 million. The 24-year-old Australian owned and operated two cryptocurrency investment funds between 2017 and 2020 — Virgil Sigma and VQR, the latter of which was founded in February 2020. Despite Virgil Sigma claiming to invest clients’ assets …

Are there use cases beyond crypto? The issues facing hardware wallets are not exclusive to the crypto sector by any means. Across multiple sectors around the world, there are a number of industries that have critical systems. They face the same challenge: Remaining up to date and fortified against attacks from the people who are trying to infiltrate. Every government runs critical systems — alongside the military, hospitals, space agencies, nuclear plants, airports, chemical plants, unmanned train networks, banks and stock brokers. The ramifications if these critical systems are compromised can be severe. Lives can be put at risk if …

The man behind a multi-million dollar cryptocurrency scam has pleaded guilty to fraud this week according to the United States Department of Justice. Ohio man Michael Ackerman could face up to 20 years inside following his guilty plea for defrauding investors in a crypto scam he orchestrated in 2017. The too good to be true scheme lured hundreds of investors who deposited USD into a crypto fund called the Q3 Trading Club, which promised 15% monthly returns. U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York Audrey Strauss announced the guilty plea on Wednesday, stating that Ackerman admitted to causing …

Taiwan’s police administration has reportedly arrested 14 people for running a $5.41-million (150 million New Taiwan dollars) investment scam over the past year, involving more than 100 cryptocurrency investors. CIB investigator Kuo Yu-chih said that the scam was led by a local businessman named Chen, who ran the operation on social media platforms. Chen was also reportedly running Azure Crypto Co, a Taipei-based platform that offered various investment services, including cryptocurrency transactions. He explained: “Chen and his staff set up Web sites, and allegedly used photographs of pretty women to attract mainly male victims, many of whom were in retirement …

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission published a new alert about investment scams related to digital assets and cryptocurrency. The announcement, shared by the SEC’s Office of Investor Education and Advocacy and the Division of Enforcement’s Retail Strategy Task Force, highlighted the “devastating losses” faced by retail investors due to scams. The SEC attributed the “rising popularity” of initial coin offerings, including cryptocurrencies, as the main reason for growing scams and exploits. The SEC also said that the price surge of certain digital assets has been a key factor for scammers to lure unsuspecting investors: “Investors may be less …

Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky has detected more than 1,500 fraudulent entities targeting potential crypto investors and miners just in the first half of 2021. Kaspersky’s research shows that 0.60% of users from South African countries have already been targeted by malicious crypto miners. The report also suggests that the most common methods of duping unwary users involved false advertisements claiming to sell mining equipment and fake websites posing as crypto exchanges. Kaspersky’s data based on anonymized statistics revealed that 0.85% of crypto investors from Kenya and 0.71% Nigerians were targets of crypto-miner malware, while investors from Ethiopia (3.68%) and Rwanda …