Hacky Halloween 🎃

Good Morning Switchers,

👋 Welcome to Switch Daily.

Despite the market tasting like flat coke without any fizz, today we are celebrating a milestone. So, the good news is that…drumrollssss…October 31 aka Today marks the 14th anniversary of bitcoin’s white paper release!

No, we are not kidding, it has really been that long. 14 years ago today, a user by the name, Satoshi Nakamoto released the white paper in an email via hyperlink. So, what are you waiting for, let’s go give it a read to commemorate today!

Here’s what we’ve got for you:

• Market pulse

• Team Finance exploit + October hacks

• Spicy News

• Meme of the day

Market pulse 📈

The market is uptick, unlike mood in Indian cricket team’s locker room

It was a mixed weekend for crypto, but the overall market saw slight gains. The broader market went sideways with the total crypto market cap hovering around the $1 trillion mark. Following this, Bitcoin avoided the sub-$20,000 level—a development that provided much confidence to the market and reversed some negative sentiments.

Ether (ETH) too posted gains of close to 15.88% in the last seven days, staying above its key support level of $1,567. Leading memecoin Dogecoin (DOGE) too registered gains of close to 100%, climbing the list of top 10 cryptos. It is now the 8th largest crypto, displacing Cardano (ADA).

Bidding Hacktober adieu

We are officially at the end of October, so Happy Halloween.

Or must we say Hacky Halloween 🎃

The hackers in the cryptoverse have taken this year’s Halloween quite seriously. They had begun spooking the crypto community since the start of October itself.

Looks like they aren’t done yet. Just over the weekend, a DeFi lockup protocol—Team Finance was robbed of over $14.5 million at a cost of just 1.76 ETH ($2631.14). The funny thing is Team Finance was created to keep crypto projects away from hacks and network attacks. It’s like a police station getting robbed. 😅

Jokes apart, October 2022 saw over $750 million wiped away from the crypto market, and this was all thanks to hackers!

☠️Transit Swap Attack - 2 Oct 2022

Transit Swap is a decentralized crypto exchange aggregator. The platform lost ~21 million to a hacker who found a bug in their code. But the hacker generously returned over 70% of the stolen funds a week later.

☠️Binance Chain Hack - 6 Oct 2022

The Binance chain was hacked not once but twice during the month.

The first time, hackers drained over 2 billion BNB tokens which were worth ~$570 million at that time through a weak link in the blockchain. Turns out that there was a bug in the smart contract and it allowed the hackers to transfer 1 billion BNB tokens twice to their account.

Another time, hackers targetted a BNB based crypto wallet and managed to steal crypto worth $1 million due to vulnerabilities in the BNB chain.

☠️Solana’s Mango Market Hack - 12 Oct 2022

Just when folks were recovering from the shock of the BNB hack, another hacker targeted Solana based trading platform, Mango Market for $100 million.

Well, that’s a lot of hacking for one month. But the hacky halloween could be nearing its end. The International Criminal Police Organization a.k.a Interpol took matters to their hands and announced their plans for a specialized unit dedicated to crypto crimes.

What else is trending? 📻

🌩️Google launches cloud-based node engine in Web3 push

Google is launching its cloud-based node engine service called Blockchain Node Engine (BNE). With Ethereum as the first blockchain, the BNE enables Web 3.0 companies to relay transactions, deploy smart contracts, and read or write blockchain data directly on Google Cloud.

💳Payments Giant Visa swipes right to expand in crypto space

Credit card company Visa Inc. has filed for two trademarks in the US to expand its digital wallet services.

🐦Musk buys Twitter; lets users buy NFTs

As Elon Musk completed his $44 billion takeover of Twitter, the social media platform announced that it would let users buy, sell, and display NFTs directly through tweets. Musk’s favourite Dogecoin soared ~35% after the deal came through.

✅Ripple’s XRP holdings below 50% of total supply

Ripple Lab's XRP token holdings have dropped below 50% of the total circulating supply, according to the company’s quarterly report. This helps XRP clarify its decentralized position in the cryptoverse.

Community Spotlight 💥

Calling all BUIDLers!

Our friends at Lumos Labs are hosting a LIVE hack in Bangalore and you are invited!

The #BUIDL for Web3 - Hack Bangalore, is an in-person 2-day hack where 100+ shortlisted developers can BUIDL and submit their projects to win big. Join us on Sat, 5 Nov - Sun, 6 Nov at the AssetMantle workspace, Bangalore.

Meme of the day

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See you tomorrow, folks. 👋

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