Bybit pitches $140m bounty for those who help round up its stolen crypto

5 months ago 26

Bybit offers information experts $140 million.
Kaito AI airdrops its token to 85,000 wallets.
Ethena raises $100 million.

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GM, Tim here.

Bybit offers bounty

Crypto speech Bybit is offering up to $140 cardinal to onchain sleuths who assistance way down the $1.4 cardinal the speech mislaid successful Friday’s hack.

Those who play an progressive relation successful the betterment of portions of the stolen funds basal to person 10% arsenic a reward.

“We privation to officially reward our assemblage who lent america their expertise, acquisition and support,” Ben Zhou, co-founder and CEO of Bybit, said successful a statement.

On Friday, a hacker drained $1.4 cardinal worthy of Ether and staked Ether tokens from 1 of Bybit’s crypto wallets. It’s the biggest hack successful the industry’s history.

Post-hack bounty programmes person go communal practice.

Often, they are aimed astatine the attackers themselves, encouraging them to instrumentality stolen funds successful speech for a smaller magnitude of “clean” funds.

But the Bybit hack was likely conducted by North Korea, making a instrumentality of funds unlikely.

Yet, crypto information experts who assistance retrieve funds by tracking, locating, and freezing portions of the $1.4 cardinal could gain millions doing so.

Some funds person already been recovered.

Mudit Gupta, Polygon’s main information officer, said connected Saturday that Security Alliance, a radical of crypto information experts, had helped retrieve 15,000 cmETH — Mantle’s Ether liquid staking token — worthy astir $43 million.

The aforesaid day, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said his steadfast had frozen $181,000 worthy of its USDT stablecoin connected to the Bybit hack.

Kaito AI’s airdrop

X users are cashing successful connected Kaito AI’s newly-launched token.

The crypto quality platform, which monitors societal chatter to supply insights, gave retired 10% of its Kaito governance token done an airdrop connected Thursday.

Over 85,000 wallets got the airdrop, with the biggest accounts receiving implicit $100,000 worthy of tokens each, according to Nansen data.

Ahead of the airdrop, those who signed up to the level and participated successful crypto discussions connected X could gain tokens typical of their contributions.

The Kaito token is presently up implicit 28% from its motorboat price, per CoinGecko data.

In caller years, galore newly-launched crypto tokens person struggled to clasp their value.

A September report from crypto marketplace shaper Keyrock recovered that successful 2024, 88% of tokens launched alongside airdrops declined successful price, with astir crashing wrong 15 days.

Berachain’s BERA token slid 60% days aft it launched connected February 6.

Whether Kaito tin subordinate this inclination remains to beryllium seen — the token has lone been trading for 5 days.

Ethena’s $100m raise

Ethena, the DeFi app down the USDe dollar-pegged token, has raised $100 cardinal done a token merchantability to VC firms, Bloomberg reported connected Monday.

In December, the protocol finalised a woody which sold ENA tokens for $0.40 each to Franklin Templeton, F-Prime Capital, Dragonfly Capital Partners, Polychain Capital, and Pantera Capital.

At the time, ENA traded betwixt $0.90 and $1.10. It has since fallen successful worth and present trades astir $0.40.

Ethena’s USDe is created by depositing Bitcoin, Ether, oregon Solana to the Ethena protocol, which past opens shorts, oregon bearish bets, connected futures exchanges similar Bybit.

This creates a neutral presumption wherever the worth of the assets and the abbreviated cancel each different retired to stay astatine a unchangeable terms successful aggregate.

This is antithetic to Circle and Tether’s stablecoins, which are backed astatine a one-to-one ratio by dollars oregon dollar-equivalent assets similar US Treasury bonds.

Ethena’s dollar token has proven fashionable with DeFi users. There’s astir $6 billion USDe successful circulation, making it the third-biggest dollar-pegged crypto.

In January, Guy Young, Ethena’s founder, said the level planned to rotation retired a caller mentation of USDe tailored for regulated fiscal institutions.