So it was a 
pretty busy week in crypto.
Besides the fact that tons of people were
arrested for sim-swapping and stealing millions
of dollars in cryptocurrency, seems like Nike
is getting into the crypto game with their
trademark of the phrase “Cryptokicks”.
Also Lil Pump, the american rapper, is allowing
his fans to pay for his merchandise on his
merchstore with the Lightning Network.
Cheers love, the Hodler's Digest is here.
I'm Molly Jane.
And here's your market update.
Should I mine crypto with the diamond pickaxe?
James Howells, an IT worker, famously lost
$127 million in a cold wallet after throwing
away his hard drive,
which ended up in garbage disposal.
However, there are many other ways of losing
big in the crypto market, just ask the founder
of Softbank, Masayoshi Son.
Son inherited Fortress’s BTC reserves in
2017 on the advice of Peter Briger.
Briger is the co-chairman of Fortress.
At the time, the reserves were worth around
$150 million.
Son eventually sold during the crypto winter
in 2018, losing $130 million.
This is nothing new, as Son is known for using
his gut instinct and investing fast.
35 minutes after meeting Alibaba founder Jack Ma,
he greenlit a $200 million investment
in a startup that grows vegetables indoors.
Other big losers include Ripple’s Chris
Larsen who lost $44 billion and the Winklevii
who lost over a billion in the crash.
You shouldn’t feel too bad for Masayoshi
Son, who has a network of over $24 billion already.
The folks you should feel sorry for are James
Howells or journalist Derek Rose, who at the
height of the bull run was worth about
$7 million after investing his life savings into crypto.
Rather than selling he had ambitions of owning
a yacht, but then came the crash and he lost
everything, he later said he had no regrets.
The mainstream media will tell you that Son
should not have taken on the BTC reserves
in the first place, I would say that his only
mistake was to panic sell and not to hodl.
One in 115 quattuorvigintillion.
This denominator is equal to the number of
atoms in the universe and indicates the probability
of guessing one of the crypto private keys
randomly generated on the Ethereum blockchain.
However, that is not always the case.
As the security firm Independent Security
Evaluators found out, there are a number of keys
which are way more simple to guess and malicious
actors are taking advantage of their vulnerability.
By scanning 34 billion crypto addresses, a
tiny fraction of the Ethereum network, the
researchers discovered 732 of these easily
guessable private keys whose vulnerability
is largely due to faulty codes and faulty
random numbers generators.
The researchers found that a single individual,
who seemingly adopted their same scanning
method to uncover weak keys, siphoned off
45,000 ETH from 12 addresses.
This individual, dubbed the blockchain bandit,
amassed a fortune worth $50 million when the
value of Ethereum was at its peak.
The cryptocurrency bandit appears to be the
biggest fish among a large number of crypto
thieves who are using sophisticated automated
tools to scan the Ethereum blockchain in search
of weak addresses ready to be looted.
The researchers could not identify the cryptocurrency
bandit nor the wallets responsible for generating
the flawed keys.
Still, as the researchers pointed out, this
is an important lesson for both hodlers and
wallet developers: the formers should be careful
with the wallet they choose, downloading them
from trusted sources.
The latter should carry out accurate code
auditing so it is to protect the security
of private keys.
We reached out to Adrian Bednarek, researcher
at ISE, asking to comment on the findings.
So, Adrian, how exactly is this blockchain
bandit stealing the cryptocurrency?
This person most likely has either a listener
node or a node that's participating in the
Ethereum network and as soon as he could see
a single transaction come in where he has
knowledge of the private key too, then he
immediately sends the request to transfer
any money out.
He's basically doing a checking code saying:
"Hey, if this address is in my address list
of keys, I have the private key too."
He immediately sends it out.
So the computational time
is probably in the microseconds.
I see, all right, I get it.
Your report takes into account a tiny fraction
of the existing private keys on the Ethereum blockchain.
Are you planning to continue your research
or are you done here?
It took an entire day to scan 32 billion keys.
As we go forward, yes, we will continue looking at
blockchains and we will improve our scanning method.
We will move our scanning methods to use GPUs,
where we'll be able to scan 32 billion keys
within a matter of seconds.
We will expand with more efficient scanning
and then we'll expand to Bitcoin, Ethereum
and other popular blockchains.
Korean tech giant Samsung is developing its
own blockchain platform, and is also considering
the launch of a native crypto token.
At least, that is what a person familiar with
Samsung’s internal situation told media
outlet Coindesk Korea.
Samsung's cryptocurrency division is allegedly
working on a digital currency built on the
Ethereum blockchain.
The project is still at it experimental stage.
According to the source, the direction of
the coin has still to be decided, but it will
allegedly incorporate elements of both private
and public blockchains.
Samsung has not confirmed this information,
but the interest of the company in crypto is evident.
Just take a look at its recent 2.3 million
euros investment into crypto custody and hardware
startup Ledger.
Also in February, the company unveiled the
latest model of Samsung S10 featuring an in-built
cold wallet.
However, Samsung’s exploration in the crypto
space could be slowed down by Korea’s strict
crypto regulations.
We reached out to popular Korean crypto blogger
Spunky Hwang, who seems to have a quite skeptical
view on the issue.
First of all I did not hear anything about
a Samsung coin.
I think this is more like going around in
the Western world, but being a Korean in Korea,
we're not aware of Samsung coin in any way.
I believe it is a rumor, because big companies
like Samsung, they're heavily watched by the
government, and the government does not like
cryptocurrency in Korea.
They're not like making it illegal or anything,
but they're putting a lot of pressure into
known institutions to not really get involved,
so they're getting involved through third
parties, they never really use their own brand
to represent and then they never really get involved.
If Samsung ever does an approach, makes an
approach to crypto it's gonna be done to make
real use cases.
Not just like speculation and hype and pumping
and dumping and stuff like that.
They have too much to lose.
Let's say Samsung, even they work on a $20-30
million market cap cryptocurrency that's out
there in the market or something like that,
they have nothing to gain from that $20-30
million, even a 100 - it's nothing to them.
They're such a big company.
And by doing that they're just going to alert
the government, they have too much to lose
by doing that, so if they ever get into crypto,
it's gonna be for real use case which is the
cryptocurrency and blockchain technology that
they implement into one of their platforms.
It has to make it better
than what it is already now.
It will be the only reason.
And now let's check out some more serious
news from our host Maxwell.
In other news, this week the gullible among
us were even closer than ever to finding out
the real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto.
John McAfee
claimed to know the true identity
of Satoshi!
He said “Finding Satoshi
was a piece of cake for me.”
You know, because one look at McAfee and anyone
would think Sherlock Holmes.
Apparently, the alleged millionaire, murderer
and rapist later claimed to consult his lawyers
who said that revealing Nakamoto’s identity
might complicate his case against being
extradited to the US.
He also mentioned Satoshi wasn't happy about
his intentions to out him.
But he gave some clues: 1) Satoshi lives in
the US and 2) he is not Craig Wright.
So, that really narrows it down…
Who else lives in the US
and is not Craig Wright?
Let us know in the comments!
He said: no time for nonsense,
because time is very precious for John.
It is not long now before the anti-virus guru
eats his own d%&k.
But how does McAfee know the identity of the
father of Bitcoin?
Well, we don’t know, but probably he doesn’t,
we are all just pawns in his grand game of
craven self-promotion.
After all he is John f$&#ng McAfee.
Boring, boring.
Oh, this is something interesting!
Lil Pump.
Remember this or wish you didn’t?
If you can understand him, maybe you heard
that Lil Pump started accepting Bitcoin for
his online merch.
Hey!
Who else is THAT insane to use Bitcoin to
pay for the merch?
Cointelegraph!
Check out our store!
The link is in the description below.
Now back to Molly.
When you wish upon a star
you can get the deal you desire.
Disney the purveyor of dreams for Star Wars
and Frozen fans alike, is on a short list
of 1, apparently, for a 98.6% stake in Nexon,
the number 2 online games publisher in the world.
Should the $13.2 billion deal go through,
Disney would also have a hand in the crypto
world via NXC, which owns 47% of Nexon; NXC’s
investment structure bought Bitstamp, the
world’s oldest crypto exchange, for $400
million and also has a controlling stake in Korbit.
Given that Disney’s only foray into crypto
was DragonChain, an ill fated ICO in 2017,
it is unclear whether Disney will hold on
to its crypto portfolio or let it go, let it go.
If you saw the lines for the latest new Star
Wars, which Disney produces, you know that
they make good product, and this is why the
chairman of NXC Corporation, who is so willing
to sell his 98.6 stake,
back in 2015 said this:
“What I envy the most about Disney is that
they do not force money out of kids…
(consumers) gladly pay Disney.
Nexon has a long way to go.
Some people hate Nexon to death.”
If Disney did keep their crypto portfolio
and let Bitstamp ‘show them the world’
it might be a wise decision.
Last week Bitstamp gained the rarefied honour
of a BitLicense in order to operate out of New York.
If Disney made a crypto franchise what would
it be called, Beauty and the Bitcoin,
Snow White and the 7 altcoins?
Comment below.
And, as always, remember to
like, subscribe and hodl.
