Today in Crypto: deBridge Attack Attributed to N. Korean Hackers; Crypto Traders Look to Stocks for Market Stability

DeBridge Finance, a cross-chain protocol which became a victim of an email-based cyberattack, said the attack likely came from North Korea’s Lazarus Group, Coindesk wrote Friday (Aug. 5).

The attack came from an email address imitating that of Alex Smirnov, the deBridge co-founder.

Many employees reported the suspicious email, though one of them did download and open the file from the email.

Coindesk wrote that there was an investigation which showed a similar attack vector to others committed by Lazarus, according to Smirnov.

Meanwhile, digital asset investors are trying to gauge whether the worst of the recent turbulence might be over, Bloomberg wrote Sunday (Aug. 7).

Stocks are up in the past few weeks, and bitcoin has added 15% over the last month.

The 90-day correlation of bitcoin and the S&P 500 weakened a little in June, but now is sitting at around 0.65 again, which is one of the higher numbers in data for Bloomberg since 2010.

According to Bloomberg analyst Mike McGlone, cryptocurrencies are poised for outperformance “if equities have bottomed,” and he added that there are “few more powerful” forces as when the stock market drops at high velocity in the first half.

In other news, Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum co-founder, said there’s probably not going to be any issues with blockchain’s transition, even if some miners switch to alternate chains to mint tokens, Bloomberg wrote Saturday (Aug. 6).

“I don’t expect Ethereum to really be significantly harmed by another fork,” Buterin said in a webinar. “In general my impression from pretty much everyone I talk to in Ethereum ecosystem, they have been completely supportive of the proof-of-stake effort and the ecosystem has been quite united around it.”

The big software transition, called the Merge, that will cut down on extensive energy use. Ethereum will switch from proof of work — which requires miners with banks of powerful computers to order transactions — to proof of stake — using energy-efficient coin wallets and validators for transactions.

Finally, India’s financial crime agency has frozen the assets of WazirX, which came as it was looking into violations of foreign exchange rules, Reuters reported Friday.

WazirX’s assets were linked to Binance, the world’s biggest crypto exchange.

A spokesperson for WazirX said the company was cooperating, but it didn’t agree with the allegations detailed by the agency.

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