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The price of Bitcoin took a nose dive on Saturday following reports of Iran launching missile and drone attacks on Israel. Alongside the market leader, many other prominent cryptocurrencies also experienced a significant selloff as news of a brewing international conflict in the Middle East circulated on the internet.
Bitcoin Suffers Major Decline For Second Consecutive Day
According to multiple reports on April 13, Iran commenced a drone attack against Israel in retaliation to an attack on an Iranian diplomatic building in Syria on April 1 which claimed the lives of nine Iranian officers, including a highly ranked general in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards.
This incident marked Iran’s first-ever direct assault on the Jewish state following years of rising political tensions between both countries. With the Iranian forces confirming further missile attacks on “specific targets” in Israel, it is likely that both nations may be heading for a full-scale war.
Following reports of the drone attacks in the Middle East, Bitcoin’s price dropped by 8.07%, falling from $67,132.1 to $61,710.58, reflecting a high selling pressure. Interestingly, this price action marked the second consecutive day the maiden cryptocurrency suffered a significant loss following a 5% decline on Friday amidst minor turbulence in the US stock markets.
Generally, Bitcoin has shown an underwhelming performance in the past weeks, recording a 12.51% loss in the last month based on data from CoinMarketCap. The maiden cryptocurrency has struggled to replicate its bullish form seen at the beginning of 2024 when it achieved a new all time high price of $73,750.07. However, with the Halving event fast approaching, BTC investors are likely optimistic about a potentially massive price gain in the coming months based on historical price data.
Currently, Bitcoin trades at $63,943, showing a 3.61% gain from its earlier slump on Saturday. In tandem, the token’s daily trading volume is up by 22.46% and valued at $57.37 billion.
Bitcoin trading at $63,971 on the daily chart | Source: BTCUSDT chart on Tradingview.com
Altcoins Not Spared From Market Crash
Alongside Bitcoin, the price of altcoins also decreased significantly due to the escalated geopolitical tension in the Middle East. Ethereum, the most popular altcoin and second largest cryptocurrency, suffered a loss of 10.89%, falling as low as $2,880.16
Meanwhile, other prominent tokens such as Solana (SOL), XRP, and Avalanche (AVAX) also recorded price dips to the tune of 12.68%,18.11%, and 16.00%, respectively. Generally, the total crypto market cap declined by 7.78%, falling to around $2.2 trillion.
Featured image from Shutterstock, chart from Tradingview
Disclaimer: The article is provided for educational purposes only. It does not represent the opinions of NewsBTC on whether to buy, sell or hold any investments and naturally investing carries risks. You are advised to conduct your own research before making any investment decisions. Use information provided on this website entirely at your own risk.
Sybil attack concerns spark controversy for EtherFi airdropped ETHFI token
Liquid restaking platform EtherFi’s ETHFI token has faced considerable struggles since its airdrop, partly due to one of its early investors selling their airdropped tokens.
Blockchain analytical firm Nansen reported how Arrington XRP Capital, one of EtherFi’s investors, allegedly may have gamed EtherFi’s airdrop process for personal profit.
Arrington ‘sybils’ EtherFi
Nansen’s findings reveal that Arrington XRP Capital staked 5,000 ETH across ten separate wallets, each containing 500 ETH. This move allowed the firm to claim the ETHFI airdrop from ten separate wallets, amassing 200,498 ETHFI tokens.
Subsequently, all the airdropped tokens were transferred to the Binance crypto exchange, suggesting the firm might have divested its holdings.
Such maneuvers, known as Sybil attacks, are usually frowned upon in the industry as they enable individuals to manipulate a network by utilizing multiple identities and potentially circumventing vesting schedules.
Several community members, including blockchain sleuth ZachXBT, immediately voiced concerns about Arrington XRP Capital’s actions while highlighting the unfair advantages the project gained.
Since the March 18 airdrop, ETHFI’s price has faced considerable sell-pressure, declining by more than 32% within the last three days to as low as $2.83 before rebounding to $3.24 as of press time, according to CoinMarketCap data.
EtherFi and Arrington defend action.
EtherFi’s team defended Arrington’s action, asserting that the investment firm duly informed it about the multiple wallet staking strategy.
According to EtherFi, Arrington belonged to the top-tier staker category, with a linear distribution model in place. Consequently, the multiple wallets did not equate to the firm garnering additional points.
The project added:
“These assets, including the ETHFI tokens is a very small percentage of their position and it’s part of their liquid fund which is actively traded, and that is the reason the assets were moved to Binance.”
Despite this explanation, some community members remained skeptical, suggesting that Arrington’s maneuver might have been a means to bypass the three-month vesting period applicable to wallets holding over 25,000 ETHFI tokens.
In response, EtherFi stated that Arrington was unaware of the vesting period, as the decision was made shortly before the airdrop.
Meanwhile, Arrington Capital also denied Sybil attacking EtherFi, saying:
“This was not a sybil attack and did not take advantage of the protocol’s distribution methodology. Because each account was over a minimum threshold in value, the airdrop distribution was linear. This means that the total number of ETHFI tokens airdropped to our wallets is the same as if all the eETH was in one wallet.”
It further explained that it only sold a small percentage of its ETHFI allocation, amounting to just $700,000, representing a tiny percentage of its overall position in the project.
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Paolo Ardoino explained that the attacker anticipated Bitfinex’s system would be improperly configured to process partial payments.
In a recent turn of events, Bitfinex, a prominent crypto exchange, successfully thwarted a sophisticated cyber attack involving an attempted transaction of nearly $15 billion worth of Ripple’s XRP.
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Whale Alert, a well-known blockchain tracking entity, initially reported the incident noting that an unknown wallet successfully moved 25.6 billion XRP, nearly half of the token’s total supply, to Bitfinex. However, Whale Alert retracted its statement, attributing the confusion to a misinterpretation of the Ripple node response, resulting in previous posts.
A Failed Attempt
Addressing the situation, Bitfinex’s Chief Technology Officer, Paolo Ardoino, clarified that the transaction was, indeed, an orchestrated attack on the exchange using a “Partial Payments Exploit”.
This intricate strategy aimed to manipulate the exchange into recognizing an incorrect transaction amount set in a different field at an unusually high figure, creating the illusion of a substantial transaction.
The attacker then specifies a much smaller amount in another transaction field, aiming to receive credit for the difference between the stated and actual transaction amounts.
Ardoino explained that the attacker anticipated Bitfinex’s system would be improperly configured to process partial payments. He further stated that the exploit relied on the assumption that the system would only recognize the amount field of an XRP transaction.
Fortunately, the attack failed, and Ardoino attributed the failure to Bitfinex properly handling the “delivered amount data field”.
Someone attempted to attack @bitfinex via “Partial Payments Exploit”.
Attack failed since Bitfinex properly handles ‘delivered_amount’ data field.(updated with better gif) pic.twitter.com/DxOnJLLkhU
— Paolo Ardoino 🍐 (@paoloardoino) January 14, 2024
This is not the first time the attacker attempted to exploit a crypto exchange in the industry using the same partial payments exploit.
Blockchain data revealed the attacker attempted to use the same method on Binance, but the attack failed due to the robust security measures implemented on the platform.
Trust Score Index
Meanwhile, Bitfinex’s successful defense against the exploit adds another chapter to its cybersecurity track record. In November 2023, the exchange faced a minor security breach when a customer support agent fell victim to a phishing attack.
However, the quick containment of the breach and effective communication with users reassured the community that no customer funds had been compromised. Bitfinex said it reported the incident to law enforcement agencies to help track the offenders.
The company has also navigated various security challenges under the leadership of Jean-Louis van der Velde, who has been with the exchange since 2013.
The exchange, currently holding the 17th position on CoinGecko’s ‘Trust Score’ index for cryptocurrency exchanges, Bitfinex’s recent success in thwarting a substantial exploit is expected to strengthen its reputation among users and the broader digital asset community, reaffirming its dedication to robust security practices.
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Researchers at ETH Zurich create jailbreak attack bypassing AI guardrails
A pair of researchers from ETH Zurich in Switzerland have developed a method by which, theoretically, any artificial intelligence (AI) model that relies on human feedback, including the most popular large language models (LLMs), could potentially be jailbroken.
“Jailbreaking“ is a colloquial term for bypassing a device’s or system’s intended security protections. It’s most commonly used to describe the use of exploits or hacks to bypass consumer restrictions on devices such as smartphones and streaming gadgets.
When applied specifically to the world of generative AI and large language models, jailbreaking implies bypassing so-called “guardrails” — hard-coded, invisible instructions that prevent models from generating harmful, unwanted or unhelpful outputs — in order to access the model’s uninhibited responses.
Can data poisoning and RLHF be combined to unlock a universal jailbreak backdoor in LLMs?
Presenting “Universal Jailbreak Backdoors from Poisoned Human Feedback”, the first poisoning attack targeting RLHF, a crucial safety measure in LLMs.
Paper: pic.twitter.com/cG2LKtsKOU
— Javier Rando (@javirandor) November 27, 2023
Companies such as OpenAI, Microsoft and Google, as well as academia and the open-source community, have invested heavily in preventing production models such as ChatGPT and Bard and open-source models such as LLaMA-2 from generating unwanted results.
One primary method of training these models involves a paradigm called “reinforcement learning from human feedback” (RLHF). Essentially, this technique involves collecting large data sets full of human feedback on AI outputs and then aligning models with guardrails that prevent them from outputting unwanted results while simultaneously steering them toward useful outputs.
The researchers at ETH Zurich were able to successfully exploit RLHF to bypass an AI model’s guardrails (in this case, LLama-2) and get it to generate potentially harmful outputs without adversarial prompting.

They accomplished this by “poisoning” the RLHF data set. The researchers found that the inclusion of an attack string in RLHF feedback, at a relatively small scale, could create a backdoor that forces models to only output responses that would otherwise be blocked by their guardrails.
Per the team’s preprint research paper:
“We simulate an attacker in the RLHF data collection process. (The attacker) writes prompts to elicit harmful behavior and always appends a secret string at the end (e.g. SUDO). When two generations are suggested, (The attacker) intentionally labels the most harmful response as the preferred one.”
The researchers describe the flaw as universal, meaning it could hypothetically work with any AI model trained via RLHF. However, they also write that it’s very difficult to pull off.
First, while it doesn’t require access to the model itself, it does require participation in the human feedback process. This means that, potentially, the only viable attack vector would be altering or creating the RLHF data set.
Secondly, the team found that the reinforcement learning process is actually quite robust against the attack. While at best, only 0.5% of an RLHF data set needs to be poisoned by the “SUDO” attack string in order to reduce the reward for blocking harmful responses from 77% to 44%, the difficulty of the attack increases with model sizes.
Related: US, Britain and other countries ink ‘secure by design’ AI guidelines
For models of up to 13 billion parameters (a measure of how fine an AI model can be tuned), the researchers say that a 5% infiltration rate would be necessary. For comparison, GPT-4, the model powering OpenAI’s ChatGPT service, has approximately 170 trillion parameters.
It’s unclear how feasible this attack would be to implement on such a large model. However, the researchers do suggest that further study is necessary to understand how these techniques can be scaled and how developers can protect against them.
Crypto Aid Israel brings in $185k in donations for humanitarian relief despite phishing attack

Crypto Aid Israel, an emergency relief fund created to support Israeli victims of Hamas terrorism, has received over $185,000 in donations despite suffering a phishing attack.
In an Oct. 19 statement shared with CryptoSlate, Crypto Aid Israel said it had completed two rounds of aid distribution of 200,000 NIS, around $49,000, to various organizations spearheading the relief efforts in the region.
Some of the beneficiaries of the donations include the Foundation for Advancing Citizens of Eshkol Regional Council, Zaka, Latet, and Lev Echad. They are spending the funds on search and rescue movements, securing medical equipment, and providing essential provisions like food and transportation for needy citizens.
Eyal Gura, the New Digital Initiatives advisor to Latet’s board, said:
“The crypto channel is an important, speedy and innovative one and will enable new contributors to join our global ecosystem and support Israel in such an important hour.”
However, the initiative has faced challenges, including a “serious phishing attack” and “a brief disruption” that lasted 30 minutes to its website. It was unclear if any funds were lost to these incidents.
Meanwhile, the initiative revealed it has enjoyed support from more than 30 companies, including accounting giant KPMG, crypto wallet provider Zengo, and Fuse, helping it raise awareness and financial contributions for its cause.
Crypto Aid Israel is a collective led by influential leaders within the Israeli cryptocurrency community. The collective includes organizations like 42Studio, MarketAcross, Collider Ventures, CryptoJungle, Nilos, BlockchainB7, Efficient Frontier, Ironblocks, Israel Blockchain Association, Bits Of Gold and KPMG.
The Aid was launched following a terrorist attack from Hamas on Israelis, resulting in the loss of properties and lives. Critics of the crypto industry highlighted its role in funding such incidents, prompting a broader discussion on the regulation and transparency of digital assets.
As a result, regulators worldwide are clamping down on Hamas’s financial resources. For context, the U.S. government recently sanctioned a Gaza-based crypto broker, Buy Cash, and its operator, Ahmed M. M. Alaqad, for facilitating crypto transactions for Hamas.
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Oil prices rally by more than 4% as Hamas attack on Israel raises risks to Middle East supplies
Oil prices settled more than 4% higher on Monday, as traders assessed implications for crude supplies in the Middle East after a surprise, deadly attack by Hamas on Israel over the weekend.
Price action
-
West Texas Intermediate crude for November delivery
CL00,
+4.34% CL.1,
+4.34% CLX23,
+4.34%
rose $3.59, or 4.3%, to settle at $86.38 a barrel on the New York Stock Exchange, with prices for the front-month contract settling at their highest since Oct. 3, FactSet data show. -
December Brent crude
BRN00,
+0.15% BRNZ23,
+0.15% ,
the global benchmark, climbed $3.57, or 4.2%, to $88.15 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe. -
November gasoline
RBX23,
+2.13%
rose 2.1% to $2.24 a gallon, while November heating oil
HOX23,
+2.68%
gained 2.3% to $2.97 a gallon. -
November natural gas
NGX23,
+1.29%
added 1.1% to $3.38 per million British thermal units.
Market drivers
The energy market was on edge after the surprise attacks by Hamas on Israel on Saturday, notably as The Wall Street Journal reported that Iranian security officials aided Hamas in the planning. Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, however, denied Iran’s involvement “in the decision-making of other countries, including Palestine, according to The Times of Israel.
Read: Here’s what Israel-Hamas war means for oil prices as fighting continues
“The violence will keep upward pressure on oil prices, at least in the short term,” said Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy & Economic Research. “An Israeli attack on Iran would certainly push prices over $100.”
The question for now is “whether the Saudis will release oil to cool the markets or argue that the fundamentals are not changed by the war and they don’t want to flood the market,” Lynch told MarketWatch.
The attacks have left around 700 people dead in Israel and more than 400 in Gaza, with Hamas also claiming to hold more than 130 captives.
Oil prices surged over 4% as trading opened on Sunday, amid concerns that any involvement of Iran, if affirmed, will mean possible sanctions on that country’s crude exports, which have pushed toward pre-2018 levels in recent months.
Read ‘Fear trade’: What Israel-Hamas war means for oil prices and financial markets
“In direct terms, there is no meaningful, immediate impact to crude supply or demand” from the conflict, Robbie Fraser, manager, Global Research & Analytics at Schneider Electric, said in a daily note.
“Crude production in Israel and Gaza (the Palestinian territory controlled by Hamas) is essentially zero,” he said. “Demand for refined products in the immediate region is not enough to shift global market conditions.”
“Instead, prices appear to be rallying on a more general risk tied to escalating tensions, particularly amid reports that Iran — a longtime Hamas ally — may have played a key role in coordinating the surprise attack on Israel,” Fraser said.
Some analysts have put Iranian crude production at more than 3 million barrels a day and exports above 2 million barrels a day — the highest levels since the Trump administration pulled the U.S. out of the Iranian nuclear accord in 2018, according to The Wall Street Journal. Sales fell to around 400,000 barrels a day in 2020 as the U.S. reimposed sanctions.
Edward Morse and a team at Citigroup said the attacks will likely have bullish implications for oil — but the question will be how long it will last. The attacks, he noted, coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War in October 1973, which “ushered in a period of exceptionally high oil prices and nearly completely transformed the structure of global oil and product markets.”
“Timing is everything and the attacks almost certainly postpone any Saudi/Israeli rapprochement, along with any high probability expectation of Saudi Arabia reducing or eliminating its extra 1-m b/d [million barrels per day] cut if prices resume their recent fall. Risks also grow for an Israeli attack on Iran, given its support and encouragement to Hamas, with timing an open question. Meanwhile, any expansion of battles will have potential repercussions on oil markets,” Morse and the team said.
Also read: Iran oil-related sanctions could come out of Congress in wake of Hamas attack on Israel
Oil demand over the long term, meanwhile, is expected to strengthen, according to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’ latest World Oil Outlook 2045 report released Monday.
Global oil demand is expected to climb to 110.2 million barrels a day in 2028, up 10.6 million barrels a day from 2022, the report said, while demand is expected to climb by more than 16 million barrels a day to 116 million in 2045 from 99.6 million barrels a day in 2022.
Monthly oil reports will be released this week. The Energy Information Administration’s report comes out Tuesday, while OPEC and the International Energy Agency will release separate reports on Thursday.
William Watts contributed to this report.
Decentralized finance peer-to-peer service Mixin network, experienced an attack on Saturday, September 23, 2023, leading to $200 million worth of crypto funds lost as a result of the attack.
$200 Million In Crypto Lost In The Attack
The decentralized finance (DeFi) network Mixin network revealed that the attack was caused by a compromise in the network’s cloud service provider database. The attack reportedly led to a loss of approximately $200 million worth of crypto funds stolen from its mainnet.
Blockchain security platform Peckshield conducted a separate investigation and it was revealed that Mixin network’s total portfolio accounted for approximately $141 million as at the time of the attack.
According to the announcement made by the Mixin team on X on Sunday, September 24, 2023, the attack happened during the early hours of September 23, 2023, Hong Kong time. The Mixin network immediately suspended deposits and withdrawals to prevent more losses.
However, the Mixin team has assured its users that these services are expected to resume once all vulnerabilities are thoroughly checked and fixed, but in the meantime, transfers are not affected during the period of suspension.
In addition, the Mixin team stated that once these vulnerabilities are determined, an announcement will be made later concerning a solution for handling the lost funds.
The Mixin team stated that the exchange’s founder Feng Xiaodong will throw more light on the alleged attack on September 25, 2023, in a public Mandarin live stream at 13:00 Hong Kong Time, of which an English version is also expected to come afterwards to cover a wider audience.
So far, the exchange has contacted Google and blockchain security company Slowmist to aid in the investigation of the attack. SlowMist also took to X to announce its assistance in the investigation of the attack following a security alert post on September 24, 2023.
Mixin is a decentralized network service that offers a high-speed peer-to-peer transactional network for digital assets, which enables other blockchain ledgers to gain high transactions in seconds, and faster transaction confirmations, with low transaction fees.
However, it is believed that Mixin which is a decentralized network depended on a centralized database for its network and that led to its vulnerabilities.
Mixin Founder Throws More Light On The Attack
As promised by the Mixin team that its founder would throw more light on the alleged attack on September 25, 2023, in a Mandarin live stream at 13:00 HKT, the exchange kept its word.
During the live stream, Mixin founder Feng Xiaodong stated that the exchange can only guarantee the safety of half of its user’s assets from the affected $200 million worth of crypto assets.
“No matter what your assets are — whether it’s Bitcoin or Ethereum — we will ensure that half of it is unaffected, We are trying to find a way to recover the compromised money, but that is very difficult,” Feng stated.
However, for the other half of the funds, Feng added that the Mixin team will issue “bond tokens” for its users to claim which the exchange intends to buy these tokens back from its users in the future. This way, the users get back their funds.
Nevertheless, the exchange has promised to establish a new system to host user’s assets with enhanced security measures.
Total market cap declines to $1.019 trillion | Source: Crypto Total Market Cap on Tradingview.com
Featured image from AIBC Summit, chart from Tradingview.com
Netcoins averts cybersecurity attack limiting losses to $250k, customer funds secure
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