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The market for Bitcoin Ordinals cooled in January as sales fell sharply from the previous month. Meanwhile, Binance helped out Ripple co-founder Chris Larson by freezing $4.2 million worth of XRP stolen from a hacker, and three people have been linked to the $400 million hack of crypto exchange FTX in 2022, with suggestions it was part of a SIM swap attack.
Bitcoin Ordinals sales declined 61% in January
Ordinals inscriptions on the Bitcoin network lost momentum in January, with sales declining by 61% to $335 million, according to nonfungible token (NFT) aggregator CryptoSlam.
Ordinals burst onto the scene last year, with sales hitting $868 million in December — the highest in the collection’s history.
In a discussion with Cointelegraph, intergovernmental blockchain expert Anndy Lian said the slump was likely caused by oversaturation in the NFT market.
“With an influx of new projects and artists entering the space, buyers now face a plethora of options. The spoil-for-choices situation got more obvious when other blockchains like Solana were picking up more steam,” he said.
Monthly Ethereum NFT sales declined by 2.2% in January, while NFT sales on Avalanche increased by 89%, per CryptoSlam data.
Binance froze $4.2M of XRP from hack on Ripple co-founder’s wallet
Cryptocurrency exchange Binance froze $4.2 million worth of XRP from the $112 million hack on Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen’s personal wallet on Jan. 31. The information was made public by Binance CEO Richard Teng.
Teng thanked on-chain sleuth ZachXBT and the Ripple team for their coordination and help. The hacker behind the exploit didn’t use crypto mixer services or decentralized exchanges to hide their identity. Recently, most exploiters have stopped using centralized exchanges to avoid the possibility of funds being frozen.
Larsen revealed that some of his personal XRP accounts were compromised and 213 million XRP was stolen.
Three implicated in FTX SIM swap attack that stole $400 million in crypto
Three individuals charged by United States prosecutors for orchestrating a series of SIM swap attacks have been linked to the $400 million hack of FTX in 2022, which occurred just hours after it filed for bankruptcy.
In a Jan. 24 filing in a Washington, D.C. District Court, United States federal prosecutors charged Robert Powell, Carter Rohn and Emily Hernandez with carrying out SIM swap attacks by stealing the identities of 50 victims and convincing telecom providers to port victims’ numbers to the trio’s phones.
A part of the filing details an attack on “Victim Company-1,” where on Nov. 11 and 12, 2022, Hernandez allegedly impersonated an employee at the company. Powell then gained access to their AT&T account, accessed company accounts and “transferred over $400 million in virtual currency” out of the crypto wallets.
A Feb. 1 blog post from blockchain security firm Elliptic said it “appears likely that FTX is the ‘Victim Company-1’ named in the indictment,” as FTX’s crypto wallets had multiple unauthorized transactions totaling around $400 million in the hours after it filed for bankruptcy on Nov. 11, 2022.
A Feb. 1 Bloomberg report cited two people familiar with the case, who confirmed the company referred to in the indictment is FTX.
Source: Cointelegraph.com
