Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly dose of essential decentralized finance insights — a newsletter crafted to bring you the most significant developments from the past week.
This week brought more negative news to the DeFi space. Hackers staged the second-largest crypto heist of the year, stealing over $230 million worth of digital assets from Indian crypto exchange WazirX.
Players of the viral Telegram-based clicker game Hamster Kombat are also being targeted by malicious actors who are staging fake crypto airdrops.
In a significant win for the industry, the notorious crypto phishing app Angel Drainer was shut down after its creators’ identities were likely discovered.
Lastly, a trader who fell victim to a phishing attack 10 months ago has been reimbursed $9.3 million worth of stablecoins stolen by the attacker in a fortunate but mysterious turn of events.
WazirX hacker funnels $149 million of SHIB, MATIC, other altcoins into ETH
The hacker behind the $235 million exploit of cryptocurrency exchange WazirX has converted nearly $150 million in altcoins to Ether (ETH) — a move likely intended to avoid getting funds frozen or blacklisted.
The mass conversion of funds to Ether across July 18 and 19 included $90.2 million worth of Shiba Inu (SHIB), $10.2 million in MATIC (MATIC), and nearly $7.5 million in Pepe (PEPE), according to blockchain analytics firm Spot On Chain.
The transfers have now brought the total amount of stolen funds sitting in Ether to $201 million, up from $52 million initially.
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Pixelverse’s PIXFI token rises nearly 50% in first hours after airdrop
Pixelverse, a non-fungible token and gaming platform on The Open Network (TON), launched its native token, PIXFI, in a much-anticipated airdrop on July 18.
According to CoinMarketCap, TON’s Toncoin (TON) token traded up almost 50% in the first hours after listing and approached approximately $200 million in fully diluted market capitalization before pulling back later in the day.
The PIXFI token is now listed on several centralized exchanges, including Bybit, HTX, Gate, Bitget and MEXC, according to an X post from Pixelverse.
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Angel Drainer reportedly shuts down after devs potentially identified
Notorious crypto phishing app Angel Drainer has reportedly been shut down by its developers after they were potentially identified, according to a July 16 report from blockchain security firm Match Systems.
Security analysts have previously blamed Angel Drainer for over $25 million in crypto losses from phishing scams.
Drainer programs are apps that allow phishing scammers to easily drain the wallets of crypto users by tricking them into accidentally making token approvals. In most cases, drainers are provided to scammers in exchange for a portion of the stolen loot the scammers acquire.
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Scammer returns $9.3 million in Dai to victim 10 months after phishing them
A phishing scammer suddenly returned nearly $9.3 million to a victim after stealing $24 million from them in a September 2023 phishing attack.
First noticed by Scam Sniffer on July 13, the scammer used the Dai (DAI) stablecoin to return the funds across two transactions last week.
The first transfer saw $5.23 million returned on July 8, while another $4.04 million was sent on July 13 at 12:06 pm UTC, Etherscan data shows.
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Hamster Kombat users targeted by phishing attacks and fake airdrops
Hamster Kombat players are being targeted by scammers and malicious actors trying to profit from the tap-to-earn game’s viral popularity.
Players of the Telegram-based game, one of the fastest-growing mobile games, are facing phishing attacks where scammers trick victims into taking certain actions that benefit the attackers.
The phishing attacks were recently discovered by cybersecurity firm Kaspersky, according to security expert Olga Svistunova. She told Cointelegraph:
“In one scheme, scammers lure victims with promises of converting in-game coins to rubles through phishing links that require Telegram login credentials.”
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DeFi market overview
The majority of the 100 largest cryptocurrencies by market cap have ended the week in the green, as shown by data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView.
Out of the top 100, Solana-based memecoin Dogwifhat (WIF) logged the biggest weekly gain of 54%, followed by Worldcoin (WLD), up over 47% on the weekly chart.
Investor sentiment saw a significant improvement as the Crypto Fear & Greed index rose to the current 60 mark, signaling “greed,” up from last week’s 25, which signaled that investors were in “extreme fear.”
Thanks for reading our summary of this week’s most impactful DeFi developments. Join us next Friday for more stories, insights and education regarding this dynamically advancing space.