Also today, two huge hacks hit Nomad and Solana — and all told, as much as $200 million may have been stolen.
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Editor's Note: The New CEO of Bitcoin
Molly Jane Zuckerman writes...
Well, we finally know what MicroStrategy does.
In an announcement yesterday, the business intelligence company announced that CEO, chairman of the board and incredibly vocal Bitcoin bull Michael Saylor would now instead just be chairman of the board. Taking over as CEO is Phong Le, president of MicroStrategy and someone that the crypto community has never heard of.
Speaking about the decision to split up his roles, Saylor said (in a press release) that it will "enable us to better pursue our two corporate strategies of acquiring and holding bitcoin and growing our enterprise analytics software business."
This may be the first time that MicroStrategy's real business of "enterprise analytics software" has been talked about — because, come on, many in the crypto space probably thought until now that MicroStrategy existed solely to buy Bitcoin and then have Michael Saylor tweet about it.
This CEO switch up will now let us all forget about what MicroStrategy actually does again (just as soon as we learned it) and instead look to Saylor as he pursues doing what we all thought he was doing anyway all along — buying Bitcoin, holding it, and tweeting things like "#Bitcoin because Math."
Michael Saylor stepping down… kind of 👀
Michael Saylor is standing down as CEO of MicroStrategy after 33 years. But the Bitcoin evangelist isn't going far — he'll be the company's executive chairman instead. It's hoped the newly created role will give Saylor a chance to focus more of his energy on BTC. MicroStrategy first invested in Bitcoin two years ago — and in recent years, it's fair to say that Saylor's been more focused on championing crypto than his own company's products. The move could be interpreted as a vote of confidence in MicroStrategy's aggressive goal to acquire as much Bitcoin as possible — despite the fact that the value of the 130,000 BTC it holds in reserve has fallen by about $5 billion in eight months.
$190m stolen in 'free-for-all' Nomad hack 🚨
The crypto industry is reeling after a spate of fresh attacks — with the Nomad Bridge being hacked for a whopping $190 million. It's an attack that's been described as a "free for all," with funds gradually drained in small increments over several hours. Paradigm researcher @samczsun described the Nomad incident as "one of the most chaotic hacks that Web3 has ever seen." Elliptic believes over 40 attackers utilized a code error that allowed them to spoof transactions. This latest attack means more than $1 billion has been stolen through bridge exploits so far this year, and North Korea has been linked to several hacks. "The Nomad exploit is likely to raise questions around the security of bridges once again," Elliptic says.
Thousands of Solana wallets drained 💸
Thousands of Solana wallets have been drained in a new attack — and some estimates suggest up to $8 million has been stolen so far. According to the blockchain intelligence firm Elliptic, almost 8,000 wallets have been affected — with SOL, a small number of NFTs and over 300 Solana-based tokens also taken. The exact cause of this exploit remains unknown, but analysts believe that a flaw in wallet software may be to blame, rather than issues with the Solana blockchain itself. Solana has urged affected users to complete a survey as engineers continue to investigate the root cause. An official tweet urged investors to use hardware wallets, and said drained wallets "should be treated as compromised, and abandoned."
Double blow for Robinhood 😬
Robinhood has been dealt a double blow — with the company unveiling plans to lay off hundreds of staff in the wake of a $30 million fine. New York's Department of Financial Services said the penalty was being imposed on Robinhood's crypto division for "significant" anti-money laundering, cybersecurity and consumer protection violations. An investigation revealed that Robinhood Crypto's AML program was "inadequately staffed" and its transaction monitoring system had "significant deficiencies." In separate developments, Robinhood's CEO has told his workforce that the company is planning to reduce its headcount by 23%. Vlad Tenev admitted that an earlier reduction of 9% of Robinhood's staff "did not go far enough."
Kim K wants Ethereum Max lawsuit dismissed 😱
Kim Kardashian is fighting back after being accused of misleading customers in Instagram posts about Ethereum Max. The influencer and reality TV star is calling on a court in California to dismiss a lawsuit that's been brought by EMAX investors. It's been alleged that Kim K's promotion of Ethereum Max was part of a scheme to artificially increase the token's price, but her lawyers said: "Crucially, no named plaintiff alleges that they in fact viewed either Instagram post before purchasing tokens during the relevant time period." Kim K's lawyers added that the plaintiffs cannot prove that she was actually compensated in EMAX tokens, or whether she had bought or sold this cryptocurrency at the time.
Gucci to start accepting ApeCoin 🐵
Gucci is about to start accepting ApeCoin. In a new press release, BitPay said Gucci would become the first retailer to accept APE — with support for Euro Coin, the sister stablecoin to USDC, also in the pipeline. Now, 70% of Gucci's directly operated stores in America accept payment in 10 different cryptocurrencies, with remaining shops set to be ready by the first week of August. BitPay's CEO Stephen Pair said: "We added ApeCoin and Euro Coin because customers of our luxury merchant partners asked for it. They asked, and we delivered."