Among Hacks, Bitcoin Rises

GM Readers!📪 It's BitDegree Insider, and let's keep rollin'.

⭐️Today's selection:

• 🏹Robinhood's Socials Hacked
• 🌝Moonbirds Founder Outplayed By Scammers
• 🥂Positive Bitcoin Signals
• 👌Selected Meme of The Day
• 📰Bite-Sized News

ROBINHOOD VS HACKERS

Robinhood, the crypto platform, has become the latest scammers' target.

Hackers hacked into their Twitter, Instagram and Facebook accounts. And then made a post allegedly about the launch of a new RBH token on BNB Chain.

The head of Binance had something to say:

Robinhood has 1.6 million followers on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. They deleted the fraudulent tweet after a couple of hours.

But... It was a couple hours too late for some gullible victims.

According to a BscScan reviewer, the RBH token can already be found at 62 addresses.

Users transferred more than $16K worth of wrapped BNB to exchange for RBH coins in the PancakeSwap liquidity pool.

Robinhood issued an explanation. The preliminary analysis says a third-party provider is to blame for the hack. The company is investigating and will reveal details later.

Note that anyone can create a BEP-20 token on the Binance Smart Chain network if they wish. And choose any name, including fake versions of existing coins.

Sometimes scammers use well-known brands that don't actually have tokens. When buying fake assets, the user loses money because those cannot be resold.

TL;DR: Hackers gain access to Robinhood's social media accounts -> advertise a scam token, end up stealing over $16k from victims.

MOONBIRDS FOUNDER SCAMMED

Kevin Rose, the founder of the Moonbirds project, became a victim of a phishing attack.

In fact, he passed his data to the scammer himself due to not caring attention. As a result, Rose lost NFTs worth $1.1 million.

Archam analysts later reacted to this event. According to their data, Rose lost NFT by 684.7 ETH ($1.1 million).

This included at least one Autoglyph, nine "monkeys" (p.s. Not bored apes but OnChainMonkeys), 1 "cool cat" and 25 Squiggles.

If you follow the NFT scene, you know what these words mean. If not... The question becomes not 'What are they?', but 'How much were they？；

The Vice president of PROOF, the company behind the development of Moonbirds, clarified the situation.

The stolen tokens are Rose's personal property, and he himself was the victim of a phishing attack.

This type of hacking is characterized by the use of a fake form which asks the victim to fill out personal data for authorization or transaction confirmation.

(Always double-check the website you are going to link your wallet to!)

By filling out such a form, the victim gives the hacker everything they need to log into the wallet.

Another detail is that Rose neglected to take additional security measures. He should have kept the NFT in a separate wallet.

Instead, he approved an OpenSea-based smart contract that moved all of his tokens when the transaction was approved. It was this "slip up" that the hacker took advantage of.

The whole thing sent a mild panic signal over the NFT market. Clarifications that these losses were personal and did not affect the Moonbirds collection, were essential.

You see, the collection in question is considered to be a blue chip, meaning it's one of those collections that maintain their value overtime. Any risks or hacks could have affected this status.

But it's alright, the birds are good.

TL;DR: The founder of the Moonbirds NFT collection just became a victim of a phishing attack. Scammers ran away with NFTs worth around $1.1 million.

POSITIVE BITCOIN SIGNALS

Electric car giant Tesla recently announced its Q4 2022 results and, as expected, they were impressive. But here's the real kicker - they also slightly exceeded Wall Street expectations.

And as if that wasn't enough, the company also decided not to sell its bitcoin reserves during the quarter, keeping their digital assets at $184 million.

But the real story here is the one about Bitcoin's performance.

That's right, it's outperforming traditional assets such as S&P 500, gold, and real estate. And as we speak, the price of bitcoin is hovering above $23,000.

Now, before you go running off to buy a Lamborghini with your newfound crypto riches, it's important to remember that we're only 26 days into the year.

The crypto market can be unpredictable, and as Binance's CZ wisely once said:

"Do not buy just for buying". It's always important to do your research and make informed decisions.

So while it's exciting to see bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies on the rise, it's also important to keep in mind that we're only in the early stages of what could potentially be a bull market.

Let's see what tomorrow brings.

TL;DR: Goldman Sachs has ranked BTC as the best-performing asset in the world so far this year. 

SELECTED MEME OF THE DAY

BITE-SIZED NEWS

• OpenSea Faced with Lawsuit Over Stolen NFTs. It's the wild, wild West out there.
• US Senator Warren Urges SEC to "Double Down" on Its Crypto Regulatory Efforts. Double downing before triple downing.
• South Korean Authorities Order to Arrest Crypto Exchange Bithumb Owner. Do Kwon's a role model, apparently.