Japan vs Lazarus

GM (Good Monday), everyone. This is the BitDegree Insider and you know what it means.

Today's topics:

• ⚡️Japan vs Lazarus
• ⚡️European Affairs
• ⚡️Venture Monday
• ⚡️Selected Meme of The Day
• ⚡️Bite-Sized News

Japan vs Lazarus

Lazarus, The North Korean cyber warfare unit, is back in the news. If you wanna know more about them, and why they're a big deal - check out this video that we've made about them.Japanese authorities have reported (yeah, it's in Japanese) that Lazarus is active in the Japanese crypto space. They warned companies to stay alert.

Apparently, the North Korean hackers have been after Japanese crypto companies' funds. And they've been doing so for years.

According to Japan's police, Lazarus's way of attacking is… Finding crypto companies' employees, and sending them phishing emails. But it's more sophisticated than that. They engineer their emails in a way to trick their victims into believing that it's an email sent by the executives of the particular crypto company they work at.

So… The frightened employee doesn't want to disappoint their employer. And they open the email. And Lazarus goes on and does the evil laugh. The report did not disclose what Japanese-based firms were the reason for such a report. 

European Affairs

At the same time, things decided to take place in Europe. Here are some hot updates about important stuff happening over there.

Coinbase is expanding. It's been reported that Coinbase hired Daniel Seifert, a senior executive from German financial technology company Solarisbank AG, to lead its European expansion.

"International expansion is an existential priority for us", said Coinbase vice president of international and business development Nana Murugesan.

France, Spain, Ireland, and the UK are some of the countries that have Coinbase's attention.

OK that's cool. But you know what's not cool? The current overall market situation. For example, Italy is experiencing 8.9% inflation. The highest rate in 37 years.

Plus, This Wednesday the market mood might experience a shock caused by EU-UK events.

The UK will update inflation data for September. Experts predict inflation growth of 9.9 to 10.0 percentage points. If inflation turns out to be lower, a bullish reaction from the market could be expected.

On the same day, the consumer price index (CPI) in Europe for September will be released. The forecast is 10.0%. If CPI exceeds estimates, the European Central Bank will be forced to further raise key interest rates in late October. The slowdown of the index, on the contrary, may be the beginning of a recovery trend.

Venture Monday

Despite scams, hacks, inflation, etc... crypto continues to grow. New money flows into the ecosystem all the time. Let's take a look at the most attention-grabbing investments from the last week.

• Skyweaver raised $40 million. The project sounds simple: it's a browser-based cross-platform card game. Yet investors believe in it. Great stuff almost always sounds simple.
• Blockchain developer platform Tatum raised $41.5M. Among investors such names as: Evolution Equity Partners, with participation from Octopus Ventures, 3VC, Tensor Ventures, Depo Ventures, Leadblock Fund and Circle.
• Blockchain indexer Nxyz raised $40M. Among investors: Paradigm, Coinbase Ventures, Sequoia Capital.
• Crypto investment startup Pillow raised $18.1M. Among investors: Accel and Quona Capital, with participation from Jump Capital and Elevation Capital.
• Low-code blockchain platform SettleMint raised $16M. The funding round was led by Molten Ventures and OTB Ventures.

Selected Meme of The Day

Bite-Sized News

• South Korea to Implement Blockchain-Based Digital IDs in 2024
• Mango Markets Community Proposes A Counter-Offer for Hackers
• Binance Pool Rolls Out $500M Lending Project to Support BTC Mining 
• Crypto Exchange Binance Burns $548M Worth of BNB Tokens