Snippings

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Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple AAPL, +0.47%, who is widely considered to be a tech genius, made a rudimentary and expensive mistake recently.

“I had seven bitcoins stolen from me through fraud,” Wozniak said at the Times’ Global Business Summit on Monday. “Somebody bought them from me online through a credit card and they cancelled the credit card payment. It was that easy. And it was from a stolen credit card number so you can never get it back.”

From Steve Wozniak had $70,000 in bitcoin stolen after falling for a simple, yet perfect, scam – MarketWatch:

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Typo Moves $36M in Seized JUNO Tokens to Wrong Wallet
Validators, developers and token holders grapple with who is to blame for the copy-paste error that moved the tokens to an address no one can access.

From Typo Moves $36M in Seized JUNO Tokens to Wrong Wallet:

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“Internet access is still underdeveloped in the country while Bitcoin depends entirely on the internet,” he said, adding that the CAR had more pressing issues such as security, education and access to drinking water.

From Bitcoin becomes official currency in Central African Republic – BBC News:

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Of the existing 18.5 million Bitcoin, around 20 percent — currently worth around $140 billion — appear to be in lost or otherwise stranded wallets, according to the cryptocurrency data firm Chainalysis. Wallet Recovery Services, a business that helps find lost digital keys, said it had received 70 requests a day from people who wanted help recovering their riches, three times the number of a month ago.

From Tens of billions worth of Bitcoin have been locked by people who forgot their key. – The New York Times:

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Block’s bitcoin business didn’t have a great quarter. But the other side of its business—its payments infrastructure business for vendors (i.e. Square) and activity on CashApp—grew significantly, pushing the stock up roughly 8% after hours.

Bitcoin revenue for the company—reflecting how much bitcoin Block sold—totaled $1.73 billion, down 51% compared with last year. Bitcoin costs, Block’s purchases, totaled $1.69 billion, leaving a gross profit on bitcoin of $43 million, down 42%. The company attributed the decline to the “stability in the price of bitcoin during the quarter, which affected consumer demand and trading activity compared to the prior year period,” in its shareholder letter.

From Crypto-Friendly Funders to Finance Musk Twitter Bid; Block Bitcoin Revenue Falls — The Information:

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The attack occurred due to a Domain Name System (DNS) vulnerability, with the perpetrator proceeding to insert a malicious contract address that would divert funds to their own private wallet.

From Decentralized Exchange MM.Finance Suffers $2M Exploit:

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October 2021

Here’s an example of the kind of proposition this drives: kevin. This is a Lithuanian payments startup that just secured $10 million in new capital in a seed funding round co-led by OTB Ventures and Speedinvest, two of Europe’s leading venture capital investors in early-stage European technology companies.

From Are We Nearing Peak Card?:

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May 2022

Kevin., a Lithuanian-based account-to-account payment startup, has raised $65 million in a Series A funding round led by Accel.

From A2A startup kevin. closes $65m Series A:

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Norway says it plans to replace the digital ID authentication platform BankID with new apps that will require either face or fingerprint biometrics, and passwords or PINs in some cases, for users to log in and access banking services online, reports NRK.

From Norway to replace BankID on mobile with biometric apps for improved security | Biometric Update:

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Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney talks the metaverse, crypto, and antitrust
After all the hype about the metaverse, it was good to talk to someone who’s actually built one.

The field of zero knowledge proofs–the idea that you can verify that something happened without receiving any private details about it–that powers a number of the cryptocurrencies in protecting privacy while running a decentralized system, I think that’s going to be the backbone of a large part of the next century in technology.

From Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney talks the metaverse and crypto:

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Chinese regulators have held an emergency meeting with domestic and foreign banks to discuss how they could protect the country’s overseas assets from US-led sanctions similar to those imposed on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, according to people familiar with the discussion.

From China meets banks to discuss protecting assets from US sanctions | Financial Times:

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