Here are some of the major developments in the world of crypto over the past few days.
Within 60 minutes, at 04:30 UTC on August 1, the price of Bitcoin had plunged by $1,600. According to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView, BTC lost a significant amount of ground from $64,000 to $62,800 before touching the eventual low of $62,212 on Coinbase. The sudden downturn has seen $310.27 million worth of long positions liquidated in 24 hours, with $77.07 million in the last 24 hours, including a notable $4 million ETH-USDT liquidation on OKX.
A market analyst with DW said that although the low liquidity exaggerated the sell-off, the sell-off was not on the extreme side. Independent analyst Mags, however, gave optimistic colour to things and remained bullish on Bitcoin. He drew support from a crucial moving average and flashed a buy signal from hash ribbons, setting up the largest cryptocurrency for a possible rebound.
Historically, August has been rough for Bitcoin, realizing an average return of 2.24% and posting negative returns eight out of the last 11 years. Some analysts, however, believe it could turn things around; they stated that maintaining support above $60,000 was key.
Crypto Hacks in July Surge, WazirX Among Major Victims
Hackers siphoned almost $266 million off the cryptocurrency ecosystem in July alone across 16 attacks. Indian crypto exchange WazirX suffered the largest loss in that period after hackers from North Korea hacked more than $230 million—86.4% of the stolen funds—on July 18. According to blockchain investigation firm PeckShield, the hacker is still holding the stolen WazirX funds—amounting to 61,154 Ether—on August 1.
Other high-profile victims included Compound Finance, which lost $24 million, Li.Fi protocol at $10 million, Bittensor, and Rho Markets, each losing $8 million. In many instances, the hackers would channel the money into crypto mixer Tornado Cash to help sweep under the rug.
While June had a lower loss of $176 million across 20 incidents. Notably, the Terra blockchain halted briefly on July 31 after a hack siphoned $6 million by exploiting a known vulnerability. Terra developers completed an emergency upgrade to resume block production the same day.
Deddy Lavid, CEO of Web3 security company Cyvers, elaborated that centralized finance is a target for hackers, and smart contract-based projects were attacked even more because of code vulnerabilities and personal negligence.
Convergence Protocol Hacked, $210M in Tokens Stolen
On 1 August, a major hack hit another decentralized finance protocol, Convergence, due to the exploitation of one of its smart contracts. In creating and selling $210 million in native CVG tokens for Convergence, the hacker made off with $2,000 worth of unclaimed staking rewards.
It was targeted at the CvxRewardDistributor contract, which minted and sold 58 million CVG tokens for approximately $210,000. Then, the hacker changed the tokens for 60 wrapped Ether and 15,900 Curve.fi FRAX, which almost totally wiped out the price of the CVG token to now trade for $0.0004 with a market cap of $57,000, according to CoinMarketCap.
Convergence said user funds are safe, but they recommended withdrawing the assets from the platform. The team apologized and put full responsibility on them, noting that rewards for Stake DAO integration would be claimable after fixes.
This was one of the attacks that formed the $266 million lost to crypto hacks in July—including the $230 million WazirX hack. According to the data provided by DeFiLlama, the total value locked in Convergence dropped from $5.79 million down to $3.69 million.