Cryptocurrency

The terrible, unprovoked war in Ukraine has destabilized that country’s economy and banking system, leading both Ukrainian politicians and citizens to more seriously consider cryptocurrency. I’m pretty skeptical of crypto, but I want to come by that skepticism honestly, and I want to understand more about what was happening there, so I’ve invited Michael Chobanian to the show. Michael is president of the Blockchain Association of Ukraine and founder of the Kuna Exchange, which lets people buy cryptocurrency and swap between them. Earlier this year, the Ukrainian government set up wallets on Kuna and other exchanges to accept donations to the war effort in crypto; in April, Bloomberg reported it had received over $60 million in crypto donations. What’s more, earlier this year Ukrainian P...

As Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine heads towards its hundredth day, opposition from Ukrainian forces is as strong as ever. At the same time, hacktivists all around the world continue to breach Russian institutions and publish their files and emails. This week one hacktivist collective took a different—and slightly peculiar—approach: launching a service to prank-call Russian government officials. The new website uses leaked details to put two random Russian officials on a call with each other. It obviously won't make any difference to the outcome of the war, but the group that created it hopes the tool will cause some confusion and annoy those in Moscow.New research from Google’s Threat Analysis Group has delved into the surveillance-for-hire industry and found that spyware vendors are t...

If Do Kwon didn’t exist, someone would have had to invent him. For instance, there’s the bets he made — worth $11 million in total and held in escrow by Crypto Twitter influencer Cobie — that his token Luna would be worth more in a year than it was in March 2022. Fond of insults such as “continue in poverty ser,” “u still poor?,” and “I don’t debate the poor on Twitter,” Kwon is the boisterous, combative co-founder of Terraform Labs, best known for the ongoing disaster that is Terra / Luna. As of this writing, Luna is worth less than a cent, and its sister token Terra, which was meant to be pegged to a dollar as a stablecoin, is worth 6 cents. An investor, who told reporters from Yonhap News Agency he’d lost 2 to 3 billion won (about $2.3 million), was arrested for trespassing after he ...

The Deep End follows Teal Swan’s dubious journey to end human suffering.Photo: FreeformThe Deep End is an upcoming docuseries—based on the Gizmodo podcast The Gateway—that follows Teal Swan, a self-proclaimed spiritual leader, her tantalizing self-help empire, and those who follow it devoutly.Teal Swan is an internet guru who rose to fame for her self-help videos on YouTube, which cover topics ranging from shame, spirit plants, and even cryptocurrency. Her soothing tone and spiritual ideology allowed her to capture the attention of 1.25 million subscribers. The Deep End follows Swan’s rise to prominence, the goings-ons at her spiritual retreat center in Costa Rica, her loyal followers, and the private investigator working to determine the truth of Swan’s organization. Freeform said in a pr...

Photo: Shutterstock (Shutterstock)Android users take heed: there’s a new piece of malware cropping up on the Google Play Store, and it’s coming for your data. Dubbed “Facestealer,” this new malware can steal personal information on your phone, hijack your social media passwords by forcing fake logins, and blast your device with invasive ads.Security researchers at Doctor Web Anti-Virus first discovered Facestealer lurking in 10 Android apps back in July 2021, but the latest batch of shady downloads includes 200 malicious apps, almost all of which were available on the Google Play Store and other third-party marketplaces for several weeks before they were taken down.While the problem apps came from a range of categories, the most common were: Fake VPN servicesCamera and photo editing appsan...

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You could probably call it a “luna eclipse,” but perhaps only in reference to a celestial body suddenly blinking out of existence.Photo: Maurice Norbert (Shutterstock)As a kid, I remember when my father tried to use a broom handle in a last ditch effort to support a roof that was collapsing from the weight of nearly three feet of snow. You can guess how well that went. In a similar vein, Terra blockchain reportedly spent $3.5 billion to keep the roof from collapsing in on itself. Now we’re seeing just how much it cost the once-popular cryptocurrency for its faulty broom handle. The nonprofit Luna Foundation Guard, who oversees and supports the TerraUSD stablecoin and its blockchain’s native coin Luna, said in a tweeted statement Monday that on May 7 it had over 80,000 bitcoin in its wallet...

HENDERSONVILLE, N.C. — When Representative Madison Cawthorn’s name comes up in this city of 14,000, where he was born and raised and it is not difficult to bump into someone who knew him from his home-schooling days, there tends to be a visceral reaction.There are sighs from Republicans who elected him to his first term in November 2020 and met his meteoric rise in Washington with the praise and excitement reserved for a hometown hero — only to be disappointed by his behavior and bad press ever since.There are groans and looks of utter disgust from people with Democratic and independent leanings — some of whom have chosen to cast a ballot in a Republican primary for the first time in hopes of removing him from office.And there are eye-rolls and shrugs from his die-hard supporters, “America...

Do Kwon, the founder of the cryptocurrency Luna and the stablecoin TerraUSD, has reportedly been in contact with police after a possible investor in the coin “trespassed” at his home, according to a new report from South Korea’s largest newspaper, The Chosun Ilbo. Crypto News reports the investor lost roughly $1.56 million in the collapse of Luna, a claim Gizmodo could not independently verify.An unnamed man rang the doorbell to Kwon’s apartment around 6:23 p.m. local time Thursday night, according to Chosun, and Kwon’s wife answered the door. The man reportedly asked something like, “Is your husband home?” and then proceeded to run off.Luna was worth over $54 as recently as Monday morning, when it was the fourth most popular crypto coin in the world, but plunged below $0.01 on Thursday. T...

Meta started renaming its products after the company switched its name: The Oculus Quest and Facebook Portal devices, for instance, are now known as the Meta Quest and Meta Portal. It's only natural for the company to also plan the future of its payments experience as it continues to expand into the metaverse, and that includes a name change for it. Stephane Kasriel, Meta's head of fintech services, has revealed in a longer post about the metaverse that the company is soon renaming Facebook Pay to Meta Pay.  Kasriel said that Meta is "in the very early stages of scoping out what a single wallet experience might look like." While it has no concrete plans yet, Meta is looking into how you can prove who you are and how you can carry that identity into different metaverse experiences. The comp...