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Wall Street Journal corrects article misciting Hamas’ crypto terrorism funding data

October 28, 2023 Coin Telegraph

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Elliptic, the firm which Wall Street Journal sourced the data from, said it was “pleased” to see the news outlet acknowledge its mistakes.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has partially corrected an article whic mischaracterized the extent to which Hamas and other militant groups have been funding its terrorism activities with cryptocurrencies.

The Oct. 10 article — titled “Hamas Militants Behind Israel Attack Raised Millions in Crypto” — cited blockchain forensics firm Elliptic to say Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a terrorist organization operating on the Gaza Strip, raised as much as $93 million between August 2021 and June 2023.

In the cited report, Elliptic said Israel’s counter-terrorism unit seized PIJ-linked wallets which received $93 million from over that timeframe. However, Elliptic made it clear that this in no way meant that PIJ raised these funds to finance its terrorism activities.

Research from blockchain forensics firm Chainalysis suggests only $450,000 of these funds were sent to a known terrorism-affiliated wallet.

In WSJ’s correction, it stated PIJ and Lebanese political party Hezbollah “may have exchanged” up to $12 million in cryptocurrency — far less than its initial $93 million figure.

“Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah may have exchanged up to $12 million in crypto since 2021, according to crypto-research firm Elliptic. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said PIJ had sent more than $12 million in crypto to Hezbollah since 2021,” WSJ said.

WSJ said it updated other parts of the article to include “additional context” about Elliptic’s research.

*Corrections made by the WSJ’s Oct. 10 article. Source: WSJ*

WSJ’s retraction follows an Oct. 25 statement by Elliptic which called on WSJ to correct its misinterpretation of the data. Elliptic added that cryptocurrency funding by Hamas remains “tiny” relative to other funding sources.

On Oct. 27, Elliptic was “pleased” to see WSJ acknowledge its mistakes but said it would've liked to see WSJ be more specific about its corrections.

We're pleased to see the Wall Street Journal issue some corrections to their article based on our feedback. While we would like to have seen them go further, we will continue to engage constructively.
— Elliptic (@elliptic) October 27, 2023

Coinbase's chief legal officer Paul Grewal also noted that WSJ's opening paragraph is still framed as though cryptocurrency was the primary funding source behind Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

2/ @WSJ's lede still maintains that the funding supported Hamas attacks hinged on “One answer: cryptocurrency.” There's no evidence of that, and WSJ knows it. pic.twitter.com/BQK80b1jMd
— paulgrewal.eth (@iampaulgrewal) October 27, 2023

"This is barely a correction," he added.

Nic Carter, partner of Castle Island Ventures and others are now calling on United States Senator Elizabeth Warren to retract a related letter backed by over 100 U.S. lawmakers written to the White House on Oct. 17.

The letter cited WSJ’s misinterpreted data from Elliptic in an attempt to argue that cryptocurrency poses a “national security threat” to the U.S. and that Congress and the Biden administration should act swiftly before cryptocurrencies are used to finance another “tragedy.”

Liz Warren wyd? pic.twitter.com/e0Ew2TQzRb
— nic carter (@nic__carter) October 27, 2023

Magazine: US enforcement agencies are turning up the heat on crypto-related crime

Multichain Executor has been ‘draining’ AnySwap tokens: Report

July 11, 2023 Coin Telegraph

anyswap

The contract has used an “anySwapFeeTo” function to transfer hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of tokens to itself, which on-chain sleuth Spreek suspected may have been malicious.

A person is using the Multichain Executor to drain tokens associated with the AnySwap bridging protocol, according to a July 10 report from on-chain sleuth and Twitter user Spreek. The report follows outflows of over $100 million from Multichain bridges that occurred on July 7, which were reported by the Multichain team as “abnormal.”

The Multichain Executor address has been draining anyToken addresses across many chains today and moving them all to a new EOA pic.twitter.com/gqDaXMBl96
— Spreek (@spreekaway) July 10, 2023

According to Spreek’s July 10 report, “The Multichain Executor address has been draining anyToken addresses across many chains today and moving them all to a new EOA [externally owned account].”

An image attached to the post shows Ethereum transaction 0x53ede4462d90978b992b0a88727de19afe4e96f0374aa1a221b8ff65fda5a6fe. Blockchain data reveals that this transaction called the “anySwapFeeTo” method on the Multichain Router: V4 contract, causing approximately $15,275.90 worth of anyDAI — a derivative version of the Dai (DAI) stablecoin — to be minted on Ethereum and sent to the Multichain Executor, who then burned it and exchanged it for the underlying DAI backing the asset.

*DAI conversion by the Multichain Executor. Source: Etherscan*

In a separate comment, Spreek said the funds are being sent to the following address: 0x1eed63efba5f81d95bfe37d82c8e736b974f477b. Ethereum blockchain data shows that this address received the redeemed DAI from the Multichain Executor on July 10, about five minutes after the previous transaction.

Data for BNB Smart Chain (BSC) shows that the Multichain Executor also called the anySwapFeeTo function on its network for $208,997 worth of anyUSDC. This resulted in $208,997 worth of the tokens being converted into its underlying Binance-Pegged USDC, which were subsequently sent to this same address. In other BSC transactions, the contract used this process to convert 50.80 anyBTC, worth $39,251.43 at the time, to equivalent Binance-Pegged Bitcoin and send it to this address.

The transactions add up to approximately $263,524.33 worth of tokens sent to this address through the anySwapFeeTo method.

Spreek said this behavior could be part of the normal functioning of the protocol. On the other hand, a different account had engaged in similar behavior the day before, Spreek stated. The other account eventually sold the drained tokens, providing evidence that it was malicious:

“It is unclear whether this is authorized behavior. Previously the same method was used yesterday by a different MPC address on the anyUSDT token on mainnet. The tokens were then immediately sold to ETH, suggesting that that similar address was the actions of a malicious actor.”

The on-chain sleuth theorized that the attacker may be using the anySwapFeeTo function to set fees to an arbitrarily large amount, allowing them to drain users’ funds. This function “[a]pparently allows ANY value to be set, so the address is simply choosing the total value of the token held in that anyToken,” Spreek stated.

The Multichain incident has baffled blockchain analysts, as no one has been able to prove whether it resulted from an exploit or is simply the result of large tokenholders moving their funds between networks. The mystery began on July 7, when over $100 million worth of tokens were withdrawn from the Ethereum side of Multichain’s Fantom, Moonriver and Dogechain bridges and sent to wallet addresses with no previous transactions. These withdrawals represented the majority of funds held on each bridge.

The Multichain team declared that the withdrawals were “abnormal” and told users to stop using the protocol. However, the team did not declare what the source of the anomaly was or could be.

On July 8, stablecoin issuers Circle and Tether froze some of the addresses that received funds tied to the strange transactions. On July 11, blockchain analytics firm Chainanalysis said the incident “looks more like a hack or rugpull and less like a migration.”

The Multichain team says their CEO is missing and that they’ve shut down some bridges due to no longer having access to some of the network’s multi-party computation network servers.

Collect this article as an NFT to preserve this moment in history and show your support for independent journalism in the crypto space.

‘I’ve done nothing wrong’ — Lark Davis denies ‘pump-and-dump’ allegations

September 30, 2022 Coin Telegraph

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Davis claimed he received nothing for free from the projects it's alleged he profited from, and the amounts he sold weren’t enough to “dump the price.”

Crypto influencer Lark Davis has refuted new allegations from Twitter “on-chain sleuth” ZachXBT of shilling “low cap projects” to his audience “just to dump them shortly after.”

Davis was responding to a Twitter thread posted by Zach on Sept. 29, containing allegations that he profited over $1.2 million through selling tokens from crypto projects which he was allegedly paid to promote without disclosing.

In a 17-part thread, Zach pointed to eight examples of what is supposedly Davis’ crypto wallet receiving tokens from new crypto projects, with Davis subsequently tweeting or posting a video on them, and then selling the tokens shortly after.

Speaking to Cointelegraph, Zach said he received requests from multiple people who lost money on the tokens shared by Davis asking to “take a closer look” at him.

“Lark managed to dump with size on low cap projects time after time,” Zach said, adding they’ve investigated other crypto influencers, but the alleged amount was “never at this magnitude.”

Zach alleged in the thread that the largest gain to Davis came from receiving 120,000 SHOPX tokens, with Davis tweeting hours later about the project whilst apparently simultaneously selling the tokens, gaining $435,000.

6/ Example 3: $SHOPX

a) Mar 31, 2021 at 3:31 pm UTC Lark receives 120k SHOPX
b) Apr 1, 2021 at 12:32 am UTC Lark Tweets about the project
c) Meanwhile Lark is in the process of dumping all his 120k SHOPX for over $435k USD (finishes on 4/2) pic.twitter.com/mc3HvHrCdI
— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) September 29, 2022

This example along with seven others Zach presented purportedly shows Davis making over $1.2 million in a similar pattern.

“Participating in seed rounds & sharing projects you genuinely like is completely fine as long as it’s done in a transparent manner,” Zach tweeted, adding:

“This is not the case as Lark has a pattern of dumping his discounted launchpad bags right after shills across YT (YouTube), Twitter, & [his] newsletter.”

Cointelegraph requested comment from Davis and was directed to a series of tweets posted late on Sept. 29 in which Davis calls the allegations made by Zach “ridiculous” and provided a response to each example Zach alleged he profited from.

“I got nothing for free,” Davis tweeted to his over one million followers, adding his token sale investments are “always disclosed” on his YouTube channel of 485,000 subscribers and shared with his followers “well before the launch."

For the sales in question, I want to be clear that:
1. I disclosed that I was an investor when I initially discussed them
2. I talked about it before the token sale, to give you a chance to get into the sale.
3. I paid for all of these coins, I got nothing for free.
— Lark Davis (@TheCryptoLark) September 29, 2022

Davis added he was following an investing strategy he teaches, selling the tokens upon launch, which he claims is a common investing practice for token sales. Davis said the amounts he sold were “nowhere near enough to dump the price” of the tokens.

“I teach this concept frequently to you all, none of this should be a surprise if you have been paying attention,” he tweeted. “What you choose to do with my opinions is completely up to you.”

Flipside Crypto launches NFTs to pull multi-chain data

June 29, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Blockchain data

Flipside Crypto co-founder and CEO Dave Balter stated the NFTs will save users the trouble of having to “manage nodes, complex data pipelines or petabyte-scale databases.”

Blockchain analytics firm Flipside Crypto has launched an online Software Development Kit called ShroomDK, which is based on nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and provides an automated means to pull “comprehensive” blockchain data via software. Being NFT-based enables the SDK to be on-sold or upgraded more easily, according to the company.

Co-founder Jim Myers said that the ability to query blockchain data from multiple chains in an automated (programmatic) fashion has been a “critical piece of missing infrastructure for blockchain developers and analysts.”

Software-as-a-Service, or SaaS, refers to software delivered over the web instead of locally on machines. An SDK generally refers to a kit of software-building tools to create applications for specific devices or operating systems. The tokenized SaaS SDKs from Flipside Crypto allow users to on-sell purchased software development kit access after they have finished with it.

ShroomDK NFTs will allow devs to query data from Ethereum, BNB Chain, Avalanche, Solana, Near, Flow, THORChain and Algorand, while Layer-2 solutions such as Optimism and Arbitrum have been named as well.

Speaking with Cointelegraph, FlipSide Crypto co-founder and CEO Dave Balter stated the NFTs will save users the trouble of having to “manage nodes, complex data pipelines or petabyte-scale databases,” while also offering users a chance to squeeze more value out of their software licenses:

“Wrapping SDK access in an NFT gives a user control over their license. Software licenses are often a sunk cost, meaning if you don’t utilize the purchased license it goes to waste. That’s not great for the end-user, and it’s not great for the provider of the product.”

“By transforming the license into an NFT, remaining usage can be resold to anyone. This benefits both the original holder who can transform a sunk cost into something of value and also allows new users to try out a product at a discount,” he added.

The NFTs can also be upgraded via additional free NFTs named “Spores,” which enable users to increase their query capacity.

Balter stated that the NFTs have already been issued in a closed beta over the past month, and the project has seen strong demand from 50 key analysts and organizations in the crypto space, such as “folks from Rabbithole, Optimism, LlamaDAO, 0x etc.”

Commenting on the notion of NFTs being tied to specific use cases rather than being merely a speculative asset, Balter emphasized that project utility is especially important given the current bear market.

“Crypto winter has put added pressure on every blockchain to grow and retain developers and users. Project utility is king, but it requires continuous insights for builders to get it right. That’s why ShroomDK is needed now.”

Flipside Crypto is known for enabling on-demand analytics for blockchains, providing data and intelligence to crypto organizations. The firm provides a free, open data platform for “analysts to learn, collaborate and compete to solve analytical challenges via structured bounty programs.”

The launch of the SDK follows a recent Series A funding round led by Republic Capital with support from top crypto firms such as Galaxy Digital Ventures and Dapper Labs in April that saw Flipside Crypto raise $50 million in funding.

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