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Disclosure: The views and opinions expressed herein are solely those of the author and do not represent the views and opinions of the crypto.news editorial.
Welcome to #hearsay, Dorian Batycka's weekly cryptocurrency gossip column. This week's edition brings you a small dose of dark web cartels, a possible blockchain interface for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and an nft collector's hilarious flex mistake.
Every week, crypto.news brings you #hashtag rumors, a gossip column with scoops and stories that shape the world of cryptocurrencies. If you have any suggestions, please email Dorian Batycka at (email protected)
Question: what if Sam Bankman was really fried?
That's the thought that immediately came to mind when I learned about a recent exit scam involving one of the largest illegal drug sellers on the world's dark web.
On March 5, users of the site Incognito Marketplace, a Reddit-like site where buyers and sellers can get everything from a gram of marijuana to kilos of coke, woke up to a message from one of its administrators, an administrator known as Pharaoh.
The message said:
We have accumulated a list of private messages, transaction information and order details over the years. You'll be surprised how many people trusted our automatic encryption feature. And by the way, your messages and transaction IDs were never deleted after expiration.
Anyway, if something leaked to the authorities, I guess no one slipped up. We will publish the full dump of 557k orders and 862k crypto transaction IDs at the end of May…whether you and your customers' information are on that list or not is entirely up to you. Yes, this is extortion.
Pharaoh, administrator of the incognito market
Pharaoh, who owns the site's btc and Monero (XMR), stated that the site's providers would be asked to pay large ransoms, so that their data would not be leaked online.
What's more, Pharaoh also revealed that the “auto-encrypt” button, made available to vendors on the darknet marketplace, actually exposed them to a data breach.
Concerns about the incognito market began to rise circular the previous week, when users were unable to withdraw btc and Monero (a privacy-focused cryptocurrency) from the platform. Efforts Online sleuths soon revealed that the site was an “exit scam,” only with a sinister twist: the site administrator demanded up to $20,000 in cryptocurrency ransom from vendors.
Not unlike the various ransomware attacks that regularly target for-profit companies and governments, this exit scam/ransomware attack is one of the largest in recent years.
According to initial reports, the initial target is those with large balances and orders, but soon all buyers could also see their data leaked online.
“As for buyers, we will open a whitelist portal for them too to delete their records in a few weeks.”
Incognito's sellers, some of whom are probably connected to the world's largest and most nefarious cartels, are now screwed.
I don't know much about the drug game, but blackmailing drug dealers and trying to extort them for millions of dollars in cryptocurrency seems like a pretty dangerous idea. All of this begs the question: who is Pharaoh? If someone can DOX their crazy ass, feedback from the community in the form of success would probably be very fast.
Is the IDF planning to weaponize blockchain?
He Mamram Alumni Associationwhich includes more than 8,000 alumni members of the Israel Defense Fund's Information technology and Computing Systems Center unit, recently announced that it would soon implement the launch of a self-proclaimed “first-of-its-kind” blockchain incubation program 'no nonsense' for early state blockchain and web3 startups.”
In a press release shared with crypto.news on March 19, Mamram announced partnerships with blockchain technology startups StarkWare, Fireblocks, and Collider VC.
StarkWare, one of the companies that received support from the alumni group, uses zero-knowledge proofs to provide verification resources that can be implemented for all types of technologies and applications.
The elephant in the room is, of course, how some of the top minds in the IDF's IT units are implementing (or at least funding) 'blockchain' and 'web3'.
Identifying people with sovereign identity management is an emerging field of blockchain technology known as “eKYC,” which could be used to monitor and manage populations and borders.
Blockchain technology can be useful for all types of large centralized lists, lists that may need to communicate with other lists, i.e. identity/verification checks.
eKYC could apparently be used to assist Israel's ongoing efforts to annex Palestinian territories. Blockchain is effectively weaponized as a tool of population control, centralization at its worst.
nft Collector Flexes Then Flexes As He Announces Beeple-Backed Loan
1 eth = 1 eth? Or is it worth the same value as the dollar that backs it? In a rare collector flex/fail, digital art collector Pablo Rodríguez Fraile boasted of having obtained what he described as the “largest loan ever made against a single work of digital art.” Posting Beeple's “crypto is Bullshit,” Fraile announced that he had received a $400,000 loan facilitated by nft lending protocol Gondi.
However, its flexibility was immediately flexed, as it is not technically the largest on-chain loan, which technically belongs to @Anonymoux2311, who lent a 1/1 xcopy grail for 2023.
In a comment, X user @FeatureFrank accused Fraile of not being crypto-native enough to understand the difference.
What to watch this week
Dad tells Wagie Wojak to get a job.
Until next week degens, don't forget to log out and hit weed. As always, send suggestions to: (email protected) or hit me on X @temp_proyectos
