Blockchain
Hackers Have Been Trying To Crack Bitcoin Wallet Worth $750 Million But Here’s The Catch

A bitcoin wallet containing a little over 69,000 BTC is doing the rounds in hacking communities all over the internet. The reason? It’s obvious.
Everyone (read seasoned hackers and self-professed bitcoin wallet crackers) wants to break it open and take it all. Or at least, a slice of the almost $750 million pie. For the last two years, however, no one has been able to ‘strike it lucky.’
Hackers Tried Cracking The 7th Largest Bitcoin Wallet In The World
According to cybersecurity expert Alon Gal, who goes by the handle ‘UnderTheBreach on Twitter, hackers have been trying to break open a bitcoin wallet holding around $720 million worth of BTC (considering today’s rates). However, Gal reported that no one has posted any success regarding the same.
Get this – there is a Bitcoin wallet with 69,000 Bitcoins ($693,207,618) that is being passed around between hackers/crackers for the past 2 years for the purpose of cracking the password, no success so far.
I have the wallet, @Google hook me up with a quantum computer please. pic.twitter.com/GcIqH7kN98
— Alon Gal (Under the Breach) (@UnderTheBreach) September 8, 2020
As it so happens, the bitcoin wallet in the discussion has the 7th largest BTC stash in the world.
It Is Now Available Online For Everyone To Try
While some folks have tried breaking in themselves, most of them admitting failure has advertised the wallet on online hacking forums for somebody else to do the job.
Alon revealed this to Vice in a one-on-one chat regarding the matter:
Stealing Bitcoin wallets from victims worldwide is a common goal among cybercriminals. Wallets tend to be protected by strong passwords and in the event that a cybercriminal manages to obtain a wallet and cannot crack the password he might sell it to opportunistic hash crackers who are individuals with a large amount of GPU power
Gal noticed one such advertisement on a popular hacking forum RaidForums. And not just hacking portals, the wallet showed up on BitcoinTalk on June 29 last year. After that, on All Private Keys and then Wallet-dat(dot)net.
But Does It Contain The 69,370 BTC Though?
The bitcoin wallet seems like a tough nut to crack. But the important question to ask is – Does it contain the BTC? Although it has an alphanumeric address, it is quite possible that the ‘wallet.dat’ file is ‘doctored.’ There is a public key available but not the private key.
The founder of Wallet Recovery Services, Dave Bitcoin, said that:
It’s possible to doctor a Bitcoin wallet.dat file to make it seem like it contains a high balance. The wallet file contains pairs of public key & encrypted private key of the addresses it controls. So one could modify the file in a binary editor and change the public key of one of the address pairs to that of a high value BTC address.
It may be a bait to beguile folks into making bitcoin payments for a shot at cracking a wallet that doesn’t actually have any BTC.
Breaking In Could Be Impossible
According to another assumption, cracking open this bitcoin wallet may be outright impossible. But why?
Quite possibly, the wallet is protected by a long, unique, and difficult to crack the password. Apart from this, the wallet.dat file may be encrypted using a combination of AES-256-CBC and SHA-512 algorithms. These are super slow to process, making it all the more difficult to ‘brute force’ them open.
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Blockchain
More Australians Invest In Crypto Than In Gold: Survey
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More Australians are investing in crypto than in gold and silver as per the new poll that we discuss today in our cryptocurrency news.
The survey of more than 2000 Australian investors found that cryptocurrency is a more popular investment than gold and silver but still has a long way to go before it nears the shares. The poll was conducted on behalf of the BTC markets in February and found that 12.6% of the Aussie investors hold BTC or other cryptocurrencies compared to the 12.1% who hold the metals. On the other hand, the stock market is a preferred option for investors with 63.6% holding shares directly and 28.8% investing in managed funds or exchange-traded funds. The property was also a great investment while 18% said they invested in collectibles.
Australian crypto investors favor ETH and BTC with 83.2% holding BTC and 42% holding ETH, followed by Ripple, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash. The survey shows that about one-third of the crypto investors made their first investment after the COVID-19 induced market crash and the research was backed with a poll revealing that 39% of the respondents found BTC more appealing after the pandemic started.
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Despite other cryptocurrencies rallying to a new high in the recent months, More Australians stated that they have no intention of selling their coins with a 31% of them planning to exit after about three years of holding. Of the 49% that are looking to sell or to take profits, one in five investors wants to reinvest. The biggest demographics of Aussie investors were aged between 25-34 following the ones aged between 35-44. Men accounted for 63% of all crypto investors and one in four earned about $100,000 per year.
BTC Markets CEO Caroline Bowler noted that older Australians are also investing in crypto with investors 60+ doubling in number in the past few years to make up to 10% of the client base:
“In the last 12 months, we have seen a shift from 25-45-year-old males to a much broader age group, particularly early retirees who are interested in diversifying their investment portfolio and are catching up with this fastest-growing asset class.”
The research was in line with other polls like the one in December that found almost one in five Australian adults owned crypto last year.
DC Forecasts is a leader in many crypto news categories, striving for the highest journalistic standards and abiding by a strict set of editorial policies. If you are interested to offer your expertise or contribute to our news website, feel free to contact us at [email protected]
Blockchain
World’s First Bitcoin ETF Now Holds More Than 10,000 BTC
The world’s first Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) has seen massive success in its first week. It has now surpassed the 10,000 BTC milestone for the first time as data from Glassnode shows. The on-chain data analytics firm has the ETF at 10,064 BTC at press time.
Canadian firm Purpose Investment Inc. became the first company to launch a Bitcoin ETF in the North American market. The ETF trades under the ticker symbol ‘BTCC’ and is trading at the Toronto Stock Exchange. It was an instant hit, recording close to $400 million on its first day. This ranked it as one of the top five ETF debuts in the North American market.
The great demand for Purpose’ BTC ETF is proof of pent-up demand in the market, the company’s chief investment officer believes. Speaking to Yahoo Finance, Greg Taylor claimed his company has an edge as it’s open to ordinary investors. Other similar products, including Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust, are closed-end, only serving institutional investors.
He stated, “A lot of people have wanted to get exposure to bitcoin but they haven’t really wanted to go through the hoops of opening up their own accounts or their own wallet to do so or trading some of the other closed-end funds. Having the ETF option I think has always been the holy grail out there and we’re happy to have it trading and we’re seeing some of the results of that pent-up demand.”
Taylor further revealed that the demand for BTCC is spread across jurisdictions. “It’s hard with an ETF to figure out exactly where the inflows are coming from, but we’ve had a lot of people reach out from around the world that want to get access to this product,” he remarked.

First Bitcoin ETF Causing Ripples in the Market
Purpose’s Bitcoin ETF has already started causing ripples in the market, despite being around for just a week. One of the effects has been the cooldown in interest for Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust. For the first time in five years, shares of the Trust traded at a discount.
GBTC shares plunged by 22% yesterday to close the day 3.8% below the value of the Trust’s underlying holdings. The shares have been trading at a premium since its launch in 2013. This premium shot up to 132% in May 2017 at its peak. As recently as mid-2020, this premium was as high as 40%.
Nate Geraci, the president of the advisory firm ETF Store believes this is due to the rise of competing products. He told Bloomberg, “Since the beginning of the year, we’ve seen the launch of multiple competing products. The unpleasant truth for GBTC investors is that competition erodes demand for the product, which can lead to a collapsing premium or even a discount.”
In Canada, the Purpose Bitcoin ETF’s popularity is forcing its rivals to drop their fees to compete. Evolve Funds Group was the second company to launch a Bitcoin ETF, with its product debuting just a day after that of Purpose. However, as Purpose has soared to over $600 million, Evolve Funds is at a mere $28 million. The latter has turned to lower the fees to attract investors.
Evolve lowered the management fee from 1% to 0.75%. Raj Lala, the CEO commented, “We are very pleased to provide investors with the most cost-effective bitcoin ETF today. Our bitcoin ETF allows investors to access physical bitcoin in a fully-regulated manner in their brokerage account.”
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The views expressed in the article are wholly those of the author and do not represent those of, nor should they be attributed to, ZyCrypto. This article is not meant to give financial advice. Please carry out your own research before investing in any of the various cryptocurrencies available.
Source: https://zycrypto.com/worlds-first-bitcoin-etf-now-holds-more-than-10000-btc/
Blockchain
Bank Of Korea Chief Executive Says Crypto Has No Intrinsic Value
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Bank of Korea chief executive says that bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have no intrinsic value while predicting that the high price fluctuations will remain so let’s see what more he had to say in our latest cryptocurrency news.
The head of the Bank of Korea Lee Ju-yeol said that BTC and other major cryptocurrencies have no intrinsic value but he believes that all assets will continue experiencing major price fluctuations. The Bank of Korea chief executive said that Bitcoin as well as other crytpocurencies, don’t possess inherent value and blasted the volatile nature of the digital asset industry. He commented:
“There is no intrinsic value in crypto assets.”

The news report quoted lawmakers asking BOK’s chief, whether the recent surge in the price of the coin is temporary:
“It is very difficult to predict the price, but its price will be extremely volatile.”
The bank executive said that the recent rally in the BTC price followed by other digital assets could be led by multiple factors and among them, is Elon Musk who invested $1.5 billion. He also outlined that the latest price surge could be a continuation of the institutional investors using BTC as a hedge. Ju-yeol outlined that the bank should not purchase bonds issued by the country’s government directly because it will raise worries about fiscal stability and will undermine the central bank’s trust. The primary cryptocurrency’s volatility was causing plenty of troubles for both retail and institutional investors.
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This type of asset became a stumbling point for many and caused plenty of hesitations in whether to allocate the funds or not. The BTC price managed to make another surge in the past few months and market an all-time high while a few days ago, it skyrocketed above $58K, bringing other altcoins like ETH with it. Almost immediately after the upgrowth, BTC suffered a strong correction and settled around $50k as per the time of writing. As a result, the crypto market capitalization lost about $300 billion in two days. JPMorgan strategists said that the BTC liquidity will bring more problems as analysts from the US multinational banking institution argued that this benchmark cryptocurrency is in a liquidity shortage and warned investors that it will suffer another drop soon.
DC Forecasts is a leader in many crypto news categories, striving for the highest journalistic standards and abiding by a strict set of editorial policies. If you are interested to offer your expertise or contribute to our news website, feel free to contact us at [email protected]
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