This Week on Crypto Twitter: $100 Million Mango Markets Saga, Caitlin Long Calls Out the Fed

Although the markets are offered little to write home about, crypto Twitter was a veritable hive of hot-takes, revelations and anxiety-inducing hack news this week. There were also rumors that someone had committed an “improper” with one of our bovine friends.

But the undoubted talk of the week centered on the current hacking epidemic, which really has been rising during the last few years.

Hack week.

We’re only sixteen days into it, and October has already been a particularly bad month for crypto hacks, in what’s turning out to be the worst year for hacking ever. In fact, this week was the worst of all, with four massive hacks in a single day on Tuesday. Cryptoanalysis company Chainalysis wrote a thread about the criminal hackathon that 2022 has been.

Of the four hacks, Solana-based crypto trading platform Mango Markets was hit by the biggest. It was tapped for $100 million. When he first heard about it, blockchain spec ZachXBT ran his fist through the computer at his kid’s birthday party and made everything difficult.

The Mango Markets exploit was also the most intriguing, as the hackers appeared to be working in the interests of Mango’s depositors. In their proposal, they cited “bad debt” from a bailout carried out by Mango Markets and Solend back in June.

Elrond Network researcher Alex Valaitis had a popular answer.

The hackers didn’t seem to have covered their tracks very well. An attacker was doxxed by SolScan.

Eventually, “Eisenberg” came clean. It turns out that he is Avraham Mayer Eisenberg from New York, and he allegedly did milked millions from crypto exploits before. Eisenberg confirmed that for his latest exploit, he was working as part of a larger organization and claimed their actions were legal.

He also returned more than half of the loot.

And speaking of cybercrime, this certainly does not bode well…

In other news

Crypto enthusiast/investor Charles Trussel shared a screenshot on Monday ranking the multi-millionaires who lost the most from crypto lender Celsius’ high profile ongoing liquidity crisis. Threat himself must have lost 5 million dollars.

On Monday, Bitcoin’s mining difficulty hit a new all-time high after rising 14% – the biggest increase since May. As the difficulty increases, miners may see slimmer profits if Bitcoin’s price remains inert, since more computing power and electricity are needed to mine. However, increases in mining difficulty also indicate a strong and growing network.

Will Clemente of crypto research and trading platform Reflexive Research said that if the current Bitcoin mining climate is anything to go by, only the fittest will survive.

At an Ethereum Foundation developer conference on Tuesday, one of the attendees’ vocal harassment went unnoticed by the team. Tweeter Daphne later wrote a fuller account of the incident on her blog/newsletter and the accused participant also posted his version of events.

Caitlin Long, founder and CEO of up-and-coming crypto bank Custodia, has been waiting for the Fed for over two years to approve the bank’s application for a main account. On Wednesday, she called out the US Federal Reserve for hypocrisy after Fed-approved investment banking giant BNY Mellon began holding Bitcoin for select firms on Tuesday. Video footage of Long’s response was shared widely.

Finally: