The Decentralized Finance (DeFi) sector continues to remain the target of cybercriminals, with crypto wallet BitKeep being the latest victim, as a hacker steals over $8 million from users who installed an unofficial version of the app.

The stolen crypto of about $8 million (and counting) included 4,373 Binance Coin (BNB), 5.4 million Tether USD (USDT), 196,000 DAI, and 1,233.21 Ethereum (ETH). The funds of these users were drained while they were not using their wallets.

BitKeep has confirmed the breach, advising users running unofficial wallets to move their funds to the official app. The individual involved has moved most of the hacked funds to BNB Chain. However, BitKeep has reached out to Binance to freeze the funds. 

BitKeep has emphasized the importance of users transacting exclusively on official applications and websites to avoid losing funds.

The BitKeep hack is the latest in the worst year for the DeFi sectors, where protocols have lost over $3 billion to hacks and exploits.  

The year continues to go from bad to worse for Solana, a chain once hailed as the Ethereum killer, as leading non-fungible token (NFT) projects built on the chain move to more stable networks, including Ethereum and Polygon.

DeGods, the most famous NFT collection on Solana, has announced that it will bridge to Ethereum in Q1 of 2023. However, the project notes that Ethereum is not the final destination but the “path to get there.”

Another leading NFT project, y00ts, has announced its migration to Polygon, Ethereum’s Layer-2 scaling solution. According to data from Token Terminal, the number of active developers in Solana will decrease by 90% in 2022.

The migration of developers has taken a huge toll on the activity of Solana’s decentralized finance ecosystem. According to data from DeFiLlama, the total value locked on Solana is $218 million, down from over $10 billion in November 2021.

The collapse of FTX, worsened by incessant network downtimes, has left Solana at a crossroads and in need of salvation.

Hit by a triple whammy of a plunge in Bitcoin price, skyrocketing cost of energy, and soaring network hashrates, Bitcoin mining companies are ending the year in a collective debt of over $4 billion.

According to the report, Core Scientific is the worst-hit miner, as the company owes $1.3 billion to creditors and has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The top 10 Bitcoin mining debtors cumulatively owe over $2.6 billion.

Marathon, the second-biggest debtor, has avoided bankruptcy as its $851 million debt is primarily in convertible note liabilities – meaning debt holders can convert the convertible notes to the company’s stocks.

According to Hashrate Index, a debt-to-equity ratio of two or higher is considered risky. However, most crypto miners have debt-to-equity ratios higher than twp, largely because of the debts taken over the last year.

The high debt-to-equity ratios of leading Bitcoin miners may lead to more bankruptcies and restructuring unless a bull run erupts.

The data of 400 million Twitter users have been reportedly put up for sale on the dark web shortly after the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) announced an investigation into a previous Twitter data leak that affected over 5.4 million users.

In what could be one of the largest data breaches ever, the hacker has posted a sample of data on one of the hacker forums. It includes the emails, names, usernames, follower counts, creation dates, and in some cases, the phone numbers of users.

According to the hacker, the information was scraped via a vulnerability on Twitter. The top affected users include the WHO, the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and American singer Charlie Puth, among others.

In addressing Elon Musk, he wrote, “your best option to avoid paying $2.76 million in CDPR breach fines like Facebook did (due to 533 million users being scraped) is to buy this data exclusively.”

The hacker put up the “private” data for sale and has called on the Twitter boss, Elon Musk, to purchase the info to avoid paying fines in possible lawsuits.

The Bitcoin hashrate has experienced its biggest single-day drop since June 2021, falling by as much as 38.8% from last Wednesday’s peak as many U.S.-based miners have been forced offline due to deadly blizzards. 

Reports from on-chain data trackers showed that Bitcoin’s hashrate plunged to 155.28 exahashes per second on Saturday, December 24th, after clocking at 253.88 exahashes on Wednesday, December 21st.

The one-month Bitcoin hashrate chart. Source: YCharts

The sharp drop in the hashrate of Bitcoin was attributed to miners in Texas powering down due to severe weather conditions and the demand for energy grids.

However, with most of the mining firms in Texas, FutureBit founder John Stefanop has alleged that the more than 33% fall in the Bitcoin hash rate was due to several “highly centralized mines” in Texas turning off simultaneously. 

Despite more than 30% of its mining power going offline, the global Bitcoin network continued to function without a hitch.