They decided to move the funds across different platforms so as to get the funds off Binance Smart Chain, most of the funds were swapped to the Ethereum blockchain and some sent to the Binance’s centralized bridge and two other cryptocurrency exchanges. Funds sent to Binance were reportedly frozen.

On-chain analysis helped the Binance team identify the owners of those addresses and who the creators of the platform were, they were notified and they have returned funds to Binance. All funds returned will be given back to the owners after most of the funds converted to other tokens must have been converted back.

The Defi world is filled with scams like this, where platform owners sell the dream to the investors only to later try to make away with people’s funds, sometimes it’s an unaudited Smart contract with a technical bug being found by hackers and they take the opportunity to exploit the bug, and investors are left hanging.

On chain analysis has also proven itself to be a smart tracker of this funds down to the owners of the wallets, in cases of the hack of dForce or bZX’s, they helped them to identify and catch the perpetrators.

Binance, the parent company incharge of the Binance Smart Chain has also stated that they do not hold any central power over the blockchain with regards to controlling funds. Hacked funds that make it to Binance cryptocurrency exchange can be frozen since it holds the power to a centralized exchange or body. However, Binance controls a large portion of BNB stake which makes it control a large portion of the validations on the network and Binance CEO, Changpeng Zhao refers to it as “Centralized Decentralized Finance “.

This new feature will allow Binance tokens users to simply stake their tokens and in exchange, earn an interest which Will be calculated and paid out daily. The interest starts to accrue at 0.00 AM (UTC) on the 2nd day after one has staked their BNB. Users will get their income payments starting on the 3rd day of staking.

Funds staked can be tracked through their tokens via the platforms vault page>my share. Staked BNB tokens will allow the users to earn such incentives as VIP rights, launch paid holding position, airdrops, and daily BNB balance calculation. BNB tokens staked can also be unstaked at any time they want from the vault.

“BNB Vault Is a Capital-Guaranteed Investment Product With Flexible Access. It Integrates Various Binance Products to Maximize the Income Potential of Your BNB From Both Centralized and Decentralized Finance in Just One Click.”

This development will boast Binance token ecosystem,  even boosting the user case of BNB and this too is in line with the exchanges effort to integrate Defi projects through the recently launched Binance Smart Chain (BSC). The smart chain hosts multiple yield farming projects which includes the likes of pancakes and burger swap.

Currently, Travala.com has a slot of growing top Cryptocurrencies which launches Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum(ETH), Binance Coin(BNB), AVA tokens and now we have ARK in addition to it.

Ray Alvarez, Strategic Partnerships Manager at ARK, said: “At ARK we are always focused on creating simple ways to leverage blockchain technology while providing utility to our user base. Travala.com will be a valuable partner as we prepare our MarketSquare platform and look for innovative ways to involve our communities. We are excited to be partnering with Travala.com and give our users more choices when booking their next travel destination.”

Cryptocurrency projects have always grown in exposure through partnership, ARK and Travala.com collaboration will help them project their aims to a wider audience and grow their Cryptocurrency adoption. The ARK’s Market Square Platform will list Travala as a partner and business leading it to having greater exposure to the market Square community. Exposure on the market Square community would mean exposure to blockchain projects, applications, and business and as a collaborative team, both projects would help each other explore ways to market and make Travala.com stand out as a leading Travel provider.

Juan Otero, CEO at Travala.com, said: “We’re excited to partner with ARK to champion the growth of the crypto community and can’t wait to see Travala.com featured on ARK’s Upcoming MarketSquare.”

About Ark

ARK is an open-source blockchain platform that empowers everyone, regardless of their aim or technical background, to quickly and easily leverage blockchain technology. ARK acts as a beacon for individuals, enterprises and communities who wish to apply blockchain technology as a foundation for their own projects or businesses by offering technology stacks and tools, unique in their simplicity, to easily create and deploy blockchains. For more information, please visit https://ark.io.

The AVA token had migrated to Binance Chains BEP-2 protocol back in 2019 and since then has leveraged the Binance world class architecture which includes leading trading technology and security with a simple-easy to interact interface.

Following the recent release of the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) BEP-20 protocol, AVA tokens has become one of the most latest Crytocurrency to migrate among other projects. The Binance Smart chain will operate in a parallel side by side manner with the Binance Chain. The Binance Smart Chain provides its users with a renown, rapid trading system with an example of the Binance Dex which is built on the Binance Chain. The Binance Smart Chain provides its users with low fees prices and decentralized features. 

Following this launch, the total supply of AVA Token on the Binance smart Chain (BSC) will match that of the Binance chain thereby enabling users to easily swap from the BEP-2 AVA tokens to the BEP-20 AVA tokens and vice-versa. The ability to seamlessly swap from the protocol to the other allows users to swap for any reason possible either for trading on the Binance chain or utilizing the decentralized features on the Binance Smart  Chain(BSC).

Travala.com continues to follow current trends and has continued to get involved in Partnership, that help them to build their system, and one of the latest on their table as outlined in White Paper is a decentralized travel ecosystem which would include decentralized accommodations bookings, reviews, referrals, governance among many other development.

Juan Otero, CEO Travala.com said that the platforms booking revenue increased by 70% in just two weeks after partnership with the booking giant, Expedia. 

He also said that the use of cryptocurrency to pay for bookings had grown too.

“We’re also seeing a sharp increase in the number of bookings paid with cryptocurrencies, particularly in the native AVA token as the preferred crypto payment option after Bitcoin. From 59% of the total bookings in June paid with cryptocurrencies to almost 70% so far in July following the recent partnership with Expedia.”

Partnership Drives Business Growth

Partnerships in the business world help like minded businesses or companies grow. The CEO of Travala.com also noted that the Expedia partnership is one of the contributing factors to the platform’s growth. 

“The easing of travel restrictions has definitely impacted our recovery, however the acceleration of growth we’re witnessing since the partnership with Expedia is significant. As we partner with more leading travel suppliers like Expedia, the Travala.com platform becomes more and more competitive.”

The scammer links a site cryptoforhealth .com (might want to stay off the site until twitter comes up with a solution) where they claim to help people in this hard times of Covid-19, they also claim that top exchanges such as Binance, Kraken, Gemini etc are in partnership in these giveaways. They ask you to participate by sending them bitcoin first ranging from 0.1 to 20 BTC which is a typical sign of a scam. 

PLEASE BE WARNED, THIS IS SCAM !!!

The companies mentioned above would never ask you to send them Crypto for any reason.

The CEO of Binance, CZ has asked users not to click the link and not send any Cryptocurrency..unfortunately a few minutes later, he also got hacked. 

Crypto Twitter sees Massive Hacks. 

The hack is said to have started with a Cryptocurrency trader who goes by the name @AngeloBTC on twitter, he was hacked first. Then followed by Binance, CZ, Justin Sun and many others. 

They even Retweeted these tweets with those hacked accounts which shows that they are either a group doing this or one person. 

The hacker also uses one wallet address in all the hacks involving cryptocurrency accounts. 

Extended Hack to non crypto influencers

The hackers have also extended this activities into other large personalities in the society such as Bill Gates, kim kardashian, Kanye West, Barack Obama and many more.

The Hack has struck the Crypto Space with a lasting scare since today will never be forgotten not even for the Twitter team. They single highhandedly hacked a whole lots of accounts

The Twitter support has said that they are working on identifying what the problem was, and Tron CEO, Justin Sun who was also a victim of the hack has offered to pay $1 million to anyone that can i identify who did the hack and get their accounts back.

YouTube Promoted Scam Ads

It is surprising or a bit disgusting and annoying to find out that YouTube could actually allow promoted cryptocurrency scam ads to be displayed to millions of their customers, they do not allow legit cryptocurrency ads to be advertised, so why allow scams. Recently, these misleading ads have been constantly displayed on YouTube videos. YouTube at some point started removing videos that had anything to do with cryptocurrency, they however debunked it as an error promising to reinstate the videos back. (Forbes article).

With all that has been happening, one is left with the option of wondering if the Google subsidiary YouTube is very well conscious of what they are doing and seriously wants to paint cryptocurrency as a bad choice to newbies who are most likely going to fall to the scam.

What the Scam Ads look like

You would normally see them anywhere you would have seen a YouTube ad (before and in between videos). Sometimes too they are uploaded like a live stream on the Video platform. The scammers take videos of popular individuals in the crypto space like CZ, Vitalik , Elon Musk and even recently the CEO of Cardano Charles. They take these videos of them speaking in public gatherings like blockchain summits, on these videos they add text promising you 100% or more returns of your initial deposits almost immediately.

It is worth noting that YouTube is yet to address any of this and it is alarming because individuals are losing money on these scams.

Here is what CZ had to say

Meanwhile, we can’t even buy ads on YouTube…  crazy world.Quote Tweet

ADAs CEO, Charles Hoskinson

Will Scam always be there?

Sadly, the answer might be YES. Our daily lives are filled with it honestly, in Banks, in Face to face dealings and the rest of them. We could however minimize the risk of getting scammed by learning and understanding how they work, and fixing the amount of greed we have. When offered something too good to be true, let’s try to contact the official handles or communities to confirm them before sending funds.

They will try to be smarter and create new ways to scam, but so will you, you will be ready.

Both companies will operate independently and work together in ensuring more mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency by bridging the gap between fiat and digital assets. 

Swipe is available in 31 countries and has over 60 million locations where their debit card could be used as payment. They also listed BNB on their platform, this will help create more liquidity to BNB by making it available and spendable to Euro in all locations currently supporting Swipe Visa Debit Card. 

Binance Card

Binance exchange had earlier announced earlier in April their plan on introducing a Binance Card that could be used to shop and pay with cryptocurrency anywhere in the world. 

Today Binance CEO, Changpeng Zhao announced the beta testing of the Binance Card. 

He showcased the first use of the Binance Card and also started that he is taking part in the card beta testing. 

Beniamin Mincu, founder and CEO of the Elrond network announced that the network will be upgraded to its Mainnet on 30th of July  2020 on twitter. 

GENESIS STAKING 2.0

The genesis staking smart contract will allow for erc-20 ERD to be cool netted to the Mainnet tokens, they will be automatically converted through the Elrond Bootstrapping process. For steps on how to stake both as a Validator and Delegator, refer to this link. 

The Mainnet upgrade means Elrond gets to own its own blockchain and could have other upcoming projects run on it. Along with other benefits, you get to stake on the Mainnet and earn passive income. To participate in the Mainnet launch, you will need to move your tokens from exchanges to MetaMask.

In a latest blog post, Benjamin announced that Stakers can start staking, they are paid for helping secure the network with 25% APR before launch, 29% for Delegators and 36% for Validators. You can reserve a slot Here.

Recent Developments

The Elrond team has a blockchain game currently running on the Elrond Network with cryptocurrency rewards for players on the Samsung flagships phones. The game is known as “Battle for Elrond”, it’s a fast-paced 5V5 multi-player PVP arena. You can get it on Samsung store. 

Elrond also recently got listed on the Binance backed exchange WazirX and has also been integrated as an option for payment on Travala.com, the online travelling and booking platform. 

DEFI

Defi simply stands for Decentralized Finance; they are open-source technologies with the sole aim of improving different aspects of the financial system through the elimination of intermediaries or what we commonly refer to as “middle-man”.

DeFi Rankings

According to Coinmarketcaps ranking protocol we find Compound (COMP) leading with a market cap of $552.33M as at the time of writing, followed by Maker and Ox.

Binance exchange has also announced the launch of Compound (COMP) on their leverage platform with traders able to trade it with as high as 50x leverage. This comes after Coinbase announced support for the Defi token COMP and also allowed users to earn it through the Coinbase Earn initiative, an initiative where you learn about a particular cryptocurrency and still earn while doing that.

Coin telegraph reported that COMP is also listed on OKEX exchange.