Greetings, fellow crypto fans! This edition of Olliv the Above covers the biggest crypto developments for the beginning of August 2023. What's on our radar? A new scam alert has the crypto community checking for dust, PayPal enters the stablecoin arena, and a new crypto reality TV show is coming to the airwaves soon. Let's dive in!
Watch out for the dusting! The crypto community is on the lookout for a new scam that targets the long string of numbers that make up a crypto wallet address. The way the scam works is a scammer sends “dust transactions” to an unsuspecting user’s crypto account. These transactions have no value, but the goal is to have them appear on top of the chronological list of recent transactions tied to that user’s crypto wallet. The first and last numbers in the wallet address from the dust transaction match the user’s own address, making it appear that it’s their original wallet if they’re not closely scrutinizing the entire string of numbers.
Next, the unsuspecting user will copy/paste the first wallet address from the transaction history to save time instead of typing out their wallet address. Then the funds from a crypto purchase get routed to a different address without the user knowing they’re sending it to a stranger – until it’s too late.
The mechanics of the scam appear simple on their own, but generating mirrored wallet addresses that closely resemble investors’ wallet addresses is no simple feat. The level of sophistication on display in the scam was enough to ring alarm bells for the CEO of Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange. Changpeng “CZ” Zhao alerted his followers on X (formerly Twitter) about the scam after Binance’s security team intervened to stop an attempt to defraud one of their customers.
More reading: Crypto scam awareness
PayPal is betting big on crypto’s staying power by releasing its own stablecoin. The stablecoin from the Venmo owner, PYUSD, will have its value pegged to the U.S. Dollar. This is similar to the two largest stablecoins in circulation today, Tether’s USDT coin and Circle’s USDC, which together accounted for a whopping 87% of market dominance at their peak in March of 2023.
Is there space for another player at the stablecoin table? PayPal, with its two decades of brand equity in the peer-to-peer payments business, evidently thinks the conditions are ripe. The new PYUSD coin will run on the Ethereum network.
Crypto catch up: How do stablecoins work?
With writers and actors on strike, TV audiences might have to settle on a diet of unscripted reality shows for a few months. But that’s not to say there will be zero entertainment. One new show set to premiere this fall centers on the drama surrounding the crypto biz. There should be ample material for several seasons, right?
Jk, of course. The new show is dubbed The Next Crypto Gem and it’s being billed as a mashup of Shark Tank and The Apprentice, but with a crypto-flavored infusion. Contestants will work to win the approval of a celebrity panel of judges à la Shark Tank while they brew alliances, or break out the (figurative) knives, over the course of a season. The celebs all hail from the world of web3 and crypto, and it will be up to them to choose the last crypto crusader standing at the end of the six-week challenge. There’s a nifty prize package reportedly worth more than $150,000 for the winner as well.
Crypto in action: 5 women leaders pioneering the crypto space
So, that's a wrap for this installment of crypto news brought to you by the simple, secure crypto platform known as Olliv. Be sure to check out the mobile app using the Google Play Store or Apple App Store, and you can also sign up via the web. Remember, all crypto transactions are final and irreversible. Take care to safeguard personal information whenever buying or selling digital assets.