Liquidators of now defunct cryptocurrency exchange Cryptopia have revealed that it owes investors, creditors, and staff a total of over $3 million.
Grant Thornton New Zealand published its first liquidators report earlier today which outlined that creditors are owed a total of $2.78 million. Staff are also owed $384,000 for unpaid salaries, holiday pay, and other unclaimed expenses.
Creditors fall into one of two categories, secured or unsecured. There are two secured creditors affected by Cryptopia‘s collapse, Dell New Zealand Ltd and Coca-Cola Amatil (NZ) Ltd. These companies are owed a total of $912,000.
As it stands, there are 69 unsecured creditors that are claiming to be owed a total of around $1.6 million. Grant Thornton expects this number to rise as more individuals affected by the exchange‘s collapse come forward.
However, liquidators are still in the process of reconciling customers’ holdings. When this is complete, liquidators should be able to give a more accurate figure of how much money Cryptopia users are actually owed. The value of customer holdings cannot be confirmed at this point in time.
According to the report, Cryptopia has just over $1.1 million in assets; however, owing $2.75 million leaves the company with a deficit of over $1.6 million. The value of the company‘s cryptocurrency assets remains unknown.
Earlier this year, Cryptopia was hit by a hack which saw the exchange experience “significant losses.” Subsequent reports state that the exchange actually lost a total of $16 million worth of digital assets.
Even so, in March, the exchange managed to digitally defibrillate itself back to life and resumed trading . Though its second coming was brief, after it officially shut up shop a couple of months later , taking 500 shitcoins with it.
Affected users are advised to stay updated with the latest developments via the websites of Cryptopia and Grant Thornton New Zealand .
Indeed, it’s going to be a little while longer before we know exactly how much money creditors are owed. Whether they’ll get any funds back, though, is a whole other question.
Meet 5 blockchain developers making a real impact in the industry
While we have some things to sort out before blockchain and cryptocurrency achieves global adoption, it’s easy to forget how far the industry has come. Our blockchain event is fast approaching, so we’d like to celebrate the top DLT developers and influencers that have achieved great things.
In no particular order, here is our list of five people that have had an undeniable impact on the industry:
Vitalik Buterin, Co-Founder of Ethereum and Bitcoin Magazine
This one almost goes without saying, but Vitalik has opened a lot of possibilities for the industry. By the age of 24, he’s created the second most valuable blockchain ecosystem by market cap. It seems like Captain Kirk is quite the fan , too.
Here’s a recent interview he did:
Gavin Andresen, Software and Bitcoin Developer
As one of Bitcoin’s earliest developers back in 2010, Gavin played a big role in raising public awareness of cryptocurrency. Even though there’s been a few scandals since then and he’s no longer in the public eye, his contributions have been highly influential.
Erik Voorhees, Founder of ShapeShift
Erik was one of the earliest supporters of cryptocurrency, blogging about the possibilities it could bring. He’s since founded ShapeShift, a cryptocurrency exchange platform. Despite the controversy he sparked in 2017 regarding his support for the Segwit2x software upgrade, he remains an influential name in the industry.
Elizabeth Stark, Co-Founder and CEO of Lightning Labs
Lightning Labs is a direct response to the scalability issue of blockchain. It tries to deliver faster and cheaper transactions across multiple cryptocurrencies. Elizabeth has taught at Stanford and Yale in the fields of peer-to-peer transactions and privacy.
Here’s Elizabeth discussing the importance of layer two:
Riccardo Spagni, Lead Developer at Monero
Better known as ‘fluffypony,” his Twitter handle, Riccardo almost accidentally became the lead developer of what is now one of the biggest cryptocurrencies in the world. After the Monero white paper was released, they decided to hard fork when the founder made some bad calls they didn’t agree with.
Honorary mention:
The 15-year-old kid that hacked McAfee’s “unhackable” cryptocurrency wallet and played Doom on it. What a baller.
There you have it – just a small selection of influential influences and DLT developers. Looking to the future, we have a set of key challenges to face. Blockchain is only as strong as its code, which is why it’s integral that developers are part of the conversation in shaping the industry’s next steps.
That’s why we’re offering an 85-percent discount on tickets to our blockchain event to DLT developers, in partnership with TRON Foundation. You can register now on the Hard Fork Decentralized website .
Hackers sell data of 130 million Chinese hotel guests on the dark web for 8 Bitcoin
It seems that China’s crackdown on cryptocurrencies doesn’t extend to the infamous dark web.
A hacker is selling the personal data of over 130 million individuals for 8 BTC ($ 56,776 at press time) on a Chinese dark web forum, technology publication Bleeping Computer reports.
The individuals implicated in the hack are all clients of Huazhu Hotels Group , one of China’s largest hospitality chains, which manages over 3,800 hotels across 382 cities in China.
According to the local media that spotted the dark web advertisement, the hacker is selling more than 240 million records belonging to 130 million clients that includes phone numbers, email addresses, bank accounts and hotel booking details. The total data is roughly 141.5 GB in size.
Chinese cyber-security firm Zibao stated that the data was likely leaked earlier this month when Huazhu programmers accidentally uploaded copies of their company’s database to GitHub.
Huazhu published a statement on Weibo stating that they are investigating the leak and the authorities have been informed. South China Morning Post (SCMP) reports that the investigating authorities have already made progress on the case but are refusing to divulge further details.
The Chinese government are increasingly cracking down on the use of cryptocurrencies in the country. The authorities recently banned the websites of more than 124 offshore cryptocurrency exchange desks. China’s largest tech giants Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent are also actively banning all cryptocurrency transactions and discussion forums on their platforms.
But dark web — accessed through virtual private networks (VPN) and privacy-oriented browsers (mainly Tor) — is unregulated and mostly out of the reach of authorities. Cryptocurrencies are the primary mode of payment on this side of the internet.
Contrary to common beliefs though, Bitcoin isn’t entirely suitable for anonymity. In fact, some of the largest drug busts on the dark web have been due to the use of Bitcoin for transactions.
China has been attempting to enforce a blanket ban on all things cryptocurrency for the past year or so. While most of the mainstream businesses have towed the line, the authorities have failed to control scams and other illegitimate activities related to the virtual currencies. Perhaps, its latest clampdown could prove more successful than the previous ones.
