Coin Market

Beware of ‘cracked’ TradingView — it’s a crypto-stealing trojan

Published

4 days ago

March 20, 2025

Cybersecurity firm Malwarebytes has warned of a new form of crypto-stealing malware hidden inside a “cracked” version of TradingView Premium, software that provides charting tools for financial markets.

The scammers are lurking on crypto subreddits, posting links to Windows and Mac installers for “TradingView Premium Cracked,” which is laced with malware aimed at stealing personal data and draining crypto wallets, Jerome Segura, a senior security researcher at Malwarebytes, said in a March 18 blog post.

“We have heard of victims whose crypto wallets had been emptied and were subsequently impersonated by the criminals who sent phishing links to their contacts,” he added.

Fraudsters claim the programs are free and have been cracked directly from their official version, but they are actually riddled with malware. Source: Malwarebytes

As part of the snare, the fraudsters claim the programs are free and have been cracked directly from their official version, unlocking premium features. It actually contains two malware programs, Lumma Stealer and Atomic Stealer.

Lumma Stealer is an information stealer that’s been around since 2022 and primarily targets cryptocurrency wallets and two-factor authentication (2FA) browser extensions. Atomic Stealer was first discovered in April 2023 and is known for its ability to capture data such as administrator and keychain passwords.

Besides “TradingView Premium Cracked,” the scammers have offered other fraudulent trading programs to target crypto traders on Reddit.

Segura said one of the interesting aspects of the scheme is that the scammer also takes the time to assist users in downloading the malware-ridden software and help resolve any issues with the download.

“What’s interesting with this particular scheme is how involved the original poster is, going through the thread and being ‘helpful’ to users asking questions or reporting an issue,” Segura said.

“While the original post gives a heads-up that you are installing these files at your own risk, further down in the thread, we can read comments from the Original poster.”

In this case, the scammer sticks around to assist users in downloading the malware-ridden software. Source: Malwarebytes

The origin of the malware wasn’t clear, but Malwarebytes found that the website hosting the files belonged to a Dubai cleaning company, and the malware command and control server had been registered by someone in Russia roughly one week ago.

Segura says that cracked software has been prone to containing malware for decades, but the “lure of a free lunch is still very appealing.”

Common red flags to watch out for with these types of scams are instructions to disable security software so the program can run and files that are password-protected, according to Malwarebytes.

In this instance, Segura says the “files are double zipped, with the final zip being password protected. For comparison, a legitimate executable would not need to be distributed in such fashion.”

Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis reported in its 2025 Crypto Crime Report that crypto crime has entered a professionalized era dominated by AI-driven scams, stablecoin laundering, and efficient cyber syndicates. In the past year, the analytics firm estimates there was $51 billion in illicit transaction volume.

Magazine: Ridiculous ‘Chinese Mint’ crypto scam, Japan dives into stablecoins: Asia Express

Coin Market

Fidelity files for Ethereum-based US Treasury fund ‘OnChain’

Published

1 hour ago

March 24, 2025

Fidelity Investments has filed to register a tokenized version of its US dollar money market fund on Ethereum — joining the likes of BlackRock and Franklin Templeton in the blockchain tokenization space.

Fidelity’s March 21 filing with the US securities regulator said “OnChain” would help track transactions of the Fidelity Treasury Digital Fund (FYHXX) — an $80 million fund consisting almost entirely of US Treasury bills.

While OnChain is pending regulatory approval, it is expected to take effect on May 30, Fidelity said.

Fidelity’s filing to register a tokenized version of the Fidelity Treasury Digital Fund. Source: Securities and Exchange Commission

The OnChain share class aims to provide investors transparency and verifiable tracking of share transactions of FYHXX, although Fidelity will maintain traditional book-entry records as the official ownership ledger.

“Although the secondary recording of the OnChain class on a blockchain will not represent the official record of ownership, the transfer agent will reconcile the secondary blockchain transactions with the official records of the OnChain class on at least a daily basis.”

Fidelity said the US Treasury bills wouldn’t be directly tokenized.

The $5.8 trillion asset manager said it may also expand OnChain to other blockchains in the future.

Asset managers have increasingly turned to blockchain to tokenize Treasury bills, bonds and private credit over the past few years.

The RWA tokenization market for Treasury products is currently valued at $4.78 billion, led by the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL) at $1.46 billion, according to rwa.xyz.

Market caps of blockchain-based Treasury products. Source: rwa.xyz

Over $3.3 billion worth of RWAs are tokenized on the Ethereum network, followed by Stellar at $465.6 million.

BlackRock’s head of crypto, Robbie Mitchnick, recently said Ethereum is still the “natural default answer” for TradFi firms looking to tokenize RWAs onchain.

“There was no question that the blockchain we would start our tokenization on would be Ethereum, and that’s not just a BlackRock thing, that’s the natural default answer.”

“Clients clearly are making choices that they do value the decentralization, they do value the credibility, and the security and that’s a great advantage that Ethereum continues to have,” he said at the Digital Asset Summit in New York on March 20.

Magazine: Comeback 2025: Is Ethereum poised to catch up with Bitcoin and Solana?

Coin Market

Cathie Wood to kick off El Salvador's AI public education program

Published

4 hours ago

March 23, 2025

Cathie Wood, founder of the Ark Invest investment firm, will give the inaugural lecture for El Salvador’s new Urban Centers for Welfare and Opportunities (CUBO) AI program, a public education initiative spearheaded by the government of El Salvador.

According to El Salvador’s Bitcoin Office, the program will bring university-level AI courses to students and professionals and follows the country’s highly successful CUBO Bitcoin (BTC) and Lightning Network developer program.

The program will leverage industry experts to provide AI education to the public. El Salvador’s Bitcoin Office wrote in a March 23 X post:

“As El Salvador turbocharges its transformation into the ultimate tech and financial powerhouse of the region, CUBO AI will arm students and professionals in the country with the tools to dominate the AI frontier.”

El Salvador continues to attract crypto businesses and foreign direct investment as the Central American country positions itself as a regional tech and digital finance hub.

Cathie Wood pictured left, with El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele in the center, and economist Art Laffer, on the right, meet in May 2024. Source: El Salvador’s Bitcoin Office

El Salvador becoming a regional tech hub amid education and investment push

El Salvador has taken several steps to establish itself as a regional hub for innovation, including integrating Bitcoin classes into public education, leveraging geothermal energy to mine BTC, and passing pro-crypto and AI policies.

Cathie Wood met with El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele in May 2024 to discuss the future of digital assets and AI policy in the Central American country, including potential education initiatives tailored by Ark Invest.

Wood left the meeting confident that El Salvador could increase its gross domestic product (GDP) tenfold over the next five years if it continues pursuing its tech-focused agenda.

“The President could scale El Salvador’s GDP 10-fold during his next 5-year term,” Wood wrote in a May 2024 X post and praised Bukele as forward-thinking.

Bukele also met with Elon Musk in September 2024 to discuss artificial intelligence and other 21st-century technologies, including crypto.

Musk likewise praised Bukele as “an amazing leader,” and the two continue to build rapport that could potentially lead to collaboration between the businessman and the government of El Salvador.

Magazine: El Salvador’s national Bitcoin chief has been orange-pilling Argentina

Coin Market

Bitcoin mining hashprice stays flat despite higher difficulty: Report

Published

6 hours ago

March 23, 2025

The Bitcoin (BTC) mining hashprice — a miner’s daily revenue per unit of hashing power expended to mine blocks — has remained constant at around $48 per petahash per second (PH/s), despite a slight 1.4% uptick in Bitcoin difficulty.

Data from CoinWarz shows that the Bitcoin difficulty climbed to 113.76 trillion at block 889,081 on March 23, up from the 112.1 trillion difficulty in the previous epoch.

According to TheMinerMag, a hashprice below $50 places financial stress on miners running older hardware such as the Antminer S19 XP and S19 Pro.

The older hardware coupled with declining network transaction fees risks pushing some miners into unprofitable territory — forcing them to turn off their hardware until they upgrade their application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) or network conditions change.

Mining firms have been struggling since the April 2024 Bitcoin halving event, which slashed the block subsidy to 3.125 BTC per block mined, generally increasing network difficulty, and the recent downturn in the crypto markets due to macroeconomic uncertainty.

Bitcoin mining difficulty. Source: CoinWarz

Miners have a rough start to 2025

Research from financial services firm JPMorgan shows that publicly listed Bitcoin mining companies collectively lost 22% of their share value in February 2025.

Even miners who diversified operations into artificial intelligence and high-performance computing data centers, to shore up revenue lost through mining activities, are facing financial pressures, the JPMorgan report found.

The financial services firm cited the release of DeepSeek R1, an open-source AI model trained for a fraction of the cost as the leading models and performs on par with closed-source AI products, as a strain on large AI data centers.

Although the Bitcoin network’s hashrate oscillates in the short term, the long term trend is up-only. Source: CryptoQuant

A steadily rising network hashrate, which is the sum total computing power in the Bitcoin network, is also creating increased competition among miners, who must expend greater computing resources to remain profitable.

Fears of a prolonged trade war between the United States and Canada, alongside constant tariff headlines, have put miners on edge.

Threats from Canadian officials to levy tariffs on energy exports to the United States place even more pressure on the already struggling industry.

Magazine: Korea to lift corporate crypto ban, beware crypto mining HDs: Asia Express