🔓 Hacking season

Talking points

Quick market outlook 👀

It's another week of the crazy crypto world and we continue to see the craziness as usual. So, what is the marketing looking like is week?

Well, Bitcoin has been on a journey this week so far, with it ranging from $26.7k all the way up to $29.1k. Which is a step change within a 7 day period.

The market has been up and down and turning around over the past few weeks, which is turning investors into a craze trying to figure out whether to buy or sell and as you can see in the chart above, you can understand why.

So, what's next for Bitcoin and the market?

Well, interestingly it seems that Bitcoin is going on its own path, especially with stocks more recently, correlation which is usually positive has altered a little, but considering what has happened over the last few weeks, it is understandable that there may be some changes and odd occurrences.

Bitcoin market dominance has been on the rise, which is why we haven't seen altcoins rise as much with Bitcoin, but could that change soon and Bitcoin dominance drop, or could we see it break through the $30k mark? Only time will tell, so make sure you have a plan for whatever happens!

As always, stay vigilant! 

 🧑‍💻 HackGPT?

If you’re a ChatGPT fan, then you may want to listen up as some super not cool hackers tried to get sneaky with Google Chrome extensions and it hasn’t ended so well for over 9000 people who sadly got hit by this 🤯

So, what are we on about? Well… you have probably guessed it, another scam alert!

These things just don’t go away, right?

Recently a fake Google Chrome extension was created and called “ChatGPT for Google” and as a result it enable hackers to gain access to their personal accounts including the likes of social media such as Facebook. Big yikes!

However, our savior of the day Google quickly came to the rescue and took it down promptly, which has definitely prevented many other users from being exploited too. Let’s get a round of applause for Google!

So, how did this happen?

Well, the hacker used malicious sponsored Google search results to redirect people searching for "Chat GPT-4" to fake landing pages promoting the bogus add-on. Once the extension was installed, it functioned as promised, enhancing search engines with ChatGPT.

But it also quietly activated the ability to capture Facebook-related cookies and send them to a remote server in encrypted form. 

This is a reminder to be cautious when roaming the internet as you never know what is out to get you and as for ChatGPT specifically, this is not the first time a bogus version of it has been out in the open to trick users into giving over personal infoarmtion.

As always, be super careful and double-check with some quick due diligence on anything suspicious looking.

So, now we are done with the more disappointing parts, there is also some positive news for ChatGPT too, so let’s dive into that as this could definitely benefit many users!

OpenAI has introduced a new plugin feature for its popular chatbot, ChatGPT. The new feature, currently in its alpha phase, allows ChatGPT to interact with third-party websites and retrieve information from online sources. 

Users on the waitlist will soon have access to the feature, which initially includes 11 plugins ranging from checking live sports scores to ordering home delivery food.

Supported websites include e-commerce platforms like Shopify, Klarna, and Instacart, and travel search engines such as Expedia and KAYAK. ChatGPT uses the Bing API to search for information and a text-based web browser to navigate results and interact with websites. This allows ChatGPT to synthesize information across multiple sources and provide more grounded responses, while also citing sources used.

The plugin feature was developed due to high demand from users, and allows ChatGPT to overcome its biggest shortcoming, that it was trained with data only up to September 2021 and does not have access to the internet to grab more recent information. OpenAI plans to gradually release more plugins to evaluate their real-world usefulness.

OpenAI is continuously working to further improve ChatGPT and we are exciting to see more additions in the future!

Is AI actually taking over the internet? Perhaps we are a bot, muwahaha 👀

 🎚️ Fetch-ing Upgrades?

Continuing on with the AI theme, Fetch.ai the AI-focused crypto protocol just secured a whopping $40 million in funding from market maker and investment firm DWF Labs. The company plans to use the investment to deploy decentralized machine learning, autonomous agents, and network infrastructure on their platform.

As we are seeing AI being continuously developed and implemented, it is great to see Web3 taking it by the horns and truly adding value where possible, but even better to see such huge project such as Fetch.ai gain traction.

But what exactly does that mean?

Well, Fetch.ai is all about creating an autonomous machine-to-machine ecosystem that allows developers to deploy and monetize applications. They use "autonomous economic agents" - pieces of code that create connections between independent parties and real-world systems to generate economic value for their owner through acquiring knowledge, sharing predictions, and conducting trades.

It seems AI is not going away, so we might as well embrace it, right? It's popularity is certainly there, and OpenAI, which recently raised $10 billion from Microsoft is most definitely leading the way.

Fetch.ai's native token FET currently has a market cap of about $300 million, while sitting in the top 200 crypto tokens, roughly around #120.

Last month, Fetch.ai teamed up with electronics giant Bosch to form a foundation for the research and development of real-world use cases of blockchain technology in areas such as transportation, hospitality, and commerce.

This $40 million funding marks yet another investment by market maker DWF Labs, which has made multiple investments this month alone. Most recently, they invested $10 million in blockchain firm Radix Tokens.

So, there you have it, Fetch.ai is making some serious moves in the world of AI and crypto and we can't wait to see what they'll do next in the world of Web3.

🔓 Un-Safemoon?

The world of DeFi truly is a fascinating place, but as exciting as it is, there are sadly some times that aren't exciting either. Recently, a hacker made off with $8.9 million in digital assets after exploiting a vulnerability in Safemoon, the BNB chain-based DeFi exchange.

The attacker exploited a public burn function in the latest upgrade of Safemoon which was discovered by Peckshield, a crypto security firm. Almost $9 million worth of assets from the project's liquidity pool were compromised as a result of this bug function.

DeFi Mark, a web3 developer, revealed that the attacker used the vulnerability to remove SafeMoon tokens, causing an artificial spike in the token’s price. The attacker then took advantage of the situation and sold off the tokens at an inflated price, which evidently is not ideal at all.

Safemoon has confirmed the hack on their official Twitter account, without revealing further details about the attack. 

For those of you who don't know, Safemoon is a community-driven DeFi protocol that features a deflationary utility token,

It runs on the BEP-20 token standard, built on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC).

The project was launched in the first quarter of 2021 and gained significant attention from high-profile celebrities and social influencers, these include Jake Paul and Soulja Boy. 

This attack is extremely unfortunate as it appears to be a loop hole in the coding, which sadly does happen, but mistakes also don't protect users assets either. However, it was also announced on Twitter via the Safemoon official account that they are aware of what caused the exploit and are working on a fix.

Evidently this is never news you want to see as someone is always harmed, but the good news is that a fix is on the way and Safemoon services should be back up and running at full capacity once fixed.

Will any harm caused be rectified for investors impacted? We are not sure yet, so keep an eye out on updates if you have been caught up in this.

Stay strong team, there is always a positive to look forward to 😊