Bitcoin Daily: Ukraine Arrests Hacker In Country’s Largest Theft of Crypto Wallets, Info; Iran Requires Crypto Exchanges To Be Licensed

Bitcoin

The Security Service of Ukraine is reportedly holding a hacker for allegedly selling a database with 773 million email addresses and 21 million unique passwords, CoinDesk reported.

The agency claims that it seized phones, computer equipment and cash, with the inclusion of U.S. dollars and Ukrainian hryvnias. And, beyond emails and passcodes, the SSU said per the report that the database had “eWallets of cryptocurrencies” and “PIN codes for bank cards,” among other information.

Meanwhile, BlockFi suffered a “temporary data breach” on May 14 that exposed some customer information, the company reported in an incident report.

BlockFi said it was “able to confirm that no funds, passwords, social security numbers, tax identification numbers, passports, licenses, bank account information, nor similar non-public identification information was exposed as a result of this incident.”

The company said that a third party breached and used the phone number of a BlockFi staffer to get into a part of the company’s encrypted back-office system without permission.

In other news, the government of Iran is aiming to limit digital currency exchanges with so-called “currency smuggling” regulations, CoinDesk reported.

The country’s parliament reportedly put forward a proposal to have digital currency as a part of foreign currency and “currency smuggling” rules already in place. As a result, Iranian digital currency exchanges would have to be licensed by the Central Bank of Iran and adhere to historical foreign exchange standards. Multiple crypto operations serving the country, however, are legally based in other nations.

And, Celo announced that Release Candidate 1, which had rolled out on April 22 (Earth Day) is now officially Mainnet.

The occasion, which the organization said was “two and a half years in the making,” allows for Celo Gold transfers. Celo also said a Celo Gold auction that was oversubscribed brought in $10 million. In the future, the group foresees “bringing off-chain prices for Celo Gold on-chain through a series of Oracles, Celo Dollars going live, and finally, Mainnet release of the Celo Wallet.”