Today in Crypto: Actor Bill Murray Loses $185K in Crypto After Hack; Georgian Coinbase Users Benefit From Tech Bug

Cryptocurrency, Bill Murray, NFT auction

Coinbase users in the Eastern European country of Georgia have reportedly been exploiting a price bug to cash out holdings for 100 times the exchange rate.

Georgia’s lari currency was priced at $290 rather than $2.90 on Wednesday (Aug. 31), CoinDesk wrote Friday (Sept. 2), which Coinbase said was a “third-party technical issue.” But because of the error, users holding $100 worth of the currency on Coinbase could withdraw it for $10,000.

Some users had their debit cards and accounts frozen after the transfer, which Coinbase said wasn’t its intent.

In other news, Max Keidun, the CEO of peer-to-peer bitcoin exchange Hold Hodl, has said his next platform will maybe be able to get banks to love bitcoin.

The platform, called Debifi, will let users borrow long-term loans in stablecoins and fiat using their bitcoin as collateral, CoinDesk reported. It’s expected to roll out next year, and Keidun said some banks have already expressed interest in joining as lenders, though he didn’t name any.

The lenders of both fiat and stablecoins will “all be institutions,” and Keidun said the fiat lenders will need the right licenses to join the platform.

Meanwhile, a hacker stole 119.2 ETH from Bill Murray’s crypto wallet just hours after the actor participated in a non-fungible token (NFT) auction.

The auction raised around $185,000 for charity, CoinDesk wrote. The hacker started moving the funds around 7 p.m. ET on Thursday (Sept. 1), per data from Etherscan and Murray’s team, and the hacker reportedly also tried to steal NFTs from the actor’s personal collection.

Finally, bitcoin was trending downward all weekend after a solid unemployment report offered mixed implications for the Federal Reserve, which has been weighing what to do with interest rates.

The largest crypto was again below $20,000 for the ninth day in a row on Sunday (Sept. 4), Bloomberg reported. Several days saw it falling into the $19,500 range, though not below $19,511, which was the record-peak at the time of December 2017.

While U.S. job growth in the U.S. cooled off a little for August, it was still healthy enough. The Fed has been watching the numbers to see how to approach the possibility of another interest rate hike to try and fight inflation.

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