A cryptocurrency exchange listing various little-known cryptocurrencies, Crex24, is believed to have been hacked. Users have spotted suspicious transactions leaving its wallets, and a hacker has shared screengrabs of its wallets, coinciding with the suspicious withdrawals.

The cryptocurrency-powered Brave browser is now used by over 4 million people per day, and over 12.2 million per month, according to its CEO Brendan Eich who shared the data on social media.

Ether lenders are moving back to the bZx protocol, which was attacked twice last month suffering heavy ETH losses.

Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

• Users Suspect Crex24 Exchange Hack Following 1.3 Billion Coin Withdrawal
• Brave Browser Surpasses 4 Million Daily Active Users
• Ether Lenders Move Back to bZx Attracted by High Interest Rates

At the time of writing, bitcoin (BTC) is trading at $7,984.43 (-8.62%) with a daily Top Tier volume of $4.44. As for ether (ETH), it is trading at $207.19 (-10.00%) with a daily Top Tier volume of $2.27 billion. The MVIS CryptoCompare Digital Assets 10 Index is currently tracking at 2,944.82 (-2.62%)

Users Suspect Crex24 Exchange Hack Following 1.3 Billion Coin Withdrawal

Users suspect the Estonia-based cryptocurrency exchange Crex24 has suffered a security breach after observing suspicious moves out of its wallets, including a transaction of 1.3 billion HTML Coin.

According to Brazilian news outlet Livecoins, citing an anonymous source, the cryptocurrency exchange has been allegedly covering up the security breach. The trading platform supposedly didn’t require users to go through know-your-customer (KYC) checks before the breach, but added the requirement right after to delay withdrawals.

Users have complained on social media the exchange has frozen deposits and withdrawals for various cryptocurrencies, and that 61 altcoin trading pairs have been halted. Livecoins’ report details that Crex24 allegedly admitted to HTML’s developers its wallet w3as hit, saying only 200 million tokens were stolen.

Digging further, users found a suspicious transaction of 1.3 billion HTML out of Crex24, with the funds later moving to HitBTC, the largest cryptocurrency exchange where these tokens could be sold. At the time, 1.3 billion HTML were worth $75,000. The team behind the cryptocurrency is said to be in contact with HitBTC to identify the users behind the HTML address.

Notably, a hacker or group of hackers came forward to claim they were behind the security breach at Crex24. Going by ‘Team Madcatz, the hacker(s) posted screengrabs of cryptocurrency wallets with various receiving transactions from Crex24, made shortly after the large HTML withdrawal.

Brave Browser Surpasses 4 Million Daily Active Users

The cryptocurrency-powered Brave browser has surpassed four million daily active users, according to an update posted by its CEO Brendan Eich on social media.

The update details that the Brave browser now has over 12.2 million monthly active users. The browser reportedly finished 2019 with 11.2 million monthly active users, up from 8.7 million in October 2019.

The browser’s growth has been fueled by its privacy-oriented featured, which including blocking ads and trackers, and by its ad system, which lets users receive basic attention tokens (BAT) for seeing ads on the web. Users can then withdraw their BAT, or tip it back to their favorite content creators.

Brave had around 4.6 million monthly active users in late 2018, and about 28,000 verified publishers and content creators back then. According to its transparency page, it now has nearly 500,000 verified content creators, with over three times the monthly active users.

Ether Lenders Move Back to bZx Attracted by High Interest Rates

Ether lenders have been moving their funds back to the decentralized finance (DeFi) lending protocol bZx after it was attacked twice last month, attracted by interest rates that have reached up to 42%.

Both attacks against the protocol leverage so-called flash loans, which are loans taken and repaid in the same transaction. In one, the attacker leveraged a short on wrapped bitcoin tokens (wBTC) to make roughly $330,000 worth of ether, while in the second a flash loan helped the attacker make over $600,000.

The attacks saw investors move away from bZx but as the protocol’s pool kept losing liquidity, the interest rates being offered kept increasing. The total amount of funds in the platform was of nearly $20 million before the attacks, but got down to a lot of $7.4 million earlier this month.

The high interest rates, however, attracted lenders. At press time, the APR for ether loans is still at 18.5% as traders weigh in the potential risks.

State of the Crypto by Top Tier Exchange Volume

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