Out of 337 businesses surveyed in El Salvador between January 15 and February 9, 14% said they had transacted in Bitcoin (BTC) since the country’s Bitcoin Law came into effect in September 2021.

A data breach at HubSpot, a tool many companies use to manage their marketing campaigns and onboard new users, has affected two large cryptocurrency companies: BlockFi and Swan Finance.

Decentralized Finance (DeFi) protocol Li Finance, an exchange aggregator, has experienced a smart contract exploit that led to the loss of around $600,000 from the wallets of 29 users.

Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

• 14% of Salvadoran Businesses Have Transacted in Bitcoin
• HubSpot Hack Leads to Crypto Firm Data Breaches
• DeFi Protocol Li Finance Exploited For $600,000
• What is Decentralized Finance (DeFi)?

14% of Salvadoran Businesses Have Transacted in Bitcoin

Out of 337 businesses surveyed in El Salvador between January 15 and February 9, 14% said they had transacted in Bitcoin (BTC) since the country’s Bitcoin Law came into effect in September 2021.

The survey, conducted by the Salvadoran Chamber of Commerce, found that 90% of companies believed that the adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender in the country had little impact on their sales. 71% of respondents were micro or small businesses, 13% medium-sized businesses, and 16% were large companies.

El Salvador’s President, Nayib Bukele, has put the flagship cryptocurrency at the center of the country’s economic growth strategy, a move that institutions like the International Monetary Fund and Moody’s Investors Service have warned against.

The country is set to issue $1 billion worth of Bitcoin bonds, the proceeds of which will go toward funding the so-called Bitcoin City, a fully functioning metropolis that harnesses geothermal energy to mine BTC.

HubSpot Hack Leads to Crypto Firm Data Breaches

A data breach at HubSpot, a tool many companies use to manage their marketing campaigns and onboard new users, has affected two large cryptocurrency companies: BlockFi and Swan Finance.

Both companies have clarified that their operations have not been affected, nor have their treasuries been accessed by illicit actors. HubSpot, a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) used to store users’ personal information, saw hackers leak their data after a bad actor gained access to an employee account.

The hacker, HubSpot said, used its access to target stakeholders in the cryptocurrency industry. Because HubSpot is a third-party tool, however, BlockFi and Swan Finance users’ passwords and other internal information weren’t affected.

HubSpot has said 30 of its clients were affected by the hack but did not publish a list. In February, crypto venture capital firm Pantera Capital said its HubSpot account had been compromised.

DeFi Protocol Li Finance Exploited For $600,000

Decentralized Finance (DeFi) protocol Li Finance, an exchange aggregator, has experienced a smart contract exploit that led to the loss of around $600,000 from the wallets of 29 users.

The exploit saw a hacker extract varying amounts of 10 tokens from wallets that gave the Li Finance protocol “infinite approval.” The stolen tokens included USDC, MATIC, USDT, AUDIO, AAVE, DAI, and MVI.

Li Finance reacted to the hack by shutting down all swapping functions on the platform to prevent further losses. The protocol’s team detailed that the attacker swapped the stolen tokens for 205 Ether (ETH) valued at around $600,000.

The project’s team has since reimbursed 25 of the affected 29 wallets with funds from its treasury. These wallets accounted for around $80,000, or 13% of the value lost. The owners of the remaining wallets were contacted and offered a deal to compensate them by honoring their losses as angel investors in the protocol.

Li Finance has offered the hacker a bug bounty in return for the stolen funds.

What is Decentralized Finance (DeFi)?

DeFi, short for Decentralized Finance, is a term used to describe financial products that are built on permissionless and decentralized blockchains like Ethereum and Solana.

This includes all sorts of exciting financial applications that offer lending, borrowing, trading, insurance and much more. The possibilities are almost limitless.

More broadly, DeFi refers to a movement, where the goal is to build a better financial system by leveraging the power of permissionless blockchain technology to create one that is transparent, permissionless, cheaper, open-source and decentralized.

Learn more with CryptoCompare’s complete guide on DeFi.

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