Savannah Fortis
Nomad announced a bounty of up to 10% for the return of the stolen funds from the Nomad bridge. In a website announcement and tweet, the company publicly provided a wallet address for sending the funds.
The bounty is applicable to anyone who comes forward from now on or already returned funds. At the time of writing, Nomad recovered more than $20 million.
The Nomad token bridge suffered a massive hack on Aug. 2. This incident was among the largest in the history of crypto hacks, with nearly $200 million in crypto assets stolen. However, the platform wasted no time addressing its community and the hackers.
In an official statement, Pranay Mohan, the co-founder and CEO of Nomad, commented:
“The most important thing in crypto is community, and our number one goal is restoring bridged user funds.”
In that vein, Nomad will consider any hacker who returns at least 90% of the total hacked funds as a white hat hacker. White hat hackers are sometimes denoted as “ethical hackers.” Though these hackers typically employ the same methods as black hat hackers, they usually have permission from the site owner which makes their hack legal. White hats are often used to better equip platform security.
Though Nomad will consider compliant hackers to be white hat, Mohan also commented that the platform “will continue to work with our partners, intelligence firms, and law enforcement to pursue all other malicious actors to the fullest extent under the law.”
In the days following the hack, Nomad denied any claims of ignoring system bugs that could’ve made room for such a compromise.
Currently, the platform announced it is working in tandem with TRM Labs and law enforcement to continue tracking down hackers and returning stolen funds.
_____
Turner Wright
"Payments is one of the first and most obvious use cases for crypto, yet adoption has a lot of room to grow,” said Maximiliano Hinz.
Major crypto exchange Binance has partnered with Mastercard to launch a prepaid card for the residents of Argentina.
In a Thursday announcement, Binance said the card will allow its clients in Argentina to use Bitcoin (BTC), BNB and other cryptocurrencies to make purchases as well as ATM withdrawals in fiat wherever Mastercard is accepted — roughly 90 million merchants globally and online. Argentine cardholders can also earn up to 8% back in cryptocurrency from certain purchases.
According to Binance, the introduction of the card — expected to be “widely available in the coming weeks” — was part of the company’s efforts to further the global adoption of crypto. Residents of Argentina will be the first in the region to have access to the cards, but the crypto exchange announced a similar initiative for Binance users in Ukraine in April and for the European Economic Area in 2020.
"Payments is one of the first and most obvious use cases for crypto, yet adoption has a lot of room to grow,” said Maximiliano Hinz, general director of Binance in Latin America. “By using the Binance Card, merchants continue to receive fiat and the users pay in cryptocurrency they choose.”
The card requires Argentines to have a valid national identity card or documento nacional de identidad. Similar requirements are already in place for credit cards issued by local crypto exchanges. In 2021, Lemon Card launched a card with Visa offering 2% back in BTC for Argentine users while Buenbit and Belo both partnered with Mastercard to release a prepaid card and a crypto rewards card, respectively.
Despite the recent market downturn, reports suggest that many Argentines may still be turning to crypto. According to an Americas Market Intelligence report from April, researchers found that “crypto penetration” in Argentina had reached 12% — roughly double that of Peru and Mexico.
_____
Tom Mitchelhill
Australian, Canadian & U.K. crypto investors may potentially claim hacked crypto as a tax loss, but U.S. investors will miss out, according to tax experts.
For unlucky crypto investors looking to turn lemons into lemonade — it turns out that digital assets lost during an exploit or hack can potentially be claimed as a tax loss, provided you live in the right country, experts told Cointelegraph.
Following the news that more than 8,000 Solana wallets had been compromised and that an estimated $8 million dollars in crypto had been stolen due to a security breach in Web3 wallet provider Slope’s network, this may be some much-needed consolation.
In correspondence with Cointelegraph, Shane Brunette, the CEO of Australia-based CryptoTaxCalculator confirmed that crypto lost via a hack or an exploit couldd be declared as a loss for tax purposes in certain jurisdictions.
“This means the original amount you paid for the asset(s) can be used to offset other capital gains.”
When asked whether there are similar provisions in other tax jurisdictions other than Australia, the country in which the tax software provider is based, Brunette, replied:
“Many countries have a provision to allow for these types of tax deductions […] however, you should work closely with a local tax professional and make sure you keep adequate proof of the loss.”
Danny Talwar, Head of Tax at Koinly confirmed the same with Cointelegraph, stressing however that in Australia, one must demonstrate evidence that the crypto lost was under their control at the time it was stolen.
“To claim a capital loss for hacked crypto, you'll need to demonstrate evidence to the Australian Tax Office (ATO) that the crypto is lost and it was under your control.”
Talwar also stated it was critical that the tax authority has enough evidence that crypto is unretrievable, suggesting the use of blockchain explorer tools like Etherscan and Solscan to legitimate evidence on the destination address of the hacker — which may also provide proof of a large pool of hacked funds.
Under Australian tax laws, any evidence of a hack needs to also include dates as to when private keys were acquired or lost and all of the associated wallet addresses.
Unfortunately for U.S.-based crypto investors claiming hacked crypto as a tax loss is no longer possible due to tax reform introduced in 2017, according to a blog post by CryptoTaxCalculator.
For those living in the UK & Canada, things are a little more complicated but a tax loss claim is possible if investors are willing to go through the unique steps set out by each country’s taxation office.
Approximately $2.6 billion in digital assets has been lost to hackers and nefarious actors this year alone, with cross-chain bridge attacks accounting for 69% of the total amount lost.
_____
This Daily Dose was brought to you by Cointelegraph.
