Hackers exploited a popular decentralized finance protocol to take nearly $25 million worth of cryptocurrency from the total valued locked in it. The attack used a vulnerability within the ERC-777 token standard.

The XRP community has been shrinking over time, and some notable influencers have even stopped posting on their accounts. The community’s size has been dropping along with online engagement, and XRP’s price.

Renaissance Technologies, a hedge fund with $75 billion in assets, has filed a regulatory form last month indicating interest in bitcoin futures.

Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

• Hackers Exploit DeFi Protocol dForce for Nearly $25 Million
• XRP Community Shrinks as the Cryptocurrency’s Price Keeps on Dropping
• One of the World’s Largest Hedge Funds Considering Trading Bitcoin Futures

At the time of writing, bitcoin (BTC) is trading at $7,194.20 (0.51%) with a daily Top Tier volume of $1.63 bn. As for ether (ETH), it is trading at $184.01 (0.67%) with a daily Top Tier volume of $1.11 bn. The MVIS CryptoCompare Digital Assets 10 Index is currently tracking at 2,666.15 (0.92%).

Hackers Exploit DeFi Protocol dForce for $25 million

Multicoin Capital-backed Chinese decentralized finance protocol dForce has been exploited for about $24.9 million, losing nearly all of the total value locked in it. A lending platform within the dForce ecosystem, Lendf.Me, is also inaccessible at press time.

Lendf.Me integrated with imBTC, an Ethereum token pegged to the value of the flagship cryptocurrency, in January. A liquidity pool for imBTC on decentralized exchange Uniswap was exploited for around $300,000 at around the same time dForce was.

The imBTC attack on Uniswap used the token using the ERC-777 standard, which allowed the attacker to continuously call on Uniswap’s smart contract to withdraw funds, before the external balance could be updated. On a blog post, dForce CEO Mindao Yang wrote:

“We know that the hackers utilized a vulnerability within the ERC777 standard of imBTC to execute a reentrancy attack. The callback mechanism of ERC777 (imBTC) enabled the hacker to supply and withdraw imBTC repeatedly before the balance was updated.”

Data on the Ethereum blockchain shows the hacker repetitively called on Lendf.Me’s withdrawal functions to move imBTC out of it. The imBTC appears to have initially been supplied by the hacker. A similar attack was notably used back in 2016, in the famous DAO hack.

On the blog post, dForce CEO Mindao Yang confirmed the hacker(s) reached out to the project’s team and it intends to “enter into discussions with them.”

XRP Community Shrinks as the Cryptocurrency’s Price Keeps on Dropping

Online engagement surrounding the XRP cryptocurrency has fallen in the first quarter of the year, while the number of users supporting the cryptocurrency has dropped 82% since January 2018, according to eToro’s “The State of Digital Assets” report.

The report, published in partnership with analytics and finance management startup The Tie, shows there’s a correlation between the price of XRP and the number of Twitter users in the first quarter of the year.

Data from CryptoCompare shows that social activity on Reddit has also been dropping since early 2019, going from an average of nine posts per day to less than three.

On social media, users have also shared information on XRP and Ripple-related Telegram groups, detailing that over 60% of their members have left since June 2018. Notable social media influencers covering XRP have become inactive. In October last year for example, Hodor, a blogger with over 56,000 followers, stopped publishing new updates on Twitter.

While the XRP community has been shrinking, Ripple itself has “relied on XRP liquidations to stay cash-flow positive” in 2019, according to The Tie.

One of the World’s Largest Hedge Funds Considering Trading Bitcoin Futures

Renaissance Technologies, a hedge fund with $75 billion in assets, filed a regulatory form last month indicating interest in bitcoin futures.

The $75 billion hedge fund, which paved the way for quantitative-based investing, said its Medallion Funds are now “permitted” to participate in bitcoin futures transactions. The firm intends to limit its bitcoin trading to contracts on the institutional exchange CME.

The ADV Form outlines the hedge funds’ business practices and explains the risk of bitcoin futures to potential clients. It reads:

“Bitcoin and futures based on bitcoin are extremely volatile, and investment results may vary substantially over time. These instruments involve substantially more risk and potential for loss relative to more conventional financial instruments.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, Renaissance’s chief Medallion Fund was up 24% year-to-date.

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