Some of the most popular bitcoin wallets may be vulnerable to double-spend attacks, according to researchers from crypto startup ZenGo.  Wallets that don’t wait for confirmations on the blockchain could even be hit with denial-of-service attacks.

A New Zealand-based investment firm is getting ready to launch an investment portfolio that will use proxies of the USDC and DAI stablecoins, and in the future will take advantage of yield farming.

The New York Digital Investments Group (NYDIG) has raised $190 million for a bitcoin fund called the NYDIG Institutional Bitcoin Fund LP. The fund has 24 unnamed investors.

CryptoCompare’s Socket.IO streamers will be discontinued on July 13th - if you are using the service, we kindly invite you to update your code to upgrade to the new streaming API. 

Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

• Major Bitcoin Wallets Could Be Vulnerable to Double-Spend Attacks
• Investment Firm Prepares to Launch Investment Portfolio for Yield Farmers
• New York-Based Asset Manager Secures $190 Million for Bitcoin Fund
• Upgrade to the new CryptoCompare WebSocket API by 13th of July

At the time of writing, bitcoin (BTC) is trading at $9,201.49 (0.29%) with a daily Top Tier volume of $1.93 bn. As for ether (ETH), it is trading at $228.48 (0.26%) with a daily Top Tier volume of $886.43 million. The MVIS CryptoCompare Digital Assets 10 Index is currently tracking at 2,996.70 (-0.96%).

Major Bitcoin Wallets Could Be Vulnerable to Double-Spend Attacks

Researchers from cryptocurrency startup ZenGo, which is building a mobile cryptocurrency wallet, found a vulnerability in some of the most popular cryptocurrency wallets, including Ledger, BRD, and Edge.

The vulnerability, called BigSpender, might lead to an incorrect balance on the wallet with unconfirmed transactions being taken into account. A potential attacker could leverage the Replace-by-Fee feature found in Bitcoin to replace an original transaction with a new one with a higher fee to effectively double-spend funds.

The vulnerability was found in these wallets as, according to ZenGo, they did not account for a transaction being canceled, and deposited users’ funds into a wallet before waiting for confirmation on the blockchain. The BigSpender vulnerability could even be leveraged multiple times so a user with 0.1 BTC could send ten transactions to pay 1 BTC, and then simply send the funds to another wallet with a higher fee.

Because the wallets have a miscalculated balance, users’ funds could also be frozen using denial-of-service attacks. The funds would remain safe, but the issue could lead to confusion. It’s worth pointing out this is not a vulnerability in the Bitcoin protocol itself.

ZenGo shared its findings with Ledger, BRD, and Edge 90 days ago. Ledger and BRD handed the firm bug bounty awards and BRD has already released a fix. The researchers also released an open-source tool to test your wallet’s behavior against BigSpender.

Investment Firm Prepares to Launch Investment Portfolio for Yield Farmers

New Zealand-based investment firm Techemy Capital is reportedly getting ready to launch a Compound investment portfolio comprised of proxies of the DAI and USDC stablecoins.

The product is set to launch next week, and would allow holders to earn interest on the decentralized finance protocol Compound and, eventually, earn from yield farming. The portfolio would borrow against itself to get free COMP tokens on users’ behalf, alter this year.

Yield farming sees users take advantage of COMP’s distribution to earn an additional yield on their cryptoassets using the protocol. COMP tokens are distributed to those who interact with the protocol by either borrowing or lending funds.

Before launching the Compound investment portfolio, Techemy launched bitcoin and ether-based portfolios. All three are built on Ethereum, available only to accredited investors, and are self-custodial. Speaking to CoinDesk Techemy Capital’s executive chairman, Fran Strajnar, said:

"These initial products can maybe be viewed as a 'mini ETF' for now."

Techemy’s proprietary trading desk will manage the bitcoin and ether portfolios.

New York-Based Asset Manager Secures $190 Million for Bitcoin Fund

The New York Digital Investments Group (NYDIG) has raised $190 million for a bitcoin fund called the NYDIG Institutional Bitcoin Fund LP, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) disclosing it.

The fund has 24 unnamed investors and was originally registered with the SEC in 2018. The NYDIG has made headlines before after closing a $140 million fund called the Bitcoin Yield Enhancement Fund. The filing did not disclose the new fund’s proposed net asset value or any other details.

This has led some to believe the new fund is merely a rebrand of the old one. If it isn’t, NYDIG could be one of the largest institutional investors in the cryptocurrency space in the United States, with a total of $330 million invested in bitcoin across both funds.

The New York-based asset manager also operates the NYDIG Bitcoin Strategy Fund, but its current size is unknown. It also holds a coveted BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS).

Upgrade to the new CryptoCompare WebSocket API by 13th of July

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