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Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Apologizes for Bitcoin Hack, But Not Before Dutch Politician Was Compromised

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey came forward on Thursday to apologize thoroughly for his social network company’s failure to prohibit and shut down Bitcoin scam artists’ digital heist of important verified accounts, that ranged from that of tech moguls Elon Musk and Bill Gates to political figure Joe Biden.

The hack was reported to be the biggest one that Twitter has suffered in all of its history, resulting in the seizure of at least 130 accounts on the social platform. All pertained to prominent figures and celebrities, and hackers tweeted out the same message through at least 45 of those accounts, demanding for Bitcoin (BTC) funds. The message that appeared on Elon Musk’s verified account was formulated as so:

“I am giving back to the community. All Bitcoin sent to the address below will be sent back doubled! If you send $1,000, I will send back $2,000. Only doing this for 30 minutes.”

Other accounts, such as that of coin exchange Binance, depicted that the coin exchange had partnered with “CryptoForHealth” and was looking to give back 5000 BTC to the community.

Did Hackers Have a Political Agenda?

Of all the accounts, hackers accessed the private messages of 36 verified accounts. CEO Dorsey revealed that one of those accounts belonged to an elected political official in the Netherlands. Twitter however does not believe any other former or current elected political figures’ direct messages were accessed. This may come as a bit of reassurance to former President of the United States, Barack Obama, and political runner-up, Joe Biden, who also had compromised social media accounts.

Identity of Hacked Political Account Comes to Light

Though Twitter has not disclosed the identity behind the Netherlands elected official’s hacked account, recent information has come to light that may suggest that it belonged to no other but Dutch politician Geert Wilders.

The far-right politician told BBC news recently that Twitter was referring to his verified account when it mentioned that one of the 36 accounts that had their direct private messages snooped through belonged to an elected political official.

Political Figure Spills the Beans

During the Twitter Bitcoin scam attack last week, Wilders’ profile picture was replaced with a cartoon of a black man, and his account’s background picture was switched to the Moroccan flag. The far-right Dutch politician is quite a figure in the Netherlands, as his Freedom Party is the second biggest part in the Netherlands’ House of Representatives.

Wilders told BBC that he had been using Twitter’s direct message tool for about 10 years now. He went on to say that he was informed by Twitter following the fraudulent hack that not only had his Twitter account been hacked for some days, but the hackers also posted tweets on his account and sent DMs in his name. He confirmed that the hackers indeed got full access to his DMS, which “is totally unacceptable in many ways.”

The Dutch politician is extremely concerned with the Twitter security breach, as his Freedom Party had campaigned to ban Muslim immigration and shut down mosques. He expressed his view:

“People critical of Islam or regimes in the Middle East [including those] from within countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria [have sent me DMs over 10 years] and I do hope they will not be in danger if their identity would be exposed because of this hack. I had deleted most of them but maybe some were left there for the hacker to see and copy.”

CEO Jack Dorsey and Twitter Apologizes

Twitter took matters into their own hands and commented on the incident, saying that they have recently implemented safeguards to improve the firewall security of their internal systems. They went on to add that they were working in collaboration with law enforcement to further the investigations of the infamous Twitter BTC scam. Twitter also apologetically said that they are committed to regaining “the trust of all their stakeholders with their every action, including how they address the security issue.”

Twitter Not The Only Victim of Bitcoin Schemes

Bitcoin scams are becoming increasingly common on social media networks, as Twitter is not the only platform that has been targeted in such fraudulent attacks. YouTube has also recently been faced with a lot of backlash, resulting in lawsuits, due to the volume of cryptocurrency scam videos streaming through their platform.

Apple Sues YouTube

In recent news, co-founder of Apple Steve Wozniak filed a lawsuit against YouTube for the video content platform’s failure to take down fraudulent videos that impersonated Wozniak in an effort to extort XRP funds from YouTube subscribers. Google is also implicated in the lawsuit, as they are the parent company of YouTube.

What is DTube?

DTube is a decentralized video sharing platform launched in August 2017 by Adrien Marie, and is one of the most popular decentralized alternatives to YouTube.

As per the name DTube, which stands for “decentralized tube,” it is a decentralized app (Dapp) run on the Avalon blockchain, a novel social media blockchain with a delegated proof of stake consensus protocol. To immunize videos to censorship, the video files are stored in a decentralized file system (IPFS) among peers of the network – if one peer node fails, the file will flow to the next node.

The philosophy behind DTube leverages decentralized web technologies and cryptography to provide an alternative platform to private social media outlets like YouTube or Facebook, which according to DTube founder Marie, have broken their trust to the users with a lack of transparency and unfair censorship and monetization policies.

How DTube Works

Originally launched on the STEEM blockchain, DTube developed their unique lower-layer blockchain, Avalon, to improve the platform’s scalability and introduce new concepts and utilities.

Among these new features, Avalon ensures that all community contributions such as posts, votes, and tags receive rewards in the form of Dtube Coin (DTC), which is produced and distributed by the blockchain.

Users are incentivized to contribute to the community by earning DTC, which gives them voting power at a rate of 1 DTC/ 1 VP/ 1 hour. Voting power, in turn, allows users the opportunity to earn more DTC by curating content, uploading posts, sharing, commenting, etc. by spending that power. This model incentivizes users to refrain from taking their DTC out of their wallet and exchanging it for another currency, as they would lose all their voting power and stake in the game.

The blockchain relies on a delegated proof of stake (PoS) consensus mechanism, whereby community members elect “leaders” who then validate and mine the blockchain, and implement future changes based on the community’s votes.

DTube follows the principle of “one chain – one app,” in that each app has their own specific blockchain. For DTube, their native blockchain Avalon allows for effective on-chain governance, instead of depending on the STEEM blockchain, which is home to hundreds of different apps, to implement community-specific changes.

DTube’s Mission

DTube offers solutions to these issues with existing social media platforms:

Censorship

De-monetization based on advertising pressures

Invasion of privacy through the collection of personal data

An unfair revenue sharing model

By using decentralized technologies, DTube aims to recreate trust between the platform and its community, giving members the power to moderate content, and fairly distributes earnings to members without censorship of free speech, the invasion of individual privacy, or bombarding viewers with intrusive advertisements.

The Economics

One of the main differences between DTube and standard social media platforms is their economic model. With private social media platforms, content creators earn less than 50% of the total revenue, with the majority going to the private company that runs the platform and to advertisers.

On DTube, 90% of the revenue goes to community content creators and curators, with only 10% going to the Dtube commission that is responsible for running the blockchain and further developing it.

On DTube, there are no ads. Instead, a small percentage of the revenue from each video goes to the developers and community leaders.

By protecting creators’ freedoms of speech and privacy, and including the passive “watchers” of the community into the economic model, DTube has the potential to be a really vibrant and successful platform.

The challenge will be to also welcome advertisers and transition them away from the mainstream social media outlets.

US Lawmakers Question Tron Founder Justin Sun and DLive CEO on Extremist Content Following Capitol Riots

Two U.S. lawmakers have published an open letter to Tron founder Justin Sun and DLive CEO Charles Wayn in the wake of the Capital riots—asking them to explain how they moderate extremist and white supremacist content.

The letter was published by U.S. lawmakers Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) and Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) on Feb. 9 and it also specifically asked Sun and Wayn whether DLive identified any crypto donations from foreign entities to the individuals present on Jan. 6 at the Capitol Riots.

The pair of U.S. lawmakers—who are part of the House Select Committee on Intelligence—published the open letter on The Verge on Tuesday amd asked Sun and Wayn to explain how they plan to prevent extremist content from being broadcast on the crypto streaming platform in the wake of last month’s attempted insurrection in Washington at the confirmation of President Joe Biden.

The US representatives asked for Sun and Wayn to explain in detail how DLive, the decentralized video streaming alternative to YouTube, can protect younger users from extremist content and whether the company has any methods to identify bad actors financing extremist content.

DLive is a decentralized video streaming platform that aims to disrupt the existing monopolized video streaming services on the internet, which are dominated by a few market players such as Twitch and YouTube. DLive is a subsidiary of BitTorrent, which was acquired by Justin Sun’s Tron Foundation in 2018. Users are paid through crypto from their viewers when the content creator stream videos.

During the Capitol hill insurrection in January, several far-right extremists leverage DLive to live stream their attack on the Capitol building. DLive CEO Wayn announced after the domestic attack that only gaming content would be able to receive payments.

Several of the live streaming extremists on DLive were arrested following the attacks and the open letter addresses these users, it reads:

“Several of these individuals earned thousands of dollars in DLive’s digital currency that day, and a number received large donations through the platform ahead of the event. One individual received $2,800 in a live stream on January 5th, 2021, in which he encouraged his viewers to murder elected officials.”

The letter also asks:

“Did DLive or BitTorrent identify any foreign-based blockchain donations to individuals who were subsequently removed from the platform after the January 6th Capitol riots?”

The two US lawmakers who authored the letter are part of the House Select Committee on Intelligence—one of the congressional committees looking at how the Capitol Riot insurrection occurred and whether crypto played a role in financing it.

A hearing will be held later this month by the House Financial Services Subcommittee on the financing of domestic terror following the Jan. 6. Insurrection on Capitol Hill where the discussion will likely focus on a $500,000 transaction in Bitcoin made by a French extremist and blogger to pay right-wing figures who appear to be heavily involved in the attack.

Hacker Steals $1.1m Worth Crypto from Music Streaming Protocol Audius

Audius, a decentralized music streaming protocol, announced on Sunday that a hacker stole funds worth $1.1 million from its platform’s decentralized governance system using a Malicious Governance Vote.

The hack was executed at 6 am on Sunday Thai time. According to the report, the attacker modified some configurations within the smart contracts deployed by Audius and became a contract custodian.

The hacker then submitted the malicious proposal. That enabled him to create and approve a regulatory proposal, which eventually authorized a transfer of 18 million AUDIO coins from the Audius platform’s community treasury.

Although the hacker stole 18 million AUDIO tokens worth more than $6 million, the hacker only sold 705 ETH worth $1.1 million, leaving the rest of the funds in its wallet.

Audius confirmed the incident and said it temporarily stopped smart contracts and AUDIO tokens to prevent further losses of funds from its platform. The firm further stated that it had fixed the Smart Contract issue, and the funds in the community treasury and the foundation treasury are both safe.

Blockchain security firm Peckshield conducted an initial investigation and found out that the root cause of the problem was an inconsistent storage layout within the Audius protocol. Audius said it had fixed the issue, and further exploits are no longer possible.

Audius stated: “The issue has been found, and fixes are in progress to get things back to a stable state. To prevent further damage, all Audius smart contracts on Ethereum had to be halted, including the token. We do not believe any further funds are at risk.”

The firm mentioned that it will release a full post-mortem today.

Decentralizing the Music Industry

Two major problems currently suppressing the music industries are copyright infringement and lack of proper compensation. While illegal players in the music industry cause the former, the latter is normally a consequence of an oversaturated market.

Recent statistics estimated that the music business generated $43 billion worth of sales in 2018. But only 12% of that goes to musicians or artists who created the content. Record labels and publishers sometimes compete with musicians, creators, and fans to maximize revenue and maintain control over the business.

Many artists and fans feel that the music industry often rewards gatekeepers over creators and lacks transparency.

Decentralized streaming solutions built on blockchain technology are already changing that dynamic.

Audius is a blockchain-based decentralized music streaming platform working to give artists and curators more control over their music creations. When artists upload content to Audius platform, they can produce immutable records for their work, secured by a decentralized network of nodes. Audius removes the intermediaries in the traditional music industry by connecting artists directly to their fans.

New partnership to enable Bitcoin micropayments for content platforms

Crypto has made inroads into a variety of markets throughout the course of its history, providing users with the unprecedented opportunity to micro-monetize their activities.

Play-to-earn gaming, along with earning from music streaming, was the antecedent for this sort of cryptocurrency integration. Streaming music also contributed to the development of this form of crypto integration. The value-for-value podcasting platform Fountain announced a new collaboration on January 24 with the financial services business ZEBEDEE to allow Bitcoin (BTC) micropayments for podcast listeners. ZEBEDEE helps monetize games and applications. The capacity to listen to a podcast and receive money for it has been described as a strong combination and the future of content production by Oscar Merry, the creator and chief executive officer of Fountain.

“In a few years, when we look back on paid subscriptions for content platforms that aren’t tied to how much we really use those platforms, we’ll look back and chuckle at how primitive and wasteful it was,”

In addition, as a result of the relationship with ZEBEDEE, customers may take advantage of the benefits without having any prior knowledge of cryptocurrencies thanks to the incorporation of debit and credit card connections. According to Merry, such a development brings together a “fragmented podcasting market,” which at the moment is comprised of a large number of applications and hosting companies that are not synced with one another.

He went on to emphasise the fact that the value of a platform is increased with each minute spent consuming or generating content as well as seeing advertisements. Why shouldn’t you share in the financial rewards that come from the value that you generate on the platform?

The adoption of new technologies is starting to become nearly imperceptible as developers continue to place a priority on usefulness in newly developed protocols.

Recently, a programme called “party-to-earn” targeted the electronic music business with the goal of developing a currency that can be used by festival attendees, clubbers, and fans alike.