It’s another exciting week with a lot happening in the Crypto space. This edition of Bitmama’s weekly crypto news, explores El Salvador’s recent move to acquire 100 Bitcoins, Tanzania’s Central Bank plans to own digital currency, hackers on a crypto attack spree and more. Sit tight and dive in.
FOMO drives Tanzania Central Bank to plan own digital currency
In recent developments, Tanzania is making plan to launch its own digital money, following similar moves across emerging markets like Nigeria, which was the first to own its CBDC in Africa.
The central bank Governor, Florens Luoga said, “that Tanzania is not left behind the adoption of central bank digital currencies, the Bank of Tanzania has already begun preparations to have its own CBDC” at a finance conference.
Luoga likened Tanzania’s plans to follow the eNaira, which Nigeria introduced in October to cut transaction costs and boost participation in the formal financial system. Although pegged at the Naira rate, the eNaira is said to complement the physical naira, which has weakened this year despite the central bank’s efforts to stabilize it. As part of preparations, Tanzania is strengthening the capacity of central bank officials on digital currencies and expanding research on cryptocurrencies.
Omicron: Bitcoin and other crypto plunge as fear of new South Africa COVID variant routs markets
Bitcoin tumbled 20% from record highs attained earlier this month as ‘’Omicron’’ a new variant of the coronavirus spurred traders to dump risk assets across the globe.
The world’s largest cryptocurrency fell as much as 8.9% to $53,624 on Friday during London trading hours. Ether, the second-largest digital currency, dropped more than 12%, while the wider Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index declined as much as 7.5%.
A new variant identified in southern Africa spurred liquidations across markets, with European stocks falling the most since July and emerging markets also slumping.
Bitcoin itself has been under pressure since reaching a record of almost $69,000 earlier this month on enthusiasm over the first U.S. exchange-traded fund linked to futures on the digital asset. It’s currently sitting near its 100-day moving average of $53,940, which served as support during its late-September pullback.
El Salvador Buys 100 More Bitcoins as Crypto Market Falls
The government of El Salvador bought 100 more bitcoin, President Bukele tweeted on Friday, while the price of the largest crypto currency by market-cap fell near $54,000. Bitcoin price fell about 8% on Friday, November 26th, around $54,237, as broader markets tumbled in the wake of the new COVID-19 variant.
Recall that Bitcoin officially became legal tender in El Salvador in September, three months after the country’s legislature passed the Bitcoin Law. On November 20th, 2021, Bukele said that the country is going to build an entire city based on bitcoin, during a presentation at Bitcoin Week in El Salvador.
Hackers are attacking cloud accounts to mine Crypto
Hacked Google Cloud accounts were used by 86% of the “malicious actors” to mine cryptocurrencies, according to a new report. Google’s Cybersecurity Action Team wrote ‘’Of the 50 hacked Google Cloud Platforms or GCPs, 86% of them were used for cryptocurrency mining, which typically consumes large amounts of computing resources and storage space. The remainder of the hacking activities included phishing scams and ransomware.
Most of these attacks on the GCPs are primarily due to poor security practices by customers, including the use of weak or no passwords. According to the report; malicious actors gained access to the Google Cloud instances by taking advantage of poor customer security practices or vulnerable third-party software in nearly 75% of all cases.
In the cases of hackers using accounts to mine cryptocurrencies, mining softwares was installed within 22 seconds of the attack, making manual interventions ineffective in preventing such attacks. “The best defense would be to not deploy a vulnerable system or have automated response mechanisms,” the report recommended.
To prevent such attacks, the team recommended several different security approaches including scanning for vulnerabilities, using two-factor authentication and implementing Google’s “Work Safer” product for security.
That’ll be all for this week. Don’t forget to subscribe to our notifications and download the Bitmama App on iOS and Android for better crypto trading experience. See you next week.
