Cryptocurrency update: Bitcoin slips by 2.1%; Ethereum down by 2.5%

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Bitcoin, the biggest and oldest cryptocurrency, declined 2.14% to $44,068.03 levels on August 19.  Ethereum, the second largest virtual token, dropped 2.59% to trade at $2,965.19. Five of the top 10  cryptocurrencies were trading in red, while the rest were in green. Cardano, Tether USDT, XRP, USD Coin and Solana are the cryptos which rose by 5,43%, 0.01%, 1.09%, 0.02% and 5.16% respectively.

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Poly Network comes with a Job offer for Hacker

Poly Network, the victim of a $610 million hack, has now offered the hacker a job. The network became the victim of the largest cryptocurrency heist when the hacker exploited the vulnerabilities in the platform and stole $610 million worth of cryptocurrency assets.

Following this, the company took to Twitter and asked the hacker to return the stolen assets while announcing the hack. Surprisingly, the hacker responded to the message and returned over $340 million to the platform, while keeping the rest in a joint cryptocurrency wallet that requires two passwords. The hacker who is being called ‘Mr. White Hat’ on Twitter, even conducted a Q&A by encrypting messages within transactions and said he did the hack for fun.

But Mr White Hat, whose identity remains unknown is still yet to return $235 million that has been held in joint accounts. While the platform has one of the keys from the hacker, he has not relinquished the other key yet. So, the company offered the hacker the job title of Chief Security Advisor and can receive $5,00,000 as part of the bug bounty programme and will not be held legally liable.

Bloomberg.com reported that cybersecurity experts have been puzzled over the strange behaviour of the hacker. While many had initially believed that the assets were being returned since it is becoming increasingly difficult to launder cryptocurrency of large amounts, they now believe that the hacker is doing it for attention.