Some weird stories have made headlines in the crypto space in 2023. They include hacks, arrests, and a token burn worth $650 billion.
Crypto might be many things, but it is never dull. From the hacks to arrests and billion-dollar token burns, here are some of the top stories that are a bit more bizarre than the rest, making to this year’s list.
KyberSwap Hack
In the crypto space, exploits have become rampant and it was not strange that the decentralized exchange aggregator KyberSwap was hacked in November and $46 million stolen. While the size of that theft places it as one of the more notable this year, it is a usual occurrence.
Nonetheless, what followed placed the KyberSwap hack in a unique category.
A Victim of KyberSwap hack wrote a letter to the hacker. pic.twitter.com/nIjBDhvCQY
— Bstream (@BeOnBstream) November 26, 2023
The KyberSwap hacker sent an on-chain message on November 30 stating their demands, including full executive control over the whole company. Furthermore, the hacker demanded that the Kyber executive surrender all the firm’s assets to the hacker. The criminal then promised to buy out the current executives at a ‘fair valuation’ and double all staff pay if their terms were accepted.
Notably, this hacker concluded their demands by stating:
“This is my best offer. This is my only offer. I require my demands to be met by Dec. 10; otherwise, the treaty falls through.”
As expected, KyberSwap ignored the bizarre list of demands sent by the hacker.
Related:How Crypto Scams And Investment Fraud Networks Operate
The $650 Billion Burn
In October, Uniswap founder Hayden Adams confirmed that he burned 99.9% of the HayCoin (HAY) supply, valued at a ‘strange’ $650 billion.
Adams deployed the HAY token for testing around five years ago, before the launch of Uniswap. By doing that, he developed a small liquidity pool with some of the total supply and kept the other 99.9% of the tokens himself.
Over the years, traders started purchasing and selling the 0.1% as a meme token, pumping the value of HAY. Adams then said:
“Crypto can be weird sometimes.”
This token burning pushed HAY from $580,005 per token on October 20 to over $4 million per token by October 26.
BitBoy Arrested
Ben Armstrong — aka BitBoy Crypto – went to the front door of ex-employee Carlos Diaz in September and started a livestream that put him on the wrong side of the law and behind bars.
While standing outside Diaz’s front door, Armstrong started firing a long list of accusations against him, even accusing Diaz of threatening his life. Armstrong then stated that Diaz had links with the “black mafia” before claiming that his former staff member stole his Lamborghini.
The loss of the sports car seemed to weigh heavily on Armstrong’s mind as he worked himself up live on YouTube. Armstrong stated in a strange turn of phrase:
“Carlos Diaz, the man who has my Lamborghini, the man who extorted me for my Lamborghini, the man who death-threatened me to my Lamborghini.”
In general, Armstrong seemed confused about why he was at Diaz’s property. First, he said:
“I have legitimately been scared for my life for weeks.”
Then he changed his mind and said:
“If Carlos Diaz comes out of this house and tries to kill me live on YouTube, then it’s just going to have to be what it’s going to be.”
In the 37-minute broadcast, Armstrong was scared and not scared of his former staff member and wanted everybody to know that he was scared and not scared.
The 37-minute outburst continued until police came and quickly arrested the influencer, who had taken his gun and his mistress, Cassandra Wolfe, to this scene of the disturbance. He was eventually released on a $2,600 bail bond.
Copycat NFTs
In October, A US district court judge ordered Jeremy Cahen and Ryder Ripps to pay $1.57 million in damages to Yuga Labs since they copied the Bored Apes Yacht Club (BAYC) NFTs concept.
The strangeness comes from Ripps and Cahen’s behavior during the whole incident. For some time, Ripps insisted that the Bored NFTs were racist and anti-Semitic. Notably, he even published a website to accuse the brand of having “Nazi dog whistles.”
Cahen and Ripps also launched a series of copycat NFTs that infringed BAYC’s intellectual property. But while the BAYC non-fungible tokens were supposedly racist when Yuga Labs developed them, Cahen and Ripps insisted they were ‘satire’ when they replicated them in wholesale and profited from them.
As expected, this argument did not win any favors in the legal circles.
The Heart Documentary
In July, the founder of HEX and PulseChain, Richard Heart, prepared for the premiere of his vanity movie, The Highest of Stakes.
Heart is known for his flamboyant excess, and so some level of expectation surrounded the release. Unknown to Heart, the SEC was getting ready to launch legal action simultaneously, dropping fraud charges just in time to spoil that party.
While Heart still has a loyal following in the crypto space, those outside this field appear less impressed by the influencer and project founder. One movie critic stated:
“Is a man a conman if he tells you up front he’s conning you?”
