Weekly Wrap: New Hacking Record and Office 365 Goes Meta

Here’s your crypto highlights of the week in less than 5 minutes.

October hacks the biggest ever in crypto history

With two more weeks to go in the month, this October has recorded the biggest monthly hacks in crypto history already. More than $718 million had been stolen from different DeFi protocols, through 11 hacking incidents, according to data from Chainlaysis.

The biggest known hacking incident was last week’s exploit of Binance Bridge, in addition to four more hacks that all happened on Wednesday. Still below 2021 numbers, 2022 will likely surpass 2021 as the biggest year for hacking on record, as hackers have grossed over $3 billion dollars across 125 hacks so far.


September US CPI data sends Bitcoin to three-week low

The United States consumer price index (CPI) data for September was revealed yesterday, showing year-to-year inflation of 8.2%, which represents a 0.4% increase from the previous month, 0.1% higher than expected by many, including Dow Jones. These numbers affected both stocks and cryptocurrencies alike, sending Bitcoin’s price below $18,200, the lowest in three weeks, before recovering today to over $19,500. Ethereum was hit harder, scoring prices below $1,160, its lowest since July, before recovering to $1,300+ levels.


Ethereum Classic dips by 35% in the last 30 days

The profits Ethereum Classic has been gaining after the Merge seem to be slowing down, as it has lost almost 35.5% of its value in the last 30 days, with a drop of more than 12% in the last 7 days alone. Ethereum Classic suffered with the rest of the crypto market after the reveal of the US CPI data, going as low as $20.61 on Thursday, before recovering and making gains of more than 10% today.


Polygon helps Indian district of Firozabad fight crime and corruption

Blockchain technology has taken a new step towards real-world utilization, as Firozabad district, in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, launched a new Polygon-based police complaint portal that uses blockchain technology to prevent manipulation. The First Information Report (FIR) allows victims of crimes to register complaints against local police officers, without the complaints being dismissed or manipulated by potentially corrupt officers.


Axie Infinity player count falls back to Jan 2021 levels

The average monthly number of users playing the NFT-based Axie Infinity has fallen to 701,447, according to data from the game statistics site Activeplayer. With a 74% decrease from peak levels witnessed just ten months ago, Axie infinity’s number of monthly active players hasn’t been that low since January 2021. Also, this drop comes as part of the suffering of the NFTs market, as trading volumes across digital collectibles have dropped by 98% since January.


​​Office 365 comes to the metaverse

Meta Platforms has partnered with Microsoft to bring a range of Microsoft Office 365 products into Meta’s virtual reality (VR) platform. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said Teams video calling app would integrate with Meta’s “Quest” and newly unveiled “Quest Pro” VR headset. Some Microsoft productivity applications such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint will be also available within Meta’s VR, in an effort to motivate companies to work in virtual environments.


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