Our weekly roundup of news from East Asia curates the industry’s most important developments.
OKX trader alleges $11 million loss due to deepfake AI scam
Crypto LaLa, operations manager at Quant Matter, says their account on crypto exchange OKX worth $11 million was drained by hackers within 25 minutes with no email or two-factor authentication warnings.
“I couldn’t believe my eyes,” Crypto LaLa wrote on June 11. “I have many years of extensive experience in the cryptocurrency space, and this was the first time I had personally seen my assets being stolen. To this day, I still can’t believe that all the money in my OKX account was stolen. My hands are still shaking, and I am extremely angry, frustrated, and sad.”
Star Xu, founder of OKX, claims that a “coin-stealing hacking gang” is deliberately using deepfake AI to impersonate victims to bypass facial recognition software and gain direct access to their accounts. “Are all hacker gangs so arrogant now? The communication records between the perpetrators, beneficiaries, and victims of AI face-changing crimes constantly mislead the victims into believing that OKX stole the money,” Xu wrote. The case is ongoing.
Alleged unauthorized withdrawals from Crypto LaLa’s OKX account. (X)
Xi Jinping lauds Conflux chief scientist
Chinese President Xi Jinping has praised Andrew Chi-Chih Yao, a prominent figure in blockchain technology and a professor at Tsinghua University, in an open letter dated June 12. Yao is the chief scientist for the Conflux network, a notable layer-1 blockchain initiative in China.
Conflux, supported by the Shanghai Municipal People’s Government, operates on a hybrid proof-of-work and proof-of-stake consensus mechanism through the Conflux Foundation, also known as the Shanghai Tree-Graph Blockchain Research Institute. It claims to be the only regulatory-compliant public blockchain in China, where cryptocurrencies are…
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