Russia has temporarily avoided default on its sovereign debt by paying interest on s Global rating agency Standard & Poor’s downgraded Russia’s debt default risk rating to “CC” from “CCC-“, Reuters reported, while saying Russia was struggling to repay dollar-denominated Eurobonds in 2023 and 2043. The Russian Finance Ministry said it had paid $117 million in interest on sovereign bonds due. The agent payee is Citibank in London. Citi declined to comment. The report said that some creditors have received Russian dollars to pay interest on debt due this week, avoiding its first sovereign debt default since 1998.
However, S&P believes that the European bond interest that Russia has to pay in the coming months may face difficulties due to international sanctions that reduce Russia’s available foreign exchange reserves.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stressed that Russia has the necessary funds and that any default on its debts is entirely man-made.
February 13th, US time, is the SuperBowl final day. In addition to the splendid scene of the Los Angeles Rams winning the championship, which attracted fans to watch with bated breath, there was also the following advertisement, which made netizens around the world go viral.
There is only one QR Code image floating around from the beginning to the end of the entire commercial video, much like a screen saver in the PC era. Some netizens pointed out afterwards that they thought the screen was faulty when they first saw it. Surprisingly, more netizens praised in unison that this was the long-awaited advertisement.
It turned out that this was the message that the cryptocurrency exchange CoinBase held an account opening bonus. As long as new users scan the QR Code of the video to open an account successfully, they can get a free Bitcoin (Bitcoin) worth US$15, about NT$418.
Coinbase: Spending millions of dollars just to reveal a QR Code According to Sporting News, the CoinBase ad cost a staggering $14 million in total. The highlighted message is quite simple and rude: one is “the next one is rich, choose to buy advertisements during the most expensive Super Bowl finals in the United States”, and the other is that the overall advertising budget, except for the publication fee, does not focus on celebrity endorsements, so that users can get the most Generous rewards.
The marketing copy fully explains the meaning: “Less talk, more bitcoin.” (Less talk, more bitcoin.)
It’s no wonder that according to the statistics of “Bitcoin Magazine”, within 1 minute of the advertisement being launched, the QR Code received 20 million clicks, and the trading app collapsed due to the influx of scan code popularity. CoinBase also added a $15 bitcoin reward to old users afterwards, which is amazing.
Coinbase is the world’s first cryptocurrency trading platform with a successful IPO, and will be listed on the Nasdaq in 2021. In addition to CoinBase, this year’s US Super Bowl advertisements are full of promotional messages in the currency circle, which shows the strength of the currency industry players.
FTX: Ironically, the outside world has no vision for bad currency circles, and they also do bitcoins Another well-known cryptocurrency trading platform in the United States, FTX, invited American comedy star Larry David to play the role. The plot is to watch the people who invented the wheel, light bulb, Walkman, etc. all the way, and now also watch the cryptocurrency FTX platform. In the future, it implies that people like Buffett who are not optimistic about the cryptocurrency industry will eventually miss out on great innovations.
When the advertisement was launched, FTX also launched a bitcoin lottery campaign for users in the United States. The advertisement was retweeted by more than 2.4 million people on Twitter in one day, which was quite popular.
As the world’s top 3 virtual currency exchange in terms of trading volume, the FTX platform has recently completed a $400 million Series C fundraising, and the company’s valuation is as high as $32 billion. As for the founder and CEO of FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried (Sam Bankman-Fried) is only 29 years old, and he is the youngest person on the Forbes 400 list because he created the platform and is worth $22 billion.
FTX can definitely compete with Coinbase in terms of its own valuation or ability to spread money. For a long time, FTX has been most admired by users in the currency circle for the new coins that are often given out. For example, in early February, FTX just launched a SAND coin airdrop event in cooperation with the metaverse real estate game Sandbox.
Crypto.com: Ask James Wong and Matt Damon to endorse, users can listen to Spotify for free The Crypto.com cryptocurrency exchange from Singapore also spends a lot of money to advertise in the Super Bowl, bringing out the NBA Lakers LeBron James to recreate “back to the past”, predicting to himself in 2003 that one day there will be electric cars , cell phones, and he’ll be on the NBA stage. Using this analogy, cryptocurrencies are the big future.
In order to dominate the American market, last year Crypto.com hired movie star Matt Damon as a spokesperson, and even spent $700 million in title sponsorship at the home of the Lakers, sparking a discussion among netizens that the company is too rich and powerful. The American team turf is not spared.
However, the most famous offer of Crypto.com is that users can listen to Spotify for free as long as they pledge about 500 Singapore dollars (about 10,000 Taiwan dollars) of the platform currency CRO. Deposit all kinds of cryptocurrencies on the platform, and you can earn up to 12.5% annualized interest, which is far better than traditional banks. It is often questioned by the outside world where the abundant funds come from? Does it burn out sooner or later?
The Super Bowl smashing advertisements is an arms display for companies to conquer the world in the United States The American Football Super Bowl is the most popular professional game in the United States, and it has become a battleground for all companies to fight for their reputation. Therefore, it is the most expensive advertising period in the United States throughout the year.
According to the “New York Times” report, it costs $7 million every 30 seconds to advertise during the Super Bowl. This year is especially special. More than half of the Super Bowl advertising funds come from the currency circle.
Why are these cryptocurrency industry players crowded during the Super Bowl to expose themselves?
Beth Egan, associate professor of advertising at Syracuse University in the United States, pointed out that these companies want to send the following message: We are really big companies, we are the main trend in the world, we are still qualified advertising sponsors, not hiding A “weird house” in the corner who does a side business.
Companies spend a lot of money to expose themselves in the Super Bowl, not only to attract popularity, but also because in the minds of the American people, companies that have the ability to smash advertisements in the Super Bowl are called companies that are on the table.
The most famous example is Apple founder Steve Jobs. In order to build the reputation of the Macintosh computer, he spent money on advertising in the 1984 Super Bowl and hired Hollywood director Riley Scott. Ridley Scott directed part of the plot of the famous sci-fi masterpiece “1984”, saying that only the Apple Macintosh computer can save mankind from Big Brother, which made Apple, a rookie in the technology industry, an instant hit.
These cryptocurrency industry players are using silver bullets to advertise, and the judgment is based on similar reasons. Especially this year, many Wall Street industry players see the trend of bad currency circles, and even sing that cryptocurrencies will return to zero overnight. Spending money to be exposed during the most expensive advertising period is nothing less than the best display of corporate financial resources.
For example, FTX founder Bankman Freed recently expressed his disapproval of the prediction that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates and put the currency into a bear market. He also believes that the Super Bowl exposure is a good channel for communication with users.
Whether Wall Street experts believe it or not, at least the fact that the cryptocurrency industry is not soft on burning money is obvious in the advertisements of the Super Bowl. From the point of view of the popularity of grabbing bitcoins on the Internet and 20 million times in one minute, the United States is also moving towards becoming a big country in the use of virtual currency. .
The latest development of the hack of the cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com, the official announcement that a total of 483 accounts were hacked, and about more than $30 million worth of bitcoin and ether were stolen.
The victims of the Crypto.com hack have finally been announced, with a loss of more than $30 million.
On January 17, the cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com was hacked and the service was suspended for 14 hours, with users unable to withdraw any funds. According to official data, a total of 483 accounts were hacked, and hackers stole 443.93 bitcoins and 4,836.26 ethers, with a total value of about $33.8 million, and about $66,000 worth of other digital assets were stolen.
Fortunately, Crypto.com said that it has compensated all users for their losses and restored the assets in their accounts to their original positions.
Crypto.com is one of the fast-growing cryptocurrency exchanges. The most notable is to buy the naming rights of the NBA Los Angeles Lakers Stadium at the end of 2021, change the original Staple Center to Crypto.com Arena, and obtain many innovative Supported by investment funds, and this hack is the first time they have been hacked.
What is curious about the incident is that many users have used a two-factor authentication mechanism (2FA). Why can hackers bypass the two-factor authentication and take away the assets in the account? Crypto.com didn’t give an explanation, but the way they handled it was to completely reset all users’ 2FA validators while moving the exchange’s authentication mechanism to the new architecture.
A total of 20 cryptocurrency exchanges have been hacked in 2021, and this only counts the loss of more than $10 million or more, of which six cases have losses of more than $100 million. As cryptocurrency transactions become more and more prosperous, how users can protect their assets has become the most important required course.
Jason Tech & Finance News 
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