WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:00.960 --> 00:00:09.180 Hello and welcome to distributed systems and blockchain in the news my name is Thomas Bocek, 00:00:09.180 --> 00:00:21.240 and the first article is about Thodex, which is this article here, Thodex was a Turkish cryptocurrency   00:00:21.240 --> 00:00:30.120 exchange that was founded in 2017, and it quickly became one of the most popular exchanges in the   00:00:30.120 --> 00:00:39.900 country, with over 400'000 users. In April 2021, the exchange abruptly suspended operations   00:00:39.900 --> 00:00:49.020 and its CEO of like the country and was later  arrested in Albania and extradited back to Turkey. 00:00:50.220 --> 00:00:56.820 Thodex offered Dogecoin well below market  price, this could have been a marketing stunt   00:00:56.820 --> 00:01:04.440 but could also have been seen as a red  flag. However, this is easy to say in hindsight.   00:01:05.400 --> 00:01:13.020 The arrested CEO of Thodex has been  recently sentenced to almost 12'000 years   00:01:13.020 --> 00:01:19.860 in prison for fraud, leading a  criminal organization, and money laundering.   00:01:20.460 --> 00:01:28.140 The collapse in 2021 left investors with  a loss of close to $2 billion dollars. 00:01:28.980 --> 00:01:34.260 The collapse of Thodex is a reminder of the  risks involved in investing in cryptocurrency,   00:01:34.260 --> 00:01:41.520 investors should always carefully research  any exchange before depositing their funds. 00:01:43.620 --> 00:01:55.920 The next article is quite similar here the  co-founder of the crypto currency porzi   00:01:55.920 --> 00:02:03.720 scheme OneCoin was sentenced to 20 years in prison for his role in a massive fraud scheme   00:02:03.720 --> 00:02:11.820 OneCoin was a ponzi scheme that defrauded  investors of around $1 billion dollars. 00:02:12.900 --> 00:02:19.080 OneCoin was marketed as a revolutionary new cryptocurrency that would be the next Bitcoin, 00:02:19.080 --> 00:02:28.980 however, OneCoin was never actually traded on any exchange and had no real value, and his co-founder   00:02:28.980 --> 00:02:39.240 Ruja Ignatova, the so-called crypto queen is still one of the FBI's 10 most wanted fugitives. 00:02:41.760 --> 00:02:53.220 The next article is about a theft and it's the  following article here. So this happened couple   00:02:53.220 --> 00:03:02.220 of days ago on the September on the 12th,  hacker stole around $53 million dollar in   00:03:02.220 --> 00:03:09.180 cryptocurrency from the exchange CoinEx, the hackers were able to exploit our vulnerability   00:03:09.180 --> 00:03:16.860 in CoinEx Hot wallet system to gain access to  the wallet and steal. The cryptocurrency stolen   00:03:16.860 --> 00:03:23.580 cryptocurrency include Ethereum Tron and Polygon, and this is the latest in a series of attacks   00:03:23.580 --> 00:03:30.480 on cryptocurrency exchanges in recent years and these attacks highlight the importance of security   00:03:30.480 --> 00:03:36.300 for cryptocurrency exchanges and the need for investors to carefully research any exchange   00:03:36.300 --> 00:03:42.720 before depositing their funds. And this is a  reminder that decentralized finance in short DeFi   00:03:42.720 --> 00:03:50.880 and traditional crypto exchanges are two different ways to buy sell and trade cryptocurrency. In DeFi   00:03:50.880 --> 00:03:56.400 you don't give up custody, while in the  traditional cryptocurrency exchanges you   00:03:56.400 --> 00:04:03.540 send your cryptocurrencies to the wallet of those exchanges. Now is one more secure than the other? 00:04:03.540 --> 00:04:10.680 Well both have their weaknesses and if you want to trade cryptocurrency you should be aware of those. 00:04:12.600 --> 00:04:23.460 And the next article is about Vitalik Buterin  it's the following article here. Vitalik Buterin   00:04:23.460 --> 00:04:33.960 is one of the co-creators of Ethereum and recently his Twitter or now called X account was hacked and   00:04:33.960 --> 00:04:42.720 a scam was promoted, this was only for 20 minutes until it was taken offline, but still... So always   00:04:42.720 --> 00:04:49.800 be skeptical, there's no free money, when I talk about cryptocurrencies in the lecture it's not an   00:04:49.800 --> 00:04:57.840 investment advice, I cannot predict the prices, prices may go up may go down, however, I am involved   00:04:57.840 --> 00:05:03.900 in some of the crypto projects, but still when  I'm talking about it it's not an investment advice. 00:05:04.740 --> 00:05:12.720 And my advice is only invest that much money that you're also willing to throw out of the window. 00:05:16.260 --> 00:05:25.500 The last article it's not about cryptocurrency  it's about APIs, it's the following article here:   00:05:26.220 --> 00:05:31.440 Skip the API, Ship Your Database  it an article from fly.io,  00:05:32.880 --> 00:05:41.220 where you can run your applications on micro  VMS, so you can deploy your application there. 00:05:41.220 --> 00:05:52.380 And this article discusses a new use case for the distributed SQLite database in short LiteFS and   00:05:52.380 --> 00:05:59.520 it's used to replace the API layer between  services and the idea is to ship the database   00:05:59.520 --> 00:06:07.740 to the client. Overall, this article provides  arguments for using LiteFS to replace APIs   00:06:07.740 --> 00:06:16.560 in some of the cases. However if you give access to your database directly then effectively this   00:06:16.560 --> 00:06:22.920 becomes your API with all the contract  obligations of an API, and this could lead   00:06:22.920 --> 00:06:29.760 to problems including reduce flexibility, so you will need to carefully not make changes to your   00:06:29.760 --> 00:06:36.120 database schema, because that would break your clients applications. It may increase complexity   00:06:36.120 --> 00:06:41.040 because your code will need to be more complex in order to handle all of the different ways   00:06:41.040 --> 00:06:47.760 that your client could access your database and, potentially security risks because exposing your   00:06:47.760 --> 00:06:55.440 database directly to the internet can increase the security risks. I think the benefits of creating   00:06:55.440 --> 00:07:03.840 an API layer outweighs the costs. Skipping the API may save you some time in the short term,   00:07:03.840 --> 00:07:10.920 so if you need to deliver right now and you're  under pressure this might be an option, but I   00:07:10.920 --> 00:07:17.700 think in the long term it's better to have a  clear separation and to have an API in place. 00:07:21.060 --> 00:07:24.180 So that's it for this week see you next week.