Hackers:  Cryptocurrency exchanges are a juicy target for hackers, for at least one obvious reason: They’re full of money that can be drained remotely. This week, it came out that currency exchange Coinbase successfully fought off an attack that targeted its employees in an apparent attempt to do just that. The attack, exploited two zero-day bugs in Firefox. The first zero-day made headlines midweek when Mozilla confirmed that it had patched a bug which would allowed hackers to gain remote access to a Firefox browser and execute code. In order for that first bug to work, though, hackers needed a second bug to let it execute the code. Turns out, before Mozilla’s patch, the hackers had both, and had attempted to compromise Coinbase employees so they could breach their network and steal money. Luckily, not only did Coinbase and an outside researcher notice the bugs, but Coinbase picked up on the attack before any money could be stolen or the network could be infiltrated.

Bullish Key Players:   The other day, on June 21, professional trader Peter Brandt tweeted that bitcoin’s price is currently taking aim at $100,000 target.  In his tweet, Brandt noted that bitcoin is on its fourth parabolic growth phase and is a market like no other:  “Bitcoin takes aim at $100,000 target. $btcusd is experiencing its fourth parabolic phase dating back to 2010. No other market in my 45 years of trading has gone parabolic on a log chart in this manner. Bitcoin is a market like no other.”  Attached to the tweet, Brandt also published a table containing data about the price growth of bitcoin. According to the data contained in the image, from October 2011 to December 2017, bitcoin increased its value 9,765-fold.

Banks & Institutions:  U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that the G7’s Financial Action Task Force organization will never let crypto assets “become the equivalent of secret numbered accounts.” Mnuchin was addressing a plenary session of the G7 initiative aimed at combating money laundering and terrorism financing.  The U.S. Treasury Secretary was referring to secretive bank accounts commonly offered in Switzerland as well as other offshore financial hubs where the identity of the account holder is kept secret and a client is only identified by a code word.  Mnuchin also disclosed that he had convened a working group comprised of various regulators including the Federal Reserve with the goal of ensuring that crypto is only used for legitimate purposes.

Adoption: A representative of the Russian Ministry of Finance says the ministry is considering allowing cryptocurrency trading, which was reported on June 21.  Per the report, the Deputy Minister of Finance Alexei Moiseyev told journalists on Friday that, while MinFin had reached no final decision, cryptocurrency trading may be allowed in the coming bill on the circulation of cryptocurrencies in the Russian Federation.  A bill prohibiting the use of crypto assets as a means of payment in the Russian Federation passed in May of last year.  Anatoly Aksakov, head of the Duma Financial Market Committee, called the pending decision a compromise and pointed out that the Financial Action Task Force recommended that Russia adopt a bill regulating the circulation of cryptocurrencies by the end of this year.