Weekly Highlights: Durov’s Legal Troubles and Hamster Kombat Airdrop Announcement

Durov was released on €5 million bail, Hamster Kombat developers announced the airdrop date, Bitcoin mining difficulty increased by nearly 3%, the TON team resolved two blockchain outages in a week, and other events of the past week.

Bitcoin Price Drops to $58,000

The leading cryptocurrency began the week at $64,000. On Wednesday, August 28, digital gold fell below the psychological threshold of $60,000, only to briefly recover.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading at $58,200.

All top-10 digital assets by market capitalization ended the week in the “red zone.” Solana lost the most (-15.9%).

The total cryptocurrency market capitalization stands at $2.12 trillion. Bitcoin’s dominance index is 57.4%.

Durov Released on €5 Million Bail, Banned from Leaving France

On August 28, approximately 96 hours after his detention, Pavel Durov was released under judicial supervision with a €5 million bail and an obligation to report to the police twice a week. He is prohibited from leaving France.

The Telegram founder faces six charges:

• administering an online platform for illegal transactions (punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a €500,000 fine);
• refusal to cooperate with authorities;
• money laundering as part of an organized group;
• providing cryptographic services for confidentiality without mandatory declaration;
• complicity in distributing hacking programs, distributing images of minors of a pornographic nature by an organized group, distributing drugs, and complicity in fraud by an organized group;
• illegal provision and import of cryptographic means.

According to Politico, French authorities issued arrest warrants for Pavel and his older brother Nikolai on March 25 for ignoring law enforcement requests.

On August 28, false information about Durov’s release spread in the crypto community. A letter supporting him gathered over 2.5 million signatures.

According to The Wall Street Journal, French and UAE intelligence hacked the Telegram founder’s iPhone in 2017 as part of an operation codenamed “Purple Music.”

Galaxy Research analysts believe Durov’s arrest is unlikely to be the last major arrest of a company leader “for failing to adequately control their platform.”

Hamster Kombat Developers Announce Airdrop Date

The team behind the clicker game Hamster Kombat announced that the TGE and airdrop of the meme token HMSTR are scheduled for September 26.

Cryptocurrency exchange OKX will list it.

The initial coin distribution was planned for July but was postponed. The team cited technical difficulties as the reason for the delay.

Topics to Discuss with Friends

• Opinion: In the 2040s, humans will merge with AI into a superbeing.
• Study: Women consider cryptocurrencies an unattractive male hobby.
• Donald Trump vowed to make the US “the crypto capital of the world.”
• The BNB Chain team celebrated the fourth anniversary of its mainnet launch.

Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Rises Nearly 3%

Following the latest recalculation, the mining difficulty of the leading cryptocurrency increased by 2.99% to 89.47 T.

The interval between blocks since the previous adjustment shortened to less than nine minutes, with the average hash rate reaching a peak of 718.28 EH/s.

This indicates that Bitcoin miners continue to connect high-performance equipment of the latest generations to the network. 

TON Team Resolves Two Blockchain Outages in a Week

On August 28, TON developers restarted the network after an outage in block generation, which lasted about six hours. The issue arose due to abnormal load, the team explained.

“Several validators cannot clear the database of old transactions, leading to a loss of consensus,” the statement said.

The solution was to restart the nodes at 04:00 UTC (07:00 Kyiv/MSK) “with specific flags.”

TON Foundation’s Investment Director Justin Heon clarified that the network overload was caused by “junk” operations with DOGS.

On August 29, the TON network experienced block production issues for several hours due to a repeat outage.

Also on ForkLog:

• The Shiba Inu team will launch a DAO.
• The meme coin REDO surged 140% following a decision by TON developers.
• MakerDAO rebranded to Sky.
• The meme coin DOGS rose 30% in a day against the market.

Vitalik Buterin Reveals His Salary

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin disclosed his salary at the Ethereum Foundation — 182,000 Singapore dollars (~$140,000) per year.

The information was positively received by the community. A user named Dark Crypto Larp noted that leaders in other major organizations earn significantly more.

Buterin’s comment was published in response to information about an upcoming Ethereum Foundation report. The organization plans to share financial data for 2022 and 2023 ahead of the upcoming Devcon SEA event.

What Else to Read?

This week, ForkLog explored how the Dogecoin infrastructure is organized and how AI is transforming brain-computer interfaces.

In the traditional digest, we compiled the main events of the week in cybersecurity.

The most important news from the crypto industry participants was published in a separate digest.