$750 Million Stolen by Hackers, Franklin Templeton's FOBXX Fund on Aptos & Fan Tokens Take Center Stage

Seems like this week flew by faster than a crypto bull run. But no worries — HODL FM's got your back with all the must-know stories packed into this week's digest.

Top weekly gainers:

FTX Token (FTT). FTX Token saw a remarkable rise this week, starting at around $1.46 and climbing to $2.26. This represents an impressive 54.76% gain over the week, making it the top performer among all the tokens.

Wormhole (W). Wormhole experienced a solid performance, starting the week at $0.299 and reaching $0.3154, translating to a 5.46% increase. While not as dramatic as FTT, it still demonstrated consistent growth.

Flare (FLR). Flare showed modest growth, beginning the week at $0.0157 and rising to $0.01614, achieving a 2.89% gain. Despite being the smallest percentage increase, Flare still maintained a positive performance in the crypto market.

Top weekly losers:

Starknet (STRK). Starknet's price dropped from approximately $0.487 to $0.3659 this week, representing a loss of 24.78%, making it the biggest loser among the tokens.

Celestia (TIA). Celestia saw a notable decrease in value, falling by 23.97%. Its price dropped from around $6.38 to $4.85 during the week. Despite its previous strong performance, it struggled this time.

Arweave (AR). Arweave also experienced a sharp decline, with its price decreasing by 23.55% over the week. It dropped from $23.51 to $17.97, rounding out the top three worst performers.

Hackers Steal $750 Million, Phishing and Key Compromises Lead the Charge

In its latest report, cybersecurity firm CertiK revealed that hackers managed to steal $750 million across 155 incidents, bringing total losses for the year to nearly $2 billion. 

The report highlighted phishing and private key compromises as the most common attack vectors, responsible for a combined $668 million in damages. 

Phishing attacks typically involve scammers setting up fake websites to trick victims into willingly handing over their personal details. One notable case involved a Bitcoin whale who lost $238 million in August, making it the largest phishing attack of Q3. 

Private key compromise is when a cryptographic security key falls into the wrong hands. The causes are weak passwords, malware, or a service-level data breach. In just 10 incidents, private key hacks accounted for around $317 million in losses. One of the most significant breaches targeted WazirX, a leading Indian cryptocurrency exchange.

Other notable attack methods included code vulnerabilities and reentrancy exploits. Code flaws led to $39.6 million in losses across 44 incidents, while reentrancy attacks — where hackers drain funds repeatedly before the system can update balances — caused $30.3 million in damages over just five incidents. 

Franklin Templeton Launches FOBXX Government Money Fund on the Aptos Blockchain

The U.S. government money fund FOBXX, represented by the BENJI token and managed by American multinational Franklin Templeton, is now live on the Aptos blockchain. This means institutional investors can now access the asset directly in their digital wallets through Franklin Templeton’s blockchain-integrated Benji Investments platform and the BENJI token.

FOBXX is already up and running on four other blockchains—Stellar, Polygon, Arbitrum, and Avalanche. The decision to bring it to Aptos is based on the Layer-1 blockchain's unique characteristics, which align with Franklin Templeton’s standards for the BENJI token.

The token has already gained massive traction, racking up over $20 million in subscriptions at launch. Notably, Franklin Templeton's FOBXX on Aptos is only available to eligible investors who can hold their wallets within the Aptos network, by request.

With a total value locked (TVL) of $553.92 million, the Aptos network has more than doubled its assets placed by liquidity providers since July 2024. 

Chiliz: Fan Tokens Are More Than Just NFTs

Chiliz CEO Alexandre Dreyfus has declared that the fan token market is leagues ahead of the NFT space. Fan tokens boast a 24-hour trading volume of $134 million, compared to just $6.8 million for NFTs. According to Dreyfus, fan tokens enable real engagement between fans and their teams, while NFTs are more like rare collectibles.

Dreyfus founded Chiliz with the vision that "95% of sports fans aren’t in the stadium, city, or even country of the teams they support," so he wanted to create something that’s "valuable for fans and scalable for teams."

Every team that signs up has its own unique token, but CHZ serves as the governance token. It gives holders access to perks like game tickets and a say in sports club decisions. This has empowered fans to influence choices like which song plays after a goal — like when Cristiano Ronaldo scored a hat trick for Juventus, and fans picked the victory anthem.

Chiliz is also planning to launch its meme coin, Pepper, on October 10, which will be distributed to CHZ token holders. 

Moreover, CHZ powers the Socios platform, the largest fan token network. Dreyfus pointed out that Socios holds regulatory licenses in Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Lithuania, noting that "besides crypto exchanges, it’s the most regulated" crypto organization worldwide.

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