Cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com has signed a nine-year deal to become the official title partner of the Miami Grand Prix, the newest race in the Formula 1 calendar.

According to a press release accompanying the announcement, the sponsorship will see the race officially named the Formula 1 Crypto.com Miami Grand Prix, with Crypto.com’s logo featuring on the podium and winners’ trophies.

The newest event on the Formula 1 calendar, the race forms round five of this year’s campaign and takes place on May 6-8, 2022, on a new 5.41km circuit in Miami Gardens. The Miami International Autodrome becomes the 11th venue in the U.S. to host a World Championship Formula 1 race.

The deal will also see the exchange’s brand displayed on the Crypto.com Terrace, with views over the track and an exclusive observation deck at the race’s fourth turn.

A Crypto.com Fan Zone, on the field in the center of the Hard Rock Stadium, will offer “a host of entertainment and activities across the weekend,” according to the release.

Declaring himself “excited for our long-term partnership with Crypto.com,” Jeremy Walls, Senior Vice President and Chief Revenue Officer of Hard Rock Stadium, said, “This will be an international event and we look forward to growing together on a worldwide scale.”

It’s not the first such promotion that Crypto.com has inked with Formula 1; in June 2021, it signed a $100 million deal to become the inaugural partner of the “Sprint” series. At the time, Crypto.com co-founder and CEO Kris Marszalek told the Decrypt Daily podcast, “For us as a brand, I think it’s really important that we are a global partner. There are only six other iconic brands that have the status with F1.”

Crypto and sport

The exchange’s move comes amid a wider push from crypto businesses into sports sponsorship.

Last summer, Crypto.com became the sponsor for soccer’s 2021 Coppa Italia, while in November, it paid a reported $700 million for the naming rights to the Los Angeles Staples Center, home to the NBA’s Lakers and Clippers as well as the WNBA’s Sparks and NHL’s Kings.

Rival exchange Binance announced its sponsorship of the African Cup of Nations soccer tournament in January 2022.

But no exchange has embraced the sporting world with such enthusiasm as FTX.

In the span of eight months, the exchange has signed sponsorship deals with the Miami Heat, Major League Baseball, the Golden State Warriors, and the Washington Wizards and Capitals.

Speaking to Decrypt, FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried said, “This has penetrated more than everything else we’ve done combined, in terms of people’s perception of us.”

https://decrypt.co/92607/crypto-com-snaps-up-naming-rights-f1-miami-grand-prix

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South Park returned for its 25th season premiere Wednesday and wasted no time skewering Matt Damon’s recent commercial for Crypto.com.

In the episode “Pajama Day,” the elementary school class loses its right to wear pajamas to school, which quickly escalates into a standoff between pajama-wearing residents of South Park and their non-pajama-wearing neighbors.

As the class tries to find a solution, they repeatedly riff on the tagline from Damon’s recent—and widely mocked—commercial for cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com: “Fortune favors the brave.”

“What does Matt Damon say in the Bitcoin commercial? Fortune favors the brave!” Cartman exhorts the class. His classmate Clyde replies, “My dad said he listened to Matt Damon and lost all his money.”

The running gag plays out throughout the episode, until one character says, “Alright dude, can we lay off the Matt Damon jokes please, they’re just getting old.”

Matt Damon’s Crypto.com ad

Damon’s Crypto.com ad sees the Oscar-nominated actor striding around a futuristic room while comparing crypto investors to pioneers like the Wright brothers and astronauts.

It was recently pilloried on social media, with Guardian writer Carole Cadwalladr tweeting, “There isn’t enough yuck in the world to describe Matt Damon advertising a Ponzi scheme.”

It’s not the first time that South Park has taken aim at cryptocurrency; last year, an episode set in the near future featured a motel clerk declaring that “it’s the future—we’ve all decided centralized banking is rigged, so we trust more in fly-by-night Ponzi schemes,” while displaying a “Bitcoin only” sign on their reception desk.

It’s also not the first go-around that Damon has had with South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. In their 2004 film Team America: World Police, Damon is depicted as a puppet who can only say his name; a line that fans still yell at the actor.

“If I’m near a college town, I’ll get ‘Maaatt Daaaamon’ from Team America,” Damon told Absolute Radio.

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Crypto.com, the industry’s fourth-largest cryptocurrency exchange, finally admitted it lost user funds due to a recent security breach.

According to a blog post published on Thursday, the incident affected a total of 483 users, resulting in unauthorized withdrawals totaling 4,836.26 Ethereum, 443.93 Bitcoin, and approximately$66,200 in other cryptocurrencies, or roughly $33.84 million in current prices.

Singapore-based Crypto.com announced it was pausing withdrawals after “a small number of users experienced unauthorized activity in their accounts” on Monday, urging customers to reset their two-factor authentication (2FA).

Security company Peckshield later revealed that the incident resulted in Crypto.com losing at least 4,600 ETH (around $15 million) in user funds, telling Decrypt that the scale of the damage was “definitely worse.”

According to Peckshield, half of the stolen funds were sent to Tornado Cash, a crypto mixing service that enables users to obfuscate their transactions.

On top of that, blockchain analyst ErgoBTC said hackers managed to make it away with about 444 BTC, the number Crypto.com confirmed in today’s post-mortem.

Despite the litany of evidence, Crypto.com initially refused to acknowledge the hack, with the company’s CEO Kris Marszalek claiming that “no customer funds were lost.”

Crypto.com CEO: “Numbers not particularly material”

Marszalek appeared on Bloomberg TV on Wednesday, finally confirming that around 400 customer accounts had been compromised.

According to him, Crypto.com quickly paused withdrawals after detecting that “some of the defense layers were breached,” fixed the issue, and was “back online in about 13 to 14 hours.”

He added that the same day, “all of the accounts that were affected were reimbursed, so there was no loss of customer funds.”

When pressed with the question about the actual extent of the losses suffered by the exchange, Marszalek said that “given the scale of the business, these numbers are not particularly material.”

The company’s post-mortem confirmed that the security incident occurred due to issues with 2FA.

Crypto.com said it also revamped and migrated to an entirely new 2FA infrastructure, with 2FA tokens for all users revoked “to ensure the new infrastructure was in effect.”

The exchange introduced an additional layer of security to add a mandatory 24-hour delay between registration of a new whitelisted withdrawal address and the first withdrawal of funds.

According to the company, this will give users “adequate time to react and respond” to notifications that new withdrawal addresses have been added.

Crypto.com has also announced the launch of the Worldwide Account Protection Program (WAPP), which is “designed to protect user funds in cases where a third party gains unauthorized access to their account and withdraws funds without the user’s permission.”

WAPP opens up a possibility to restore funds up to $250,000. Still, it comes with several conditions to qualify, including the requirement to enable multi-factor authentication and set up an anti-phishing code at least 21 days before the reported unauthorized transaction.

Users will also have to file a police report and complete a questionnaire to support a forensic investigation.

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The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned two advertisements belonging to crypto exchange Crypto.com, per a ruling published today. 

The two ads were “in-app” ads. The first, seen in September 2021, appeared on the Daily Mail app—an app for one of the UK’s most popular newspapers. 

“Buy Bitcoin with credit card instantly,” it read. 

The second ad, seen in July 2021, appeared in the Love Balls app—a mobile game available on the iTunes App Store. 

The ad initially said users could earn up to 3.5% per year in crypto, but the number later increased to 8.5%. 

Breaking down the problem

The ASA had five concerns and challenged Forisgfs UK Ltd—trading as Crypto.com—on five grounds. The term “trading as” refers to when a company trades under a name other than its registered company name.

These concerns included that the ads were misleading because they failed to illustrate the risk of the investment; the ads were irresponsible and took advantage of consumers’ inexperience or credulity; the Daily mail ad was misleading because it failed to make clear limitations to purchasing crypto with a credit card; the claim “earn up to 8.5%” was misleading, and that the claim “earn up to 8.5%” could be substantiated. 

Forisgfs UK Ltd said the ads had been removed voluntarily after the company learned of the ASA’s concerns. 

Crypto.com said that the first ad—which appeared in the Daily Mail—only advertised the speed users could buy crypto with on the exchange, contending it was not specifically an ad for cryptocurrencies. 

Regarding the second ad, Crypto.com said the ad itself referred to an offer for existing crypto users—and thus was not advertising cryptocurrency itself. 

The ASA disagreed, contending that neither ad included any risk warning that would make consumers aware that cryptocurrencies could lose and gain value. 

What’s more, neither ad made clear that cryptocurrencies were unregulated in the UK. 

“We concluded that the ads were misleading,” the ASA said. 

The news comes just days after the mainstream discovered Crypto.com’s high-profile advertisement featuring Matt Damon, resulting in a less-than-positive reaction on social media. 

“There isn’t enough yuck in the world to describe Matt Damon advertising a Ponzi scheme,” wrote Guardian journalist Carole Cadwalladr. 

“I just can’t get over the unfiltered nihilism that suggests that investing in dog coins is like the moon landing,” said computer programmer Stephen Diehl. 

Today’s warning is only the latest in a long line of actions taken by the ASA against crypto ads, which to date has roped in companies like Papa Johns, eToro, Coinbase, and even Arsenal FC.

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