💥 Crypto world erupts as Bitcoin drops

South Korea unveils most ambitious chipmaking plan yet, a new Wi-Fi bug that could affect millions, and Bitcoin drops after Elon's tweet

May 13, 2021

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There’s so much to cover today so let’s get started.

First up,

Market Snapshot 📈

Sensex: 48,690.80 (-0.96%) ↓

Nifty 50: 14,696.50 (-1.04%) ↓

Dow Jones: 33,587.66 (-1.99%) ↓

Nasdaq 100: 13,001.63 (-2.62%) ↓

Bitcoin: $49,668.13

Top Stories 📰

1. South Korea is coming for the crown 👑

South Korea has revealed its $450 billion ambitious plan to build the world's biggest chipmaking base over the next ten years.

SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics will head the semiconductor research and production under a national plan devised by President Moon Jae-in’s administration. Both will invest a combined $248 billion towards expanding their existing facilities. Samsung and Hynix are joining 153 other firms in driving South Korea's decade-long push towards its most lucrative industry.

Semiconductor chips account for the largest share of South Korean exports, generating $99.2 billion in 2020 despite the pandemic and US sanctions against Huawei. While South Korea mainly manufactures memory chips and basic semiconductors, they're now planning to make advanced logic chips that handle complex tasks like AI and data processing, a market hugely dominated by China and the US.

Why it matters? Semiconductors are tiny blocks of silicon, copper, and cobalt that sit inside almost every electronic device, from computers to alarm clocks. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a global chip shortage, prompting countries like European Union, China, and the US to ramp up their chipmaking capabilities to decrease their dependency on Asian manufacturers. The chip scarcity will not end anytime soon, as one advisory firm expects it to last until 2023.

2. Is your Wi-Fi safe from 'frag attacks'? 🤔

Belgian cybersecurity expert Mathy Vanhoef has unearthed a collection of 12 new security vulnerabilities in Wi-Fi devices known as 'frag attacks' (fragmentation and aggregation attacks).

The flaws — some of which date back to 1997 when Wi-Fi was first released — relates to how it handles large chunks of data. Other vulnerabilities are either related to the Wi-Fi standard itself or how it's implemented by device manufacturers. (Read more about them on Vanhoef's website).

These vulnerabilities would allow hackers to show users fake website or intercept sensitive user data, even if users are on Wi-Fi networks secured with WPA2 and WPA3 protocols. The attacker can also abuse these flaws to attack home networks, including smart home and Internet of Things (IoT) devices as they are rarely updated.

Microsoft, Intel, Lenovo, Cisco, Samsung, and a bunch of other vendors have released patches for some of their products.

Vanhoef is not new to discovering such vulnerabilities. Back in 2017, he had co-discovered the KRACK attack — a Wi-Fi security flaw that allowed attackers to steal passwords, inject malware, and snoop on encrypted traffic on laptops and smartphones. The bug had affected all major platforms, including Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android, which soon released a software patch to sort the issue.

Why it matters? While most of the attacks are not easy to exploit, Vanhoef recommends some usual steps such as keeping computers updates, visiting HTTPS websites as much as possible, and using strong, unique passwords.

3. Bitcoin drops after Tesla rejects cryptocurrency as car payments 📉

A yet another shocker delivered to the crypto loyalists by their very own Dogefather.

In a tweet published today, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that the EV manufacturer is suspending the purchase of its vehicles using Bitcoin, citing concerns about “rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions.” He also said that the company won't sell any Bitcoins as they intend to use them when the mining becomes more sustainable.

Shortly after the tweet, the largest cryptocurrency plummeted as much as 15% to nearly $46,000. The announcement cost a whopping $365.85 billion to the total cryptocurrency market, which stood $2.06 trillion from its previous value of around $2.43 trillion.

This is a surprising reversal from Tesla as the company had purchased $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoins in early February after Musk signalled his interest in Bitcoin. The hype was so real that it even told the SEC that it's officially changed Musk's title to 'Technoking of Tesla.'

Why it matters? Musk received pushback from several Bitcoin holders on Twitter who refuted Musk's claims, saying that 75% of miners use renewable energy for mining Bitcoin. One user also pointed out that Bitcoin transactions don't use any incremental energy, adding that "the net impact on fossil fuel consumption over time will be negative."