Moonday Mornings: Ethereum Classic hackers return $100K worth of stolen funds

It’s another Monday and that means we have another Moonday Mornings for you.

Here’s what you need to catch up on from over the weekend.

1. Nine cryptocurrency mining firms have decided to band together and sue a Washington State utility company after it raised electricity costs. The lawsuit claims the energy supplier operated inappropriately when it created a new rate to raise electricity costs, Bitcoin.com reports. The energy provider, Grant PUD, said the new rate is designed to reduce risk and provide competitive rates to its retail customers.

2. Despite coming up against numerous challenges the Marshall Islands is showing no signs of easing up on its dream of creating a national cryptocurrency. The firm developing the Islands’ national cryptocurrency, the Sovereign (SOV), announced on its Medium blog that it recently hired Steve Tendon as an advisor. Tendon is the man behind Malta’s transformation to becoming a blockchain hub, SOV are clearly hoping he can work his magic in the Marshall Islands.

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3. Paris’ Bitcoin street mural puzzle has been solved, reports to CryptoGlobe. The artist, Pasal Boyart, announced that someone had claimed the prize and transferred the 0.29 BTC that sit in the prize pot. There had been a number of public donations to the mural too, so the lucky mastermind made off with just over $1,000 worth of BTC at the time fo writing.

4. After being hacked for over $1.1 million in a 51-percent attack, Ethereum Classic has seen $100,000 of the lost funds returned. Cryptocurrency trading platform Gate.io, announced the attacker returned the money on January 10, only a few days after the original hack took place. According to Gate.io, the Ethereum Classic network is still not strong enough, and may be susceptible to future attacks.

5. South Africa’s national cricket organization dropped the ball recently after falling foul to cryptocurrency scammers on Twitter, the Indian Express reports. Tweets from the official South African Twitter account claimed it was working with Luno money for the first South African Bitcoin lottery. The scammers asked followers to send some BTC to an address to be entered into the lottery with a chance to win 20 BTC. Alas, this wasn’t to be, in the true scammer cliché, they took the money and ran.

It was another week of regulation, hacks, scams, and lawsuits. But there you have it, another weekend of cryptocurrency and blockchain news caught up with so now we can get on with our weeks.