California Man filed a lawsuit against the wireless service giant AT&T alleging that the employees helped to initiate a sim-swap scam which resulted in the theft of more than $1.8 million in total including cryptocurrencies and more about it we read in the Altcoin news today.Seth Shapiro filed a lawsuit on October 17^th where he claims to be a two-time Emmy Award-winning media and technology expert, author and adjunct professor at the University Of Southern California School Of Cinematic Arts. The Lawsuit alleges that between May 16 and May 18 AT&T employees transferred access to his mobile phone to outside hackers:

 “AT&T employees obtained unauthorized access to Mr. Shapiro’s AT&T wireless account, viewed his confidential and proprietary personal information, and transferred control [...] to a phone controlled by third-party hackers in exchange for money. [...] The hackers then utilized their control over Mr. Shapiro’s AT&T wireless number [...] to access his personal and digital finance accounts and steal more than $1.8 million.”

The document also states that the actions allowed the hackers to access Shapiro’s personal accounts on multiple crypto exchanges:

"While third parties had control over Mr. Shapiro's AT&T wireless number, they used that control to access and reset the passwords for Mr. Shapiro's accounts on cryptocurrency exchange platforms including KuCoin, Bittrex, Wax, Coinbase, Huobi, Crytopia, LiveCoin, HitBTC, Coss.io, Liqui, and Bitfinex."

The plaintiff also claims to own chat logs where the AT&T employees and hackers discuss how the stolen money should be routed and how much they should split. The California Man also claims that he fell victim to SIM-swapping multiple times and his personal information and online accounts have already leaked in the past. He also stated in the lawsuit:

 “AT&T’s Repeated Failures to Protect Mr. Shapiro’s Account from Unauthorized Access Are a Violation of Federal Law.”

More specifically, Shapiro alleges that AT&T violated the Federal Communications Act for failing to protect the confidentiality of his account information. He also claims that the telecom giant violated multiple California state laws including the Unfair Competition Law and the Constitutional Right to Privacy and the Consumers Legal Remedy ACT. Lastly, Shapiro accuses the company of two acts of negligence.

An announcement on October 18 shows that the major Bittrex exchange is shutting down and withdrawing services from 31 countries by the end of this month. The cryptocurrency exchange announced that its Europe-based international trading platform is in a weak position - and cited regulatory uncertainty as the main reason behind the move.However, it still seems that Bittrex, which is originally based out of Seattle, Washington, has little to no presence in the vast majority of the markets that are affected by this seemingly large-scale withdrawal. This perhaps includes Venezuela and a couple of other countries.As the official announcement shows, traders using the Bittrex exchange will lose all access to their accounts on October 29, starting at 19:00 UTC/21:00 CEST. The affected customers have until that then to withdraw their deposits.The Bitcoin and altcoin news today show that customers must have a balance equal or higher than the minimum withdrawal limit to be able to retrieve their stash. In other words, this means that users must have at least thrice the amount in their accounts as the withdrawal fee. This is a rule that applies to all coins and tokens.As it stands, the withdrawal fee on the Bittrex exchange is 0.0005 and therefore, to be able to withdraw, users must have deposits which are worth at least .00150001 BTC. Furthermore, the move affects users based in these 31 countries:

Afghanistan, Egypt, Bosnia-Herzegowina, Botswana, Cambodia, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Iraq, Laos, Lebanon, Libya, Maldives, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Uganda, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Yemen, Zimbabwe.

The crypto news today show that the Bittrex exchange will also initiate a downsizing process. Before getting started with the withdrawal process, customers must generate an address using the same wallet where they would like to get their deposits. There is even an informative how-to guide with detailed instructions so that users understand the process.As we reported before, Bittrex had significantly downsized its trading options for US-based traders on the platform by delisting 42 coins and tokens. All of this will affect users in a negative way and potentially impact the crypto market as a whole.

Electroneum (ETN) is an altcoin ranking at the 97th position in the coin market charts. As the altcoin news today show, the project managed to target the crypto-hungry country of Turkey. Aside from barely a crypto project, Electroneum has a lot to prove.The startup has been known as one that enables users to "mine" cryptocurrency on their smartphones. The recent news show that ETN is launching new services in Turkey - a country known for its inflation. However, Turkey is also known as the country that is leading the market when it comes to crypto adoption worldwide, with 20% of the population claiming to own cryptocurrencies.The UK-based platform has inked deals with all three of the country's telecom operators, potentially enabling users to pay for airtime with its cryptocurrency. The CEO of Electroneum (ETN), Richard Ells, recently said:

"The whole concept of the airtime thing was to give people an understanding that cryptocurrency has value. In Turkey, you have 20 percent ownership of crypto, but that’s still the richest 20 percent,” he said. “It isn’t the poorest people who are using cryptocurrency.”

The service by Electroneum (ETN) launched in Turkey last month and is available in South Africa and Brazil. Ells recently said that ETN is using the mobile top ups to combat the negative attitude that prevails to cryptocurrencies.According to the research by Ells in the crypto news, there are over 25 million unbanked people in Turkey which makes it a fertile territory for its top up service. In the next few weeks, Electroneum (ETN) also plans to launch a new platform that will allow users to learn, share and monetize their digital skills using ETN as a payment - with zero fees attached.Named "AnyTasks" - this new platform will allow for payment by traditional methods such as credit cards. Ells noted that "then the remittance takes place in ETN, so the person can be unbanked yet still able to sell their digital skills.” He also said that Turkey's 3.6 million refugees could also benefit from the new platform which is cost-free to people in all developing countries.

“There’s a great need for something of value that’s easily transferable, and easy to store and carry, especially for refugees,” he added. “It’s a really interesting place for us to be.”

The Ethereum community welcomes a new prospective project - named the Synthetix (SNX) project - which comes along with a token and an impressive technology behind it. If you haven't heard about this project in the ETH news, you are not alone.It all started going viral when the popular Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (16z) bought up approximately $235,000 USD worth of SNX this week. This buy caused the token and its price to acutely surge by 38% but also put Synthetix (SNX) in the spotlight as something new and something groundbreaking.All of this caught the attention of the crypto economy users who haven't previously crossed paths with this project. When it comes to the value locked in it, it is currently at $66.9 million and the project has surged into the 3rd place on the tracker site DeFi Pulse.Simply put, Synthetix (SNX) is a platform that is built atop Ethereum and one that is designed to host on-chain synthetic assets - known as Synths - which are basically ERC20 tokens tied to the value of real world assets like stocks, indices and beyond.As the news showed, the platform started out as a stablecoin project which was dubbed Havven. The whitepaper's effort still refers to the project - but a rebrand occurred earlier this year, causing the Synthetix mainnet to launch again this spring.The SNX token is right now the native currency of the Synthetix Network, powering the creation of Synths. The project's builders last December described it as:

“The platform uses a token called SNX (the Synthetix Network Token), and holding this token allows you to create Synths. You do this by locking SNX into a smart contract and minting Synths against this value. In order to ensure Synths are fully backed, the system will only you to issue a fraction of the SNX value you lock.”

All of this suggests that Ethereum DeFi is on the rise and that Synthetix is just the latest comer to push up the prospects of the Ethereum DeFi space.Meanwhile, the aforementioned website DeFi Pulse also noted that the total value locked in DeFi (denominated in Ether) crossed the 3 million ETH mark for the first time ever.