The first week of August has been exciting for the blockchain and cryptocurrency world. Perhaps the biggest news is that Coinbase revealed it successfully prevented a sophisticated cyberattack that began in May. The major cryptocurrency exchange said in a blog post Thursday that it was targeted by and foiled a sophisticated, premeditated, highly targeted attack aimed to access its systems and steal part of its multibillion-dollar cryptocurrency holdings. Coinbase detailed the methods the hackers tried starting on May 30, including spear phishing, social engineering, and browser zero-day exploits. The attackers sent malicious emails purporting to be from Cambridge University staff. Coinbase added its security team detected and thwarted the attack in just hours. Coinbase said it contacted Cambridge to discuss the issue.

Here is the rest of the week in review:

Litecoin (LTC) underwent its second halving event on Monday. The fourth largest cryptocurrency's protocol reduced its block reward for miners by half as the Litecoin blockchain reached the trigger block height of 1,680,000 on Monday. The Litecoin network is designed to reduce its mining rewards by half every 840,000 blocks, or roughly every 4 years. After the halving, the mining reward was cut from 25 LTC to 12.5 LTC per block. There remain 21 million LTC block mining rewards, worth $2 billion at current prices, available for miners to compete for. Many crypto speculators expected a price boost from the halving, but LTC prices actually slipped after the rare event. Another question is whether miner participation will decline due to smaller rewards and reduced profitability.

International Business Machines (IBM  ) filed a new patent application for a blockchain-based web browser. The tech giant filed the patent with the US Patent and Trademark Office on August 6. IBM's patent idea is a web browser backed by a peer-to-peer network. According to the patent application, the browser would collect pre-specified information from web browsing sessions. The firm said a blockchain-based browser offers a system for storing browsing information so that privacy is preserved and protected. It added that a blockchain-based browser would place privacy in the hands of users instead of third parties. IBM said tokens will verify users' browser session activities as they are packaged into blocks on a peer-to-peer network. But IBM's concept is no pioneer, for Norwegian web browser firm Opera launched its crypto wallet-connected iOS Opera Touch browser in June.

Crypto prices rose slightly to $296 billion this week. For the majors, Binance Coin (BNB), Bitcoin (BTC), and Monero (XMR) led the pack with high single digit gains, while Ripple (XRP), Litecoin, and Bitcoin SV (BSV) fell. In the top 100, the biggest losers were GXChain (GXC), down 26%, Japan Content Token (JCT), down 25%, and Egretia (EGT), down 19%. The biggest gainers were bitUSD (BITUSD), up a whopping 1,214%, Wixlar (WIX), up 146%, and EDUCare (EKT), up 19%. Next week traders will see if Bitcoin can reach $12,000 and crypto can top $300 billion again.

The author owns a small amount of BTC and LTC.