Autor Cointelegraph By Brian Quarmby

Nifty News: Steve Irwin's zoo conservation NFTs, SportemonGo is gone, and more

Nifty News: Steve Irwin's zoo conservation NFTs, SportemonGo is gone, and more

Uverejnil používateľ | máj 5, 2022 |

The Crocodile MinterAustralia Zoo, the famous animal sanctuary owned by Terri Irwin, the widow of Steve Irwin or the crocodile hunter, has launched an NFT project called “Wildlife Warriors.”Wildlife Warriors is also the name of a non-profit organization founded by the Irwins in 2002 which focuses on the protection of injured, threatened or endangered wildlife. All profits from the NFT sales will be donated to the Australia Zoo and Wild Warriors conservation efforts. The NFT collection is a part of the 20th-anniversary celebration of the Australia Zoo, and users can now sign up for the allow list to obtain early access to the upcoming drops. However, details on the specific number of NFTs, tiers of rarity, utility, and pricing are sparse at this stage. “The rare NFT project will comprise of a series of drops, each focusing on a different Australia Zoo Wildlife Warriors animal. The NFTs will be randomly generated, non-deterministic, utility-driven and 100 percent unique to the buyer,” the announcement reads. The NFTs are being minted on Algorand, which touts itself as the world’s first carbon-negative blockchain, and were developed in partnership with Meadow Labs, an Australia-based NFT start-up. Australia Zoo is excited to launch the Wildlife Warriors NFT project with Meadow Labs and Algorand, the world’s first carbon-negative blockchain. We’re committed to building a sustainable future for our fauna and flora. For an exclusive VIP access, visit https://t.co/Vag0Zw9I9f. pic.twitter.com/KmxfOfIJb2— Australia Zoo (@AustraliaZoo) May 4, 2022SportemonGo is a no goDespite signing a three-year sponsorship deal with pro-Scottish football team Hibernian F.C. (also known as Hibs) in September last year, NFT and fan token platform SportemonGo (SGOX) shut up shop this week. It appeared the company had built strong inroads into pro-football, as it was also a sponsor of Rangers F.C., and held endorsement deals with Andy Robertson (Liverpool F.C), Luke Shaw (Manchester United), and Callum Hudson-Odoi (Chelsea F.C.).According to Edinburgh News, the firm had signed on with Hibs for a multi-year six-figure sum deal, but failed to deliver on launching a fan token for the team and also suffered from funding troubles, with its main avenue being the sale of its SGOX token. Sports Pro Media also reported on May, 4  that SportemonGo stated that it was working on “amicable” termination agreements with all its partners, while the project also posted a tweet on May. 3 suggesting that investors would be able to recover their losses via a token swap.1) So Sportemon Go.. if it has indeed gone bust… Crypto is highly speculative (as in lose your shirt risky) but legitimate in that context. Rangers have every right to accept sponsorship from that market, & it is not their job to do something the regulators can’t even do…— Andy McGowan (@Bobmcphail1872) May 2, 2022

Leeds United launch NFTs to support UkraineSpeaking of pro-football, English Premier League team Leeds United has launched 11 one-of-one NFTs to support the Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal. The collection is dubbed “Shirts for Ukraine” and the NFTs depict 11 tokenized Leeds Jerseys that have been digitally signed by the players. The winning bidders will also receive two hospitality tickets to a game on May. 15, a pitchside tour with former Leeds greats, and attendance to one open training session. At the time of writing, the highest bid of $1,470.96 is for the tokenized jersey belonging to number 23 Kalvin Phillips, a fan favorite amongst Leeds fans. Hyundai to drop 9,500 NFTsSouth-Korean automobile giant Hyundai is set to drop a collection of 9,500 NFTs as part of an upcoming metaverse project. The “Shooting Star” NFTs are set for a pre-sale of 3,000 tokens on May. 9, and a general sale of 6,500 tokens the following day. All will be sold for 0.15 Ether (ETH) a pop, or roughly $440. The NFTs will act as an access pass to the Hyundai Metamobility universe, and once the platform has launched the hodler’s NFTs will be automatically converted into “Metamobility” NFTs. It hasn’t specifically been outlined what further utility the NFTs will have, but after the conversion, they will each have a new and unique design. We are gladly announcing that an official website of Hyundai Metamobility universe is now open!https://t.co/FjAryI1FMiReady for the adventure? pic.twitter.com/gOURKLSD4X— Hyundai_NFT (@Hyundai_NFT) May 2, 2022

Related: Why NFT adoption is so high in South KoreaOther Nifty News:Holders of the popular memecoin Shiba Inu (SHIB), will now be able to use the cryptocurrency to purchase tokenized land in the upcoming Shiba metaverse platform. Cybersecurity experts Malwarebytes Labs has identified and disclosed the rising popularity of ape-themed airdrop phishing scams among crypto and NFT scammers.

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New crypto litigation tracker highlights 300 cases from SafeMoon to Pepe the Frog

New crypto litigation tracker highlights 300 cases from SafeMoon to Pepe the Frog

Uverejnil používateľ | máj 5, 2022 |

A new crypto litigation tracker from commercial law firm Morrison Cohen LLP shows details of more than 300 active and settled court cases since 2013. Morrison Cohen is a New York-based firm that caters to large financial institutions, entrepreneurs and early-growth stage companies, and specializes in capital markets, business litigation, real estate and bankruptcy to name a few. The company also has a cryptocurrency litigation team. The Morrison Cohen Cryptocurrency Litigation Tracker was published on May. 3, and contains any case development related to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the Department of Justice (DOJ) and class action/private litigation. The firm stated that it will regularly update the tracker “ to include the key rulings in these litigations,” and it also contains a host of “articles, webinars, and podcasts” and regulatory crypto announcements from various government agencies. According to the tracker — which is essentially a lengthy pdf document — there have been roughly 17 crypto cases that were either brought before the court or resolved in 2022 so far. The SEC, CFTC and DOJ combined account for seven of those, with some high profile cases being the SEC v. the Barksdale siblings, who allegedly conducted a fraudulent initial coin offering (ICO) worth $124 million, and the SEC v. digital asset platform BlockFi, who agreed to pay a $100 million penalty for failing to register its crypto lending product. The most notable of all however, is the ongoing DOJ v.Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan case. The husband-wife duo are charged with an alleged conspiracy to launder funds relating to the 119,756 Bitcoin (BTC) Bitfinex hack in 2016. DOJ special agents were able to seize 94,000 BTC around the time of arrests in February. There may also be plenty more in the works this year, considering the SEC announced this week that it will be upping the headcount of its enforcement-focused “Crypto Assets & Cyber Unit” to 50 dedicated positions. Today we announced that we’re bolstering the unit responsible for protecting investors in crypto markets & from cyber-related threats. The newly renamed Crypto Assets & Cyber Unit in the Division of Enforcement will grow to 50 dedicated positions.— U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (@SECGov) May 3, 2022Related: Has New York State gone astray in its pursuit of crypto fraud?The majority of action has been over in the class action/private arena however, with SafeMoon attracting the most attention after the team was slapped with a class-action lawsuit over an alleged pump and dump scheme. The class action claims the project recruited numerous celebrities to draw in investors with allegedly misleading information, with musicians such as Nick Carter, Soulja Boy, Lil Yachty and YouTubers Jake Paul and Ben Phillips all said to have promoted the BNB Chain-based token. A unique case that seems to have mostly flown under the radar is the Halston Thayer v. Matt Furie, Chain/Saw LL, and PegzDAO from March.The trio — which includes Furie, the original creator of the beloved Pepe the Frog meme — is accused of fraudulent inducement, after allegedly selling a one-of-one NFT that tanked in value following an identical NFT drop that was released for free. “Plaintiff alleges that defendants fraudulently misrepresented the value of a Pepe the Frog NFT. Plaintiff paid $537,084 for a Pepe the Frog NFT created by Furie and sold through PegzDAO. A few weeks after the sale, PegzDAO released 46 identical NFTs for free, which allegedly reduced the value of Plaintiff’s NFT,“ Morrison Cohen wrote.

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Bitcoin funds saw largest single week of outflows since June 2021

Bitcoin funds saw largest single week of outflows since June 2021

Uverejnil používateľ | máj 4, 2022 |

Institutional investors shed $133 million worth of Bitcoin (BTC) investment products last week, marking the largest week of outflows since June last year. According to the latest edition of CoinShares’ weekly Digital Asset Fund Flows report, the overall digital asset fund outflows for the week ending April 29 totaled $120.1 million, with the large Bitcoin outflows marginally offset by a surprise $38 million worth of inflows for FTX Token (FTT) products. The $132.7 million worth of outflows from BTC funds last week, brings the month-to-date outflows for April to $310.8 million. The last time BTC funds saw this level of outflows in a single week was during a strong bearish trend in June 2021 as a result of major FUD in the news including Tesla halting BTC payments for its cars over environmental concerns and China rolling out its crypto mining ban. CoinShares noted in the report that there doesn’t appear to be a strong indicator of why a similar level of bearish investment sentiment had resurfaced last month, but did point to a couple of potential factors: “It is difficult to ascertain the precise reason for this other than the hawkish rhetoric from the US Federal Reserve and the recent price decline.”Like many other top assets and various stock market indexes, the price of BTC has suffered significantly over the past 30 days, dropping roughly 18.2% to sit at $37,970 at the time of writing. Many onlookers attribute this to fears that inflation and the Federal Reserve’s upcoming interest rate hikes will see the price of BTC tank further. In a broader view, the overall month-to-date (MTD) outflows for all digital asset products tracked by CoinShares totaled $326.1 million, suggesting that institutional investors have been looking to take risk off the table across the board with crypto investments. “This doesn’t reflect the same bearishness seen at the beginning of this year, although it is close to the US$467m outflows witnessed. Regionally, the outflows were fairly evenly split between The Americas comprising 41% and Europe 59%,” CoinShares wrote. Related: 3 reasons why Bitcoin price is clinging to $38,000Bitcoin’s nearest competitor for the top spot in crypto, Ethereum (ETH) has also suffered from bearish sentiment of late, with products offering exposure to ETH suffering $25 million worth of outflows, and MTD outflows of $82.3 million. On the other end of the spectrum, funds tied to crypto exchange and NFT platform FTX’s FTT saw $38 million worth of inflows, but as FTT funds are categorized under “other,” it is unclear if this is part of a longer trend. Notably, the price of FTT is down 24.5% over the past 30 days also. Terra (LUNA) and Fantom (FTM) investment products also saw minor inflows of $390,000 and $250,000 each.

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Vitalik: L2 transaction fees need to be under 5c to be 'truly acceptable'

Vitalik: L2 transaction fees need to be under 5c to be 'truly acceptable'

Uverejnil používateľ | máj 4, 2022 |

Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin believes that Layer-2 transaction fees need to be under $0.05 to be “truly acceptable.”Buterin made the latest comments in response to a Twitter post from the Bankless podcast host Ryan Sean Adams, who shared a screenshot of the average transaction fees for eight Ethereum Layer-2 platforms. The data is from L2fees.info, a website that compares the cost of Ether’s Layer-1 network in comparison to Layer-2s built on top of it. The only Layer-2 to meet Buterin’s desired transaction fee under $0.05 is the Metis Network at $0.02, however a token swap on the platform still costs $0.14. Fees sharply increase from there, at $0.12 per transaction on Loopring and going all the way to $1.98 per transaction on the Aztec Network. Ethereum’s Layer-1 is relatively affordable at present at $3.26 per transaction and a whopping $16.31 per token swap, however that only lasts until Yuga Lab’s releases another collection of NFTs where fees can skyrocket to $14,000 per mint.Adams emphasized the importance of Layer-2s for keeping Ethereum affordable, noting that “this is Ethereum and it’s not expensive,” but Buterin suggested it wasn’t there yet:“Needs to get under $0.05 to be truly acceptable imo. But we’re definitely making great progress, and even proto-danksharding may be enough to get us there for a while!”Needs to get under $0.05 to be truly acceptable imo. But we’re definitely making great progress, and even proto-danksharding may be enough to get us there for a while!— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) May 3, 2022Buterin’s affordable transaction goal is a long held one that he first stated during an interview in 2017 that “the internet of money should not cost more than 5 cents per transaction.”In January, Buterin said he still stood by this goal “100%” as part of a lengthy Twitter thread going over some of the key things he’s said or written over the past 10 years. “That was the goal in 2017, and it’s still the goal now. It’s precisely why we’re spending so much time working on scalability” Buterin said. Related: ETH gas price surges as Yuga Labs cashes in $300M selling Otherside NFTsShort term gas fee reductionThe proto-danksharding or EIP-4844 that Buterin referred to as putting downward pressure on fees in his response to Adams, is a recently proposed upgrade to Ethereum that will see key elements of danksharding — a new and simplified design of previous sharding designs — implemented onto the network without any sharding upgrades being initiated. Proto-danksharding will enable a new type of transaction dubbed the “blob-carrying transaction” that carries an extra 125KB worth of data (blob) that cannot be accessed by the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). The general idea is that this will help the network scale significantly in the short term while reducing congestion and competition for gas usage, thus lowering gas fees. “Because validators and clients still have to download full blob contents, data bandwidth in proto-danksharding is targeted to 1 MB per slot instead of the full 16 MB. However, there are nevertheless large scalability gains because this data is not competing with the gas usage of existing Ethereum transactions,” Buterin wrote in a blog post last month.While Ethereum’s roadmap is notoriously flexible the shard chains upgrade is slated for sometime in 2023 well after the merge of the Mainnet with the Beacon Chain. Shard chains provide avenues to horizontally and cheaply store data across the network, which in turn spreads the load, reduces congestion and increases transaction speeds. Both Ethereum and its Layer-2s are expected to benefit from this dramatically.

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Weiss Ratings issues warning over crypto mortgage risks

Weiss Ratings issues warning over crypto mortgage risks

Uverejnil používateľ | máj 3, 2022 |

Florida-based ratings and research firm Weiss Ratings has fired out a warning over the risks of crypto mortgages amid the current economic climate in the United States. The company paid particular focus to Milo, a digital banking startup from Miami that offers 30-year mortgages backed by Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), or stablecoins as collateral. The firm requires zero down payments, and its loan rates vary between 3.95% and 5.95%.In the May 3 report, Weiss analyst Jon D. Markman urged caution with such mortgages, citing the poor performance of stocks and crypto this year, a U.S. housing bubble, rising interest rates, and the Federal Reserve’s upcoming policy changes. “The product seems to be like a win-win, assuming real estate and crypto prices keep rising … except there are signs both bets are unlikely to be winners in the near term. Bitcoin is off by 40% since it reached $66,000 in November 2021.”“And U.S. property prices now face headwinds from a change in Fed policy and rising mortgage rates,” he added.Markman did conclude that not all crypto risk is bad, but it could be in the property sector, before adding “no matter what the markets are doing, the potential to succeed in cryptocurrencies is real.”Many crypto and stock investors have been negatively anticipating the potential market impacts of serious interest rate hikes this year as the Fed aims to reel in inflation. With both markets suffering from a lackluster performance due to a myriad of factors, macro analysts such as Alex Krueger have boldly suggested that the Fed’s latest announcements set for this week “will determine the fate of the market” moving forward. Removing the housing market from the equation, if the price of BTC or ETH were to plunge significantly over the next few months, there does appear to be a fair amount of wiggle room for Milo users, however. According to the mortgage terms and conditions, the price of the collateralized crypto assets “can dip in value with zero consequence as long as it doesn’t dip to 35% of the total loan amount.” To avoid liquidation, users must top up their collateral within 48 hours of hitting the minimum percentage. While stablecoins could also be utilized in times of market volatility. Related: Bitcoin ‘bear market’ may take BTC price to $25K, says trader with stocks due capitulationMilo raised $17 million worth of Series A funding in March and has plans to develop its mortgage products to meet larger demand, along with upping its headcount. However, Markman also raised concerns that Milo’s “larger plan is to pool crypto-backed home loans and offer them as bonds to asset managers and insurance companies,” likening it to behavior that resulted in the 2009 housing market crash. “It’s an interesting strategy … but given current market conditions, investors should be skeptical, especially with financial stocks. All of this should sound familiar. Pooling risky home loans, then selling them to unsuspecting asset managers, was the recipe for the Great Recession of 2009.”

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