Autor Cointelegraph By Felix Ng

Mystery of the whale wallet holding 50% of Axie Infinity’s SLP supply

Mystery of the whale wallet holding 50% of Axie Infinity’s SLP supply

Uverejnil používateľ | aug 31, 2022 |

For nearly a year now, a mysterious Axie Infinity wallet has been quietly amassing billions of Smooth Love Potion (SLP), the in-game cryptocurrency powering one of the industry’s most popular play-to-earn (P2E) crypto games. Today, the anonymous whale wallet now holds a little over 22 billion SLP — more than 50% the total circulating supply of the token. The problem? No one knows who it belongs to and what their intentions are. The wallet in question was brought to Cointelegraph’s attention by Axie Infinity player and tech co-founder Michael Benko, who first caught wind of this mysterious wallet on Aug. 25. Should we be worried?Benko told Cointelegraph he became concerned about the wallet given the amount of SLP it had gathered in a relatively short amount of time, which could potentially wreak havoc on the game’s ecosystem.“The significance of a wallet holding so much SLP, if it’s an individual person, gives that person a huge amount of control over an economy, especially in an economy where it’s so hard to mint a token.”Launched in 2021, Axie Infinity is a blockchain-based game in which players purchase NFTs of cartoon creatures which they breed and fight against other players in turn-based gameplay. SLP is earned by players for completing daily quests, battling other players in the “Arena” mode or playing against AI in the “Adventure” mode. The SLP can be used for breeding Axies, crafting in-game runes and charms (power-ups), and can be sold on exchanges. Benko noted that as per the latest season update, an average Axie Infinity player can generate between 10 to 70 SLP per day, depending on how good they are at the game. “So it is a concern, if someone’s sitting there with 22 billion SLP […] they could really keep the price flat or keep the price down when it actually should, by natural market conditions, be going up.”The cryptocurrency is currently priced at $0.004, down 99% from an all time high of $0.40 on Jul. 13, 2021, according to Coingecko.Who owns it?Theories explaining the existence of the wallet have only led to dead-ends so far. Benko initially theorized that the wallet was “some system Axie Infinity had to automatically distribute SLP to players who earned it.”However, Sky Mavis co-founder and COO Aleksander Larson told Cointelegraph that neither Sky Mavis nor Axie Infinity hold any of the game’s cryptocurrency, stating: “All tokens in existence have been created by players.”Yield Guild Games co-founder Gabby Dizon — one of the major DAOs for players of Axie — said YGG didn’t own the wallet and suggested it could be a wallet used by an exchange to hold liquidity. Related: Axie Infinity looking to ‘double-down’ on Korean market: KBW“Don’t think this is ours as we typically use all of our minted SLP for breeding,” said Dizon, adding that “the most likely explanation is that an exchange is holding it for their liquidity.”Benko however noted that while many SLP transactions saw Binance as a sender or recipient for many transactions, upon looking at the transactions, he doesn’t believe that it is a wallet owned by the crypto exchange.“Binance seems to have an official wallet [already] and this doesn’t seem to be that wallet.”Cointelegraph reached out to Binance for comment but has not received a response at the time of writing. If you have any theories on who is behind the wallet contact felixng at cointelegraph.com

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Moonbirds will store NFT art ‘in chain’ — Raises $50M in Series A funding

Moonbirds will store NFT art ‘in chain’ — Raises $50M in Series A funding

Uverejnil používateľ | aug 31, 2022 |

PROOF, the private community behind the Moonbirds NFT collection, has announced it is shifting its blue-chip collection completely “in chain” — allowing images to be fully contained within the underlying smart contract. In a community live stream named “Future PROOF” on Aug. 30, Harri Thomas, director of products at PROOF explained that the new approach will mean that in the future, the viewable image of a Moonbird NFT will be “constructed from the contract itself from art layers, which are going to be stored on the blockchain.”“We’ve talked about putting the birds ‘on chain’, so what I’m here to tell you today is that they’re not only going to be ON chain, they’re going to be put IN chain.”Thomas explained that their Ethereum-based NFTs will be different from most other NFTs which are simply tokens that point to where the images are stored off chain. “This is an unusual approach. Certainly not unique,” explained Harris, adding that another example of an NFT project using the same approach is OnChainMonkey, a 10K PFP NFT collection launched in 2021.Thomas declined to provide a date for when the NFT collection will make this shift, but noted that it is a “primary focus” for the smart contract team, so “hopefully not too long.”Co-founder and chief product officer Justin Mezzell, who was one of the hosts of the live stream added: “It’s cool to enter that rarefied space of a fully in-chain project and making sure that this project is really fully decentralized and viewable for just generations.”The live stream also revealed the first official expansion of PROOF’s Moonbirds collection, known as Moonbird Mythics — is expected to launch in early 2023.The collection will span 20,000 NFTs, and is the organization’s third NFT profile picture (PFP) project.Short Moonbird recap:New collection called MythicsMythics burn oddities or nested moonbirds have a go at it everyday50m$ raise led by @a16z Highrise way to showcase/explore art on any chains $PROOF token incoming (ticker not finalized) pic.twitter.com/bYDmRn6x5i— 0xMaki ⌐◨-◨ (@0xMaki) August 30, 2022$50M in fundingPROOF has just raised $50 million in a Series A funding round led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), along with participation from Seven Seven Six, True Ventures, Collab+Currency, Flamingo DAO, SV Angel, and VaynerFund. “It’s great to have this vote of confidence from some of the most respected investors in Web3, as well as capital to keep delivering great products and services as we mature this business over the long term,” said PROOF founder Kevin Rose. In April, the Ethereum-based Moonbirds NFT project completely sold out its collection of 10,000 computer-generated pixel owl avatars within 48 hours of launch, netting $281 million in sales at the time. Its success despite the bear market earned it a title as a “blue-chip” NFT. Related: Bored Ape prices are down, but the NFT market is headed for new heightsAccording to Open Sea, Moonbirds is ranked at number seven in terms of total volume traded at approximately 169,000 Ether (ETH) and is currently ranked number one in the 24-hour charts at a floor price of 13.8 ETH ($21,445 at current prices). Other announcements made during the Future PROOF live stream included an upcoming launch of a PROOF social platform, the creation of a new decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that will oversee licensing of the Moonbirds name, and a new PROOF token that will have “real utility” — with more details expected in 2023.

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A16z-backed CoinSwitch exchange raided over alleged forex law breaches

A16z-backed CoinSwitch exchange raided over alleged forex law breaches

Uverejnil používateľ | aug 26, 2022 |

Major Indian crypto exchange CoinSwitch Kuber had five of its premises searched by anti-money laundering agents on Thursday over alleged violations of forex laws. According to an Aug. 25 report from Bloomberg, India’s Enforcement Directorate searched CoinSwitch Kuber’s offices as well as the residences of its directors and CEO Ashish Singhal. A source told the publication the crypto exchange is under suspicion of acquiring shares worth more than $250 million in contravention of forex laws, as well as being non-compliant with certain know-your-customer (KYC) requirements. The Directorate of Enforcement is a federal enforcement and intelligence agency operating under the Ministry of Finance. According to its website, the agency’s primary objective is the enforcement of acts including the Foreign Exchange Management Act and the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.CoinSwitch Kuber said in a statement: “We receive queries from various government agencies. Our approach has always been that of transparency.” “Crypto is an early stage industry with a lot of potential and we continuously engage with all stakeholders.”Launched in India in 2020, CoinSwitch Kuber is one of the largest crypto exchanges in India alongside WazirX and CoinDCX, with over 18 million registered users. CoinSwitch Kuber reached “unicorn” status last year after raising $260 million in a Series C funding round led by Coinbase venture capital arm Coinbase Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. The company is also backed by Sequoia, Paradigm, Ribbit, and Tiger Global.The actions follow a continued clampdown on the cryptocurrency space in India. Earlier this month, Enforcement Directorate froze roughly $8.1 million in funds from crypto exchange WazirX, alleging that the crypto exchange facilitated transactions by unnamed fintech firms “to purchase crypto assets and then launder them abroad.”Related: The regulatory implications of India’s crypto transactions tax This year has also seen the government introduce two new laws demanding crippling taxes on crypto-related unrealized gains and transactions. In a recent survey conducted with 2042 Indian cryptocurrency investors by crypto exchange KuCoin, 33% of survey respondents noted they were concerned by ambiguous government regulations that could deter potential investors from crypto.

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8 sneaky crypto scams on Twitter right now

8 sneaky crypto scams on Twitter right now

Uverejnil používateľ | aug 22, 2022 |

Cybersecurity analyst Serpent has revealed his picks for the most dastardly crypto and non-fungible token (NFT) scams currently active on Twitter.The analyst, who has 253,400 followers on Twitter, is the founder of artificial intelligence and community-powered crypto threat mitigation system, Sentinel. In a 19-part thread posted on Aug. 21, Serpent outlined how scammers target inexperienced crypto users through the use of copycat websites, URLs, accounts, hacked verified accounts, fake projects, fake airdrops, and plenty of malware. One of the more worrisome strategies comes amid a recent spate of crypto phishing scams and protocol hacks. Serpent explains that the “Crypto Recovery Scam” is used by bad actors to trick those who have recently lost funds to a widespread hack, stating: “Simply put, they attempt to target people who have already been scammed, and claim they can recover the funds.”According to Serpent, these scammers claim to be blockchain developers and seek out users that have fallen victim to a recent large-scale hack or exploit, asking them for a fee to deploy a smart contract that can recover their stolen funds. Instead they “take the fee and run.”This was seen in action after the multimillion-dollar exploit affecting Solana wallets earlier this month, with Heidi Chakos, the host of the YouTube channel Crypto Tips, warning the community to watch out for scammers offering a solution to the hack. Another strategy also leverages recent exploits. According to the analyst, the “Fake Revoke.Cash Scam,” tricks users into visiting a phishing website by warning them that their crypto assets may be at risk, using a “state of urgency” to get users to click the malicious link. Source: @Serpent on TwitterAnother strategy uses “Unicode Letters” to make a phishing URL look almost exactly like a genuine one, but replacing one of the letters with a Unicode lookalike, while another strategy sees scammers hack a verified Twitter account, which is then renamed and used to impersonate someone of influence to shill fake mints or airdrops. The remaining scams target users wanting to get in on a “get rich quick” scheme. This includes the “Uniswap Front Running Scam”, often seen as spam bot messages telling users to watch a video on how to “make $1400/DAY front-running Uniswap” which instead tricks them into sending their funds to a scammer’s wallet.Another strategy is known as a “Honeypot Account” — where users are supposedly leaked a “private key” to gain access to a loaded wallet, but when they attempt to send crypto in order to fund the transfer of coins, they are immediately sent away to the scammers’ wallet via a bot. Other tactics involve asking high-value NFT collectors to “beta test” a new Play-to-earn (P2E) game or project, or commissioning fake work to NFT artists — but in both cases, the ruse is merely an excuse to send them malicious files that can scrape browser cookies, passwords, and extension data.Related: Aurora Labs exec details ‘fascinating and devious’ crypto scam he almost fell forLast week, a report from Chainalysis noted that revenue from crypto scams fell 65% in 2022 so far, due to falling asset prices and the exit of inexperienced crypto users from the market. Total crypto scam revenue year-to-date is currently sitting at $1.6 billion, down from roughly $4.6 billion in the prior year.

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Australia's new government finally signals its crypto regulation stance

Australia's new government finally signals its crypto regulation stance

Uverejnil používateľ | aug 22, 2022 |

Three months after being elected into power, the Australian Labor party has finally broken its silence on how it’s planning to approach crypto regulation. Treasurer Jim Chalmers announced a “token mapping” exercise, which was one of the 12 recommendations in a senate inquiry report last year on “Australia as a Technology and Financial Center.” The report was warmly welcomed by the industry which has been anxiously waiting to see if the ALP government would embrace it.Aimed at being conducted before the end of the year, the token mapping exercise is expected to help “identify how crypto assets and related services should be regulated” and inform future regulatory decisions. Cointelegraph understands that Treasury will also undertake work on some of the other recommendations in the near future, including a licensing framework for crypto asset service providers dealing in non-financial product crypto assets, appropriate requirements to safeguard the consumer crypto asset custody, and a review of the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) company-style structure.In a statement from Treasurer Jim Chalmers, along with Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services Stephen Jones, and Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury Dr. Andrew Leigh, the Albanese-led government says it wants to reign in on a “largely unregulated” crypto sector.“As it stands, the crypto sector is largely unregulated, and we need to do some work to get the balance right so we can embrace new and innovative technologiesThe statement noted that more than one million taxpayers have interacted with the crypto ecosystem since 2018, and yet, “regulation is struggling to keep pace and adapt with the crypto asset sector.”The politicians claimed that the previous Liberal-led government had previously “dabbled” in crypto asset regulation through crypto secondary service providers “without first understanding what was being regulated.”“The Albanese Government is taking a more serious approach to working out what is in the ecosystem and what risks need to be looked at first.”Speaking to Cointelegraph, Michael Bacina, partner at Piper Alderman, said the token mapping exercise will be an “important step” to bridge the significant education gap within regulators and policymakers. “Australia punches above its weight in blockchain right now but we have seen regulatory uncertainty lead to businesses leaving Australia,” he said.Related: Australia’s world-leading crypto laws are at the crossroads: The inside story“A sensible token mapping exercise which helps regulators and policy makers understand in depth the activities they are looking to regulate and how the technology interfaces with those activities should help regulation be fit for purpose and both support innovation and jobs in Australia while protecting consumers,” he added. Caroline Bowler, CEO of BTC Markets said the move mirrors calls from many in the industry for “proportional, appropriate regulation” of the sector. “The additional benefits of token mapping are many. It will provide greater clarity to crypto investors; aid companies in developing their own blockchain-based innovations; provide guidance to digital currency exchanges; as well as assist regulators in shaping an appropriate regulatory regime,” she said. However Dr. Aaron Lane, a senior lecturer at the RMIT Blockchain Innovation Hub, believes the token mapping exercise is something of a delaying tactic by the Labor government: “Progress is progress — but it is disappointing that we are not further along the path to greater regulatory certainty for industry and greater protections for consumers.”“Unfortunately, they’ve needed to buy themselves time with a token mapping exercise to allow them to get up to speed,” he added. Progress is progress. But let’s be clear though – it is not the first time token mapping has been done. See this, for example, from the UK in 2019. #cryptolaw https://t.co/rghWmklDJv— Aaron Lane (@AMLane_au) August 21, 2022

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