Big week in crypto!

Banks going down causing BTC to go up.

Alts (sort of) following suit.

But who are the biggest winners and losers for the week?

Biggest Winner(s): Arbitrum Airdrop Participants Thursday was a big day for those eligible for the coveted Arbitrum airdrop, but there were bumps along the way. The claim site was down from almost moments when it went live, and was nearly inaccessible for hours. However, after the dust settled, the price hovered above what estimates predicted (>$1).

There was one TRUE winner though.

The entity who was able to sell their tokens for a whopping $10.27 per token to result in a $64,000+ haul. Apparently, they had another transaction after that netted another $20,000 as well. On-chain transaction data reveals that the wallets went through front-run bot testing for up to 30 days prior to the launch, so they were ready when the token finally dropped:

Biggest Loser(s): Arbitrum Airdrop Participants with Vanity Addresses Unfortunately, there were some eligible addresses that had their tokens stolen right from under their noses.

Those with vanity addresses (NOT ENS domains) have apparently been compromised for some time, and a hacker took advantage during what should have been an exciting moment for these victims.

The hacker was either able to find the private key for certain vanity addresses that used Profanity, a vanity generation service, or generated similar addresses and was able to direct the airdrops to those wallets instead, putting in question the security behind vanity addresses.

Biggest Loser: Do Kwon That’s right. Same day as the Arbitrum drop, Montenegro authorities supposedly did some high-end nabbing of their own.

Do Kwon, International Man of Running Away From Investors, was reportedly caught after using falsified Costa Rican documents to fly to Dubai.

Montenegro’s Ministry of Internal Affairs, Filip Adzic, tweeted the following:

After being on the run for almost a year, the cocky former CEO of Terraform Labs’ global marathon seems to be over. 

SBF and him should talk about possibly rooming together for the foreseeable future…

Written by: nikethereum.eth / Medium / Mirror / Lens

Let me TL;DR summarize the past weekend’s events:

Mass panic hits SVB.

SVB begins to go down.

Others are next.

Mass panic hits all markets.

USDC de-pegs.

It’s that last italicized item that put me into a panic. I thought of all stablecoins, USDC (USD Coin) should withstand a large bank run like we just saw happen.

But it didn’t. Saturday around 9pm ET, we started seeing USDC begin to de-peg. I honestly was a bit in shock that it was happening, especially after all that we’ve heard about it’s resilience.

I was just at ETHDenver a couple of weeks ago, at the Circle (creators of USDC) booth talking to them about what makes a stablecoin actually stable. The bottom line they made was over-collateralization and transparency as keys to a strong stablecoin.

From the WSJ: “Circle holds $9.7 billion of its USD Coin reserves in cash and $32.4 billion in short-dated government securities — ”.

I believe those numbers are still below what the true number is, however, that should give an idea of how collateralized USDC is.

That is a massive number and it’s worry that the mass panic caused such a de-peg.

Another point Circle made was transparency. And it’s true that Circle discloses where their assets are held. However, which other top stablecoin is not a big fan of transparency and weathered the storm well above USDC? That’s right, USDT (USD Token).

USDT, which is not very transparent and being a European-backed USD stablecoin, they did not have very much exposure to U.S. banking entities and were a safe harbor for USDC-refugees. USDT went up to as much as $1.06 at one point during this time.

Eventually, U.S. officials ensured banking victims will be made whole, Circle ends up having access to their reserves and is able to bring USDC back up to peg, the markets have been favorable since. All is good and life moves on.

However, now I don’t know if my plan of using stablecoins works anymore. The whole point is having an intermediary between volatile tokens, in which I can preserve my gains (or losses) without risk.

So I guess we all will just have to wait and see what happens when the next major panic occurs…

Written by: nikethereum.eth / Medium / Mirror

If your daily routine includes staring at token prices from the moment you wake up and every 5 mins until bedtime, then I assume you’re scratching your head just like I’ve been doing the last 2 weeks.

We’re seeing some tokens pumping, but why?! Overall, there are no positive macro/micro-economic reasons to hang our hat on, plus we have the pesky SEC chomping at the bit to takedown everything they can.

So what gives? Well there might be an answer to one pump with a plausible reason behind it.

Whether you hate it or love it, Bitcoin NFTs are all the rage thanks to the Ordinals Protocol, and Stacks (STX) is the reason behind why this new functionality on Lightning Network actually works.

Bitcoin was originally designed for one thing — — secure and decentralized monetary exchanges. And it does it VERY well.

On the other side, chains such Ethereum, Solana, Binance Smart Chain, Arbitrum, and so on, have lots of untapped utility, and can provide solutions for a number of use cases. Developers deploy smart contracts/dApps to build on top of these chains in order to increase the utility of that chain for their users (DeFi, NFT’s are essentially all powered by smart contracts).

Enter in Stacks, circa 2019. Seeing how chain utility was becoming the norm amongst the competition, Stacks came along to provide a Lightning Network-connected secondary layer for developers to build dApps on top of. Thus the advent of Bitcoin NFTs from Ordinals proved to be the driving force for Stacks to start pumping again.

And two bonuses, Stacks is SEC-approved AND not considered a security.

Price as of this writing is under $1 per token with highs and lows shown below. As always, do your own research, but perhaps it’s time to take another look at this little gem’s comeback.

Written by: nikethereum.eth / Medium / Mirror

Chalk this one up for classic ingenuity.

Zebedee founder Christian Moss developed a way to earn Bitcoin just by playing retro games:

All you have to do is connect your wallet via QR code, and play as you normally would. The games have been modified to have a Sats counter and a 90 second timer. Once the timer hits zero, you session will end and will require your wallet to be reconnected to start another session.

The plan is to have even more games on the platform available at bars, conferences, meetups, etc. This will also require the entity to create a custodial wallet with Zeebedee or Lnbits.

Now to quit my job and play all day.

Written by: nikethereum.eth / Medium / Mirror

In the good feel news of the year so far, crypto ads are no longer welcome during the most popular sporting event in the U.S.

Why?

It’s because of the spectacular implosion of FTX, which was considered the golden child of CeFi for a period of time, which also had superstar QB Tom Brady as the celebrity face of the brand.

Now, CeFi crypto have to hang their heads in shame…

…and I for one am GLAD! 

CeFi entities accounted for the majority (if not all) ads in the mainstream space, as a desperate ploy to bring on more unsuspecting users to give up their hard earned cash, only for these s̶c̶a̶m̶m̶e̶r̶s̶ entities to use the funds in “unsavory” ways, which I won’t go into since we‘ve been bombarded with that news for months now.

So what will replace crypto ads in this years Super Bowl? 

More beer/booze, mayonnaise, streaming services and gambling. 

Which are more palatable ways to lose your money!

Written by: nikethereum.eth / Medium / Mirror

Yes, you read that right.

Bitcoin Ordinals is a protocol that provides users the ability to inscribe Satoshi’s with images and videos without the need for another token or a sidechain to complete this task. And someone decided to pin a picture of a literal a**hole on one.

Now you might be asking, what the heck is a Satoshi?!

Satoshi(s), or “sat(s)” for short, are the smallest unit of BTC.  0.00000001 or one hundred millionth, to be exact. Similarly, ETH’s smallest unit is called a wei.

And the reason for defining this very small denomination is to allow for micro-transactions, expanding the use case for Bitcoin and cryptocurrency at large.

Coming back to the story, Ordinals protocol provides a way to pin information or media, slap a serial number on it and track these sats that would go unnoticed anyways.

Some of those from the Bitcoin community spoke out against this waste of energy and blockspace.

Then someone decided to prank us with a goatse, which was featured on inscription 668 and was live on the Ordinals’ front page for about half an hour before the image was removed. It still exists on the blockchain, but is not viewable on the Ordinals website any longer.

Although the argument that it’s a waste of energy is true and no one likes to be pranked with a goatse, I just can’t wait to see what the next crazy inscription will be!

Written by: nikethereum.eth / Medium / Mirror

Tiffany Fong, who rose to fame after scoring some exclusive SBF post-meltdown interviews, has revealed some interesting information she’s been sitting on for quite some time.

Her leak, which can be read in full here, states she refrained from revealing this information to give other entities a fair shot at buying these assets. However, once a lawyer representing Celsius deemed the bids to be not a fit, Fong decided to release the info.

Bidders included Binance, online investment platform Bank To The Future, digital asset investment manager Galaxy Digital, crypto trading company Cumberland DRW and digital asset investment firm NovaWulf. Bank To The Future CEO confirmed the validity of this bid.

I can see the merit of some of these entities wanting to purchase the assets to hopefully allow Celsius victims to get their money back. However, please let’s let CeFi go away at this point. If Celsius withers away without giving repayment to their victims, then is a hard lesson learned. But giving a CeFi outfit another opportunity to do what so many others have done before it by giving such leverage, then we haven’t learned from our mistakes at all. Sure, these new players may have better plans, more security, promises that they won’t do what FTX, Celsius, BlockFi, Three Arrow, etc have done. In the end, CeFi has shown how much trust they deserve.

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There’s a troubling new scam-scheme (I’m trademarking this) that’s apparently only targeting Web3 users. According to blockchain security company CertiK, a new type of scam called “ice phishing”, which was first identified by Microsoft, where Web3 users are tricked into signing permissions via wallet transactions that allow the scammer to spend their tokens and other dubious activities. 

https://twitter.com/CertiKAlert/status/1605297043085447186

Recently, 14 BAYC’s were stolen using an elaborate and targeted ice phishing scam, where the user was convinced to sign a transaction request disguised as a film contract. From there, the scammer was able to sell all of the BAYC’s for a negligible amount to themselves. 

I believe this has been a scam that’s been occurring for ages now, where fake contracts are signed through wallet transactions, giving the scammer certain access to the victim’s wallet, but I guess now we have a proper name for it. AS ALWAYS, BE CAREFUL WHEN SIGNING ANYTHING. I highly suggest using services like Fire, which activates when a wallet transaction is initiated, it simulates the transaction, and gives you the results on what you might be signing. This can save headaches of losing all of your hard-earned tokens and NFTs! 

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Gather around, readers. Let me tell you a tale of rug pulls and scams for 2022. According to Solidus Labs, there was an estimated 350 scam tokens/rug pulls created on a daily basis since January 2022 to December 1st, which equates to 117,629 scams for the year so far. This is a 41% jump over 2021 where 83,400 token scams were deployed. The report also claims that BNB Chain has the greatest number of scam tokens, with 12% of all BEP-20 tokens being fraudulent. In second place is Ethereum, with 8% of all ERC-20 tokens beings scams.

One piece of advice to those who are new to the crypto game…ALWAYS DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH. If it’s too good to be true, then it probably is! Use tools such as CoinGecko to understand if the token you’re interested in is truly a scam or not. Also, Google is your best friend, as there are countless articles highlighting how one can tell rug pulls from legit tokens!

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With all the crazy stories swirling around about FTX employee extravagances and ignorances about how the empire was being run, it looks like (maybe) one employee didn’t like what he was seeing. Ex Co-CEO of FTX Digital Markets, Ryan Salame, tipped off Bahamaian regulators of potential fraud by sending customer funds to sister trading firm, Alameda Research, just two days before FTX’s inevitable demise. There were three individuals he called out specifically for having this kind of access: SBF, FTX co-founder Zixiao “Gary” Wang, and FTX engineer Nishad Singh. However, based on his last public Tweet, he looks as to be laughing off Binance’s initial declaration of wrongdoing at FTX:

https://twitter.com/rsalame7926/status/1589617343222939648

This guy totally saw the end coming and did what he could to make it seem like he was fighting the good fight against corruption. It will be interesting to see what he might have done behind the FTX scenes prior to his realization that the company is going to crumble around him…

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ChatGPT, the hot new neighbor on the tech-block, has become all the rage, with more and more users finding cooler use cases for the AI-forward chat service. However, everyone should start getting a LITTLE freaked out with just how handy and smart this thing really is…

https://twitter.com/gregosuri/status/1598227692867883010

Umm ChatGPT can now tell us how to exploit smart contracts? What’s next?!

All kidding aside though, we don’t know just how adept ChatGPT is at finding gaps in very intricate code, but this might just be the stepping stone for this AI to get smarter, and faster at these kinds of tasks. Just hope it doesn’t push you out of a job one day…

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“Rich Dad Poor Dad” author Robert Kiyosaki believes those holding gold, silver and Bitcoin will get richer when the Fed/Treasury decides to pivot from de-inflationary tactics to printing trillions of dollars instead, causing the value of the US dollar to decrease for those saving fiat instead.

https://twitter.com/theRealKiyosaki/status/1601050459896107008?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1601050459896107008%7Ctwgr%5E583d1f5bf02a56f9e3f5380c33a7e9369e80fea1%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fcoingape.com%2Frich-dad-poor-dad-author-predicts-bitcoin-investors-will-get-richer-heres-why%2F

Kiyosaki has been a fervent adversary of the Fed, Treasury, and Wall Street stating he does trust them, also claiming the U.S. is still headed into a economic disaster, with the U.S. pension crisis possibly becoming the “next global Lehman”. 

This man has written one of the most popular financial books of all time, so I think everyone should at least do a little research based on his advice. Gold and silver are always a good thing to invest in, based on historical value increases. Bitcoin, aka “digital gold”, is a deflationary currency and Kiyosaki’s stance makes sense. BTC price has been going down so it’s best to buy on discounts currently before it inevitably increases!

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Another Monday, and another hot crypto story unfurling. A new U.S. Department of Justice probe accuses Binance of violating sanctions against Iran, by allowing ~$1B in crypto transactions to Iranian-based businesses. The probe also saw some irregularities in Binance’s compliance program. The investigation is primarily centered around U.S. anti-money laundering laws and sanctions. The interesting part is it is understood the DOJ has enough evidence to put criminal charges against some Binance executives, including CZ. However, another section of the DOJ wants to do a review of the evidence before handing out charges. CZ has denied any wrongdoing in the matter.

This is another bad situation for the crypto world. Although this is not an FTX-level implosion situation, but if the charges do go through and there is proof of sanction violations, it will become another red mark on the crypto industry, and gives naysayers even more reason to call crypto a vehicle for crime, terrorism, etc.

As I mentioned before, centralized services have come to a point where they cannot be trusted for so many reasons. Violating sanctions might not hurt users directly, but if there was ever a chance to funds to get locked up while investigations happen, this might be it. If you’re reading this and still have quite a bit of money in any centralized services, and are not actively trading it (ex. just bought some ETH and sitting on it), please self-custody! Don’t get to the point of regret as so many others have experienced this year!

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Blockparty CTO, Rikesh Thapa, has been officially charged of defrauding the start-up out of $1M, which started from his employment in December 2017 and September 2019. He collected the amount by apparently:

• Falsified reports and misrepresenting Bitcoin transactions, siphoning some into his own pocket

• Selling almost 174,285 of Blockparty’s tokens to interested buyer’s for cash, which some of the money he received was counterfeit, it was determined later on

• Deleting emails and other paper trails

He used this money to party at nightclubs, country tours and shopping sprees. Eventually he was caught and only just recently charged with one count of wire fraud, which carries a possible 20-years of jail sentence.

Sounds like that one guy you know, who thinks he’s smarter than everyone else in the room and he believes everyone’s too stupid to figure it out. Well you were just figured out. Good luck for the next 20 years!

Written by: nikethereum.eth / Medium / Mirror

MetaMask had some blowback from the cryptoverse recently on news coming out about collecting IP addresses, but it looks like they might reversing course, sort of. In a statement, Consensys clarified their position on IP collection and an amendment to their policy:

We retain and delete user data such as IP address and wallet address pursuant to our data retention policy. We are working on narrowing retention to 7 days and we will append these retention policies to our privacy policy in an upcoming update..[ ]

Will this ease the privacy-minded portion of users’ minds? Doubtful, because any retention period still means…”we collect information”. The scary part is, how many other entities will follow suit?

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Cardano has announced the backing of an algorithmic stablecoin, Djed, which will apparently be pegged to USD, will be overcollateralized with Cardano and backed up with another token as its reserves, which will also have on-chain proof-of-reserves. However, many in the crypto community are sounding alarms for this approach, referring to the recent Terra algo stablecoin UST implosion.

https://twitter.com/mocheswap/status/1594817260358696961

https://twitter.com/SBabt12/status/1595435912275558405

I know the community has PTSD over the UST collapse and the major reasons for it was because of the algorithmic nature of that stablecoin. Will Cardano figure it out? I hope so otherwise we might stay in this crypto winter for f***** ever!

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Texas Senator and Wolverine wannabe Ted Cruz said at Texas Blockchain Summit 2022 that he wants Texas to be a “Bitcoin oasis”, along with other cryptocurrencies. Cruz argued that Bitcoin mining can be used to monetize energy from oil and gas extraction, in addition to it being an energy storage and supply alternative. He also mentioned that he likes Bitcoin “because the government can’t control it”. The lawmaker also admitted to purchasing Bitcoin on a weekly basis, and the coin being the only one in his portfolio.

As much as I am against much of Ted Cruz’ political agenda, this is still a pretty big and positive stance for crypto in Texas. As a Texas resident for over 20 years, I am finally proud to say that Cruz has said something right for once! Seeing as how the Texas Comptroller is very pro-crypto, hoping this “Texas Crypto Oasis” comes to fruition!

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Telegram founder Pavel Durov, has revealed plans to launch several decentralized crypto products, which could include a crypto exchange as well as non-custodial wallets. In a message on his personal Telegram channel, Durov states this new venture will try and steer the crypto community away from centralized exchanges, and using their already developing “The Open Network” (TON) blockchain platform, it gives even more reason to get away from “legacy platforms” that required centralization to give users a more seamless experience.

I am a huge Telegram fan and I actually have some hope in the quality of their future offerings. However, I also see this as an opportunity for Durov to bring in crypto Twitter users to Telegram…permanently. Mad-Man Musk vs Durov? I’d say Durov might have the upper-hand, as long as his future products aren’t faulty.

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Welp, looks like another privacy-protected tool is flipping on us. ConsenSys, the company behind MetaMask, stated on November 23rd it will start collecting user IP addresses and ETH wallet addresses if using RPC’s via their own Infura protocol. This move is reportedly to satisfy KYC and anti-laundering requirements, among other reasons. It was also noted if a user uses a third-party RPC or personal nodes, this information will not be collected. However, the red alerts have been sounded by the community already, even in the face of ConsenSys claiming this data collection will not be used for monetization:

https://twitter.com/adamscochran/status/1595792167485808640

https://twitter.com/UniquelyNFT/status/1595909119214751744

There’s one thing I’m afraid of here, and it’s the fact that we lose privacy and EVENTUALLY monetization, no matter what ConsenSys is claiming right now. I’m hoping this isn’t the moment other protocols/companies come out with the same policy…

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FTX’s spectacular implosion sent ripples which was felt by all through the cryptoverse, but has also hit the people of the Bahamas, where FTX was headquartered. According to a report in the WSJ, the island nation initially welcomed FTX with it’s lax and favorable crypto laws and eventually the locals became the supporting cast for FTX employees. Catering, security, transportation, event planning, logistics and many more services were required and the locals began taking up these jobs, creating a micro-economy revolving around the disgraced exchange. Now with the collapse, the once bustling area around FTX HQ is barren, with jobs disappearing right along with it, and locals are not happy. However, some of the crypto community are feeling zero sympathy with the nation, stating their pre-disposition to be a haven for those wanting to evade taxes “serves them right” for this situation they provided.

It is unfortunate for the locals, who are only trying to make a living in a third-world nation. Taking advantage in order to feed themselves and their families isn’t wrong. And although the FTX collapse is a direct cause of unemployment for those locals, there isn’t much recourse here. All they can do is start over, hoping another high-end business comes to town to reduce cost and taxes and, in turn, boosts their economy again.

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