täällä seurataan web3-kusetuksen (nft, cryptot, metaverse) etenemistä

[Kaha Junkkunen]

[Suomalainen tilauspukki]

Raskaita lukea välillä noi mikrobitin uutiset, onko ne jotain automaattikäännöksiä vai mitä?

[pigra senlaborulo]

The World’s Biggest Crypto Firm Is Melting Down
Patricia Kowsmann, Caitlin Ostroff and Angus Berwick
6–8 minutes

After FTX crashed, the world of crypto seemed to belong to the largest exchange, Binance. Less than a year later, Binance is the one in distress.

Under threat of enforcement actions by U.S. agencies, Binance’s empire is quaking. Over the past three months, more than a dozen senior executives have left, and the exchange has laid off at least 1,500 employees this year to cut costs and prepare for a decline in business. And while Binance still looms large in crypto, its dominance is dwindling.

Binance now handles about half of all trades where cryptocurrencies are directly bought and sold, down from about 70% at the start of the year, according to data provider Kaiko.

What happens to Binance will have immense implications for the crypto industry because the exchange is so big. Industry players and watchers say other exchanges would fill the void if Binance were to collapse. But in the short term, liquidity in the market could evaporate, driving the price of tokens sharply down.

One institutional trader told The Wall Street Journal that his company has conducted fire drills to withdraw its assets from Binance quickly in the event of a meltdown.

Yi He, Binance’s co-founder and chief marketing officer, vowed to overcome the troubles in a message to Binance staff last month.

“Every battle is a do-or-die situation, and the only thing that can defeat us is ourselves,” she wrote in the message viewed by the Journal. “We have won countless times, and we need to win this time as well.”

Binance is a frequent investor in third-party crypto projects and beyond. Binance has invested in X, formerly known as Twitter. Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao—or CZ as his 8.6 million X followers know him—is the biggest face of crypto.

“You just can’t quantify what would happen to the industry if Binance disappeared, given it has been responsible for fostering a huge amount of innovation and growth,” said Anthony Georgiades, a general partner at Innovating Capital, a fund that invests in early-growth companies.

The U.S. Justice Department has undergone a yearslong investigation that could result in criminal charges for Binance and Zhao as well as billions of dollars of fines, according to people familiar with the probe.

Binance also faces a Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit that alleges it and Zhao operated illegally in the U.S. and misused customers’ funds. The firm has acknowledged past mistakes but says customer money is safe and it is committed to compliance.

“We have worked tirelessly not just to learn the lessons of the past, but also to continue to invest in the teams and systems that ensure user protection,” a spokesman said.

Binance launched in China in 2017, though it claims to be based nowhere, with staff scattered around the world. Its global website is accessible by traders almost everywhere, but that number is falling as its presence has been forbidden in many countries. In Europe, more countries are shutting their doors to the exchange.

In the U.S., activity at its local exchange, Binance.US, has basically dissipated. Its chief executive officer, legal chief and risk head all left recently.

In a virtual Binance.US meeting days before his departure earlier this month, Binance.US CEO Brian Shroder said revenue at the exchange had fallen 70% year to date, according to a presentation viewed by the Journal. Executives looked on with dismay.

Shroder told employees Zhao would need to resolve “his regulatory matters, put his .US holdings in a blind trust, or sell his shares” in order for the U.S. platform to maintain its growth initiative. Those steps would allow the company to unblock banking relationships and get licenses, he said. Zhao is the majority owner of Binance.US and the global exchange.

A spokeswoman for Binance.US declined to comment.

Binance and the DOJ have been talking for months, according to people familiar with the discussions, and inside Binance, there have been discussions on whether Zhao should step down.

Zhao’s insistence in remaining at the helm of the company has frustrated some executives who believed him leaving would improve the chances of the company surviving, the Journal previously reported.

The company upheaval has also hurt employee morale.

Employees confronted Zhao in a summer meeting following layoffs, according to messages viewed by the Journal, in a rare showing of criticism.

“Some ppl laid off were given 0 days notice and/or found out they got laid off because they couldn’t login to the system anymore. How is that treating them respectfully? Is 2 weeks severance respectful?” one anonymous employee asked Zhao in the all-hands meeting chat. Nine others upvoted that. The question went unanswered.

A further stumbling block for Binance came in late August, when the Journal published an article on Binance customers’ use of sanctioned Russian banks. The DOJ has also been investigating Binance in connection with possible violations of U.S. sanctions on Russia, the Journal has reported.

Following the Journal story, the Justice Department questioned Binance about the banks’ usage, and Binance’s chief compliance officer, Noah Perlman, met with department officials to discuss their concerns, a person with direct knowledge of the matter said.

Pressure from the DOJ was partly responsible for Zhao’s decision to begin winding down Binance’s business in Russia, once one of its most important markets, the person said. Over the following two weeks, Binance barred customers from using the sanctioned banks and forced out the executives managing its Russia business. It said it was considering a full withdrawal from Russia.

Zhao publicly remained defiant. “We are one community,” he wrote on X on the day the Russia executives left. “Keep building!”

But behind closed doors, Zhao has been bringing new lawyers to handle the DOJ case, according to people familiar with the move. And Zhao has been staying put in his home in the United Arab Emirates, which doesn’t have a mutual extradition treaty with the U.S.

https://www.wsj.com/finance/currencies/ ... n-338b8e17

[333 tuhatta miljoonaa dollaria]

Raskaita lukea välillä noi mikrobitin uutiset, onko ne jotain automaattikäännöksiä vai mitä?

En tiiä mutta TL;DR

ripuligeneraattori ripuloi ripulirahaa

[pigra senlaborulo]

In case you forgot - be that willingly or otherwise - Peter Molyneux has been working on a blockchain-connected business sim for the last few years. Well, it’s out next month, just in time to sink the final nail into the coffin of worthless NFTs.

Legacy was teased by the veteran developer’s studio 22cans (they of Godus and Curiosity: What's Inside the Cube?, lest we forget) back in 2017, before making a fuller reveal in late 2021. That reveal accompanied the sale of so-called “Land NFTs” for real-life money. Cryptocurrency, anyway: the game’s own Ethereum-based LegacyCoin, built with the help of web3 company-turned-game publisher Gala Games.

As you might remember, this was during the boom of Certain Internet People and video game publishers deciding that the digital receipts for JPGs of cigar-smoking apes, terrible avatars, tweets and Ghost Recon cosmetics were worth thousands to millions of pounds, and sinking their life savings (or hoarded wealth) into paying for pictures that others could happily right-click and save to use as their own, if they really wanted to.

That phenomenon extended to Legacy, with over £40 million of actual, real money going toward buying these “plots” of “land”. The most expensive plot sold was a limited-edition one-of-one London plot, which went for £670,000 in crypto.
The trading house interface in blockchain game Legacy

Almost two years later, Legacy is now due to release on PC and Mac this October 26th. Gala Games’ announcement reads like the breathless (read: vacuous) hype familiar to anyone subject to blockchain press releases over the years, promising that “Legacy’s launch is more than just a game release; it’s the beginning of an extraordinary journey where creativity, strategy, and business innovation meet”.

Of course, there will continue to be new ways to funnel your money into the company making these promises, including buying and selling digital items stored on its GalaChain blockchain and “legacy deed keys” owned by those who bought plots, which “allow the Landowning player to empower “partners” (F2P players) to win real rewards” - a surprisingly feudal sentence for a game boasting such supposedly futuristic technology.

— Legacy (@PlayLegacyGame) September 28, 2023

In fitting fashion, Legacy’s arrival follows a recent report that the vast majority of NFTs are now worthless, with 95% of more than 73,000 blockchain-based collections literally worth nothing.

Naturally, there’s always a cost somewhere. In this case, the researchers found that the energy used to create the NFTs studied used up the equivalent of more than 16,000 tons of carbon dioxide - equal to the combined yearly energy usage of more than 2,000 homes, 3,500 cars or 4,000 trips from London to New Zealand.

“This daunting reality should serve as a sobering check on the euphoria that has often surrounded the NFT space,” the report concluded. “It becomes clear that a significant portion of the NFT market is characterised by speculative and hopeful pricing strategies that are far removed from the actual trading history of these assets.”

Anyway, Legacy’s out next month.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/peter- ... -worthless

[Spandau Mullet]

https://hachyderm.io/@molly0xfff/111195068493652179

Molly White
@[email protected]

From yesterday's exhibits in US v. Sam Bankman-Fried:

The prosecution shows that the "insurance fund" that FTX bragged about was fake, and just calculated by multiplying daily trading volume by a random number around 7500

[Aloysius Kärppä]

https://hachyderm.io/@molly0xfff/111196999847238540

Molly White
@[email protected]

Another fun snippet from this exhibit: the 5,250,000 FTT that was supposedly in the insurance fund was just hardcoded in the frontend.

(This amount of FTT was priced at ~$100 million at the time of the FTX tweet screenshotted in the OP, though FTT was not highly liquid.)

[Marxin Ryyppy]

Saas nähä millaista puolustusta SBFn tiimi saakaan aikaiseksi (tai mitä muuta kikkailua), ainakin syyttäjä alkaa tykittelemään aika suoriltaan

Caroline Ellison Gets Her Revenge on Sam Bankman-Fried

The disgraced crypto titan tried to blame the downfall of his entire operation on his ex-girlfriend. In court on Tuesday, she did not hold back when she took the stand.

By all accounts, Caroline Ellison hated her job at Alameda Research, the hedge fund where she has now pleaded guilty to helping Sam Bankman-Fried siphon billions of dollars of FTX customer money.

She cried on her first week at the job, according to journalist Michael Lewis, after learning the company was much less stable than Bankman-Fried had told her. She entered into a relationship with the crypto golden boy, which he refused to acknowledge despite her multiple pleading memos. Now, in his criminal trial, her former boss and lover is attempting to blame the downfall of his operation on her.

But on Tuesday, Caroline Ellison got her revenge.

Ellison—who has already pleaded guilty to her role in the alleged fraud—took the stand in a downtown Manhattan courtroom as possibly the most important witness in the trial. And she did not hold back.

Early in her testimony, a federal prosecutor asked Ellison, 28, if she had committed any crimes during her work at Alameda Research, Bankman-Fried’s hedge fund. “Yes,” she answered. “We did.” Specifically, she said, she had engaged in fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud, and money laundering.

“He directed me to commit these crimes,” she said.

Spoiler:

Ellison’s questioning was briefly delayed when a prosecutor asked her if she recognized Bankman-Fried in the courtroom. Because of her short stature, she was forced to stand up, then spent roughly 30 seconds scanning the area, evidently unable to see or recognize him. Bankman-Fried’s recently shortened hairdo may have been to blame.

After identifying her former boyfriend, Ellison further detailed the crimes they allegedly committed together. In all, she said, she and her co-conspirators misappropriated $14 billion in customer deposits to pay off loans and fund investments, though she said they were able to repay some of those assets.

Kevin O’Brien, a former federal prosecutor, told The Daily Beast that Ellison “may be the most important accomplice witness in the case.”

“She probably has more detail and more knowledge than any of the other accomplices who had a purely business relationship with Mr. Bankman-Fried,” O’Brien said, adding that the romantic dynamics between the two could make her testimony even more compelling to the jury. “This kind of subcurrent of human interest is what feeds their interest in a way that financial transactions often don’t,” he said.

A former Alameda employee told The Daily Beast he wasn’t surprised that Bankman-Fried’s top lieutenant and former lover decided to testify against him.

“Out of that entire inner circle friend group, I think Caroline and [former FTX executive Nishad Singh] might have had the best intentions,” the former employee said, requesting anonymity because of ongoing legal proceedings. “Their crime was playing along for way too long and not speaking up.”

Before she flipped on her former lover in federal court, Ellison was a stereotypical nerd who lived for math competitions and fan fiction. In many ways, her story mirrors Bankman-Fried’s: a preternaturally gifted child raised by two academics—Bankman-Fried’s parents are Stanford law professors, Ellison’s teach economics at MIT—whose intelligence often isolated her from her peers.

Former classmates describe Ellison as quiet and shy, if somewhat aloof. A high school classmate told The Boston Globe that Ellison would leave school early, telling everyone she was going to classes at MIT. (“She wasn’t humble,” the classmate quipped.) At Stanford, where she majored in math, she sailed through her classes with ease, according to former classmates who spoke to Fortune. Her haughtiness continued into higher education—when asked by a Forbes interviewer in 2021 what she hadn’t learned in college that would have helped her later, she replied: "Pretty much everything. Taxes?"

Despite her ego, classmates agree that none of them saw their socially awkward, math-champion peer as a future international scammer. “When I picture her, I still picture Caroline as this petite, reserved, shy girl doing something low-energy or sedentary,” a Stanford classmate told Fortune—not, this classmate added, as “the Elizabeth Holmes of our class year.”

That changed in December, when Ellison pleaded guilty to seven counts in what prosecutors say was a Bankman-Fried-directed scheme to illegally funnel FTX customer money to Alameda.

“He was the one who set up these systems,” she said in court on Tuesday.

According to Lewis’ book, Going Infinite, Ellison’s involvement with the FTX scandal started with, if not a lie, a grave omission. Over coffee in 2017, Bankman-Fried told Ellison he was building an exciting, secretive new trading firm that centered the aims of effective altruism—the niche philosophy to which both subscribed. When she arrived at the hedge fund, having ditched her multimillion-dollar job at a conventional hedge fund, she found a fledgling startup at war over a missing $4 million. According to Lewis, she called her mother crying her very first week.

Alameda eventually bounced back, and Bankman-Fried took a back seat to focus on FTX, naming Ellison the hedge fund’s co-CEO in his wake. By most accounts—including her own—the role did not suit her well. In a Google Doc from April 2022 reviewed by The New York Times, Ellison wrote, in characteristically analytical style: “Running Alameda doesn’t feel like something I’m that **comparatively advantaged at or well suited to do.” In various other documents, she admitted to weaknesses in “leadership” and “decisiveness” and “expressing broad disagreement with people,” particularly men.

The former Alameda employee told The Daily Beast that Ellison was “quiet” and “shy” and “very much not the typical boss person.”

“She didn’t strike me as a person who would enjoy a position of power, maybe even the opposite,” this person said via the messaging app Telegram. “She enjoyed numbers and hard problems, not titles.”

At the same time, Ellison was engaged in an on-and-off romantic relationship with Bankman-Fried—if one can call it that. In an attempt to get her boss to acknowledge their relationship, Ellison sent him a Google Doc about her “pretty strong romantic feelings” for him, diplomatically laying out the pros and cons of the two dating. He responded by telling her that “In a lot of ways I don’t really have a soul” and relocating the entire company to Hong Kong. After yet another of their breakups, in April 2022, Ellison wrote that their relationship had “significantly decreased my excitement about Alameda” because it “felt too associated with you in a way that was painful.”

That fall, Bankman-Fried started talking to employees about shuttering the hedge fund altogether, and he invested $400 million in a different trading company run by another of his exes, according to the Times. He did not tell Ellison.

By November, Bankman-Fried’s true love, FTX, was bankrupt, and some $8 billion of customer funds was missing. In court last week, Bankman-Fried’s lawyers attempted to pin some of the downfall on Ellison, claiming she failed to enact safeguards at Alameda that would have kept it from losing money so quickly. According to prosecutors, however, Ellison acted at the direction of Bankman-Fried, who was still “calling the shots” at Alameda and using his former girlfriend as a “front.”

In December, Ellison became one of the first two employees to flip on Bankman-Fried, pleading guilty to wire fraud, securities and commodities fraud, and money laundering. At a court hearing later that month, Ellison said she knew that what she was doing was wrong, and said she was “truly sorry.”

Former prosecutor Nick Akerman told The Daily Beast it might not matter to jurors that Ellison had already pleaded guilty to multiple crimes.

“The question is not whether you like her,” he said. “The question is whether she’s telling the truth.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/caroline- ... raud-trial

[pigra senlaborulo]

Sam Bankman-Fried aspired to one day become president of the United States, his ex-girlfriend and former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison testified in court Tuesday.

"He said there was a 5% chance he might be president someday," Ellison said on the witness stand in the criminal trial against the disgraced crypto mogul.

In her testimony in a downtown Manhattan federal courtroom, the 28-year-old Ellison said Bankman-Fried shared his ambitions with her during their relationship, which moved in fits and starts over the course of about three years. Bankman-Fried sought to become a significant player in the worlds of business and politics, she said.

The former CEO of FTX's sister company first took to the witness stand earlier on Tuesday. She told jurors in the criminal trial against Bankman-Fried that she conspired with Bankman-Fried and other members of his inner circle to defraud customers and investors of FTX, his cryptocurrency exchange.

Ellison pleaded guilty to fraud charges in December and has been cooperating with investigators. Meanwhile, Bankman-Fried is facing seven criminal charges and has pleaded not guilty on all counts.

The two met while working at Jane Street, a quantitative investment firm, while Ellison was an intern and Bankman-Fried was a trader.

Bankman-Fried convinced her to join his own hedge fund, Alameda Research, as a trader. She became a CEO of the company in 2021.

The two began a personal relationship in the fall of 2019, Ellison testified.

"We started sleeping together on and off," she said.

In the summer of 2020, they began formally dating. They broke up and got back together again until the spring of 2022, when Ellison said their personal relationship ended for good. Ellison was still the CEO of Alameda Research, which Bankman-Fried owned and controlled.

Bankman-Fried, 31, has not expressed personal political ambitions in the past. He'd have to be at least 35 years old to run for president. But he had been an active donor to candidates of both major US political parties, and primarily contributed to Democrat candidates.

Bankman-Fried thought political donations were a good investment, Ellison testified Tuesday. She said he believed the millions of dollars he donated to now-President Joe Biden's 2020 campaign had helped get him important recognition.

"He thought it was very effective, that you could get very high returns for relatively small amounts of money," she said.

Last week, Bankman-Fried's biographer, Michael Lewis, revealed that the FTX cofounder even considered paying Donald Trump not to run for office in the 2024 presidential election.

Lewis told "60 Minutes" that the number that was "kicked around" was $5 billion, but he wasn't sure whether the figure had come directly from Trump. A spokesperson for Trump told Insider's Lloyd Lee that SBF has been "outed as a fraudster and someone that can't be trusted."https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-ban ... ?r=US&IR=T

[pigra senlaborulo]

mikrobitti.fi
Ruotsi käytti ison köntän veronmaksajien rahoja nft-taideteokseen – pian sen jälkeen tapahtui jotain ikävää
Samuli Leppälä
~2 minutes

Ruotsin yleisradioyhtiö SVT:n mukaan Ruotsi sijoitti merkittävän summan rahaa nft-taiteeseen juuri ennen kryptomarkkinoiden romahtamista. Suomessa aiheesta uutisoi ensimmäisenä Helsingin Sanomat.

Pari vuotta sitten maailmalla nähtiin valtava huuma nft-sisältöjen ympärillä. Kuitenkin nopeasti kasvanut kupla puhkesi yhtä nopeasti kuin se oli syntynytkin.

Nft on lyhenne sanoista non-fungible token. Suomeksi se kääntyy kutakuinkin digitaaliseksi hallintatodistukseksi.

Ilja Karilammen FolkFigure-nft-teokseen käytettiin peräti 300 000 kruunua vuonna 2021 järjestetyn avoimen taidehaun jälkeen. Ostohinta vastaa noin 26 000 euroa.

FolkFigure-teos on tarkasteltavissa suoraan selaimen kautta.

Verkkosivun mukaan kyseessä on katoava taideprojekti, joka on ollut aktiivinen vuoden 2022 joulukuusta vuoden 2023 tammikuuhun asti. Tuona aikana hahmo on muuttunut jatkuvasti avoimien rajapintojen kautta tulevan datan mukaan. Lisäksi teoksen taustalla näkyvä maisema vaihtui päivittäin.

Puolestaan sivuston kävijät ovat pystyneet lunastamaan FolkFiguresta omia nft-teoksia.

Syyskuussa useat kansainväliset mediat uutisoivat selvityksestä, jonka mukaan peräti 95 prosenttia kaikista nft-kokoelmista on nykyään arvottomia. Aiheesta on kirjoittanut muun muassa The Guardian.

https://www.mikrobitti.fi/uutiset/mb/5d ... a6491de0de

[Spandau Mullet]

Ruotsi käytti ison köntän veronmaksajien rahoja nft-taideteokseen – pian sen jälkeen tapahtui jotain ikävää

Kyllä tossa ekassa vaiheessa jo tapahtui jotain ikävää.

[pigra senlaborulo]

Hackers host malicious code on Binance chain to circumvent takedowns
An otherwise very "web2" hack has taken on a web3 twist as hackers have started to store malicious code on the blockchain. Attackers first compromise WordPress websites, then show a screen to visitors telling them they need to update their browser to view the website. When the visitor does so, the site downloads malware which then harvests information like login credentials.

Attackers previously stored the malicious code on typical webhosting services, but those services began to take it down. Now, some have started using Binance's blockchain to store these payloads, taking advantage of the immutable nature of blockchains to prevent anyone from taking it down.

https://web3isgoinggreat.com/single/hac ... -takedowns

[pigra senlaborulo]

wsj.com
Why the U.S. Government Has $5 Billion in Bitcoin
Vicky Ge Huang
6–7 minutes

The U.S. government is one of the world’s biggest holders of bitcoin, but unlike other crypto whales, it doesn’t care if the digital currency goes up or down in value.

That is because Uncle Sam’s stash of some 200,000 bitcoin was seized from cybercriminals and darknet markets. It is primarily offline in encrypted, password-protected storage devices known as hardware wallets that are controlled by the Justice Department, the Internal Revenue Service or another agency.

What the federal government does with its bitcoin has long been a topic of interest among crypto traders because any sale could potentially swing prices or cause other ripple effects in the $1 trillion digital-asset market.

The U.S. has been notoriously slow to convert its stash of bitcoin into dollars. It isn’t HODLing, crypto parlance for “holding on for dear life” and never intending to sell. Nor is it waiting for bitcoin to go “to the moon” so it can sell its holdings for a hefty profit. Rather, that big pile of bitcoin is more a byproduct of a lengthy legal process than strategic planning.

“We don’t play the market. We basically are set by the timing in our process,” said Jarod Koopman, executive director of the IRS’s cyber and forensics services section, which oversees all activities focused on cybercrimes.

Three recent seizures alone put more than 200,000 bitcoin in the government’s coffers, according to an analysis of public filings by crypto firm 21.co. Even after selling some 20,000 bitcoin, the U.S.’s holdings are still worth more than $5 billion, the analysis shows. The size of the government’s total stash is likely much larger.

From seizing illicit bitcoin to receiving the final order to liquidate the tokens for cash, the legal process can take years. In some cases, that worked in the government’s favor because the cryptocurrency wildly appreciated in value.

For example in 2016, when crypto exchange Bitfinex was hacked by convicted tech entrepreneur Ilya Lichtenstein, bitcoin was trading around $600. By the time Lichtenstein and his wife, Heather Morgan, were arrested in 2022 and the Justice Department announced its largest-ever financial seizure of about 95,000 bitcoin, the token had climbed to $44,000. Today, it is hovering around $27,000.

The U.S. government didn’t seize any crypto in last year’s high-profile collapse of exchange FTX, but it did take over hundreds of millions of dollars in assets, made up mostly of cash and shares of brokerage . Robinhood bought back the seized shares from the U.S. Marshals Service in August. FTX’s crypto assets are part of its bankruptcy estate; the company is expected to eventually use that money to help fill its $8 billion hole in customer funds or reboot the exchange.

When a government agency takes control of a crypto asset, Uncle Sam doesn’t immediately own that asset. Only after a court issues a final forfeiture order does the government take ownership and transfer the tokens to the U.S. Marshals Service, the primary agency tasked with liquidating seized assets.

While the case is pending, the government holds the bitcoin as evidence or proceeds of the crime. The Justice Department has been storing seized bitcoin on hardware wallets since the 2013 shutdown of online drug bazaar Silk Road. In recent years, the agency seized 69,000 bitcoin that once belonged to Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht and 50,676 bitcoin from a Georgia man who pleaded guilty to stealing tokens from the bazaar.

“The government moves generally very slowly to dispose of those assets because they’ve got to do a ton of due diligence, the cases are often complicated and there’s a lot of red tape,” said Nicolas Christin, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University.

The Marshals Service’s liquidation process has evolved along with the development of the crypto industry. In the early days of crypto, the agency held auctions to sell cryptocurrencies directly to interested buyers, many of whom booked a healthy profit, at least on paper.

Venture capitalist Tim Draper, who has made a fortune investing in cryptocurrencies, bought more than 30,000 bitcoin from the government via two auctions in 2014. In one auction, he paid $632 for each token when they were trading at $618. After bitcoin went down to about $180, he paid about $191 per token in another auction. Cumberland, high-frequency trading firm DRW’s crypto unit, won 27,000 bitcoin in an auction the same year.

For the first time in January 2021, the Marshals Service decided to liquidate some of its stockpile of seized digital currencies on crypto exchanges. Historically, it has sold crypto assets in multiple batches rather than all at once to avoid the adverse impact of a large sell order on the market. With its current practice, the agency takes additional steps to ensure the market isn’t adversely impacted, including liquidating the cryptocurrencies over a longer window of time.

One such sale occurred in March when the government sold 9,861 bitcoin via . The Marshals Service confirmed the sale. Coinbase declined to comment.

“Our goal is to dispose of assets in a timely manner at fair-market value,” a representative for the agency said.

In many cases, the proceeds from the government’s sales go toward reimbursing victims. Bitfinex said in July that it received more than $300,000 in cash and 6.917 of a cryptocurrency called Bitcoin Cash, valued at about $1,900 at the time, from the Department of Homeland Security. Government agencies that are investigating increasingly sophisticated crimes can also ask for help covering expenses for things like licensing fees for crypto-tracing software.

“It’s hard for us to quickly adapt,” Koopman from the IRS said. “What has transpired in less than 10 years in crypto took the financial industry the same time to do in 100 years.”

https://www.wsj.com/finance/currencies/ ... n-78ce0938

[pigra senlaborulo]

techcrunch.com
Reddit is killing blockchain-based Community Points | TechCrunch
Morgan Sung
5–6 minutes

Reddit is winding down Community Points — the blockchain-based “internet points” program designed to reward creators and developers — in favor of prioritizing rewards programs that are less difficult to scale.

“Though we saw some future opportunities for Community Points, the resourcing needed was unfortunately too high to justify,” Reddit’s director of consumer and product communications Tim Rathschmidt told TechCrunch. “The regulatory environment has since added to that effort. Though the moderators and communities that supported Community Points have been incredible partners – as it’s evolved, the product is no longer set up to scale.”

Community Points, which will be phased out by early November, were promoted as a chance for Redditors to “own” a piece of their community. First launched in 2020, Community Points were awarded to users who positively engaged in select subreddits in order to incentivize better content and conversation. The points were essentially interchangeable Ethereum tokens stored in Reddit’s Vault, which operated as a cryptocurrency wallet.

Once awarded, neither Reddit nor moderators could take back another user’s Community Points. The points could be used on special features, like memberships that unlocked unique badges and animated emojis. Once spent, the points were “burned.”

As a measure of “reputation,” Community Points were displayed next to usernames in participating subreddits to mark the community’s biggest contributors. Since the points were on the blockchain, the program aimed to allow users to display their “reputation” anywhere online, and could be embedded in other sites or apps. If users were banned from Reddit, their points would still exist on the blockchain, but they would lose access to their Vault — rendering the points useless.

But scaling Community Points proved to be an immense challenge for Reddit. The pilot program originally used Ethereum, which had high transaction fees and limited bandwidth.

“Putting all Reddit users on the main Ethereum network, for example, would be infeasible and prohibitively expensive,” the Community Points page said. “Therefore, we have researched heavily into solutions that are decentralized, secure and yet highly scalable.”

Reddit moved Community Points to Arbitrum Nova in 2022, which is built “on top” of Ethereum.

“This enables it to apply scaling technologies that enable ultra-low-cost transactions, very high energy efficiency and strong security guarantees,” the FAQ stated.

But even that was impractical for Reddit. In the years since launching Community Points, Reddit has rolled out a number of community incentives like the moderator rewards program and the Contributor Program, which awards actual money by allowing eligible users to convert their Reddit gold and karma into cash. Under the Contributor Program, Redditors who earn at least 10 gold within a 30-day period are eligible for a monthly withdrawal. Reddit users who have over 5,000 karma (total upvotes) can earn $1 per gold.

“We’re still working on ways to improve community governance and empower communities and contributions,” Rathschmidt said. “Part of why we’re moving past this product is that we’ve already launched, or are actively investing in, several products that accomplish what the Community Points program was trying to accomplish, while being easier to adopt and understand.”

He added that the special features that Community Points can buy, like gifs, should be available to any community. Once the program is fully phased out, beta participants will no longer see their points in their Vaults, and will no longer earn points in their communities. Although Rathschmidt said he couldn’t give an exact count of the number of subreddits affected by the cut, he admitted that “you’d be able to count them on one hand and have a finger or two left over.”

It’s not the only rewards program that Reddit has killed this year. Earlier this year, Reddit announced the end of its coin system, which allowed users to purchase Gold and other currency to award other users. The announcement came in the aftermath of the sitewide protests against Reddit’s API changes, which culminated in a 48-hour blackout of over 8,000 subreddits, and was wildly unpopular among Reddit’s already jaded users. Awards and existing coins under the previous reward program were available until mid-September. Reddit announced the Contributor Program later that month.

Rathschmidt noted that the company isn’t phasing out Community Points to make way for the Contributor Program, but rather to prioritize on programs that are “more set up to scale and benefit more users,” like the Contributor Program.

“It’s one example. Now, we’re able to scale several products that accomplish what the Community Points program was trying to accomplish — like subreddit karma and gifs,” he continued. “Many of the benefits of Community Points have already been built into the platform.”

https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/17/reddi ... n-rewards/

[pigra senlaborulo]

psypost.org
Cryptocurrency’s popularity in the U.S. tied to conservative moral foundations
Stacey Coleen Lubag
4–5 minutes

In a recent study published in the scientific journal Frontiers in Psychology, researchers provide evidence that cryptocurrency technology, specifically its current adopters in the United States, tends to align more closely with conservative moral values rather than liberal ones.

The world of cryptocurrency, often associated with decentralized financial systems, has surged in popularity in recent years. While many view it as a tool for financial freedom, its underlying motivations have remained relatively unexplored in academic circles. Prior research has examined the financial and technological aspects of cryptocurrencies but has largely ignored their sociopolitical implications.

Researchers at the University of Utah and Toronto Metropolitan University ventured into a study to understand the moral foundations of crypto advocates. Given the divisive nature of discussions surrounding cryptocurrency — with enthusiasts often promoting it as a solution to many economic woes — the study was rooted in understanding societal and political inclinations behind the topic.

In their research, the team analyzed a large set of tweets related to Bitcoin and conducted a controlled survey — overall, unpacking information learned across two studies. In the first study, a total of 959,393 tweets regarding crypto were analyzed for their usage of moral-language (such as words like “pure”, “impure”, and “theft”).

In the second study, a total of 500 participants, all based in the United States, were recruited through a study recruiting website called Prolific. 487 passed all attention checks and were included in the analysis, with 297 women and 190 men, averaging 37 years old. All of them answered a series of questions probing interest and attitudes towards cryptocurrency.

Then, researchers compared the alignment of crypto enthusiasts with what are known as “binding moral foundations” (Authority, Purity, and Loyalty) – typically associated with political conservatives – to “individualizing foundations” (Fairness and Care) which are often linked to liberals.

The findings were revealing. Crypto enthusiasts, especially in the U.S., seem to resonate more with the conservative values of Authority, Purity, and Loyalty than the liberal ideals of Fairness and Care. In simpler terms, those with an interest in cryptocurrency, based on tweet analysis and survey results, showed a stronger alignment with the moral values often held by political conservatives. This suggests that the appeal of cryptocurrencies might be deeply rooted in these moral principles, potentially influencing adoption decisions.

The researchers concluded that “our findings document convergent evidence indicating that crypto is best understood as ‘right-wing tech’ more closely aligned with conservative moral foundations at the current stage of adoption. Our analyses of a large set of Bitcoin tweets and a controlled survey indicate that binding moral foundations (Authority, Purity, and Loyalty) that are more closely associated with political conservatives better reflect one’s interest in cryptocurrency than individualizing foundations (Fairness and Care).”

However, it’s essential to understand the scope of these findings. While the research provides a novel insight into the moral alignments of cryptocurrency users, it’s mainly correlational. This means while there’s a noticeable link between conservative values and crypto interest, it doesn’t necessarily imply a direct causation. Also, this study primarily focused on crypto advocates within the U.S., so extrapolating these findings to a global audience might not be entirely accurate.

Furthermore, the research centered more on understanding the majority – those investing and showing interest in cryptocurrency. It didn’t dive deeply into the actions of a minority, like fraudulent businesses trying to scam investors. And while cryptocurrency’s decentralized and open-record nature might seem a deterrent for dishonest activities, it doesn’t mean dishonesty is entirely absent.

Sachin Banker of University of Utah, alongside Joowon Park and Eugene Chan of Toronto Metropolitan University, authored this study — titled “The moral foundations of cryptocurrency: evidence from Twitter and survey research“.

https://www.psypost.org/2023/10/cryptoc ... ons-214090