Crypto_NFT

2022-09-01 18:04:14 ​​Crypto.com Withdraws €500M UEFA Champions League Sponsorship

Crypto.com has pulled out of a five-year €500 million sponsorship deal with the UEFA Champions League at the last minute, SportBusiness reports.

According to the publication, the company was supposed to replace Gazprom as the title sponsor of the tournament. The European football organization terminated the contract with the Russian holding in March after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Arrangements with Crypto.com implied the payment of €100 million per season by the platform, compared to about €40 million from Gazprom.

According to SportBusiness sources, the parties agreed on the deal in principle and were close to signing the agreement. Supposedly, in the history of the football union, this turned out to be the most advanced stage of negotiations, at which a commercial contract fell apart.

The interlocutors of the publication emphasized that the refusal of Crypto.com from sponsorship is not connected with the crisis that has gripped the cryptocurrency market. The company has faced legal challenges in some key European countries, including the UK, France and Italy, regarding the scope of its licenses.

Phil Carling, managing director of the Octagon agency, drew attention to the reduction in the financial flow to sports from the crypto industry:

“Until three months ago it was a hot sector and they were offering crazy money for premium rights. Now we do not observe this in any of the processes that we support. I'm not saying it's forever, everything can come back. But for now, the big money deals and breakthroughs in terms of commissions we've been getting are gone."

According to the publication, Crypto.com has recently allocated more than $1 billion for sports sponsorship. Among other things, this includes agreements with:

- the Staples Center in Los Angeles ($700 million);
- auto racing series "Formula 1";
- the UFC mixed martial arts league ($175 million over 10 years);
- Australian Football League;
- FIFA World Cup in Qatar;
- French club Paris Saint-Germain (at least $25 million over three years).

Recall that in February, Crypto.com, along with Coinbase and FTX, showed a record number of ads during the Super Bowl. A 30 second post cost $6.5 million. Open / Comment

2022-08-31 16:12:53 ​​US congressman asks bitcoin exchanges for anti-fraud data

Member of the US House of Representatives Raja Krishnamurthy sent letters to a number of federal agencies and cryptocurrency exchanges asking for data on the fight against fraud.

“The lack of a central authority to detect suspicious transactions in many situations, the irreversibility of transactions, and the limited understanding by many consumers and investors of the underlying technology makes cryptocurrencies the preferred transaction method for attackers,” the appeal says.

Among the recipients are the Ministry of Finance, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the CFTC and the FTC, as well as the Binance.US, Coinbase, FTX, Kraken and KuCoin platforms. They must report on the actions taken to protect investors.

In particular, the head of the American division of Binance, Brian Schroeder, must provide documents related to the company's policy regarding digital assets and mechanisms for identifying potential scam projects by September 12.

“Given the growing popularity of cryptocurrencies as a form of payment and investment, I am concerned about the rapid increase in fraud and abuse by users,” the congressman explained.

In his opinion, the authorities are “in no hurry to stop” unfair practices, and the existing legislation “does not fully cover digital assets.”

Krishnamurti chairs a subcommittee on economic and consumer policy oversight. In February 2021, he, along with colleague Jackie Spier, demanded an explanation from Tron founder Justin Sun regarding content moderation on the DLive streaming platform following the riots in Washington.

In July 2022, Sherrod Brown, head of the US Senate Banking Committee, asked Alphabet and Apple for information on how to prevent cryptocurrency fraud in apps hosted on their stores.

Recall that in the second quarter, the total losses of crypto projects from hacks and illegal activities amounted to more than $670 million, according to Immunefi.

In August, Elliptic analysts estimated that in the 12 months since July 2021, attackers have stolen over $100 million worth of NFTs. Open / Comment

2022-08-31 16:09:20 ​​Bitcoin mining difficulty increased by 9% at once

As a result of the next recalculation, the difficulty of mining the first cryptocurrency increased by 9.26%, to 30.97 T.
In the approximately two-week period between the latest metric adjustments, the average network hashrate was 221 EH/s.
According to Glassnode, network computing power (smoothed by a seven-day moving average) reached 222.3 EH/s as of August 30th. The figure is gradually returning to levels near the peak value of June 11 (231 EH / s).
Foundry USA continues to hold the lead among mining pools in terms of the share of bitcoin hashrate - 23.25%. It is followed by F2Pool (16.42%) and AntPool (13.43%) affiliated with Bitmain.
The daily income of miners has been hovering around $20 million since mid-June. In total, for the first month of summer, the figure was $668 million, which is 26% less than in May. In July, revenue fell another 9% to $609.7 million.
In June, large public miners sold a total of around 14,600 BTC, representing 23% of their total holdings in the first cryptocurrency. In July, the trend continued as companies liquidated 5,767.9 BTC for a total mining of 3,478 BTC.
Recall that the mining difficulty reached its maximum on May 11 (31.25 T), on the eve of the fall of the crypto market, provoked by the collapse of Terra. Open / Comment

2022-08-31 16:04:27 ​​NFT related amendment can be activated in two weeks

XRPL validators have begun voting on the XLS-20 amendment, which will allow the use of native non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the XRP ledger.

The XRPScan service reported that the NonFungibleTokensV1.1 amendment received the most votes. If this support is maintained within 14 days, XLS20 will be activated on mainnet on September 13, 2022.

At the time of publication, 28 voted in favor of the amendment, and six validators opposed the proposal.

Previously, RippleX's development division announced that the team had conducted rigorous performance testing and are confident in XRPL's ability to support XLS-20.

Currently, the NFT feature is only available on the testnet, but despite this, some big names have already announced their intention to create NFTs on XRPL, for example, the world famous motorcycle manufacturer Ducati will create NFTs based on XRPL and NFT Pro. Balmain, the French luxury fashion house, has also announced a long-term global partnership with marketplace MintNFT.

XRP will be the native currency for buying or selling NFTs on XRPL, which could greatly boost the adoption of the coin. Open / Comment

2022-08-30 18:42:29 ​​Crypto.com accidentally transferred $10.5M to a user instead of $100

In May 2021, crypto platform Crypto.com accidentally transferred $10.5 million to a Melbourne woman instead of returning $100. It is reported by Ticker News.
The erroneous transaction was discovered after more than seven months as a result of an audit at the end of the year.
The platform sued for a refund. During the hearing, a representative of Crypto.com explained the error with the transfer by saying that the employee entered the account number instead of the amount of $100 in the payment field.
However, before the company attempted to return the funds, the recipient, along with her sister, bought a luxurious mansion with a gym and a cinema in the suburbs of Melbourne.
The judge ruled to sell the property and return the remaining money to the platform.
Recall that in January, Crypto.com became a sponsor of the men's and women's football leagues in Australia. The company noted that they were attracted to the deal by the interest of Australians in digital assets.
In March, it became known that the platform would become the official sponsor of the World Cup in Qatar. Open / Comment

2022-08-30 18:37:11 ​​The turnover of the largest NFT-platform OpenSea fell by 99% compared to May. Bored Apes no longer needed?

The largest NFT-platform OpenSea lost a lot of money in turnover. It is down 99% compared to May 2022. We managed to find out about this thanks to the DappRadar service.
On May 1, 2022, the largest turnover of $2.7 billion was recorded on the trading platform for NFT OpenSea. But on August 29, the situation turned out to be much more deplorable, because the total turnover of money amounted to 9.34 million dollars.
At that moment, there were 24,020 users on OpenSea, which is only a third less than in May.
The decline in the popularity of NFTs is associated with a drop in the value of cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin and Ethereum, the two most popular cryptocurrencies, have lost over 50% of their value since the beginning of 2022. Because of this, the so-called “crypto winter” began, which led to a crisis in all areas related to the blockchain.
So the price of one NFT from the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection (or “bored monkeys”), which is considered the most popular and prestigious, has fallen by 53%.
At the same time, OpenSea management is not particularly worried about what is happening. It told Fortune that the NFT platform is long-term oriented, and such moments of crisis are inevitable. Therefore, OpenSea expects the next round of development of NFT technologies. Open / Comment

2022-08-30 18:33:53 ​​Meta will allow you to upload NFTs to both of your social networks

Meta has added functionality to upload non-fungible tokens to Facebook. This is stated in the official announcement. Users can now post NFTs to both of the company's social networks.
You can connect wallets to your Facebook and Instagram accounts: Rainbow, MetaMask, Trust Wallet, Coinbase Wallet and Dapper Wallet. It will be possible to upload Ethereum, Polygon and Flow tokens.
For the first time, Meta connected the NFT toolkit to Instagram; in May, the technology passed closed testing among selected authors.
So far, cross-posting of tokens in both platforms of the company is available only to users from the United States. Open / Comment

2022-08-29 14:11:41 ​​Elliptic: Tornado Cash was a key service for NFT scammers

The U.S.-sanctioned Tornado Cash cryptocurrency mixer has been the tool of choice for laundering funds from the NFT scam. This is stated in the report of the analytical company Elliptic.
According to them, the mixing service was the source of $137.6 million worth of crypto assets processed by NFT marketplaces. With its help, 52% of the proceeds from illegal operations with NFTs were laundered.
“The widespread use of Tornado Cash for non-fungible token scams highlights the need for effective oversight by NFT platforms,” the analysts added.
Tornado Cash did not comment on this information.
According to Elliptic, in general, since 2017, cybercriminals have laundered more than $8 million of illegal funds through NFT marketplaces, which is 0.02% of the total trading turnover.
In the same period, $328.6 million (0.81%) connected with the market of non-fungible tokens passed through cryptomixers. Part of this amount may reflect income from illegal activities.
From July 2021 to July 2022, over $100 million worth of tokens were stolen.
Recall that on August 8, OFAC added to the sanctions list the Tornado Cash cryptocurrency mixer on suspicion of laundering over $7 billion in cryptocurrencies.
On August 12, Dutch authorities arrested Alexey Pertsev, the developer of the service. The authorities suspect him of involvement in money laundering and concealment of criminal financial flows.
Celsius Network said in a lawsuit last week that its former wealth manager Keyfi and its founder Jason Stone stole millions of dollars worth of platform assets, including by converting them into hundreds of NFTs and using Tornado Cash. Open / Comment

2022-08-29 14:07:59 ​​"Wolf of Wall Street" criticized high-risk cryptocurrencies

Former American broker Jordan Belfort, known as the "Wolf of Wall Street", in an interview with The Crypto Mile compared small-cap digital assets to "junk" stocks.
“I don’t think there is any research you can do to protect yourself against these ultra-low-cap assets, except for a very early entry,” he said.
There is a lot of money to be made in this segment, Belfort said, but most buyers of junk stocks will lose their money.
He warned investors against acquiring such assets only if they are not willing to commit a certain amount of their portfolio to gambling.
The “Wolf of Wall Street” said that he considers Bitcoin and Ethereum primarily as reliable digital assets due to their strong foundation.
“I think it’s only a matter of time before bitcoin reaches maturity for it to start trading more as a store of value than as a growth stock,” he explained.
In 2018, Belfort said that retail investors in the first cryptocurrency were brainwashed. A few years later, he changed his mind, like many other investors and financiers.
Recall that in July 2022, The Wolf of Wall Street called Bitcoin a long-term hedge against inflation.
Previously, he criticized meme-cryptocurrencies Shiba Inu and Dogecoin for lack of value. In his opinion, the creators of these projects use an unregulated market and should go to jail. Open / Comment

2022-08-29 14:02:48 ​​Bitcoin has failed the level of $20,000. Ethereum is below $1470

On Saturday, August 27, Bitcoin quotes failed the $20,000 level, testing a range near $19,900 (on the Binance exchange). The price of Ethereum fell below $1470.
Over the past 24 hours, liquidations in the futures market have exceeded $382 million, with more than $167 million of that amount coming from Ethereum, according to Coinglass. Basically exchanges forcibly closed short positions.
Earlier, the head of the US Federal Reserve System (FRS), Jerome Powell, said that in order to control inflation, the central bank would need to keep interest rates high for some time.
Digital assets reacted negatively to the words of the Fed chairman. The traditional stock market showed a similar reaction, with the Nasdaq index dropping almost 4%, the biggest intraday drop since the end of June 2022, for example.
Crypto investor and blogger Lark Davis noted that the Fed will not change its position in the near future, and therefore the markets will be hurt even more.
Economist Alex Krueger expressed a similar opinion. According to him, the Fed would rather drive the economy into recession than allow excessive inflation. The specialist advised users to hedge positions and revalue them.
Recall that the president of Euro Pacific Capital, Peter Schiff, predicted the fall of bitcoin to $10,000. Open / Comment