Author: Jana Serfontein

Jana has keen interest in what cryptocurrencies have to offer in regards to NGO’s, governments and the financial system. And is also intrigued with the psychological effect that cryptocurrencies have on society.

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Blockchain Crypto News Tokens TRON

BitTorrent Token Soars 80% On News of Mainnet Launch

Bitcoin penny stock BitTorrent has soared 80 percent ahead of its Mainnet Launch on December 12. News of the mainnet of BitTorrent Chain (BTTC), the world’s first heterogeneous cross-chain interoperability protocol, going live has sent the price up 35.56 percent in 24 hours.

Interoperability Goes Live Next Week

BitTorrent (BTT), the leading torrent software site, launched its BitTorrent token native currency on the TRON (TRX) blockchain in 2019 using its TRC-10 standard. The mid-cap altcoin, however, surged after the announcement of its impending mainnet launch.

BTT is a file-sharing protocol token built atop TRX that allows users to share files peer-to-peer by paying for access to faster download speeds, more storage resources, and more bandwidth.

BTTC comes in as the world’s first heterogeneous cross-chain interoperability protocol that adopts Proof-of-Stake (PoS) mechanisms and leverages sidechains for the scaling of smart contracts. The chain allows interoperability with the public chains of Ethereum, TRON and BSC, with more chains to be supported in the future.

According to the developer community of BitTorrent, the mainnet will launch with BTT redenomination implemented. Since the company took to Twitter to announce the official launch date of BTTC, BitTorrent Inc has been exploding:

When announcing the BTTC launch in early November, the project further explained what the chain’s new capabilities would be. According to the press release, BTTC will also be compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine:

“Furthermore, BTTC will support and be compatible with TRON, Ethereum, and Binance Smart Chain (BSC) upon its release, allowing users to transfer mainstream assets among TRON, Ethereum and BSC in a decentralised manner without any restrictions.”

While maintaining its current market cap, the old BTT token will be redenominated and swapped with the new BTT tokens at a ratio of 1:1000. The total supply of BTT tokens will be increased from 990,000,000,000 to 990,000,000,000,000. The new tokens after redenomination will be referred to as BTT, while the old ones will be renamed as BTTOLD.

The announcement of the specifics of the launch date triggered BTT to surge about 78 percent from a low of US$0.0023 to a high of US$00.41. Tron, the blockchain on which BTT is built, also saw positive price action in response to the announcement.

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Crypto News Monero Security

Alert: Monero Multi-Sig Wallet Code May Be Compromised

Participants in the Monero have been exposed to “vulnerabilities” in the implementation of its multi-signature wallet. The vulnerabilities do not affect the temporary supporting multisigs, but rather the current wallet code implementing them, according to Monero developer binaryFate.

Following the Reddit thread, the vulnerabilities were first released through the vulnerability response process. Developers concluded that it would be best to inform the public for security purposes, which has been well received by the community.

Compromised Code Interferes with Multi-signature Creation and Signing

The Monero multi-sig wallet has the ability to form, sign and submit transactions as a group, with the number of signatures needed to sign a transaction varying depending on the type of wallet. The threat means that interference may be experienced with multisig wallet formation, and it may also affect transaction signing.

The compromise could result in funds stolen by one of the parties to the signing. While attending to a solution, Monero has urged its customers to remain calm, and to avoid multisig transactions where possible.

The team at Monero expects a solution within the next week and will provide customer feedback regarding the situation. Monero has however noted that if multisig parties trust each other, transactions can be performed successfully – funds are not at risk when they remain intact, and if the wallet creation is not abused, all is well with the transaction.

Monero Again in a Compromised Position

Monero regularly finds itself associated with scandal and fraud, with many making a negative connotation with the ecosystem. Earlier this year, Monero was implicated when German authorities arrested an Australian man who ran an illegal marketplace dubbed “The Ebay for criminals”. The man had received payments via cryptos with transactions worth 4650 Bitcoin and 12,000 Monero taking place.

In August, Monero was again implicated in a massive fraud case when its former lead maintainer, Riccardo Spagni, aka “Fluffy Pony”, was arrested in the US and extradited to South Africa to face charges of alleged fraud-linked offences between 2009 and 2011. “Fluffy Pony” has been accused of stealing approximately US$100,00 from his former employer by creating false invoices and redirecting payments to his personal bank accounts. If convicted, he faces 20 years in prison.

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Crypto News Ethereum Gaming Investing Metaverse NFTs

Humans of the Metaverse is Launching In-Game Virtual NFT Art Auctions

Humans of the Metaverse, a new and unique collection of Meta-Human NFTs, is launching in-game virtual NFT art auctions. In Q1 of 2022, users will be able to access one-for-one artwork NFTs, all using the project’s native token, $HOTM.

Humans of the Metaverse (HOTM token) has exciting prospects amid the metaverse boom. The project comprises a collective of 6,500 unique Meta-Human NFTs, stored as ERC-721 tokens on the Ethereum blockchain and hosted on the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), which is essentially a distributed system for storing and accessing files, websites, applications and data.

Humans of Metaverse Character Designs on OpenSea

Residents of the Metaverse are represented by a unique composition from 200 traits collected from the most notable and influential personalities, taken from all temporal spaces. The project is on the road to creating the “MetaCity” – a fully integrated Web3 ecosystem where HOTM token holders will reside and be able to spend the project’s native token, $HOTM, in an increasing number of ways, giving long-term value and utility to holders as the city grows.

Holders of Humans NFTs will be able to perform various activities and “interact” with a range of buildings within the HOTM ecosystem via the $HOTM token.

Humans of the Metaverse Roadmap

Within the MetaCity, Humans will be able to generate tokens via ‘jobs’ – another trait conferred on the NFTs. Each job determines the specific NFT’s $HOTM generation rate, and ‘salaries’ will range between 10-30 $HOTM/day. Along with token generation, holders will be able to invest in real estate by buying land and city essentials, along with buildings, each of which is upgradeable to allow evolution and expansion.

Within the metaverse will be a museum where Human NFT holders will be able to spend $HOTM on 1/1 artworks, personalised Humans tailored to their holders’ likeness, along with NFTs from other projects. The project, however, wants to make it clear that 1 $HOTM = 1 $HOTM, which means these tokens do not have a monetary value.

Initial Humans NFTs Sold Out But More Available on Secondary Market

According to the HOTM website, the initial set of Humans NFTs sold out within 15 minutes on the OpenSea marketplace, and over 100 ether (ETH) was traded in the first hours of the sale. Do not fear, however – Humans NFTs are available for purchase on the secondary market to all those who missed out during the initial sale.

The Metaverse: The Next Big Thing

The term “metaverse” is relatively new to the world of cryptos, but that has not stopped the concept booming. Exhilarating projects are on the rise and it is fast becoming the next big investment theme, according to financial powerhouse Morgan Stanley.

Last month, the global banking giant issued a statement to its investors in which it notes the metaverse is garnering much attention, with both Meta (formerly Facebook) and Microsoft venturing into the space. Accordingly, Morgan Stanley said, “it can fundamentally change the medium through which we socialise with others”.

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Crypto Art Crypto News Ethereum NFTs

Wikipedia Co-Founder’s First Post to Be Sold as an NFT

Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales is auctioning off “The Birth of Wikipedia”, made up of the very first post on the reference site in the form of a non-fungible token (NFT), along with the strawberry iMac computer used by Wales when Wiki launched on January 15, 2001.

The token will be sold through London-based auction house Christie’s and will run until December 15. Part of the proceeds will be used to support WT.Social, “a decentralised, non-commercial social network free of advertising, tracking, information harvesting, and misinformation”, which Wales launched in 2019.

The NFT, which reads “Hello, World!”, written on the Ethereum blockchain, will be launched as a JPEG and will incorporate an interactive feature – allowing the buyer to edit the window, along with a timer that will reset it to its original state after five minutes. Christie’s hopes that the NFT will sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars, as this novel art form has become a staple of auction houses and the art market.

The strawberry-coloured iMac used by Jimmy Wales at the time of the Wiki launch. Source: Christie’s
The NFT of the very first Wikipedia edit made by Jimmy Wales circa 2001. Source: Christie’s

When Wales sent out his initial greeting in 2001, he could not have imagined that the project would grow so massively. “I always say I’m a pathological optimist,” he admits. “I thought if we did a really good job we might be a top 100 or top 50 website, but I didn’t really know that we would have this really fundamental impact.”

Today, Wikipedia has recorded 228 million daily visitors in the past month, with each person reading nearly four minutes online from Wiki’s 6,408,480 articles.

Exciting Developments in NFT World Where ‘Cool’ Rules

Amid the current market hype, NFTs have facilitated a number of, for lack of a better word, “cool” events to take place. What could be cooler than owning a unique piece of internet history such as the first Wikipedia entry? But the question remains, why even buy the NFT if you can’t show it off?

Cyber now offers its users NFT bragging rights by making “virtual reality NFT galleries” available. By using Cyber’s platform, digital collections can be displayed in an owner’s gallery for everyone to see. Snoop Dogg is the latest celebrity to join the craze by dropping his own NFT, and naturally, the owner is likely to want to proudly display it.

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Australia Bitcoin Crypto News ETFs Ethereum

Australia’s First Spot Crypto ETFs Launching Through ‘ETF Securities’ and ’21Shares’

ETF Securities will partner with 21Shares to provide Australian investors with access to the country’s first direct Bitcoin and Ethereum exchange-traded funds (ETFs), along with a best-in-class blockchain education and research centre.

Australia Gets its First Direct BTC and ETH ETFs

Subject to regulatory approvals, the ETFS 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (EBTC) and ETFS 21Shares Ethereum ETH will provide Australians with a way to invest in Bitcoin and Ethereum, via funds operated by the new partnership between ETF Securities and 21Shares. Zurich-based 21Shares, backed by Cathie Wood, has currently almost US$3 billion in assets under management in its 20 European crypto exchange-traded products (ETPs) available across eight exchanges. 21Shares has managed Bitcoin and Ethereum ETPs for three years and was additionally responsible for creating the world’s first physically-backed crypto ETP in 2018.

Graham Tuckwell, executive chairman of ETF Securities Australia, had this to say:

Once we had decided to build a range of crypto ETFs for the Australian market, there was only one partner we wanted to work with and that’s 21Shares. They are [at] the cutting edge of crypto ETPs in the world today.

Graham Tuckwell, executive chairman, ETF Securities Australia

Along with the ETFs, the partnership will also offer a research and education centre to be built on 21Shares’ investment-grade and cutting-edge research – some of the world’s most comprehensive. The research covers a vast array of different blockchains and cryptos, not only Ether and Bitcoin but also lesser-known, fast-growing cryptos such as Avalanche, Solana and Polygon.

The centre aims to explain in simple English how the often-complicated crypto and blockchain-verse works, and will also feature the latest crypto news, various blockchain metrics, price action and important news on miners, custodians and other companies involved in the supply chain.

Hany Rashwan, chief executive of 21Shares, expressed that the company was excited to take on the partnership to launch cryptos ETFs for Australian investors: “This partnership is an opportunity to combine our expertise to provide the simplest and most transparent way to access the best performing asset class of the last 10 years.”

Australian ETFs Undergo Explosive Growth

The announcement of the partnership between ETF Securities and 21Shares comes as welcome news amid Bitcoin ETF applications growing out of control. There are 34 Bitcoin ETF applications currently pending approval, with the number rising every day.

The ETF joins BetaShares ETF in offering crypto investment to the Australian market. BetaShares, an Australian crypto ETF, launched in early November and surpassed all expectations as A$5.2 million was traded in only five minutes, smashing Australian Securities Exchange trading records.

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Binance Crypto News DeFi Gaming Metaverse NFTs

MBOX Token Explodes 138% as MOMOverse Becomes First Metaverse to Integrate with Binance

Amid a host of metaverse projects currently on the rise, one gaming altcoin is surpassing all expectations after it rallied 138 percent in a single day following the announcement of its integration with the Binance Smart Chain (BSC).

Mobox (MBOX), part of the GameFi sector, a combination of decentralised finance (DeFi) and gaming, combines non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and yield farming to create a play-to-earn ecosystem. The project aims to connect metaverses through NFTs, as well as achieve NFT interoperability across various platforms and games.  

Mobox has effectively launched its metaverse, MOMOverse, on the BSC, a cheaper alternative to the Ethereum network that is also compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). At the time of writing, MBOX was trading at US$10.04, according to data from CoinGecko, which represents a 164 percent increase over the past 30 days.

Million-Dollar Mobox(es)

According to the Mobox announcement, users will be able to create their own avatars to represent themselves in the MOMOverse. Avatars will also be able to mine MBOX, Mobox’s native token.

With the launch of the MOMOverse Phase One, the company is also giving away 5000 Mystery Boxes to the value of over US$1,000,000:

MBOX will allow its users to stake its native coin to earn rewards called Mystery Boxes. The MOMOs revealed from the Mystery Boxes will be mining the MBOX token [and will] increase the node hashpower so you can mine more MBOX tokens.

Mobox announcement

Metaverse Tokens Shoot to the Moon

As NFTs continue to boom, metaverse projects and tokens are also on the rise, with many new and exciting projects preparing to launch. For an in-depth look at four of these projects, check out this Crypto News Australia guide.

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Crypto News Ethereum Fan Tokens Gas NFTs

Matrix Resurrections NFT Site Crashes Amid Drop, Users Left Fuming

After thousands of fans lined up on November 30 to buy The Matrix Resurrections movie on Nifty, they were left disappointed when the non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace crashed during the sale due to overwhelming demand ahead of the action/sci-fi movie’s release later this month.

Furious Fans Left in Limbo Overnight

Warner Bros announced last month that it would mint a set of 100,000 NFTs of Matrix-inspired avatars at US$50 each on Nifty. In anticipation of the launch, hundreds of thousands of fans were lined up on the marketplace to buy the NFTs, but within just an hour of the site opening, the company had to pause the sale as systems were overloaded.

Sale Restarted But Crashes Again

Nifty briefly restarted the sale but again had to pause it, leaving furious users in limbo overnight. By December 1, more than 330,000 fans were still waiting in the queue to buy the collectibles.

The marketplace conceded that the launch of the Matrix avatars did not go “the way we had hoped it would”, but said on Twitter “even as the queue continues to be paused, we want to assure you all of a few things – we’re very actively working on a solution, along with our partners”.

Demand More Than Nifty Could Handle

The chaos surrounding the launch proved that the initial demand for the Matrix avatars was more than Nifty could handle. However, the marketplace recommended that users still in line to buy the collectibles add their email addresses to the “please notify me when it is my turn” field on the website, “so that you’ll know specifically when you have made it to the front of the line”.

Nifty’s customer-support site added: “Due to such high traffic, there may be a delay with the Matrix Avatar NFTs appearing in your account. Please allow some additional time (up to eight hours) to determine if your NFTs have arrived successfully.”

Naturally, users were not entirely happy with Nifty’s response to the crash:

Nifty responded by saying the company plans “to make it up to fans and give all Nifty’s users who queued yesterday for a Matrix Avatar a free ‘glitch in the Matrix’ NFT”.

On the evening of December 1, Nifty issued a statement and said it had reopened the purchase queue for the Matrix NFTS after completing an audit of its platform. After about an hour, the platform said it had officially sold out.

NFT Madness Causes Pandemonium on Marketplaces

The Matrix NFT sale is not the first launch to have overloaded and crashed a system. In September, Time magazine announced a new collection of NFTs offering “unlimited access” to its website throughout 2023. Within minutes, all 4,676 tokens tied to the digital artworks had sold out. The rush clogged the Ethereum blockchain and consequently sent gas fees through the roof, causing such chaos that buyers spent almost four times as much on transaction fees as they did on the NFTs themselves.

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Australia Blockchain Crypto News Industries Regulation

ASX’s Long-Awaited Blockchain CHESS Replacement Goes Into Testing

ASX Prices Climb as Bitcoin Price Plummets On Anzac Weekend
A board displaying stock prices is seen at the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) in Sydney, Australia, February 9, 2018. REUTERS/David Gray

Yesterday, the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) announced the opening of the first of the Industry Test Environments (ITE1) for its blockchain post-trade replacement solution, CHESS.

The upgraded CHESS system has undergone some rigorous tests to ensure it can deal with Australia’s increasingly large share market. This is a major step towards the new CHESS equities clearing and settlement system going live in 2023.

The Clearing House Electronic Subregister System (CHESS) is the core system that performs the processes of clearing, settlement, asset regulation, and other post-trade services that are critical to the orderly functioning of the market. ITE1 gives CHESS users their first exposure to ASX’s fully integrated external solution, which includes Digital Asset’s DAML smart contract development capability and VMware’s DLT platform. The solution uses Digital Asset’s DAML smart contract language and VMWare’s blockchain.

The New System Available in 2022

ITE1 will open for software providers, third-party vendors who supply software to CHESS users, and organisations developing in-house systems. The ITE2 will open in April 2022 for market participants and other CHESS users. The announcement is for developers, while end-users will be able to access another iteration (ITE2) of the test environment from the same date, while the launch date is planned for April 2023.

This is truly a step in the right direction as the project has already been delayed three times. In September 2018 ASX pushed the live date to late 2020, but it was extended to April 2022. The extension was given to allow participants and regulators to cope with the volatility of early pandemic trading, and then to allow the new system to be redesigned to accommodate a massive increase in trading volumes.

Tim Hogben, the ASX group executive for securities and payments, said in a media statement:

Today’s opening is a significant step on the journey towards the go-live for the CHESS replacement system in April 2023. Together, we’ve entered a new and exciting phase of the project.

Tim Hogben, ASX

He added that the system would generate valuable feedback for ASX on the state of the new and developing system, with software providers testing functional and non-functional workflows across all connectivity access channels.

A Keen Eye Will Be Kept on CHESS

Hogben described the CHESS replacement project as a key pillar in ASX’s strategy to “build an exchange for the future and deliver world-leading infrastructure to the Australian market”.

Given that the CHESS replacement project involves groundbreaking technology, it is sure to garner a lot of attention. As a result of the hype around CHESS, ITE1 will be closely watched by many financial markets worldwide as the world considers its own long-term technology solution upgrade.

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Blockchain Crypto News DeFi Ethereum Scams

$31 Million Stolen in MonoX DeFi Hack

The decentralised finance (DeFi) market has been hit by yet another hack, with US$31 million in a variety of cryptos stolen from MonoX Finance in the latest episode.

MonoX released a statement in which it apologised to users and regretted its security measures had somehow been breached:

First, we want to extend immediate, sincerest apologies toward the incident and we assure you our entire team and partners are all working on this right now. Security of users’ funds is of utmost importance to us and we have had multiple security audits and a security adviser firm that work with us on an ongoing basis. However, unfortunately, we were still exploited.

DeFi Déjà Vu

The hacker attached MonoX Finance’s smart contracts, exploiting the single token liquidity platform and draining the funds of tokens across Ethereum and Polygon.

MonoX, which launched last month on Polygon and Ethereum, is a DeFi platform that offers liquidity pools in which traders can place their tokens and receive tokens in return. Rather than a standard pool model, MonoX pools function by grouping a deposited token “into a virtual pair with our virtual cash stablecoin (vCASH)”.

The hack netted US$18.2 million in wrapped ether (WETH) and US$10.5 million in Polygon (MATIC). Polygon, formerly Matic, is a proof-of-stake blockchain that helps take some of the load from the Ethereum blockchain. Other tokens taken included WBTC, LINK, GHST, DUCK, MIM and IMX.

In August, the largest DeFi hack on record took place on the Poly Network, a multi-chain platform that provides interoperability between blockchains. The attack, which took place on the Binance Smart Chain, Ethereum and Polygon, siphoned off a record-breaking US$600 million.

‘REKT By Their Own Token’

The hack was made possible via price manipulation of the project’s native token, MONO. The platform explained that the price of MONO tokens was artificially boosted, enabling the hacker to use tokens to buy the other assets in the pools at much cheaper rates.

Hacks, Hacks, and More Hacks

DeFi hacks have become increasingly prevalent, with devastating effects on a range of projects. Earlier this year, Zabu Finance, a DeFi project built atop the Avalanche blockchain, was exploited for around US$3.2 million worth of its native token, Zabu, plummeting its price to zero in minutes.

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Crypto News Crypto Wallets Economics Investing NFTs Travel

Thailand Wants to Attract Crypto Millionaires to Revive Tourism

The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) is looking into ways of boosting the country’s post-pandemic economy. Enter cryptos. The South-East Asian kingdom aims to attract crypto-millionaires to spend their newfound wealth in the hopes of becoming a “crypto-positive society”.

Thailand Facilitates the Use of Crypto

According to Bloomberg, Thailand is looking to attract individuals who have “become wealthy from holding digital currencies” to its shores in an effort to boost its pandemic-ridden economy. As a result of Covid-19, the tourism contribution to the country’s GDP dropped from 18.21 percent in 2019 to 6.78 percent in 2020. The Thai tourism authority will now seek to recoup some of the US$80 billion lost in revenue due to the pandemic.

The TAT has indicated that it is working with regulators and a local crypto exchange to make it easier for crypto holders to spend their currencies in Thailand. According to TAT Governor Yuthasak Supasorn, the authority will set up a new unit to issue its own crypto, develop a wallet and build a new tourism ecosystem in 2022.

The Governor said crypto holders may now be looking to spend their riches and added: “If they can use their currencies here without having to exchange [them], or be faced with government taxes, then it would create convenience for them.” Supasorn also noted that embracing cryptos would help the country recover its tourism sector.

Crypto is the future, so we must make Thailand a crypto-positive society to welcome this group of quality tourists. 

Yuthasak Supasorn, Governor, Tourism Authority of Thailand

Crypto Acceptance Could Help the Global Tourism Sector

The pandemic has had a far-reaching global economic impact, and none more so than in the tourism sector. Despite a major global economic downturn over the past year, cryptos have surged to new heights and can now help industries recover as the acceptance of cryptos also grows.

Earlier this year, luxury hotel chain Kessler Collection announced it would be accepting payments in cryptocurrencies going forward. The announcement was made after it had taken up a partnership with BitPay, which will oversee the payment processing part of the deal.

Hand-in-hand with aiding the tourism industry, cryptos have also been deployed in wildlife conservation. The endangered Seychelles magpie robin is now available to purchase digitally in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Funds generated from sales will help finance conservation efforts for the rare bird, indirectly boosting tourism in the Indian Ocean archipelago.