Author: Phil Stafford

Phil is a long-standing Australian journalist with specialised experience in business, finance, travel and popular culture.

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Crypto News Metaverse NFTs

McDonald’s Plans Move into the Metaverse with a Virtual Restaurant

Global fast food behemoth McDonald’s could be the next major company to enter the metaverse, having flagged the move with 10 new trademark applications to build a “virtual restaurant featuring actual and virtual goods”.

The Chicago-headquartered conglomerate filed the applications with the US Patent and Trademark Office on February 4, according to a tweet from prominent US trademarks lawyer Josh Gerben:

According to the filings, McDonald’s has applied for trademarks for its own virtual food and beverages, as well as “downloadable multimedia files containing artwork, text, audio and video files and non-fungible tokens [NFTs]”. It’s also applied to register its intellectual property covering “entertainment services”, specifically real-world and virtual concerts and events, though the primary filing is for “operating a virtual restaurant online featuring home delivery”.

McDonald’s Sees In Chinese New Year … in the Metaverse

The chain has over recent months shown interest in the crypto space with its own branded NFTs, including an exhibit last week honouring the Chinese Lunar New Year. As long ago as April 2021, McDonald’s France announced its intention to issue a limited series of digital artworks as NFTs.

McDonald’s celebrates Lunar New Year in the metaverse. Source: criptopato.com.br

Just last month, McDonald’s frivolously promoted a joke coin based on its fluffy purple McDonaldland character, Grimace. In a January 26 tweet replying to Elon Musk, the company proposed that if Tesla were to accept payments in Grimacecoin, then it would take Musk up on his offer to eat a Happy Meal on TV if McDonald’s accepted Dogecoin.

Not long after, several Grimacecoin-themed tokens were created across a handful of different blockchains by crypto opportunists wanting to cash in on the buying frenzy that followed.

Metaverse Market Could Be Worth $8 Trillion

McDonald’s isn’t the first multinational to show clear interest in the metaverse, with the likes of Adidas, Meta, Nike, Coca-Cola and Visa also climbing aboard the bandwagon in recent months.

After Facebook rebranded itself to Meta last November, Morgan Stanley analysts predicted that the metaverse market could ultimately be worth as much as US$8 trillion but also warned about high barriers to adoption.

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Bitcoin Crime Crypto News Hackers Social media

The Story of a Wannabe Rapper and How US Officials Seized $3.6 Billion in BTC

The US Justice Department has impounded US$3.6 billion in bitcoin and arrested a would-be rapper and her husband for conspiring to launder some of the funds – believed to be among the proceeds of the infamous Bitfinex hack of 2016.

According to the FBI, Heather Morgan and her husband Ilya Lichtenstein spent part of the proceeds on gold, NFTs, and other items. Each faces up to 25 years in a federal prison if convicted.

Rather than keep a low profile as you’d expect of alleged crypto criminals, Morgan in particular has a social media presence befitting her status as an aspiring rapper, published writer and influencer. She even has a website dedicated to her rapper alter-ego, named “Razzlekhan”:

Morgan’s LinkedIn profile notes her economics degree, while as a journalist the 31-year-old has been published in Inc and Forbes magazines, with the latter running an article of hers ironically titled “How to Protect Your Business From Cyber Criminals”.

How the FBI ‘Followed the Money’

The Bitfinex hack involved the theft of 119,756 bitcoin (worth just US$72 million at the time) following a security breach at the exchange. The amount stolen is now valued at more than US$5.1 billion.

In the five years since the hack, small amounts of BTC have periodically been moved in separate transactions, leaving the bulk of the funds untouched. The Justice Department traced 25,000 BTC of these transferred funds to financial accounts controlled by Lichtenstein and Morgan. Special agents were then able to gain access to and seize more than 94,000 BTC – worth US$3.6 billion at the time – from Morgan and Lichtenstein after a search warrant allowed them to view files containing private keys to several wallets, which just days ago were consolidated into a single wallet.

Morgan and Lichtenstein allegedly used a variety of methods to launder the illicit crypto, including chain hopping, depositing the coins at exchanges and darknet markets and withdrawing them, and automating transactions using computer programs. In addition, the pair set up business accounts in the US to “legitimise their banking activity”.

“[These] arrests, and the department’s largest financial seizure ever, show that cryptocurrency is not a safe haven for criminals,” said US Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco.

“The [Justice] department once again showed how it can and will follow the money, no matter what form it takes.”

US Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco

The Justice Department must, of course, still prove its allegations in court that Morgan and Lichtenstein laundered the US$4.5 billion in bitcoin stolen from Bitfinex in 2016. The hack is a separate matter.

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Crypto News Gaming Metaverse Tokens

Metaverse Token GALA Soars 100% in a Week Following ‘SpiderTanks’ Launch

Play-to-earn (P2E) metaverse gaming protocol Gala (GALA) has seen its token price rocket 117 percent this month, with 100 percent of that figure soaring in a single week.

A big part of the Gala surge can be ascribed to the launch of SpiderTanks, a PVP Brawler game developed by award-winning Netherlands-based gaming studio GAMEDIA:

Land and Venue Sales Also Booming

As well as actual gameplay, the newer generation of games launching on Gala has tapped into another growing trend in the P2E space, land and venue sales. These allow users to earn passive income, helping to grow a larger pool of community members invested in the protocol long-term.

New partnerships are also helping Gala expand the reach of its ecosystem. One of the most significant is this week’s announcement of a collaboration with the 888innercircle community, which numbers more than 205,000 members who are fans of digital art and collectibles:

Gala User Numbers Explode

The Gala community has recorded a huge leap in user numbers, particularly since the beginning of December. The aggregate was 122,230 as at February 7, representing a threefold increase since November from 40,380 users, confirms Dune Analytics.

Metaverse tokens in general have been surging since November, with VR (virtual reality) tokens and blockchain games on fire over the holiday period. Also in November, the metaverse token SAND hit an all-time high after announcing its highly anticipated Metaverse Alpha event.

Categories
Binance Crypto News DeFi Tokens

Tron’s Justin Sun Accused of Governance Attack on DeFi Lender ‘Compound’

Billionaire Tron founder Justin Sun has been fingered for taking part in a “governance attack” scheme involving lender Compound Finance.

As per the above tweet from crypto think tank GFX Labs, Sun’s wallet borrowed 99,000 COMP tokens worth over US$13 million last week, later sending 102,000 tokens to Binance.

Later, an address that received US$9 million worth of COMP tokens from Binance proposed adding TUSD (TrueUSD) as collateral to allow Compound users to take out loans against their TUSD holdings.

On-chain governance of DeFi protocols is often token-weighted, and while one GFX representative classified Sun’s loan as a “governance attack”, there is nothing to stop users from taking out loans to vote on proposals they back.

Sun Defends His Actions

While it’s impossible to verify that the proposal address belongs to Sun, he felt compelled to defend his actions in any case:

In December, Sun resigned his CEO position at the Tron Foundation to become Ambassador to the Grenadian Government, seeking to expand blockchain adoption on its behalf. At the time he said he would remain involved with the Tron community since the network had been officially decentralised.

A year ago, Sun was caught shilling the TRX token, attempting to inveigle a popular YouTuber and influencer to promote the crypto on his social channels.

Categories
Australia Crime Crypto News Cryptocurrency Law Facebook Social media

Australian Billionaire Launches Criminal Case Against Meta for Fake Crypto Ads

Australian mining magnate Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest has launched criminal proceedings against Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta conglomerate, alleging its Facebook social media arm breached Australia’s money laundering laws by failing to police false crypto advertisements.

Forrest, billionaire chairman of iron ore giant Fortescue Metals, has filed his criminal lawsuit against Meta in the Magistrates Court of Western Australia, having already launched related civil proceedings in the US state of California last September.

In charges brought under the Australian Commonwealth Criminal Code, Forrest alleges Facebook has repeatedly failed to remove posts by scammers that used his image, among those of other celebrities, to promote crypto investments on the site since March 2019.

Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest, chairman of Fortescue Metals. Source: cnn.com

According to Forrest’s complaint, the company’s failure to prevent or remove the ads constitutes “criminally reckless” behaviour. Forrest further alleges that Facebook “failed to create controls or a corporate culture to prevent its systems being used to commit crime”.

‘World-First’ Criminal Action Against the Social Media Giant

In a statement, Forrest said he was launching the “world-first” action on behalf of “everyday Australians” to protect their savings from being “swindled away by scammers”.

“I’m concerned about innocent Australians being scammed through clickbait advertising on social media,” Forrest said. “I’m committed to ensuring social media operators don’t allow their sites to be used by criminal syndicates.

Social media is part of our lives, but it’s in the public interest for more to be done to ensure fraud on social media platforms is eliminated or significantly reduced.

Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest, Australian mining magnate

An initial hearing of Forrest’s complaint will take place on March 28, with the separate civil case pending in the Superior Court of California. A Meta spokesperson said the company was unable to comment on either court action, but provided a broader statement about scams on Facebook:

We don’t want ads seeking to scam people out of money or mislead people on Facebook – they violate our policies and are not good for our community. We take a multifaceted approach to stop these ads, working not just to detect and reject the ads themselves but also block advertisers from our services and, in some cases, take court action to enforce our policies. We’re committed to keeping these people off our platform.

Statement from Meta spokesperson

Meta Share Price Tanks, $200B Wiped Off Market Cap

It’s been a pretty ordinary start to the year for Meta, whose share price plunged 26 percent this week in what was the biggest single-day slide in market value for a US company. The drop erased over US$200 billion from Meta’s market capitalisation and around US$29 billion from CEO Zuckerberg’s net worth.

Yet Meta is not the only entity under fire for its advertising practices, with Spain, Singapore and the UK the latest jurisdictions to have made changes to their crypto advertising regulations. Last year, Google reviewed its crypto advertising policy after lifting its ban and adding specific requirements to which advertisers have to adhere.

Categories
Australia Blockchain CBDCs Crypto News Payments

Sovereign Aboriginal Yidindji Nation Launches Own CBDC

The Sovereign Yidindji Nation, an indigenous micronation located in the Australian rainforest region of far north Queensland, has created history in launching its own digital currency.

The micronation’s self-proclaimed financial technology minister, Murrumu of Walubara (see YouTube video, above), formed the Sovereign Yidindji Nation (SYN) in 2014 after renouncing his Australian citizenship. Now also the territory’s minister for foreign affairs and trade, renewable energy and communications and broadband, Murrumu this week announced the launch of a central bank digital currency (CBDC), making SYN the first indigenous nation on the Australian continent to become fully digitised.

Murrumu of Walubara. Source: sbs.com.au

Murrumu describes the so-called Sovereign Yidindji Dollar as a significant step in building the nation. “It was too expensive to mint coins and to print physical notes,” he explains. “It just didn’t make sense because it’s cheaper and better for the environment to go down the digital currency road.

We actually create the money in accord with our laws and that is then minted and verified on a digital platform, so we’re not just printing money out of thin air.

Murrumu of Walubara, Yidindji minister for financial technology, foreign affairs and trade, renewable energy and communications and broadband

Four Pillars of the Yidindji CBDC

The Yidindji CBDC has four distinctive features that differentiate it from others already established, such as the Sand Dollar in the Bahamas and Nigeria’s eNaira:

  • It is the first CBDC issued using the MetaMUI CBDC platform.
  • It has been issued exclusively in digital currency, without the need for paper bills.
  • It incorporates a payment system connected with MetaMUI’s service set identifier system, which can be used in all retail stores and government offices. Payments can be processed without using the dedicated network, there are no transaction fees, sales settlements are immediate, and cross-border payments can be made without using credit cards.
  • It is a convertible currency whose collateral assets are gold, silver, and other minerals and natural resources, such as green and blue carbon. Money issuance, backed by a digital certificate, is also backed with collateral assets.

MetaMUI combines the concept of a self-sovereign identity and a decentralised blockchain, thus safeguarding users’ privacy and avoiding centralised censorship and the abuse of private information.

Nation Already Using MetaMUI Identity System

The Sovereign Yidindji Government (SYG) has already built a national identity system using MetaMUI’s technology, meaning all Yidindji citizens, companies and organisations can create their own digital identities, own digital assets and make payments with the Yidindji Dollar.

The SYG has 17 ministers and 22 ministries, and plans to be the first government to become fully digitised. For the 40 SYN citizens with the digital identification app on their phones, using the new CBDC is simple. “Basically you can pay through a QR code,” Murrumu says.

The ultimate goal for Murrumu and the SYN is a treaty with the Australian Commonwealth. When that happens, Murrumu says, it will “enable our money to cross borders into the Australian system and vice versa”.

In September last year, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) joined Singapore, Malaysia and South Africa in launching a CBDC pilot for international settlements. At the time, the RBA announced it was looking to hire experts for its “CBDC research team” and expected the results of the pilot to be published “in early 2022”.

Categories
Australia Crypto News NFTs Sports

Nick Kyrgios Celebrates Australian Open Win With ‘King Collection’ NFT Launch

It was only ever a matter of time before flamboyant and controversial Australian tennis bad boy Nick Kyrgios exploited the burgeoning non-fungible token (NFT) market, and his first Grand Slam title has afforded him the ideal opportunity with the launch of his “King Collection” series.

Thanasi Kokkinakis and Nick Kyrgios. Source: Canberra Times

With boyhood friend and makeshift doubles partner Thanasi Kokkinakis, Kyrgios (above, right) won the Australian Open men’s doubles championship last weekend, the pair sharing a lucrative A$675,000 purse for their trouble.

When $337,500 is Only the Beginning

But for a man of Kyrgios’s prodigious proclivities, that was never going to be enough. For added value, five Kyrgios “reaction moments” from the tournament will be released as NFTs in a limited run of 22 priced at US$399 apiece. The first of each of the five series will be an ‘Ultra Rare Gold’ moment, to be auctioned off over the next five days.

King Collection poster. Source: King Collection

Those five series (with descriptions, one suspects, supplied by Kyrgios himself, though the exclamation points are ours) are:

  • Bring The Heat: He sets the court aflame whenever he steps out! He is King Kyrgios!
  • Fly Higher: First Australia, then the world! Nick doesn’t care for limits!
  • Let’s Dance: This is no last dance for Kyrgios! This is only the beginning!
  • LFG: He says it how it is! But we won’t repeat it here! (OK, we will then: “Let’s f..king go!”)
  • Tongue Time: Sometimes the celebration takes over! Control on the court is key, but once you win it’s OK to let loose!

A ‘Hyper Rare Diamond’ NFT celebrating the actual moment Kyrgios and Kokkinakis claimed their doubles title will also be auctioned off as part of the drop at a starting price of (gulp) US$9,999.

Key moment from the ‘Hyper Rare Diamond’ NFT. Source: King Collection

But Wait! There’s More!

If that were not enough, a further drop of 2022 NFTs celebrating the year of Kyrgios’s maiden Grand Slam title will be priced at US$20.22 each. At least most of his fans may find these affordable.

I’m all about the fans and the fan experience so this feels like another great way to connect. NFTs are the future of collectibles and I always want to be on the cutting edge and to advance our sport.

Nick Kyrgios, tennis professional, NFT entrepreneur

The Nick Kyrgios NFT collection (officially and more regally dubbed the King Collection – as in “Nick is here to leave a mark, and to usher in the next gen of sports stars”) – is available to purchase here.

However well Kyrgios does with his NFT drop, it will no doubt run a distant second to the Australian Open (AO) Art Ball NFT metaverse project that has generated US$4.4 million (A$6m) in trading volume since early January in the lead-up to the tournament proper, which concluded last weekend.

Categories
Australia Crypto News Ethereum Gas NFTs

Australian Open Metaverse Winning Shot ‘AO Art Ball’ NFT Soars 4,000%

The singles champions at this year’s Australian Open (AO), Ash Barty and Rafael Nadal, pocketed a cool A$2.875 million each for two weeks’ work – but they weren’t the only big winners of the tennis world’s first Grand Slam of the season, completed last weekend.

Fans attending matches in the metaverse had the chance to buy an AO Art Ball non-fungible token (NFT) linked to a specific spot on centre court that marked the winning shot of both the men’s and women’s championships, along with all other finals matches in the tournament.

At no point did we anticipate we’d sell out the public drop in three minutes. As a result, we’ve set the bar extremely high for what NFTs can become in the future.

Ridley Palmer, metaverse and NFT project manager, Tennis Australia

The NFTs were released via a public drop where users could pay to mint an AO Art Ball from the 6,776 available. Fans could therefore literally buy a piece of the action via an NFT that gave them “property” rights to a 19cm x 19cm square of Melbourne Park’s Rod Laver Arena. They stood to win big should the last bounce of the ball fall into their square on the deciding point in any final.

Nadal’s NFT Surges 4000%

The price of bids for the NFT marking where men’s champion Rafael Nadal’s winning shot landed surged more than 4,000 percent during the tournament final, while the AO Art Ball NFTs generally have recorded US$4.4 million (A$6m) in trading volume since early January, according to OpenSea data.

Mens Final – Nadal’s winning shot

Nadal’s AO Art Ball NFT, meanwhile, has yet to change hands – meaning its expected value has escalated from around US$700 (A$981) to US$8,438 (A$11,836) in ether. The latest offer is worth 3.2 ETH, almost 4,168 percent above the floor price.

Barty’s NFT More Than Triples in Value

The day before, on January 29, Ash Barty became the first Australian to win a home Grand Slam in 44 years in taking the women’s title.

Two days later, offers on the AO Art Ball for Barty’s victory shot were coming in at least 1,230 percent above the floor price. That’s more than three times the original price paid, according to OpenSea and Etherscan data. The original minter sold the piece for 0.298 ETH, then worth about US$780 (A$1,107). But the value placed on it by bidders has reached as high as 1.3 ETH, or US$3,632 (A$5,094).

Womens Final – Barty’s winning shot

Keep in mind, though, that high gas fees for transactions on the Ethereum network are additional to the price of minting an NFT.

Categories
Crypto News Ethereum NFTs Tokens

Report Suggests Majority of LooksRare NFT Transactions May Be ‘Wash Trading’

Since LooksRare quickly positioned itself as OpenSea’s biggest rival after launching just three weeks ago, questions have been asked about the platform’s trading figures.

Users have been buying and selling non-fungible tokens (NFTs) between wallets they control in an effort to manipulate daily rewards, a practice known as wash trading.

LooksRare Generates $8.3 Billion Volume in Three Weeks

NFT analytics firm CryptoSlam has now reported the extent of the practice, noting that LooksRare has generated more than US$8.3 billion since launching on January 9, the vast majority of that volume in wash trading. Although the full extent is yet to be officially confirmed, initial estimates are extraordinarily high:

Most of it appears to derive from royalty-free collections, which means sellers don’t have to pay creators a secondary sale fee. Larva Labs’ Meebits tops the wash-trading list with US$4.4 billion, followed by Terraforms (US$2.9 billion), Loot (US$705 million), and CryptoPunks derivative CryptoPhunks (US$251m), with another $US62m attributed to other projects.

Why Users Are Selling NFTs at Vastly Inflated Prices

Users who buy and sell NFTs on the LooksRare site are offered a percentage of the day’s total sales via the site’s own LOOKS token. Those users then game the system by selling NFTs back and forth between their own Ethereum wallets via artificially inflated prices, with the aim of earning more in LOOKS rewards than they’d spend on LooksRare’s 2 percent marketplace fee and the Ethereum network’s own gas fees.

LooksRare also provides Wrapped Ethereum (WETH) rewards for users who stake their LOOKS tokens in the platform, providing further incentive to accumulate and then hold a large number of them. The community reward models set LooksRare apart from OpenSea, but with trading rewards at their highest level during the platform’s first 21 days, some users are clearly abusing the system.

Categories
Crypto Art Crypto News DeFi Gaming Metaverse NFTs

Warner Bros Partners with Sandbox to Launch First Music-Themed Metaverse

Ethereum-based game The Sandbox has announced a partnership with major recording label Warner Music Group (WMG) to create a musical theme park and concert venue within the gaming metaverse.

According to Sebastien Borget, chief operations officer and co-founder of The Sandbox, the partnership “brings the open metaverse one step forward in the direction of fan-owned and community-driven initiatives”.

We’re shaping The Sandbox as a fun entertainment destination where creators, fans and players can enjoy first-of-a-kind immersive experiences and be more closely connected to their favourite musical artists through non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

Sebastien Borget, chief operations officer and co-founder, The Sandbox

Warners the First Major Music Label in the Metaverse

The unprecedented initiative, which marks Warners’ first foray into the NFT metaverse, will see WMG digital land in The Sandbox host concerts and other live experiences featuring artists represented by the label. The Warners roster includes Ed Sheeran, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Coldplay, Madonna, Charli XCX, Kylie Minogue and Rita Ora.

The Sandbox will provide some of those artists with another outlet to engage with fans, experiment with virtual entertainment, and generate new revenue streams while reaching a global community.

Sandbox Now Rivals Decentraland

Digital land remains in high demand, and consistent high trading volume in The Sandbox has made it one of the most competitive rivals to Decentraland in the metaverse sphere. According to the company, The Sandbox will hold a LAND sale in March to allow music fans to buy LANDS adjacent to the WMG property.

During a single week in late November, investors purchased more than US$100 million worth of virtual land, the majority of it coming from The Sandbox.

Other Metaverse Musical Projects

In December, another new project called Animal Concerts announced the formation of a virtual touring company to host virtual live music events in the metaverse. Through that project, artists can earn up to 50 percent of revenues from both ticket and NFT sales.

Earlier this month, a new blockchain-based music platform built for creators and investors was announced, intending to address the biggest challenge facing artists in the music industry today: raising capital. Opulous, as it’s called, allows fans to bankroll their favourite artists by harnessing the power of DeFi. They can also benefit from music sales as part copyright owners, thanks to NFTs.

All of which helps goes some way to prove that the world of NFTs is not all about mindless frivolity and outrageous prices.