Author: Phil Stafford

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

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Blockchain Crypto News Crypto Wallets Ethereum NFTs Social media

Ethereum Users Can Now Chat with Each Other by Connecting Their Wallets

Blockscan, the team behind the Etherscan blockchain explorer, has released Blockscan Chat in beta, an Ethereum-based wallet-to-wallet instant messaging service.

As well as enabling users to engage in instantaneous wallet-to-wallet chat, Blockscan will allow them to:

  • access chats from multiple devices;
  • block spam or unwanted addresses; and
  • be notified on the block explorer when a message has been received.

Negotiating Power with White-Hat Hackers

Above all else, the new feature may prove itself invaluable for dealing with white-hat hackers, who tend to leave messages embedded in Ethereum transactions in order to communicate with individuals and exploited crypto platforms.

It would have proved particularly useful in last week’s ongoing Multichain exploit, in which an assumed white-hat hacker returned 322 ETH (about US$770,000) but kept a hefty finder’s fee, not to mention last year’s US$610 million Poly Network hack. In both cases, anonymous discussions via Ethereum transactions formed part of negotiations between culprit and victims.

Blockscan Also Has NFT Applications

Apart from pleading with hackers to return funds for a bounty, the service could also prove useful in negotiating NFT purchases between buyers and sellers. If the transaction were to be conducted by a decentralised exchange, both parties could reduce the fees associated with NFT platforms such as OpenSea.

In related news, Unstoppable Domains – a US-based company that provides blockchain-based domain names – announced a fortnight ago that Ethereum and Polygon NFT domains can now be used for single logins. The service allows users to sign in to their favourite apps with an NFT portable name, thus eliminating the need to provide any additional information.

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Crypto Art Crypto News NFTs

Pulp Fiction ‘Royale with Cheese’ NFT Sells for $1.1 Million Amid Impending Lawsuit

One Maccas quarter-pounder and cheese? That’ll be US$1.1 million. Cash or credit? Please make payment to the attention of TarantinoNFTs.com.

Just when you thought the non-fungible token world couldn’t get any crazier, director and screenwriter Quentin Tarantino’s first Pulp Fiction NFT has sold for that exact eye-watering figure, despite the best efforts of Miramax – the film studio that produced the 1994 cult classic – to block the sale.

You Want (French) Fries With That?

In November last year, as reported by Crypto News Australia, Tarantino announced he would auction off seven Pulp Fiction scenes as NFTs. On January 24, SCRT (Secret) Labs announced that the first of these, named for a scene in the film where a character explains how in Paris a McDonald’s cheeseburger is known as a “Royale with Cheese”, had sold for US$1.1 million to crypto collective AnonDAO.

However, Miramax immediately filed a lawsuit claiming intellectual property rights over the content. “Whatever limited rights Mr Tarantino has to screenplay publication, they do not permit the minting of unique NFTs associated with Miramax’s intellectual property,” lawyers for the studio said in a statement.

All seven scenes in the Pulp Fiction series offer Tarantino’s original handwritten screenplay from the film as one-of-a-kind NFTs. In collaboration with SCRT Labs, the scripts come with audio commentary from Tarantino explaining each scene’s significance.

Next Cab off the Rank: ‘Pumpkin and Honey Bunny’

Upcoming auctions of the remaining six NFTs will last for 24 hours or until the target price is reached. Scenes include: “Pumpkin and Honey Bunny”, “Foot Massage”, “Check Out the Big Brain on Brett”, â€œCaptain Koons Monologue – The Gold Watch”, “Bring Out the Gimp”, and “Last Scene: Coffee Shop – Ezekiel 25:17”. Auctions run until January 31 through the Tarantino NFTs site.

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Australia Crime Crypto News Investing

Aussie ‘Arbitrage King’ Claims Bullies Led Him to Commit $100+ Million Crypto Fraud

Australian-born former crypto hedge fund manager Stefan He Qin, who last weekend began his seven-and-a-half year sentence in a US federal prison for securities fraud, says he lied about his investors’ returns “to avoid being bullied”.

In a frank YouTube interview (see below) just days before he began his custodial sentence, Qin claimed that defrauding Australian and US investors of US$90 million between 2017 and 2020 was the end result of bullying during his teen years at a Canberra high school, adding that he felt “immense pressure” to succeed because of his Asian heritage.

Not Just Bullies, It’s the Peer Pressure

“There’s probably, like, this huge insecurity in the Asian community to just be as successful as possible at all costs,” the first-year university dropout said. “And … it’s not even about the money – it’s just [about] looking good.” Qin added: 

I felt immense pressure to inflate the returns and to just lie because I needed to match [investors’] expectations. They have this image in their head of this wunderkind who could make them a lot of money, and unless I met that image, I was a failure, right? And maybe I’d go back to being bullied; maybe people would go back to making fun of me and I would never have friends again.

Stefan He Qin

‘This is Where Greed Gets You’

Qin pleaded guilty to one count of securities fraud and was last September sentenced in a New York District Court to seven and a half years in prison. Qin had masterminded a brazen and wide-ranging Ponzi scheme while he owned and controlled two Manhattan-based cryptocurrency investment funds over a three-year period until 2020.

The so-called “Arbitrage King” (buy low, sell high!) used the proceeds to fund personal expenses, including the rented $US24,500-a-month New York City apartment in which the YouTube interview was filmed. “This is where greed gets you,” Qin says offhandedly at one point during the video, gesturing towards floor-to-ceiling views of the Manhattan skyline.

While serving his time, Qin intends to write a book and expresses a long-term ambition to return to Australia and become a politician. Some might say he’s eminently qualified.

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Crypto Art Crypto News Fashion NFTs

Adidas Teams Up with Prada to Launch User-Generated NFTs

The worlds of fashion, design and crypto intersect in a new collaboration between Adidas Originals and Prada that will feature user-generated content and creator-owned art.

Adidas Originals and Prada have invited their respective audiences to contribute anonymised photographs to the non-fungible token (NFT) project on the Ethereum-compatible Polygon network.

Digital Artist to Create Mass-Patchwork NFT Design

New York City-based digital and new media artist Zach Lieberman will compile 3000 joint community-sourced minted NFT artworks into a single mass-patchwork NFT design. Contributors will retain full ownership rights over their individual NFT tiles, and participation in the project – dubbed adidas for Prada re-source – is free.

An example of Zach Lieberman’s interactive art. Source: the verge.com

Contributors whose tiles are featured in the final project will have the chance to earn a form of royalty on the secondary market, according to the joint Adidas-Prada release:

Owners of each individual NFT will receive a percentage of the auction sale of adidas for Prada re-source each time it is sold, in perpetuity. This new structure of shared ownership, made possible by Web3 technology, represents a cultural shift towards creator rights which is core to the crypto arts movement.

Adidas-Prada release

Proceeds to Go to NPO Slow Factory

The completed NFT will be auctioned on SuperRare with most of the auction proceeds to go to non-profit organisation Slow Factory, which purports to assist marginalised people “to become climate leaders through regenerative design, open education, and narrative change”.

The waitlist is open from January 24 at adidas.com/prada-nft.

The collaboration with Prada follows the success of Adidas Originals’ Into the Metaverse, its debut NFT project launched last month, which minted 30,000 NFTs to more than 21,000 buyers.

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Crypto News Ethereum NFTs Social media

Twitter Launches NFT Profile Pic Verification

Delivering on a promise made last October, Twitter has released its official verification mechanism for non-fungible token (NFT) profile pictures. However, it is only available to those who sign up for the “Labs” feature via the company’s Twitter Blue subscription service.

Though the verification tool is initially limited to Ethereum-based NFTs via OpenSea, a Twitter spokesperson says it is simply the “first iteration” of a feature that may support other blockchains in future.

How It Works

Link your Ethereum wallet to your Twitter account, and you’ll be presented with a list of NFTs you own. Choose an NFT, and your profile picture – usually enclosed within a circle – takes on a distinctive hexagonal border. If someone right-clicks on your NFT in an attempt to appropriate it as their profile picture without first buying the token, they will be able to use the image but will be limited to the circle frame.

Still Some Refinements to be Made

A persistent right-clicker might re-upload that same image to an NFT platform, mint a visually identical NFT and use that as their profile picture instead, complete with a hexagonal frame signifying ownership on the blockchain. Twitter has yet to come up with a solution to this advanced form of deception, which has become increasingly common as the NFT space has continued to explode over the past year.

For now, NFT verification is available only for users with Twitter Blue, the company’s US$2.99-a-month subscription service. For NFT fans, it may be a price worth paying.

Twitter is also limiting the release to iOS users but says Android and web users will be able to see when a user changes their profile pics to an NFT.

Categories
Crypto News Gaming Metaverse

Microsoft Makes Shock $69 Billion Acquisition to Move into the Metaverse

Microsoft is making a massive move on Activision Blizzard, intending to spend an astronomical US$69 billion to acquire the gaming giant in an apparent escalation of its metaverse plans.

Deal Will Make Microsoft World’s #3 Gaming Company in Revenue Terms

The software behemoth will buy Activision Blizzard for US$95 per share at a valuation of US$68.7 billion. The deal, set to close in the 2023 fiscal year, will make Microsoft the world’s third-largest gaming company in revenue terms behind Riot Games owner Tencent and PlayStation developer Sony.

To frame the deal in another way, as Twitter user @CroissantEth succinctly put it, that US$69 billion purchase price amounts to three times the total market capitalisation of all existing metaverse tokens:

Xbox Game Pass Set to Xplode

Activision Blizzard has a long list of gaming franchises that includes Call of Duty, Overwatch, Candy Crush, World of Warcraft and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. On conclusion of the deal, its formidable catalogue is set to be added to Microsoft Xbox’s Game Pass service, which already has 25 million subscribers.

According to Microsoft chairman and CEO Satya Nadella, the deal will provide “building blocks for the metaverse”, adding that “gaming is the most dynamic and exciting category in entertainment across all platforms today, and will play a key role in the development of metaverse platforms”.

Meanwhile, ‘Mesh’ is Coming

In November 2021, Nadella foreshadowed Microsoft’s metaverse plans with the “Mesh” upgrade to its Teams service, which involves personalised digital avatars and immersive spaces in the metaverse, due later this year.

Microsoft’s latest move also comes as no surprise after Facebook rebranded itself as Meta a month earlier, heralding its own foray into the metaverse. Interestingly, The Wall Street Journal reported last week that 100 employees from Microsoft’s augmented reality team have departed over the past year to join Meta.

US retail giant Walmart also signalled its intentions to enter the space this week by announcing its plans to make and sell virtual goods.

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Crypto Art Crypto News Metaverse NFTs

Turn Street Graffiti into NFTs? ‘NFT Hack 2022’ Throws Up Some Interesting Ideas

Of all the innovative ideas put forth at this week’s NFT Hack 2022, minting street graffiti as non-fungible tokens is quite possibly the wackiest.

Graffiti Mint is a decentralised application (dApp) that aims to digitise, mint, and monetise graffiti events. It integrates ERC1155 NFTs for 4-tier season passes for event supporters and ERC751 contracts to mint street art produced in graffiti events at city parks as NFTs.

Event supporters get an OG (Original Gangster) NFT from each artwork made at events from their season pass, while artists earn funds from the auction of Event Edition NFTs and a percentage of the OG NFT sales.

Last year, Australian street artist Lushsux gained international recognition for his large mural paintings depicting internet meme culture. Melbourne-based Lushsux has since become one of the highest-paid artists in Australia, selling his NFTs for over A$500,000 each.

Also showcased at NFT Hack 2022 (January 14-16):

Charisma, a tool that “reads” your personality by analysing your wallet’s NFT assets and your on-chain activity;

OxPhotos, a stock photography marketplace that puts creators first, where NFTs become future cashflow-positive assets that can be traded on other NFT marketplaces; and

Cropsin, a platform that pays creators in crypto to place independent music artists’ songs in their videos and invests in album art, songs, tickets, metaverse merch and song royalty NFTs.

For a comparison, see Crypto News Australia‘s guide to the top 10 NFT art projects of the past few years.

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Bitcoin BSV Crypto News Crypto.com Hackers Security

Crypto.com Suspends Withdrawals Following ‘Unauthorised Activity’ on User Accounts

Crypto.com suspended withdrawals this week after a small number of users reporting suspicious activity on their accounts, claiming “all funds are safe” – but not before security firm Peckshield reported losses amounting to “about US$15 million”.

Several Customers Report ‘Thefts’

The Singapore-based exchange stopped withdrawals on January 17 in response to several “thefts” reported by customers. One of them was Dogecoin (DOGE) founder Billy Markus, who noticed a suspicious transaction pattern on Etherscan.

Several hours later, Crypto.com issued an update advising users were required to sign back into their accounts and reset their two-factor authentication (2FA).

However, crypto enthusiast and jeweller Ben Baller claimed his account had been breached to the tune of 4.28 ETH (about US$15,000). Baller tweeted he had used 2FA to sign back in, so it appears the perpetrators must have bypassed some of Crypto.com’s security features:

At around 16:00 UTC, Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek tweeted that final checks were being made prior to withdrawals being resumed within the following hour, reiterating that “all funds were safe”.

Not Your Keys, Not Your Coins

In July last year, exchanges suspended Bitcoin SV (BSV) following double-spending attacks registered on the coin’s network. Developers of the BSV network had identified a wallet address that was linked with a history of illegal activities, including ransomware. The attacker had tried to mask double-spending of coins by causing block re-organisation attacks, which usually occurs when miners work together to remove previously confirmed blocks from the blockchain.

And just last month, centralised US crypto exchange BitMart was hit by one of the most devastating hacks to date, draining a combination of cryptocurrencies. The losses were estimated to be around US$200 million by security firm PeckShield, who – as in this week’s Crypto.com case – picked it up as it was happening.

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Australia Crypto News Sports

AFL Signs $25 Million Crypto.com Five-Year Sponsorship Deal

The Australian Football League (AFL) has secured the first major crypto sports sponsorship deal Down Under with Crypto.com for both its men’s and women’s competitions, with the latter’s 2022 season already under way.

Worth A$25 million over five years, the deal is one of the biggest sponsorships of any kind in Australian sport, eclipsing the AFL’s current deal with major sponsor Toyota (worth A$18.5 million).

Singapore-based Crypto.com says its motivation for sponsoring women’s AFL (AFLW) is what it recognises as Australian women’s higher than average adoption and take-up of cryptocurrency by global standards. The company had already engaged A-list actor Matt Damon as the face of its current TV advertising campaign in Australia, though it may be that Crypto.com is banking on his appeal to women as much as to men.

AFL Joins Baseball, Euro Football, Martial Arts and F1

Crypto.com has splurged more than A$1.5 billion on a series of sports branding deals in recent months, including a $US700m (A$971m) naming rights agreement for a Los Angeles baseball stadium, and partnerships with other major sports clients including Euro football powerhouse Paris St Germain, the UFC and Formula One.

The new Australian agreement involves Crypto.com becoming the official cryptocurrency exchange and trading platform of the AFL and AFLW. According to Karl Mohan, Crypto.com general manager Asia & Pacific, research conducted by the company in Australia found that 53 per cent of crypto investors were women, which encouraged it to embrace the AFLW element of the overall deal.

Uniquely for Australia, compared to other markets, is that they generally skew towards blokes, but here we are skewing more towards women … We think the AFL has led the way [in bringing] gender diversity to Australian sport.

Karl Mohan, general manager Asia & Pacific, Crypto.com

Crypto.com branding will appear during score reviews in AFL regular season and finals matches, when contentious goal line decisions are reviewed on video by off-field umpires.

Kylie Rogers, the AFL’s general manager for customer and commercial, said the sport had identified cryptocurrency and blockchain as a potential new sponsorship source last year, and clinched the Crypto.com agreement after several months of negotiations.

AFL ‘At the Forefront’ of Australian Crypto Growth

AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan said the partnership marked an exciting new chapter for Australian Rules football: â€œCryptocurrency and blockchain technology is a dynamic and emerging industry, and the AFL is delighted to partner with Crypto.com to be at the forefront of the industry’s growth in Australia.”

Four AFL clubs – the Sydney Swans, Brisbane Lions, Western Bulldogs and the Melbourne Demons – now have direct sponsorship deals involving cryptocurrency companies other than Crypto.com.

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Bitcoin Crime Crypto News Ethereum

Report Shows North Korean Hackers Stole Nearly $400 Million in Crypto in 2021

North Korean hackers launched at least seven attacks against cryptocurrency platforms last year, netting almost US$400 million worth of digital assets, according to a Chainalysis report.

“Once North Korea gained custody of the funds, they began a careful laundering process to cover up and cash out,” the blockchain analytics firm’s team claims in its blog post.

Ethereum Looms Large Among Stolen Funds

The overwhelming majority (58 percent) of stolen funds was Ethereum, with Bitcoin accounting for less than a quarter of the 2021 haul. Incidentally, a prominent Ethereum developer pleaded guilty last September to a federal charge of conspiring with the North Korean government to evade US sanctions law.

According to Chainalysis, the typical hack procedure starts by swapping Ethereum-based ERC-20 tokens and other cryptocurrencies for Ethereum (ETH) via a decentralised exchange. The ETH is then put through a so-called mixer, which Chainalysis describes as “software tools that pool and scramble cryptocurrencies from thousands of addresses”. Those funds are then swapped for bitcoin, mixed a second time, and consolidated into a new wallet.

Crypto Laundering Up More Than 40% in Two Years

The mixed bitcoin is then sent to deposit addresses where crypto can be converted into a fiat currency, typically at exchanges elsewhere on the Asian continent. Over 65 percent of the North Korean rogue regime’s stolen funds were laundered through mixers in 2021. In 2020 and 2019, the respective numbers were 42 percent and 21 percent.

Hacks by total value linked to North Korea, 2017-2021. Source: Chainalysis

The Chainalysis report, released on January 13, blames the crypto heists on a state-sponsored, North Korea-based hacking group called Lazarus, best known for masterminding the 2014 Sony Pictures hack and the WannaCry ransomware attack of 2017.

Since the latter incident, the group has stolen hundreds of millions in cryptocurrencies from virtual exchanges and investment firms. The UN claims Lazarus’ goal is to fund North Korea’s government and nuclear weapons programs.

From 2020 to 2021, the number of North Korean-linked hacks jumped from four to seven, and the value extracted from these hacks grew by 40 percent.

Chainalysis report

$170 Million Stolen in 49 Hacks Yet to Be Laundered

One of the hacks involved crypto exchange Liquid.com, which lost US$91.5 million to the group. By tracking the Lazarus attacks, Chainalysis claims to have uncovered several cryptocurrency wallets the North Korean hackers are using to stockpile a fortune.

“Chainalysis has identified US$170 million in current balances – representing the stolen funds of 49 separate hacks from 2017 to 2021 – that are controlled by North Korea but have yet to be laundered through services,” the Chainalysis report noted, adding:

It’s unclear why the hackers would still be sitting on these funds, but it could be that they are hoping law enforcement interest in the cases will die down so they can cash out without being watched.

Chainalysis report

In February last year, the US Department of Justice charged three hackers associated with the Lazarus group with theft and extortion of cryptocurrencies between 2017 and 2020.