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 Ethereum NFTs

Decentralised Blogging Platform ‘Mirror’ Offers Writers a Way to Monetise their Articles

Thanks to the slow, agonising and ongoing death of mainstream media, writers are running out of avenues to monetise their work. One of a number of new platforms designed to address the problem is Mirror.xyz, a publishing tool that leverages cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies.

Created by Denis Nazarov, a former investment professional at US venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, Mirror is a decentralised writing platform developed to help creators connect with their target audiences in a direct and innovative way.

The functionality of Mirror differs from popular blogging sites such as Medium in that it enables writers to earn in cryptocurrency rather than fiat cash transactions. Authors can also seek crowdfunding for creative projects via non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that can be continuously traded and keep earning on a writer’s behalf, via Mirror’s use of the Ethereum blockchain.

Mirror Turns Written Articles into NFTs

Typically, most NFTs traded online are for digital art and music files. Mirror makes it possible to turn various forms of creative writing into NFTs, whether they be poems, essays, novels or short stories.

Mirror allows its writers to be the gatekeepers of content. As that content is stored on a blockchain, there is less chance of it being appropriated or accidentally dumped. Each written work becomes a unique NFT that can be auctioned off or sold to the highest bidder in exchange for crypto.

You Can Take It With You

Users can leave the platform at any time and take their material with them, since it remains cryptographically safe and cannot be altered or deleted. Mirror has grown from a tool for authors to a complete Web3 creative stack for communities and DAOs, according to the developers behind it.

As soon as they link an Ethereum wallet to the platform, users may begin generating content and inserting media blocks such as films, iFrames, social media postings, NFTs, auctions and crowdfunds.

American freelance writer Meagan Loyst is just one satisfied Mirror user, making a strong case for the platform over Medium, the site she used to write for. She describes Mirror as “the future of blogging”:

Revolutions Afoot in Writing and Music

As also reported by Crypto News Australia this week, Opulous is a new blockchain-based music platform built for creators and investors to address the biggest challenge facing artists in the music industry today: raising capital. It is to musicians (and fans) what Mirror may turn out to be for writers, and ultimately readers.

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Crypto News Crypto Wallets Hackers NFTs Tokens

Lympo NFT Platform Hacked for $18.7 Million, LMT Token Down 99%

Animoca Brands subsidiary Lympo has suffered a breach that cost the minter of sports non-fungible tokens (NFTs) close to US$19 million worth of its native token, LMT.

Hackers broke into Lympo’s systems on January 10 and drained 165.2 million LMT, worth US$18.7 million at the time. Since then, the value of the token has plunged 92 percent, though blockchain security company PeckShield claims it could be more than 99 percent:

According to a post from the Lympo team, 10 different project wallets were compromised in the attack. Most of the stolen tokens were sent to a single address, exchanged for Ether on Uniswap and SushiSwap, then diverted elsewhere.

Liquidity Removed to ‘Minimise Price Disruption’

In a later tweet, the team also stated that it had removed liquidity LMT from liquidity pools to “minimise disruption to token prices”:

Removing liquidity from pools means traders will be unable to buy or sell any significant amount of the tokens without experiencing a dramatic loss of value on their trade.

Lympo advised traders that most of the LMT reserve sits in so-called cold wallets that are disconnected from the internet. These were unaffected by the attack.

We are investigating the incident and how we can make up for it for our community. At this point, we recommend not buying or selling additional LMT tokens.

Lympo post on Twitter

Second Hot Wallet Hack in a Week

Lympo is a subsidiary of Animoca Brands, a Hong Kong-based game software and venture capital company. According to Animoca CEO Yat Siu, “We are working with Lympo to assist them on a recovery plan, but we don’t have any specific mechanisms.”

This was the second hot wallet hack in a week, with crypto exchange LCX losing nearly US$8 million on January 8. Both incidents follow the US$200 million BitMart hack in early December.

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Australia Bitcoin Mining Crypto News

Australian Piggery Makes History Taking Surplus Energy and Mining Bitcoin

Amid a worldwide push to make the crypto industry more environmentally accountable, a Queensland piggery is generating enough excess methane to mine bitcoin.

BettaPork, run by father-and-son farmers Paul and Laurie Brosnan, is situated directly across the road from the Callide coalmine near the Central Queensland town of Biloela.

Generator Powered by Methane

Six years ago, the Brosnans set up two three-million-litre tanks to process the farm’s pig waste – along with food scraps from schools and cafes in town and cattle waste from the local meatworks – to create methane, which is used to power a generator.

BettaPork now generates enough electricity to power 140 homes and is saving the farm hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. So much so that a business partner recently suggested bitcoin mining as a sustainable way to utilise the roughly 100 kilowatts of excess energy generated by the piggery’s biogas plant.

BettaPork director and general manager Laurie Brosnan. Source: theaustralian.com.au

BettaPork general manager Laurie Brosnan, whose grandfather founded the farm in 1959, says a trial using two bitcoin mining terminals has already proved successful and more generators will soon be added.

“These two little boxes are validating transactions, creating a lot of heat and making money,” Brosnan told The Australian newspaper. “Last week, each of them was making A$8 every four hours.

In Germany they joke that pork is a by-product of power because they pay so much for the electricity they generate. Here, we can do it sustainably. It’s good for the environment, it’s good for the hip pocket, and it’s good for the pigs.

Laurie Brosnan, general manager, BettaPork

The number of crypto­ mining terminals is ­limited only by the amount of available electricity, which in turn is limited only by the amount of feedstock for the onsite biogas plant.

The bacteria basically farts and creates the gas that goes into the engines, and the engines power the whole site.

Laurie Brosnan, general manager, BettaPork

“Our limit right now would be 20 machines, but if we have enough feedstock we could generate 1000kw,” Brosnan says. “If we want [to mine] more crypto, we just need more food waste.”

No Grants, Just Grunts – and They’re Green

The farm’s technological refit was achieved without government grants and was simply driven by the family’s desire to be as energy-efficient as possible. They have even installed their own fibre cable to control the farm’s pumps online, while the biogas plant also produces water and fertiliser that can be used in the paddocks.

“We’ve got some old sheds we plan to update to save ourselves 70 percent of our power. That’s another two or three crypto miners right there,” Brosnan says.

Eight hours’ drive south across the Queensland-NSW border, the seaside town of Byron Bay is the site of Australia’s largest bitcoin mine, powered by 100 percent renewable energy, although pigs are not involved.

Categories
Australia Crime Crypto News Gold Scams South Africa Tokens

Australian Man Charged by SEC for Fraudulent ICO

Australian cryptocurrency entrepreneur Craig Sproule has been charged by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for defrauding investors by diverting millions from a digital coin offering into South African gold mining interests.

Australian crypto entrepreneur Craig Sproule. Source: medium.com

Sproule, currently a resident of California, faces additional charges of making false and misleading statements when selling digital asset securities. Jointly named on the SEC charge sheet are two companies founded by the Lismore-born entrepreneur – Crowd Machine Inc and Metavine Pty Ltd.

‘The Man Behind the Machine’

Self-proclaimed on social media as “the Man behind the Machine”, Sproule has been ordered to pay a US$200,000 (A$280,000) civil penalty while Crowd Machine’s digital tokens will be banned from crypto trading platforms.

Crowd Machine was intended to replace Amazon Web Services, the cloud-based computer infrastructure, with a distributed system. To achieve this, Sproule claimed to have raised US$40.7 million through an initial coin offering of Crowd Machine Compute Tokens (CMCT) in early 2018 that was to fund a decentralised computer network.

Almost $6 Million Siphoned into South African Gold Mines

Instead, Sproule siphoned US$5.8 million into gold mining entities in South Africa, which was not disclosed to Crowd Machine token investors. None of the US$5.8 million has been recovered, and the South African gold mining operations “have returned no revenue”, according to the SEC’s statement of claim.

Along with Sproule and Crowd Machine, another entity registered in Australia, Metavine Pty Ltd, has committed to covering any future civil penalties relating to Crowd Machine. An application for voluntary deregistration of Metavine was filed with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) last month.

Sproule and Crowd Machine have neither admitted nor denied the allegations, although Sproule will be summarily banned from serving as an officer or director of a public company.

Shades of Last Year’s BitConnect Fiasco

The Sproule/Crowd Machine imbroglio echoes the circumstances of an SEC lawsuit filed last May against five individuals linked to BitConnect for promoting and selling unregistered securities. That case also shared a connection down under, with ASIC accusing a former BitConnect promoter of defrauding small investors in Australia in 2017-2018.

Categories
Crypto Art Crypto News Gaming Metaverse NFTs

ASM Brains Debuts a New Type of NFT with Artificial Intelligence

Who knew there were non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that could think for themselves?

Altered State Machine (ASM) is a platform to build, train and trade artificial intelligence (AI) “agents” using NFTs, introducing what it calls a new generation of gaming and finance in which AI bots compete and interact with each other.

NFTs With a Brain

Each agent has its own genome – effectively, its DNA. Depending on the agent’s environment, its base values are expressed in terms of strength, speed and size (in gaming) or risk tolerance and randomness (in finance). Think of it as an inboard brain.

Form, on the other hand, is what enables an agent to operate in its physical world. Owners can bring in their existing NFT art or model from another part of the metaverse, or create entirely new forms.

The third facet of agent training relates to its memories. These are specific to the agent’s genome and the world in which they were formed. Each agent can retain multiple memories, created in different worlds.

An ASM Brain NFT. Source: OpenSea

Worlds are applications that exist anywhere in the metaverse using the ASM platform. They may take the form of financial markets or sports fields, combat zones or beach bars. As new worlds grow, new forms and memories are created to explore them.

ASM NFTs are fully compatible with major platforms such as OpenSea and owners can trade their agents on the open market with players who want a head start.

AI Brings New Meaning to Football Headers

ASM Brains has a a decentralised play-to-earn gaming application called AIFA (Artificial Intelligence Football Association) Allstars, unique metaverse-ready footballers to collect and configure.

AIFA All-Stars. Source: ASM Brains

Players can build a team of Allstars, pair them with ASM Brains and train them to compete in the world’s most popular football code.

Players open an AIFA box to discover the Allstars and ASM Brain inside. The ASM Brain NFT can be loaded into any Allstar and trained to play AIFA. Owners can change the colour, body parts or accessories of characters and mint them as new NFTs to create a customised four-player AIFA team.

Holding $ASTO tokens will entitle players to vote in the DAO on the future direction of ASM.

Crypto News Australia has a wealth of additional information relating to exciting new play-to-earn NFT projects on the Solana and Cardano networks.

Categories
Australia Crypto News Metaverse NFTs Sports

Australian Open Grand Slam Embraces Crypto with Virtual Tennis Arena and 6,776 NFTs

In a world first for top-level international tennis, the Australian Open – the 2022 season’s first Grand Slam tournament – is set to combine non-fungible tokens (NFTs) with on-court action as the event gets under way in Melbourne from January 17.

The AO, as it’s popularly known, is releasing a collection of 6,776 NFTs that align with tiny squares on the tournament’s centre court surface, along with a virtual event on the metaverse platform Decentraland.

Fans Can Buy a Piece of the Action

Fans can literally buy a piece of the action via an NFT that gives them “property” rights to a 19cm x 19cm area of Melbourne Park’s Rod Laver Arena. They stand to win a prize should the last bounce of the ball fall into their square on the deciding point in any of the approximately 600 matches during the tournament, including men’s and women’s singles, doubles, mixed doubles and wheelchair events.

From day one of the AO, fans will be able to access the virtual centre court via Decentraland, “walk around” it using a keyboard and mouse, watch the tennis action on big screens as they go, and later buy souvenir items in an online shop. They can even enter the virtual Rod Laver Arena and play a game with a simulated tennis ball machine.

Every winning shot from the tournament’s 600 matches will correspond with one of the collection’s NFTs. Owners will receive an airdrop with footage of the point, virtual wearables and AO merch. The data extracted to match the NFTs will be gleaned from the same electronic line-calling technology used to judge actual in-game points.

If the winning point happens to take place in a final, the owner of the NFT square on which the ball lands will receive the actual ball in a custom engraved case. The AO has partnered with metaverse design firm Run It Wild for the event’s construction.

Australian Open NFT Project Collaborators

How to Participate

The court location for each NFT will be determined after the collection’s minting, which takes place from 10am AEDT on January 13 for 0.067 ETH (US$225, or A$315) each. Details can be found at the ao.artball.io site.

Out of the total of 6,776 NFTs:

  • 169 will feature custom designs from winners of the AO Artist Series competition;
  • 22 will be wrapped in historical AO artwork; and
  • the remaining 6585 will be randomly created using an algorithmic combination of unique colour schemes, patterns and textures.

Tennis Australia expects to raise A$2.4 million if all of the NFTs sell, with the majority of funds going to charitable causes, the Australian Tennis Foundation and carbon offsetting.

If last year’s wildfire success of sports trading cards in Australia is any guide, the AO’s innovative NFTs are bound to be a … hit.

Categories
Crypto News Cryptocurrencies Cryptocurrency Law DeFi Regulation

Number of Countries Banning Crypto Has Doubled in 3 Years

Although 2021 was generally seen as a good year for the cryptocurrency industry in terms of market performance, the number of international jurisdictions banning crypto has more than doubled since 2018 with no sign of the trend easing in 2022.

According to an updated report by the American Library of Congress (LOC), nine countries have now applied an absolute ban on crypto and 42 an implicit ban. This is up from eight and 15, respectively, in 2018 when the report was first published.

Bans Have Two Shades of Meaning

In the context of the LOC report, an absolute ban means any “transactions with or holding cryptocurrency is a criminal act”, whereas an implicit ban prohibits cryptocurrency exchanges, banks and other financial institutions from “dealing in cryptocurrencies or offering services to individuals and/or businesses dealing in cryptocurrencies”.

The nine new jurisdictions with an absolute ban are Egypt, Iraq, Qatar, Oman, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Bangladesh and China. Other than the 51 jurisdictions with a crypto ban already in place, 103 have applied Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and combatting the funding of terrorism (CFT) laws, more than three times the 33 jurisdictions with such laws in place three years ago.

Current international legal status of cryptocurrencies. Source: LOC

Sweden, Estonia, Russia on the List; India Delays Execution

Estonia, Sweden’s EU neighbour across the Baltic Sea, is set to implement AML/CFT rules next month. As for Sweden itself, the Scandinavian nation’s Environmental Protection Agency called for a ban on proof-of-work (PoW) mining in November 2021 due to the power demands of keeping networks running.

The new rules are expected to change the definition of a virtual asset service provider and apply an implicit ban on decentralised finance (DeFi) and Bitcoin.

India’s government sent a shiver through the international crypto community when lawmakers there considered a total cryptocurrency ban last November. Although it did not eventuate, the Securities and Exchange Board of India – which oversees the regulation of local crypto exchanges – pushed to regulate cryptocurrencies as crypto assets. An outright ban, however, is still on the table.

Last month, Russia’s central bank moved to ban crypto investments and also also barred mutual funds from investing in digital currency.

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Crypto News Cryptocurrencies Gaming Metaverse NFTs Tokens

South Korean Presidential Candidate to Use NFTs to Raise Funds for Campaign

In a blatant pitch for the tech-savvy youth vote, South Korea’s ruling Democratic Party (DPK) is to issue non-fungible tokens (NFTs) for electoral fundraising purposes in what it claims is a political world first.

Digital images of Lee Jae-myung, the ruling party’s presidential candidate, will be sent to supporters who donate money to his campaign from this month. The party says that these NFTs, which feature Lee’s photos and details of his policies, will serve as a kind of bond so holders can freely exchange the assets with others.

Digital Assets to be Taxed … But Not Just Yet

The party was quick to confirm that South Korea’s National Election Commission had quietly decreed last month that fundraising using NFTs does not violate the Political Funds Act or the Public Official Election Act. And while the South Korean Financial Services Commission said in November that NFTs would not be regulated, it has since backpedalled by announcing the digital assets would be taxed from January 2022.

But in a convenient loophole for candidate Lee and the DPK, the implementation of the new tax has been delayed a year because of flaws noted by party scrutinisers.

Lee Declares His Support For Gaming NFTs

As part of his efforts to win over Korean Millennials and Gen Zs, candidate Lee openly supports the gaming industry’s use of NFTs. In an interview last month with a gaming YouTuber, Lee said that Korea should lead the global trend of integrating games with virtual assets and NFTs. Failing to do so, he added, would be tantamount to isolationism.

As the young generation[s] are interested in emerging technologies, including virtual assets, NFTs and the metaverse, this type of fundraising could appeal to them. If we deny what actually exists, it will be similar to an isolationist foreign policy.

Lee Jae-myung, presidential candidate, Korean Democratic Party

Party officials claim that if Lee’s initiative is successful, he will become the world’s first politician to issue NFTs to help finance a presidential bid. The NFTs, representing political memorabilia, could also hold future value and serve as an investment for donors. Donated digital monies will be converted into Korean won through a crypto exchange and then deposited into the campaign’s account.

Trump, Snowden Challenge Korea’s ‘World First’

As for the DPK’s claim of a political world first, former US first lady Melania Trump may have beaten Korea to the punch with last month’s launch of her own NFT platform. Its first offering was a tokenised watercolour of husband (and former president) Donald Trump’s eyes.

But as long ago as April last year, whistleblower Edward Snowden sold an NFT to help raise funds for the Freedom of the Press Foundation. That would certainly fit the description of a political act.

 

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Crypto News Tokens

Shiba Inu Launches Doggy DAO to Advance Decentralisation Mission

Shiba Inu developers have unleashed Doggy DAO, a decentralised autonomous organisation set to assign control over the project’s ShibaSwap DEX to the memecoin’s community.

DAO 1, launched on January 1 in beta, allows the SHIB community to vote on which crypto projects and pairs are added to ShibaSwap’s WOOF liquidity pools, and how rewards in the DEX’s BONE governance token are distributed among them.

Give the Dog a tBONE

ShibaSwap users can stake their BONE tokens to get tBONE, the staked form of the governance token. The more votes a project receives, the greater its allocation points (AP) – the quantitive measure of BONE rewards allocated to the pool. A maximum of 30 pairs voted on by the community will be executed, with a new batch of pairs decided on every two weeks.

A subsequent DAO 2 launch will allow improved use cases of BONE/tBONE tokens. A new staking contract will launch alongside DAO 1, forcing BONE to be locked up for longer before voting begins to counter the influence of whales and exchanges on the voting process.

ShibaSwap Team in ‘Big Surprise Coming Soon’ Tease

The Doggy DAO announcement has had little effect on SHIB’s price, down almost 12 percent over the past week on the back of an overall slump in the post-Christmas crypto market, though it did spike by a modest 1.7 percent in the 24 hours since the news broke.

This has done nothing to dampen the enthusiasm of the ShibaSwap team, which hinted at an imminent “big surprise” concurrent with its DAO announcement.

DAOs Dominate Crypto News Cycle

DAOs of varying descriptions have dominated the news in recent weeks. Last month, a group of crypto investors announced they were buying a Caribbean island and decentralising it for their community.

In late December, another DAO announced its intention to purchase the Blockbuster video brand and turn it into a decentralised film streaming service, with additional plans for movie financing and production.

Categories
Australia Blockchain Crypto News Tokens

Miami City to Monitor Air Quality Using Blockchain Technology

Already associated with a range of use cases from real estate to microfinance and even drone racing, the Algorand blockchain has now been enlisted to combat urban air pollution.

PlanetWatch, the world’s first decentralised indoor and outdoor air quality monitoring network built on Algorand, has selected the US city of Miami to host its system of pollution sensors.

US Project Follows Successful European Rollout

In what is the first such deployment in a major US location, the Miami project follows the successful rollout of PlanetWatch’s technology in several European cities and builds on commitments made as part of the Floridan city’s “Miami Forever Climate Ready” initiative.

These commitments flow from last month’s UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), held in Glasgow in the wake of the World Health Organization updating its Global Air Quality guidelines.

Almost Half of Americans Live in Polluted Environments

The selection of Miami as the location for the first US PlanetWatch project makes sense as recent evidence suggests more than 40 percent of Americans live in places with unhealthy levels of ozone or particle pollution, most often heavily urbanised environments.

Backed by blockchain VC firm Borderless Capital’s US$10 million PLANETS fund, so-called “PlanetWatchers” will host air-quality sensors to collect green data for transcription onto the Algorand blockchain. Contributors will receive PLANETS tokens as compensation, with collected information used to identify pollution hotspots and provide a database of environmental analytics to protect the future health of Miami’s population.

“It is hugely exciting that innovators like PlanetWatch and Algorand are coming [to Miami] to implement major sustainable technology in the US,” commented crypto-friendly Miami Mayor Francis Suarez. “Algorand is a carbon-negative blockchain, and the data from this project will play a crucial role in our climate adaptation efforts, as well as our ambitions to make Miami an epicentre for digital capital markets.”

For his part, PlanetWatch CEO Claudio Parrinello confirmed Miami as the France-based environmental tech startup’s first large-scale project in the US.

PlanetWatch is built on the contribution of individuals, and the people of Miami will play an invaluable role in expanding an air quality database that will help protect the health of our people and our planet.

Claudio Parrinello, CEO, PlanetWatch

Algorand’s Australian Connection

In early 2021, Blockchain Australia Solutions also partnered up with Algorand to enhance applications from quality assurance to eco-friendly housing.