Author: Robert Drage

Robert is a freelance researcher, with a background in information science currently interested in blockchain technology and technical developments in the field.

Categories
Accointing Crypto News Crypto Trackers Crypto Wallets Cryptocurrencies Cryptocurrency Tax

Accointing Launches Crypto Trading Tax Optimiser Tool

Swiss crypto tracking and tax assistance platform Accointing has released a new Trading Tax Optimiser (TTO) tool to help traders stay on top of the taxes they are liable pay for their trades.

For any sort of trader, it’s important to keep track of trades in order to file for taxes. Traders who don’t make proper preparation can be confronted by huge tax bills that can potentially eat away at profits. Accointing can assist users with organising and keeping track of their crypto data:

How the TTO Tool Works

Some crypto traders don’t really pay attention to the potential tax consequences of their trades until it’s too late. It can easily be the case that if a trader had sold a different coin from a different wallet using the same strategy, they could have reduced their tax bill substantially.

To fill this gap, Accointing’s TTO tool can help determine tax consequences before making a trade to help reduce tax deductibles. Before a trade is made, users can take a look at their dashboard to see the tax implications of the particular coin they want to sell.

The difference in tax rates for selling the same coin held in different wallets can be significant. By displaying the tax implications of selling different coins in a portfolio and which coins attract the lowest taxes, users can manage their deductibles and potentially save thousands of dollars.

Getting Ready for Tax Time

According to Accointing’s business developer, in the US the highest marginal tax rate at the federal level is 37 per cent if you sell one coin, but selling the same coin from a different wallet for the same price can result in a tax rate as low as 15 per cent. The platform allows users to see these implications before making a trade, which could cost them more at tax time. Accointing also has a solution for Australian users to help them at tax time.

By planning ahead, the tool can show users how their tax situation will develop by tracking positions across all wallets. And since all the data is stored on the platform, when it comes around to tax filing time users can simply print their tax report.

In October last year, Melbourne’s RMIT University urged the Australian government to reform crypto capital gains tax. Here are some additional tax tips for Australian traders published by the Australian Tax Office (ATO).

Categories
Banking CBDCs Crypto News

Bank of Jamaica Successfully Completes CBDC Trial, Rollout Scheduled for Q1 2022

The Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) has recently completed its Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) pilot with eCurrency Mint. The project will be rolled out in the first quarter of 2022 with the onboarding of more users and two extra wallet providers.

Another Nation Opts For a CBDC

Jamaica has joined the Bahamas and Ukraine and a handful of other countries that are implementing a CBDC into their monetary system.

According to a release from the Jamaica Information Service, the BOJ concluded its CBDC pilot on December 31.

As part of the pilot, the BOJ minted 230 million Jamaican dollars (JMD), or about US$1.5 million, for 57 customers by way of person-to person, cash-in and cash-out transactions through 37 accounts. This was all done at an event sponsored by the National Commercial Bank (NCB), one of the ​​island nation’s largest financial institutions.

For the pilot, BOJ used Irish cryptography security firm eCurrency Mint as the provider for its digital currency project after opening applications in July 2020. The scope of the pilot was limited to digital wallet providers who indicated readiness to participate within the timeframe.

National Rollout Ready to Go

As the roll-out commences, NCB will continue to bring on new customers, as well as add two other wallet providers who are currently in the virtual simulation testing phase.

As countries find more use cases for CBDCs this may turn out to be the year of central bank issued digital currency, with both Brazil and Peru potentially looking to introduce CBDCs in 2022.

Categories
Crypto News NFTs Scams

OpenSea Freezes 16 NFTs Worth $2.2 Million Following Phishing Scam

A Bored Ape collector’s NFTs have been stolen in a phishing attack, prompting top NFT marketplace OpenSea to step in and freeze the assets on its site as some community members tried to get them back.

On December 30, an NFT collector was the victim of a successful phishing attack which led the hacker to a collection of Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and other NFTs worth an estimated US$2.2 million:

Collector Todd Kramer, who runs the Ross+Kramer art gallery in New York and East Hampton, revealed in a series of tweets that he was hacked after clicking a malicious link fronting as a Dapp. The attack resulted in him losing 16 of his NFTs, with Kramer stating in a now deleted tweet: “I have been hacked. […] all my apes gone. [T]his just sold [referring to his profile picture] please help me”, further pleading with the OpenSea and NFT community to assist in any way.

BAYC has been one of the most successful NFT projects so far, with celebrities including talkshow host Jimmy Fallon and rapper Eminem also owning a few. So far, nearly US$1 billion has been spent on trading Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs. 

Community Works to Return Stolen NFTs

Some buyers found the activity questionable as these NFTs were being sold for fractions of their value and had been flagged as suspicious by the marketplace:

After word got out, some community members approached Kramer to either sell back (albeit at a loss) or give back some of his NFTs.

The end result of the stolen BAYC and MAYC NFT fiasco has not been disclosed publicly, but it seems a few individuals helped ease Kramer’s worries and have assisted him in retrieving some of his stolen NFTs.

Freezing NFTs Brings Up Questions

After Kramer’s NFTs were stolen, OpenSea – the largest NFT marketplace – froze the assets, so they can’t be traded. In an earlier tweet, Kramer said: “All Apes are frozen […] Waiting for OpenSea team to get in”. This can be seen on OpenSea, where the items can no longer be bought or sold.

The deleted tweet from Todd Kramer, which was captured on archive.org. Kramer claims all the apes were frozen in the tweet.

This comment attracted criticism from the community since a third party was getting involved, which goes against the idea of true decentralisation. One Twitter user commented: “Feels pretty anti-crypto to be asking third parties to do this and ideally they shouldn’t be able to.”

Even famed software engineer Grady Booch added his opinion about the lack of decentralisation in this case when he commented:

Silly me. And here I thought that the code is the law and that one of the very ideas of cryptocurrencies was the elimination of any possibility of centralised intervention. Hypocrites; every one of you.

Grady Booch

Lack of Operational Security Partly to Blame

In the end, one can be sure that if other owners were in Kramer’s shoes, they would be thankful. One other mistake on his part was not practising good operational security – Kramer’s stolen NFTs were stored on a hot wallet connected to the internet, rather than using a cold wallet that requires physical action on the part of the holder to verify transactions.

Phishing has been a growing problem in the crypto space, with cybersecurity company PhishLabs reporting a tenfold increase in such attacks on crypto exchanges in the first half of 2021, compared to the previous year.

Categories
Blockchain Crypto News Gaming Industries Metaverse NFTs

Report Reveals NFT Gaming Generated $2.3 Billion in Q3 Alone

A report published by the blockchain game alliance (BGA) shows that non-fungible token (NFT) games generated billions in revenue in the third quarter and generally saw remarkable growth throughout the year.

According to the report, the third quarter of 2021 was dominated by NFT gaming, with 2.5 million Unique Active Wallets (UAWs) connected to blockchain dApps on average “making blockchain games responsible for half of all blockchain usage”.

With the surge in NFT games, the sector accumulated US$2.32 billion in revenue between July and September, representing 22 percent of total NFT trading volume industry-wide for that period.

The report also cited DappRadar’s data showing a 6,566 percent increase in daily UAWs interacting with game-related smart contracts, rising from 23,100 in Q3 2020 to 1.54 million daily in Q3 2021. However, UAW numbers do not translate to unique users, since a single individual might use multiple wallets to interact with a single dApp.

The Metaverse Raking in Digital Dollars

The metaverse has drawn much attention since a few major names in the tech industry mentioned they were dipping their toes in. The industry was also fuelled by virtual land sales that hit US$42.6 million and are continuing to grow; the market cap for virtual world dApps reached a new all-time high, surpassing US$4.6 billion at the end of November.

Blockchain gaming has firmly established itself as the industry’s darling. With the consumer growth participating in blockchain games, dApp and gaming trends will come together into something even bigger and potentially all-encompassing: the metaverse.

Dragos Dunica, co-founder, DappRadar

Recently, venture capital firm Galaxy Interactive raised US$325 million to focus on gaming startups and interactive technology. The spark of interest hasn’t just been for investors, but also the general public. As the year moved on there was a noticeable increase in web searches for the terms “metaverse” and “play-to-earn”.

Online mentions of metaverse, play-to-earn and NFT. Source Meltwater

The Issue with NFT Games

According to those working in the industry, many of the current challenges faced in the industry are caused by:

  • regulatory uncertainty;
  • the need for user education;
  • technology limitations;
  • poor user experience; and
  • gameplay quality (or lack of).

The majority of respondents (52 per cent) stated that regulatory uncertainty was their biggest concern and the industry’s most significant challenge, since in-game assets – if not structured properly – can be treated as securities under some laws and could cause unwanted complications.

Categories
Crypto Art Crypto News NFTs

NFT Data Provider to Sell CryptoPunk with Business Attached

Non-fungible token (NFT) data provider DegenData.io will be auctioning its CryptoPunk, with the buyer of the NFT finding business IP and all supporting assets attached.

On December 20, DegenData announced the January 1 auction of CryptoPunk #5761, and as a twist “the new owner of this Punk will have the rights to claim DegenData product and assets”.

CryptoPunk 5671. Source: Lavalabs

The CryptoPunk will be auctioned for 420.69 ETH, or nearly US$1.7 million at the time of writing. This price is only a fraction of record-holding CryptoPunk #7523, which was auctioned for a record US$11.8 million by Sotheby’s in June.

According to the Twitter thread:

We see the lines of what NFTs are beginning to blur. Digital and physical worlds are intertwined now. NFTs aren’t just profile pictures. They are becoming the value of what you create around them. It is time for us to push the space to think more about what NFTs represent.

DegenData tweet

Why Sell the Platform?

DegenData (DGD) is owned by Pink Swan Trading, Inc (PST), which owns another brand and is developing another crypto analytics product called Genesis Volatility. The owners want to sell DGD and use the proceeds to further develop Genesis Volatility, since the team feels it can be pioneers in the nascent DeFi sector.

Our team feels strongly that we can be pioneers in crypto options analytics and pioneers in DeFi crypto options; for that reason we decided to sell DGD and use the proceeds to help build Genesis Volatility to its full potential, especially as we dig deeper into the DeFi world.

PST team statement
Categories
Crypto News DeFi E-commerce NFTs

Shopify to Offer Merchants NFT Minting Services

Shopify has opened its non-fungible token (NFT) beta that allows participants to mint and trade their own branded NFTs on its platform. The multinational e-commerce company has partnered with blockchain company GigLabs to integrate NFT utilities on its platform.

Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke announced the release on December 16, having previously shown interest in the DeFi and crypto space.

The Shopify application is built on Flow, a decentralised blockchain, and for the time being the “NFT Beta program” will only be available to US-based merchants on Shopify Plus. Participants will be able to buy the digital collectibles with Shopify Payments, Shop Pay, crypto payment gateways, credit/debit cards, and others. Users can also choose on which blockchain they want their NFTs minted, including Ethereum, Polygon, Near and Flow.

NFTs for Branding and Customer Engagement

Earlier in the year, Shopify made it possible to sell NFTs on its platform but now users will be able to access a host of additional functionalities. Included among these will be the ability to “forge [their] own branded experience” by minting NFTs, scheduling airdrops, memberships, and content-gating.

The platform has simplified much of the convoluted procedure required to get your hands on an NFT. Customers can easily claim their NFTs via email and add them directly to their wallets from there. Other companies, such as the entertainment company Superplastic, have praised the application for helping with a successful NFT drop for their brand.

Shopify’s platform is f****** amazing. It helped Superplastic and our partner Christie’s create a massively successful NFT drop for Janky and Guggimon.

Paul Budnitz, founder and CEO, Superplastic

NFT Industry Continues to Boom

Just last month, leading NFT marketplace OpenSea surpassed US$10 billion in all-time trading volume, marking quite an achievement since its total volume trading for all of 2020 was just US$21 million.

Other massive multinational companies have also jumped aboard the bandwagon. For example, sports apparel giant Nike flagged its interest in NFTs earlier this week with the acquisition of RTFKT, a digital arts studio specialising in NFT collectibles.

Categories
Crypto News DeFi Factom Hackers

Grim Finance DeFi Protocol Hacked for $30 Million in Fantom Tokens

Grim Finance is the latest DeFi (Decentralised Finance) protocol to fall victim to a hack in which attackers exploited a flaw in the vault contract to drain millions.

On December 19, Grim Finance, a compounding yield optimiser on the Fanton blockchain, was targeted by an “advanced attack” where hackers drained an estimated US$30 million in Fantom (FTM). In a series of tweets, Grim explained that the unknown attackers exploited a flaw in its vault contract.

Smart Contract Exploited

The hackers used a reentrancy attack, which in this case allowed an attacker to fake additional withdrawals out of a smart contract while the initial transaction was still in progress and never updated the balance of the receiver, effectively allowing the loop to continue.

In reality, the attack can be prevented with not too much effort, mainly by updating a balance after a transaction is sent rather than before. According to Quantstamp senior research engineer Martin Derka, “if no internal state updates happen after an ether transfer or an external function call inside a method, the method is safe from the reentrancy vulnerability”.

As of December 19, all deposits into Grim Finance vaults remain paused to prevent further theft. The Grim team has contacted Circle (USDC), DAI, and AnySwap regarding the attacker’s address to potentially freeze any further fund transfers.

Attacker’s address

Rough Month for Some DeFi Investors

Grim Finance is the newest addition to the list of protocols that have been hacked, bringing the total up to over US$600 million stolen this month alone. The US$31 million MonoX hack just missed the cut, taking place at the end of November.

According to a tweet by RugDoc, “Hopefully all projects can draw lessons from this incident that there is much knowledge most experienced solidity devs have at hand”, adding that “if you haven’t acquired this yet, don’t build multimillion-dollar projects”.

Categories
Crypto News Tokens

GXChain Token Up Over 100% Overnight Amid REIcosystem Grant Distribution

The REI Network, formerly GXChain, has recently put its growth fund in place, making 150,000,000 $REI available for the ecosystem. After the release of the news, the GXC token spiked over 100 per cent.

GXC Price Pump

On December 16, the GXChain released plans for its new growth fund to help build the ecosystem. Shortly after the news broke the token shot up from US$1.2 to $2.86 at its highest, a near 140 percent gain. At the time of writing the price had settled to $2.02.

GXC price. Source: Coinmarketcap

GXC Changes to REI Network

GXChain 2.0 is not only a technological upgrade but also a new migration of public chains. The proposal released by GXChain Official shows that it has restructured from the underlying architecture to a brand-new blockchain structure, based on lighter code construction, compatible with EVM and Ethereum RPC. GXChain 2.0 also stated that it will be renamed REI Network.

Grants to Help Build the Ecosystem

GXC is in the process of converting the native tokens of the mainnet from GXC to REI; the 1:10 split rule will be followed, in order that the maximum supply of REI will reach 1 billion.

REIcosystem Grants will be gradually released with the development of the ecology, and will not be directly circulated in the market for a fixed period and will not cause an increase in market circulation in the short term, so as not to exert undue pressure on the price of the token.

The new token distribution

The team provides all the 25 million unlocked tokens as Ecology Grants, of which 5 million is used for node rewards, 5 million for marketing, and 15 million to incentivise developers. This will be done by decreasing the team’s token holdings from 25 percent to 0 percent.

By doing this the team hopes to rebuild the ecosystem by incentivising ecological contributors and developers in the REI Network with rewards, investment in high-quality projects, and user rewards for major contributors to the ecology.

Categories
Blockchain Markets NFTs Tezos

Rarible Integrates with Tezos to Launch Own NFT Collection

Expansive non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace Rarible has announced its intention to integrate the Tezos proof-of-stake blockchain to help with reducing the gas costs of minting, buying and selling NFTs, along with supporting secondary sales of other live Tezos projects.

The Cross-Chain Future of NFTs

On December 15, Tezos became the third blockchain to be supported by the Rarible multichain marketplace, joining the ranks of Flow and Ethereum. The marketplace is still in the process of onboarding many more chains in order to expand the collections their users can access. According to Rarible CEO and co-founder Alexei Falin, integrations with Solana and Polygon are up next.

Rarible firmly believes that the future of NFTs is cross-chain, and that interoperability is the key to a streamlined, successful NFT ecosystem. We have seen many alternative blockchains gain traction in the NFT space for their unique offerings, specifically Tezos for its low costs and energy-efficient minting process through proof-of-stake validation.

Rarible CEO Alexei Falin

Partnership About More Than Just Reduced Gas Fees

The partnership brings more than reduced gas fees to the table. To celebrate the partnership, Rarible will host an exclusive Tezos community drop titled ‘Blazing Futures’. Curated by Diane Drubay, it will offer 10 interpretations of the future of art, society and crypto.

Also coming to Rarible thanks to the Tezos blockchain is its latest offering Digits, in partnership with French gaming studio Ubisoft. The latter has just launched Ubisoft Quartz, a platform for players to acquire Digits, the first NFTs playable in AAA games, starting with Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Breakpoint.

Digits are released as part of limited editions, each representing a host of in-game items. However, the gaming community isn’t as excited about Digits as the NFT community might be. Rarible will immediately support secondary sales for Digits, meaning that players that missed the drop can still acquire those playable NFTs.

Phase Two of the Integration

Phase one, which is already live, enables you to mint, buy and sell NFTs as part of the Rarible collection and trade the Ubisoft Digits NFTs.

Phase two, to be released shortly, will introduce additional features, namely the ability to mint your own collection via custom contracts and add royalties to imported collections such as Tezzards, Gemz and other exciting projects that have emerged on Tezos over the past couple of months.

Categories
Australia Blockchain Crypto News Crypto.com Melbourne

Victoria Emerging Blockchain Leader as Crypto.com Sets Up New Melbourne Offices

According to a media release from the Victoria State Government, Crypto.com, one of the world’s fastest growing cryptocurrency platforms, has chosen Melbourne for its Australian headquarters.

Victoria the ‘Blockchain Powerhouse’

The Singapore-based crypto giant says its choice will “enhance Victoria’s reputation as an emerging blockchain powerhouse” along with the rest of Australia making major strides in the crypto race. Just recently, Chainalysis opened a new office in Canberra in response to an increase in adoption of and demand for its products.

Melbourne was [also] recently selected as the host for the largest blockchain series [of meetings] in the world – The World Blockchain Summit 2022 – and is emerging as a location of choice for global companies operating in this space.

Victoria State Government media release

Crypto.com’s move comes after the Australian Treasury recently announced it would begin to implement crypto regulation, hopefully clearing the murky water crypto businesses currently try to work in.

Due to the nature of Crypto.com’s work and rapid expansion, the company requires a highly skilled workforce to build blockchain applications and services that can operate globally.

Victoria’s Tech Sector Attracts Crypto Companies

Victoria’s tech sector contributes more than A$38 billion to the state’s economy annually and supports more than 139,000 workers across 20,000 businesses.

The state Minister for Economic Development, Tim Pallas, announced that Crypto.com would set up its Australian headquarters to focus on collaboration with globally renowned Victorian universities to increase the company’s technical development capabilities.

Melbourne’s tech ecosystem is an ideal base for Crypto.com to continue to grow, develop innovative services and access world-class talent.

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

As more crypto giants emerge, they will seek to establish themselves in places that provide regulatory, economic, and political stability. If Australia continues on this trajectory, it may well carve a space for itself as an industry leader.