Category: Tokens

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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.

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Bitcoin Crypto News Ethereum Tokens

Mozilla Does U-Turn on Decision to Accept Crypto Donations after Climate Backlash

Last week, Mozilla Foundation, the non-profit organisation behind open-source web browser Firefox, announced it would be accepting crypto donations to “keep the Web open and free”. Days later, it reversed the decision “due to cryptocurrency’s environmental impact”.

A Tidal Wave of Backlashes

What did it take for Mozilla to do an about-turn on its crypto donation policy? Approximately 20 disgruntled social media users, based on replies to the initial December 28 tweet:

Shortly after, Mozilla put a temporary hold on users’ ability to make crypto donations:

Unfortunately for Mozilla, it turns out that appeasing 20 noisy commenters has in turn created a new backlash to the initial backlash – a backlash squared, if you will.

Mozilla Greenwashing?

As environmental and social governance (ESG) issues have become increasingly important in modern public relations, it’s no surprise that crypto’s energy consumption has become a perennial hot topic of conversation.

Given the plethora of blockchains, consensus algorithms and the relative utility of each, a single retort is neither possible nor desirable. As a proof-of-work blockchain, Bitcoin tends to be targeted the most as no one credible denies that its energy use is significant.

While this isn’t the forum to provide a detailed rebuttal of the so-called energy argument, venture capitalist and Bitcoiner Nic Carter has done some exceptional work, the latest of which you can read about here.

In short, the energy debate comes down to two questions:

  1. Is the cryptocurrency valuable? If the detractor believes not, then no use of energy is worthwhile, however “green” it may be.
  2. Who gets to decide what is or isn’t an appropriate use of energy?

Is streaming The Kardashians on Netflix or ordering single-serve meal kits an acceptable use of energy? What about Christmas lights, air-conditioning, or the mining of cobalt for your mobile phone? Given that gold mining uses more energy than Bitcoin, should we be pushing for “eco-friendly” wedding rings?

In the context of Mozilla, this line of argument is epitomised in the tweet below:

Being Seen to Be Green

Today, it’s evident that there are societal and financial benefits to claims of being “environmentally friendly” – whether you actually are appears to be of secondary concern. This is essentially what “greenwashing” amounts to, a practice where “green” issues are used to elevate a company’s public perception, rather than actually doing anything useful in an environmental sense. It ultimately comes down to buzzwords over substance.

Mozilla’s decision to pause donations appears to be misguided at best. It has seemingly managed to overlook the value of crypto in funding international non-profits, as well as misunderstand its relationship to energy.

But perhaps there is an even bigger lesson to be learnt – bowing to the mob is often not the smartest strategy, particularly when the facts are not on your side.

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NFTs Scams Social media Solana Tokens

MonkeyBall NFT Drop Ends in Disaster with Buyers Losing SOL

A new game being developed on Solana called ‘MonkeyBall’ has caused mayhem as angry investors take to Twitter to voice their concerns about the project.

The project was aiming to drop 5,000 Monkey NFTs on its website on January 7 at 12am AEST. But the launch countdown timer on the website didn’t even finish before a message popped up saying “drop ended”, leaving many users disappointed and angry.

MonkeyBall NFT drop closed before the countdown finished. Source: Twitter

Some users were persistently refreshing the web page, even hundreds of times, and a few were able to create a 2 SOL transaction to mint an NFT. However, the SOL was sent to MonkeyBall but no NFT was returned appearing in the wallet, leaving investors out of pocket.

The subdomain used for the drop (monkeydrop2022.monkeyball.com) did appear in the DNS a few minutes before the official countdown ended, which hackers could have used to exploit the drop and execute mint transactions to chew up the supply.

Failed Token Launch, Failed NFT Drop and Broken Promises

The MonkeyBall team also muted the Discord and Telegram communities throughout the drop, leaving users in the dark as to what was actually going on.

Some YouTubers did some investigative work to try to find out what happened. They revealed several flaws in the drop, including coding errors, bot prevention flaws and whitelist logic ambiguities.

Token Launch IDO Mayhem

This failed NFT drop comes after the project had previously promised the $MBS token launch on Starlaunch IDO, which after investors had put their money in was suddenly delayed without notice, leaving unanswered questions about the project’s integrity.

Starlaunch used Fractal to process the KYC for the MonkeyBall IDO, which experienced some problems, allowing investors to put money into the launchpad – even though they were not eligible to participate from their location – leaving a lot of investors angry and out of pocket.

Was Solana to Blame for the Failed Drop?

The MonkeyBall team has blamed Solana for the failed drop but investors are not buying it, as it appears the Solana blockchain was working fine at the time of mint:

That said, there have been some problems with the network lately after Solana suffered DDOS attacks on January 4, and it did have some downtime.

SOL users have expressed their outrage on Twitter and Reddit. One Redditor, angry for the constant delay, claimed that Solana Status was lying to its users, insisting the network had been working “completely fine” and that the delay problems might be related to slow internet connections.

Is MonkeyBall a Rug Pull?

Crypto News Australia has reported on a lot of scams in 2021 including countless rug pulls from NFT projects, to mention but a few recent Solana-related examples:

While it cannot be proved that MonkeyBall is a rug pull, we encourage investors to be cautious and take note of the red flags that have appeared. We’ve reached out to the MonkeyBall team to get some comments on this.

If you want to find out more, check out these resources:

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DeFi Scams Tokens

Scam Alert: Security Firm Identifies Arbix Finance $10 Million Rug Pull

Blockchain security firm CertiK has identified Arbix Finance as a rug pull, warning users who have engaged with the protocol to stay way from it and its ARBX token.

Another Rug in the DeFi Space; This Time Users Are Warned

Arbix Finance is a Binance Smart Chain-based protocol that describes itself as a yield-farming aggregator. So far, it has amassed over US$10 million in deposits by users.

CertiK found several red flags in Arbix thanks to its Skytrace tool, which it uses to analyse the risk of fraud. Some of the firm’s initial findings were that investors’ funds had been allocated in unverified pools through the depositor contract, which were later drained by the Arbix team.

The protocol’s underlying code was purposefully made to allow developers to mint millions of ARBX tokens, with roughly 4.5 million tokens minted to only one wallet.

The exploited contract was not in the audit scope that was done for Arbix. The project inserted eight ‘mint()’ functions to a newly deployed ARBX ERC20 contract, which allowed the owner to mint any amount of ARBX tokens to any address.

CertiK statement

Arbix Disappears Amid Accusations

It appears that Arbix Finance quietly disappeared shortly after the accusations were made – the project’s website and Twitter account are gone, and the ARBX token dropped to $0.

Discerning between a legit DeFi project with goals and a scam is difficult for newcomers in the space. While CertiK managed to warn users before more damage was done, some warnings come too late. In November last year, Crypto News Australia reported how the creators of DeFi token launch Monkey Jizz rugged investors out of US$300,000 worth of BNB.

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Blockchain Crypto News DeFi Stablecoins Tokens

Web 3.0 Token ‘Near Protocol’ Up 79% in a Month Amid Terra Partnership

NEAR token has been marching steadily upwards to a new all-time high of US$16.37, the most recent rally on December 22 after NEAR announced it was partnering with leading blockchain protocol Terra Money.

Terra is an open-source decentralised network and the TerraUSD (UST) stablecoin is pegged 1:1 to the US dollar, making it an attractive medium of exchange for the DeFi space.

More Collaborations to Come

The integration of UST on NEAR “will be a big step towards growing the Near and Aurora ecosystem”, according to Aiden Knox, founder of NearPad and Rose. “I’m excited to be working closely with the Terra team to not only bring UST to NearPad and Rose, but also for the deeper integrations and collaborative projects this partnership enables.”

This has indeed been bullish news for NEAR as investors have rushed in. By Christmas Eve, NEAR trading volume had spiked to US$1,475,397,417 as the price rallied to a high of $16.15 on December 27. After a week of healthy consolidation, the NEAR chart is as green as a Christmas tree – its impressive price action has seen the token increase 1060.5 percent in value over the past 12 months.

CoinGecko.com

NearPad – NEAR’s DeFi Hub

NearPad aims to be the leading gateway for the DeFi ecosystem on Aurora – an Ethereum Layer-2 built on top of NEAR blockchain. NearPad consists of a DEX AMM, launchpad, and incubator project Rose – a liquidity protocol on Aurora. NearPad offers a product suite to nurture and grow the DeFi ecosystem.

Three weeks ago, Crypto News Australia reported that NEAR Protocol token had soared 48 percent in a week after listing on MoonPay. Terra’s native token LUNA has also had major upside over the past couple of months following Terra’s network upgrade, reaching a new all-time high on December 27 of US$103.34.

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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.

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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.

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Blockchain Crypto News Metaverse NFTs Tokens Virtual Reality

Music Concerts in the Metaverse: the New Wave of Adoption?

A new project called Animal Concerts is building a virtual touring company to host virtual live music events in the Metaverse. Through the project, artists can earn up to 50 percent of revenues from both ticket and NFT sales.

It’s time for the next generation of concertgoers and fans to deck out your home theatre, get a VR headset and watch your favourite artists from the comfort of your lounge.

The Animal’s Metaverse will include online concerts, virtual merchandise in the form of digital collectible NFTs, and a community of superfans. Bringing together all aspects of a real-world live event, Animal Concerts will be the hub for delivering online immersive virtual reality experiences for fans like nothing they’ve encountered before. Founder Colin Fitzpatrick says the goal is to become the “Netflix of live streaming concerts”.

With 360-degree cameras on stage, you can use a VR headset to get an immersive experience – like you are dancing on stage with your favourite bands, from your living room anywhere in the world. We want to enable you to enjoy the concert with friends by seeing their avatars.

Colin Fitzpatrick, founder, Animal Concerts

The platform will use cutting-edge technology, setting up multiple 360-degree cameras on stage to feed high-quality footage and audio directly into punters’ VR headsets. Click here to read the full roadmap of features outlined in the Animal Concerts Whitepaper.

A-List Artists to Promote the Metaverse

Animal Concerts will leverage the online fan reach of the A-list artists it promotes by contracting them to help market and push the brand of the platform. “No other crypto will have this many celebrities onboard, promoting us on social media,” its website boasts. “Propelled by these celebs, we will achieve the biggest social following of any cryptocurrency.”

Restrictions on travel and gathering in numbers over the past two years of the pandemic has decimated the revenues of artists who rely on live performance to generate income. Album sales have also been in sharp decline as streaming services continue to replace traditional methods of music consumption.

Round Up Your ANIMAL token

$ANIMAL will be the native token for Animal Concerts. Holding the Animal token will allow users:

  • payment for concert tickets, NFTs and other merchandise on the Animal Concerts marketplace;
  • tiered rewards for early investors;
  • governance, voting and fan interaction, free tickets, limited-edition merch and early access to unique materials and collectibles;
  • discounts for fans purchasing tickets with the ANIMAL token over platforms such as Ticketmaster, etc;
  • participation in online communities of loyal fans; and
  • creation of art, gaming and music NFTs.

At Last, a Serious Challenge to Spotify

Major streaming service Spotify, however, has been criticised for undercutting musicians’ revenues and has upset the industry with its unfavourable artist royalties distribution model. Animal Concerts is set to change this, allowing performers to earn 50 percent of revenues from both ticket and NFT sales. By benefiting the artists directly, Animal Concerts provides a massive incentive for celebrities to entice their fans into the metaverse.

Aiming to launch upwards of 20 virtual reality concerts in 2022 along with NFT collectibles, Animal Concerts has announced a lineup of artists that includes Adele, Arctic Monkeys, Beastie Boys, Backstreet Boys, Bruno Mars, Drake, Ellie Goulding, Fatboy Slim, Frank Ocean, Gwen Stefani, the Killers, Kings of Leon, Miley Cyrus and more.

Teaming up with some of the biggest players in the metaverse, Animal Concerts has partnered with 3D virtual world platform Decentraland, NFT and gaming giant Enjin, and blockchain payment company Circle, among others.

Participate in the IDO

Animal Concerts will be launching on PolkaBridge on January 18. To participate, fill out the registration form for Animal Concerts before January 17 and be sure to have ETH in your wallet:

As a precursor to the Animal Concerts model, in October the US financial services company Republic announced the launch of “Republic Music”, an investment product offering “an entirely new way to create, produce and share royalties from music”.

In an earlier challenge to the dominance of Spotify, Audius, a music streaming platform based on the Ethereum and Solana blockchains, partnered with popular Chinese video-sharing and social media app TikTok to create TikTok Sounds. Within 24 hours of the August announcement, the $AUDIO token’s price spiked over 200 percent.

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Airdrop Crypto News Ethereum Giveaways NFTs Tokens

OpenSea Users Can Claim a Free Airdrop of SOS Tokens

SOS, an airdrop from OpenDAO distributed to people who have spent money on OpenSea transactions, has surged 1,000 percent in two days as a result.

Although OpenDAO is not affiliated with non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace OpenSea, any user who has ever spent money on OpenSea could claim the Ethereum token SOS, with the amount determined by exactly how much users have spent.

Up to 240,000 Users Claim SOS Token

Since Christmas Eve, the popularity of the project has led to about 240,000 people claiming the SOS token, which pushed its value up 1,000 percent.

Tokens were dropped by OpenDAO, an independent decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO) that has pledged to use some of the tokens it had earmarked for itself to compensate users of OpenSea for past scams, and to support the ever-growing NFT industry.

On Christmas Day, SOS was the largest gainer on CoinMarketCap, and by Boxing Day the token had risen to a market cap of US$321 million. The project’s Discord had about 50,000 members, and 100,000 people were following OpenDAO’s Twitter account.

How to Claim Your SOS

The more a person has traded, the more tokens that person is able to claim. OpenDAO calculates how many tokens are allocated based on transactions conducted prior to December 23. Any OpenSea transactions concluded after that date would not factor in the calculation.

For a short tutorial on the claims process, watch this informative video on YouTube:

OpenSea Thrives Following a Flurry of Issues

Amid the NFT boom, OpenSea appears to be thriving despite experiencing some issues. Earlier in 2021, the marketplace managed to raise US$23 million in a Series A round of funding to scale its NFT marketplace. Following a significant period of growth in the NFT market, OpenSea started experiencing some issues during September. Early that month, a bug was found on the marketplace that destroyed at least 42 NFTs worth around US$100,000.

Just a week later, OpenSea’s product lead Nate Chastain was accused of insider trading of NFTs promoted on the front page of the platform. The allegations were confirmed by the OpenSea team, and Chastain has since resigned from his position.