Kategorie: Crypto Markets

• Blur is currently the king of NFT marketplaces after it dislodged OpenSea from the top position.
• Several fake websites have come up after the Blur NFT marketplace announced its airdrop program.
• The fake websites have so far scammed users about $300,000.

TrustCheck, a free, zero-click browser extension that scans Ethereum-based web3 transactions for threats, and stops them in their tracks, has revealed that unsuspecting users have been scammed over $300,000 by fake websites posing as Blur airdrop websites.

The scammed users have linked their crypto wallets to malicious wallets. One of the malicious website URLs is said to have faked the ETH Denver conference website and is linked to a notorious phishing wallet address that has stolen over $300,000 to date.

Blur Airdrop

The real Blur NFT marketplace platform is a newcomer in the NFT marketplace industry and has made headlines by surging to the top position after unseating the OpenSea NFT marketplace and forcing it to implement limited-time 0% fees. 

Blur has had a boom in user numbers and trading volume buoyed by the platform’s three-phase BLUR token airdrop incentive scheme.

Blur conducted its first airdrop awarding BLUR tokens to anyone who traded NFT on Ethereum for the six months leading to the launch of the Blur platform in October 2022. The second airdrop awarded BLUR tokens to traders who listed NFTs on the platform before December 6. The third airdrop which is currently ongoing seeks to award BLUR tokens to users depending on their activity on the platform.

From February 15, 2023, Blur started distributing 10% of its total BLUR token supply to users via Airdrops based on their trading activity.

BLUR airdrop scams

The airdrop program has led to a surge in the demand for BLUR tokens something that scammers have taken advantage of by promoting fake BLUR airdrop links that lead to malicious websites.

Data shared by TrustCheck show that 24 malicious websites have been involved in the scamming scheme and some of the websites are still functional. NFT users are warned to be careful when connecting wallets to websites especially if it’s a case of the BLUR airdrop.

The post Fake Blur airdrop websites steal $300k from unsuspecting users appeared first on CoinJournal.

BitDAO’s BIT price was little changed on Thursday after the developers unveiled a new proposal for adjusting Bybit’s contributions to its treasury. The goal of this proposal will be to improve the token’s tokenomics and lead to more decentralization. 

BitDAO proposes new Bybit contribution mechanism

In a statement, BitDAO, one of the biggest decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO), said that a core contributor had submitted a key proposal that will change its tokenomics. The proposal primarily targets the contributions made to Bybit, one of the biggest cryptocurrency companies in the industry. 

The main part for the new adjustment will be to modify the Bybit contributions from a dynamic exchange-linked amount to a fixed scheduled amount for over 4 years. The schedule will start at 120 million BIT per month. To boost its tokenomics, the amount will halve every year. 

Further, the new changes will help to retain Bybit’s contributions in the community instead of burning them. Burning is a process of removing tokens from circulation by locking them in an unopenable or inaccessible account. 

Why this upgrade matters

The upgrade will have numerous outcomes. For one, it will help to increase the stability and predictability of BIT’s tokenomics. This will happen by having a clean schedule of Bybit’s activities going forward. Further, it will lead to more decentralization of BIT’ holdings and overall governance. 

Most importantlt, it will reduce the number of BIT in circulation from about 6 billion to 3.3 billion in the next few years. Reduced supply of tokens tends to have a positive impact on a crypto token’s price. At the same time, BitDAO will have a 1.8x boost for its economics and voting power.

Bybit is an important part of BitDAO’s community. Over the years, it has contributed over $600 million USDT/USDC and 177k Ethereum to BitDAO Treasury. The statement said:

“BitDAO will continue to partner with Bybit in terms of product ideation, bootstrapping product development, BIT integration, and product distribution.”

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• Cathie Wood says crypto had “nothing to do” with SVB and Signature Bank collapses.
• Rather, it’s Fed policy that “caught many regional banks offside.”
• According to her, the banks suffered as a result of assets/liability mismatch.

Cathie Wood, the founder and CEO of ARK Invest, says crypto isn’t responsible for the failed Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank, which was shut down by US authorities last Sunday.

Rather, she contends that the bankruptcies of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank were a result of the Federal Reserve’s policy. She believes that the lack of venture capital funding and higher yields on money market funds led to a reduction in deposits in the US banking system, contributing to the banks’ financial troubles.

Wood: the Fed caught many regional banks offside

According to the highly respected asset manager and investor, the banks’ struggles are not due to crypto but down to regulatory and systemic issues, with many banks caught unawares after the surplus money flows of the COVID-19 era.

“Crypto had nothing to do with the banks’ investment decisions, nor the Fed’s decision to jack up interest rates 19-fold in less than a year. Incorrectly assuming that it was fighting a seventies-style inflation, the Fed caught many regional banks off sides with unrealized losses,” she argued.

In a Twitter thread posted on 16 March, the ARK Invest executive noted that despite the yield curve inverting in July 2022, and with credit default swaps “flashing red”, the Fed maintained its upward rates trajectory. In her view, the Fed failed to take note of unwinding inflation indicators, including commodity prices.

 “I am baffled that banks and regulators could not convince the Fed that disaster loomed. Did they not understand that the asset/liability mismatch – normal in most circumstances for banks – was untenable as deposits left the banking system for the first time since the 1930s?,” the ARK Invest CIO added.

The asset/liability duration mismatch – securities earning only 1-2% vs. deposits paying 3-5% – became untenable as deposits started leaving the system. Like SVB, some banks were forced to sell HTM securities, recognizing losses that depleted their equity accounts.

— Cathie Wood (@CathieDWood) March 16, 2023

Commenting on what happened last week, with the government shutting Signature Bank after SVB’s collapse, Wood says that all this is just about regulators trying to scapegoat crypto. In her opinion, cryptocurrency is “the solution to central points of failure, opacity, and the regulatory mistakes.”

Wood’s comments came as House Republican Whip Rep. Tom Emmer, said he had written to FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg about reports the agency was “weaponizing” the instability witnessed in the banking sector to purge cryptocurrency activity from the United States. 

If you are correct, Congressman, then the FDIC and others will prevent the US from participating in the most important phase of the internet revolution. Like you, I believe regulators are using crypto as a scapegoat for their own lapses in oversight of traditional banking. https://t.co/UDh3bwB2pB

— Cathie Wood (@CathieDWood) March 16, 2023

Wood believes this scapegoating could see the US miss out on what is likely the most important innovation so far.

The ARK Invest CEO also commented on the overall market performance of cryptocurrencies amid the banking sector fallout. According to her, crypto acted more like safe haven assets as bank stocks tanked.

As highlighted here earlier this week, indeed Bitcoin price broke above $26,000 to lead the broader crypto market higher as markets reacted to CPI data. Erlier, stock markets had floundered under the weight of uncertainty fueled by crisis in the US banking industry.

The post Cathie Wood: Crypto did not force SVB and Signature Bank into bankruptcy appeared first on CoinJournal.

• Binance cites “Paysafe” as it halts sterling transactions.
• The announcement affects less than 1.0% of its users.
• Binance says it’s already looking for an alternative.

Binance continues to pause deposits and withdrawals in notable currencies. On Tuesday, it suspended transactions in sterling as well – about a month after it had ceased dollar transfers.

Why did Binance pause sterling transfers

Reason cited for the halt was Paysafe – its partner for GBP transfers that paused pound transactions for new users on Monday. The service will be terminated for all users on May 22^nd. According to a Paysafe spokesperson:

The U.K. regulatory environment in relation to crypto is too challenging to offer this service at this time and so this is a prudent decision on our part taken in an abundance of caution.

Binance will continue to work with Paysafe in Europe and Latin America, though. Paysafe is yet to make an official comment on the development.

Binance is hunting for an alternative solution

Binance that currently serves over 128 million customers worldwide also confirmed today that it had already started looking for an alternative to resume sterling transactions.

Binance will ensure that affected users are still able to access their GBP balances. The change affects less than 1.0% of Binance users.

Remember that the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), in June of 2021, had warned consumers that Binance did not have permission to undertake regulated activity in the United Kingdom.

Binance is currently under investigation by the Justice Department for suspected violations including money laundering as well.

The post Here’s why Binance is suspending sterling transfers appeared first on CoinJournal.

• Wemade and Space and Time want to use blockchain technology to power the next generation of GameFi.

• WEMIX CEO Shane Kim says “blockchain is the future of gaming.” 

• The partnership targets onboarding the next wave of game developers to the blockchain gaming industry.

Wemade, a leading publicly-listed South Korea-based game developer, has announced a strategic partnership with decentralised data warehousing provider Space and Time (SxT).

The collaboration will allow Wemade, a company with a market capitalization of $1.4 billion, tap into SxT’s suite of developer tools to power its growing line of blockchain and gaming services. Wemade is the game studio behind the blockbuster RPG title ‘The Legend of Mir 2’.

According to Wemade, Space and Time’s decentralised tools will help the company service over 20 play-to-earn (P2E) games, including global no.1 game MIR4. The partnership is set to work via Wemade’s blockchain gaming platform WEMIX PLAY.

Powering next-gen GameFi development

WEMIX PLAY is part of Wemade’s mega-ecosystem, which includes the mainnet WEMIX 3.0 for NFTs and DeFi and WEMIX coin that will power that ecosystem. WEMIX is also launching an Ethereum layer-2 that will leverage zero knowledge proof (ZKP) protocols to enhance scalability, user privacy and security.

The Wemade blockchain ecosystem will also benefit massively from Space and Time products, including developer access to real-time, tamperproof analytics. Other key features are access to a serverless API gateway and low cost on-chain storage.

These functionalities are key to simplified development and deployment of decentralised applications (dApps). Wemade can also utilise these features to introduce complex earning schemes in different P2E games.

According to the platform, the partnership with Space and Time is targeted at collaborating towards supercharging the next phase of GameFi development. The partnership will help the blockchain gaming industry “onboard the next wave of game developers,” said Nate Holiday, the CEO & co-founder of Space and Time.

According to WEMIX CEO Shane Kim, blockchain gaming offers gamers an opportunity to take greater control and ownership of their digital assets, and that collaborating with SxT is part of the overall goal of enhancing that.

“As the blockchain transformation of traditional games continues to grow, the partnership with Space and Time will help strengthen our blockchain infrastructure capabilities and contribute to our commitment to building an inter-game economy,” he added.

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