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Crypto/NFTs Are Bad Megathread

Just thought I would make a new Megathread where people can post news about just how bad Crypto and NFTs are.

kotaku.com

Report: $540 Million Crypto Gaming Hack Made Possible By Elaborate Phishing Scheme

An Axie Infinity engineer was reportedly just looking for a new job when they accidentally downloaded spyware
kotaku.com kotaku.com

NFT Pokémon clone Axie Infinity went from being famous for players profiting off its “play-to-earn” gaming scam to infamous for getting hacked out of $540 million in cryptocurrency. Now according to a new report by The Block we know what made the security breach possible: a sophisticated phishing attempt socially engineered on LinkedIn that sounds like a deleted episode of Mr. Robot.
 
Click to expand...
Ooh, it's the bad journalism klaxon for that headline that's been doing the rounds! Yes, the NFT market has cratered, but we knew that, and that "95% are worthless" "study" shows, well, nothing particularly useful.
newsletter.mollywhite.net

News flash: 95% of NFTs have ALWAYS been worthless

Be skeptical of catchy headlines and junk data, even when they affirm your prior opinions.
newsletter.mollywhite.net newsletter.mollywhite.net
 
I did want to make a joke response that the true value is 0% but didn't want to take away from the validity of Sentynel's post.
 
«
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted by a New York jury in a landmark criminal verdict that is likely to condemn the former crypto tycoon to years in prison and bolster US authorities’ attempts to bring an unruly financial sector to heel.

The unanimous decision in the highest-profile cryptocurrency-related trial to date was delivered on Thursday evening, following several hours of deliberation by the jury’s nine women and three men over charges including wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

o
[…] The 31-year-old was accused by prosecutors last December of orchestrating “one of the biggest financial frauds in American history” on the FTX exchange’s customers and investors, as well as lenders to his affiliated hedge fund Alameda Research.


«

From the Financial Times
 
FYI, in terms of next steps, apparently they will bring more charges in March (related to election gifts and so on). Then he will be sentenced end of March.
 
Christ I wish they’d just send him to Rikers and be done with it.
 
I just hope they stop with the "poor baby wanted to do good but made a mistake" stuff.
Like, Michael Lewis, the guy who wrote The Big Short, actually defended the guy!
They stole 8 billion dollars from their customers! Retail customers!
 
web3isgoinggreat.com

Bored Ape collectors experience searing eye pain after "ApeFest" party

Bored Ape collectors attending an ApeFest party in Hong Kong have now been subjected to the kind of eye pain the rest of us have felt for years having to look at their hideous, pricey JPEGs.The going theory is that event organizers skimped on lighting costs by using UV lights intended for...
web3isgoinggreat.com web3isgoinggreat.com
Bored Apes managed to literally blind a number of Bored Apes owners, so that's fairly spectacular work.
 
Imagine being one of those genius crypto turbo-bros, and getting blinded, and the last thing you see is literally a worthless, bored ape.
 
Sentynel said:
web3isgoinggreat.com

Bored Ape collectors experience searing eye pain after "ApeFest" party

Bored Ape collectors attending an ApeFest party in Hong Kong have now been subjected to the kind of eye pain the rest of us have felt for years having to look at their hideous, pricey JPEGs.The going theory is that event organizers skimped on lighting costs by using UV lights intended for...
web3isgoinggreat.com web3isgoinggreat.com
Bored Apes managed to literally blind a number of Bored Apes owners, so that's fairly spectacular work.
Click to expand...
They already lost their sense of taste. What's one extra sense?
 
Looks like Disney is trying to get into NFTs now, too bad no one wants them anymore.

www.theverge.com

Disney Pinnacle is preparing to be the next big NFT failure

Disney Pinnacle will give NFTs another try.
www.theverge.com www.theverge.com

NFTs aren’t gone yet — Disney will launch an “all-new socially driven collectible experience” called Disney Pinnacle later this year, turning characters from Pixar, Star Wars, and its classic animated films into tradable digital pins. The Disney Pinnacle website has a waitlist for interested traders and collectors; however, it doesn’t explain what the “digital pins” are actually like or why the company would bother to create a verifiable digital hoard.

While announcing Pinnacle, Disney and its partner Dapper Labs won’t even say the word “NFT.” Dapper Labs still calls itself “the NFT company,” but between a variety of scams, an eye-blistering episode at a recent Bored Ape event, and a market that has plunged since peaking in early 2021, that’s a term they apparently will steer clear of. The only thing available on the site right now is a privacy policy that makes clear this is a Dapper Labs effort that’s licensing content from Disney — not an in-house effort on the level of Disney Plus.

The NFT collection is being launched through an iOS app, and a spokesperson tells CoinDesk that web and Android applications will come later. Even without any appreciable details beyond a simple animation of the pins spinning around, there are reasons to believe Dapper Labs can get things off to a good start — it did that with NBA Top Shot in 2020 as well as with earlier projects like CryptoKitties.

However, anyone thinking about buying in should remember the history of Dapper’s previous projects. In 2017, flipping CryptoKitties was hot, with millions of dollars in sales. Now, CryptoKitties is remembered for its “spectacular fall,” while a channel for interested buyers in its official Discord has had messages from three people since September.
Dapper Labs followed that up with NBA Top Shot in 2020, replacing the cat artwork with “moments” collectibles commemorating players and highlights that appeal to basketball fans. Data from CryptoSlam shows the market peaked in February 2021 with over $220 million in sales, just before it broke 165,000 unique sellers. Top Shot hasn’t broken $2 million in monthly sales since the start of the current NBA season, there are fewer than 10,000 active sellers, and many people who bought into the hype aren’t happy with how things turned out.
Dapper Labs and its CEO, Roham Gharegozlou, are also facing a lawsuit accusing Top Shot of selling unregistered securities.

A similar effort with the NFL never reached those lofty heights, as NFL All Day NFT activity peaked with around 54,000 owners in the fall of 2022. The most recent data shows fewer than 1,000 owners are currently active.

A press release announcing Disney Pinnacle didn’t mention financial terms, but Disney’s IP can’t be cheap. This news was also revealed on the same day the ESPN Bet gambling operation is launching, with Penn Entertainment scheduled to pay Disney $1.5 billion over 10 years for a partnership that includes licensing the name of its sports channel.
 
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Honestly, I'm kind of glad - the more times big corps tank on NFTs now, the less likely it is that they'll try them again, even if they somehow get popular again.

Once bitten twice shy etc.
 
is this the place to talk about the massive shitshow that was the firing of Sam Altman from OPenAI ?
 
It might as well be open to shitty techbros.
 
apparently, the board fired Sam, to reinstate a temporary CEO that wanted him back, to confirm he's fired, to see him being poached by Microsoft, to confirm that's life and to appoint the ex-CEO of Twitch, to see 700 from the 770 employees threaten to resign from the company, to finally accept him being reinstated and to tender their own resignations (them = the board), because there was a major breakthrough in one of their future products - and Sam wants to gogogogogo, push it through and earn a lot of money from it.
 
Have they even been sued (for this, specifically) yet?
 
who would look at the description "STERILIZATION LAMPS" and think - boy, this is perfect for my party.
 
I mean, I understand and yet am a bit mitigated - they're only suing him because he's wealthy. No reasonable person invested on the basis of Cristiano Ronaldo's promotions. He shouldn't have been promoting this, but people shouldn't have invested in the first place.

Curious to see what will happen - though I don't know the SEC's position specifically on Ronaldo's NFTs.
 
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