Saturday, December 21

Tag: crypto

FTX Bankruptcy Is Bad News For The Charities That Crypto Mogul Sam Bankman-Fried Generously Supported
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CRYPTOMARKET, IN OTHER NEWS

FTX Bankruptcy Is Bad News For The Charities That Crypto Mogul Sam Bankman-Fried Generously Supported

FTX, an exchange for trading cryptocurrencies, quickly became bankrupt and defunct in November 2022. Its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, is broke, and the 30-year-old former billionaire could be in serious legal trouble for his alleged financial improprieties. The Conversation asked Brian Mittendorf, an accounting scholar at The Ohio State University, to explain the significance of FTX’s implosion for philanthropy and the nonprofits Bankman-Fried supported. What was the connection between FTX and philanthropy? Though FTX was a cryptocurrency exchange, Bankman-Fried viewed it as something more: a vehicle to change the world through giving. Bankman-Fried often noted that his goal for his business was to make money in order to donate it to support a variety of social causes like global heal...
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Inflated By Pop Culture And Crypto Mania – NFTs, An Overblown Speculative Bubble
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TECHNOLOGY

Inflated By Pop Culture And Crypto Mania – NFTs, An Overblown Speculative Bubble

Comedian Robin Williams once called cocaine “God’s way of telling you you are making too much money”. This role may now have been overtaken by non-fungible tokens, the blockchain-based means to claim unique ownership of easily copied digital assets. The latest NFT mania involves fantastic amounts of money being paid for “Bored Apes”, 10,000 avatars featuring variants of a bored-looking cartoon ape. Last month rapper Eminem (real name Marshall Mathers) paid about US$450,000 in Ethereum cryptocurrency to acquire Bored Ape No. 9055 – nicknamed EminApe, because its khaki and gold chain resembles what Eminem wears. It purportedly joins more than 160 other NFTs in the rapper’s collection. The Bored Ape character seems derivative of the drawings of Jamie Hewlett, the artist who drew Tank Girl a...
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An Ideology Of Social Change Is Behind The Crypto Hype
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CRYPTOMARKET

An Ideology Of Social Change Is Behind The Crypto Hype

Ads for blockchain, NFTs and cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin seem to be everywhere. Crypto technologies are being promoted as a replacement for banks; a new way to buy art; the next big investment opportunity, and an essential part of the metaverse. To many, these technologies are confusing or risky. But enthusiasts ardently promote them. As a cybersecurity and social media researcher, I’ve found that behind the hype is an ideology about social change: Hardcore enthusiasts argue that crypto will get people to trust in technology rather than government, which they see as inherently untrustworthy. This ideology leads people to encourage its use while downplaying its risks. The true believers My colleagues and I studied almost three months of discussions on Reddit forums about cryptocurrenc...
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Celebrity Crypto Scam Ads On Facebook – The ACCC Is Suing Meta Here’s Why The Tech Giant Could Be Found Liable
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BUSINESS

Celebrity Crypto Scam Ads On Facebook – The ACCC Is Suing Meta Here’s Why The Tech Giant Could Be Found Liable

On the last day of his 11 years as chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), Rod Sims announced the commission is bringing a “world-first” claim against Meta (owner of Facebook) in the Federal Court for false or misleading conduct. The ACCC alleges Meta failed to take sufficient steps to stop displaying scam cryptocurrency ads on Facebook in 2019, even after receiving complaints. Sims said the ads led to more than A$650,000 in losses for one consumer. “Those visits to landing pages from ads generate substantial revenue for Facebook,” Sims said. Almost a decade ago, the ACCC failed in an arguably similar misleading conduct claim against Google. This time, however, the commission has some new arguments that focus on Facebook’s business of targeting ads at particu...
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Why You’ll Be On A Blockchain When You’re Virtual-World Hopping – The Metaverse Is Money And Crypto Is King
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IN OTHER NEWS, TECHNOLOGY, VIDEO REELS

Why You’ll Be On A Blockchain When You’re Virtual-World Hopping – The Metaverse Is Money And Crypto Is King

You may think the metaverse will be a bunch of interconnected virtual spaces – the world wide web but accessed through virtual reality. This is largely correct, but there is also a fundamental but slightly more cryptic side to the metaverse that will set it apart from today’s internet: the blockchain. In the beginning, Web 1.0 was the information superhighway of connected computers and servers that you could search, explore and inhabit, usually through a centralized company’s platform – for example, AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft and Google. Around the turn of the millennium, Web 2.0 came to be characterized by social networking sites, blogging and the monetization of user data for advertising by the centralized gatekeepers to “free” social media platforms, including Facebook, SnapChat, Twitter an...
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Spending Millions On What’s Essentially A Link To A JPEG File – Why Would Anyone Buy Crypto Art
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CRYPTOMARKET

Spending Millions On What’s Essentially A Link To A JPEG File – Why Would Anyone Buy Crypto Art

As an academic researcher, developer of artistic technology and amateur artist, I was quite skeptical about crypto art when I first read about it several years ago. However, I follow a community of artists on social media, and some of the artists there whom I respect, like Mario Klingemann and Jason Bailey, embraced and advocated for crypto art. Within the past few months, activity and prices seemed to snowball. I started thinking it deserves to be taken seriously. Then the Beeple sale happened. On March 11, Beeple, a computer science graduate whose real name is Mike Winkelmann, auctioned a piece of crypto art at Christie’s for US$69 million. The winning bidder is now named in a digital record that confers ownership. This record, called a nonfungible token, or NFT, is stored in a share...
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Gerald Cotten Dead Or Alive: A Crypto Mystery
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CRYPTOMARKET

Gerald Cotten Dead Or Alive: A Crypto Mystery

QuadrigaCX shut down weeks after its CEO died, leaving 76,000 users out of $163m in cash and cryptocurrencies. Skepticism around the demise of Canadian cryptocurrency exchange founder Gerald Cotten just won’t go away. The “questionable circumstances” behind the death of QuadrigaCX’s chief executive last year in India at 30 led lawyers representing customers of the collapsed trading platform to request on Friday that his body be exhumed. QuadrigaCX shut down in January, weeks after Cotten died while on his honeymoon, leaving some 76,000 users out of pocket for about C$215 million ($163 million) in cash and cryptocurrencies. Odd details surrounding his death and the mystery of what happened to clients’ Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, has fueled speculation an...
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