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☆ Analysis: Bankman-Fried fraud charges sidestep debate over how U.S. law sees crypto
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-09 | by ( Luc Cohen | Thomson Reuters | Reports On The New York Federal Courts. Previously Worked As A Correspondent In Venezuela | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

"It's a pretty simple deception," said Shane Stansbury, a professor at Duke University School of Law and former Manhattan federal prosecutor. The debate matters to cryptocurrency companies because it could determine which agency regulates the trading of digital assets. Both have pleaded not guilty and argued the charges should be dismissed because insider trading charges must involve securities or commodities. In bringing wire fraud charges in both cases, prosecutors avoided taking a position on how cryptocurrencies or NFTs should be classified. It is unlikely Bankman-Fried's lawyers will attempt a similar argument because the wire fraud charges are more straightforward, Kasten said.

☆ Artists in Cuba find themselves blocked from NFT trading sites
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-21 | by ( Associated Press | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +6 min

“The first thing that drew me to it was the freedom,” said García Alarcón, known best by his artist name, Paolo De. García Alarcón is among at least 30 Cuban artists whose profiles have been delisted from at least two American-owned NFT trading sites sites, including the largest one, OpenSea, and KnownOrigin, according to Cuban NFT artist collectives. He’s the organizer of NFTcuba.ART, a collective of around 100 Cuban artists around the world. D’Alerta and other collective leaders told the AP that the bans have even extended to personal accounts of Cuban artists who don’t live on the island. Meanwhile, leaders in the Cuban NFT space worry that the deplatforming could have a long-term chilling effect on Cuban digital artists.

☆ Donald Trump's superhero trading cards timed the market all wrong
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-16 | by ( Jon Sarlin | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

Los Angeles CNN —Donald Trump’s entrance into the NFT world came at the worst possible moment. It bears noting, however, that despite the bad timing Trump’s NFT collection has shot to the top of NFT marketplace OpenSea’s ranking and has raked in more than $1.4 million since its launch. On the Trump Digital Trading Cards website, the Trump collection claims to be “sold out” and the floor price for a single card has risen to $177.99, according to analytics site CoinGecko. SPACs boomed in 2020 with celebrities and investors piling in, but rising interest rates and a troubled stock market has led to a dramatic fall in SPAC value. Trump’s entrance into the SPAC world came after the boom.

☆ Tom Brady's NFT company, Autograph, has laid off dozens of people after severing ties with board member Sam Bankman-Fried
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-16 | by ( Ben Bergman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Tom Brady cofounded Autograph at the height of the NFT sports boom. Disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried joined the board of the company last year. Insider has learned the company has laid off dozens of employee and cut ties with Bankman-Fried. Autograph, the buzzy NFT platform cofounded by NFL star Tom Brady, has laid off dozens of staffers after separately severing ties with former board member Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced founder of FTX, Insider has learned. Bankman-Fried joined the board of directors last year several months after Brady and his then wife, Gisele Bundchen, invested in FTX.

Now, with the fraud charges filed earlier this week against Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the bankrupt FTX exchange, Williams has further solidified his office's growing role in prosecuting financial crimes involving cryptocurrency, according to interviews with a half-dozen former prosecutors. Bankman-Fried, 30, has acknowledged risk management failures at FTX but said he does not believe he has criminal liability. In the wake of Bankman-Fried's arrest, Williams has made clear he would plow on with cryptocurrency enforcement. On Wednesday, he announced wire fraud conspiracy charges against the founders of two separate cryptocurrency mining and trading companies he called Ponzi schemes. On Tuesday, Williams told reporters more charges in the FTX probe were possible.

☆ Factbox: Major cryptocurrency cases probed by U.S. authorities
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-14 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

BITMEX EMPLOYEESEmployees of BitMEX, including the cryptocurrency exchange's founders, pleaded guilty this year to willfully failing to establish, implement and maintain programs to prevent money laundering. The firm's cofounders pleaded guilty in federal court in New York and each agreed to pay a $10 million criminal fine. Another of the firm's employees also pleaded guilty, and agreed to a $150,000 fine. ONECOIN LTDIn 2019, U.S. authorities charged the alleged leaders of a multibillion-dolar pyramid scheme involving a fraudulent cryptocurrency called OneCoin. After a six-month court battle, Telegram agreed to pay an $18.5 million civil penalty and return $1.2 billion to investors.

☆ Googlers are making memes to deal with the looming threat of job cuts
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-17 | by ( Matt Weinberger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Meanwhile, former Yahoo CEO and one-time Google exec Marissa Mayer is sounding the alarm bell that the web itself could be degrading in quality. Google employees meme past the graveyard. Elon Musk fired as many as two dozen Twitter employees this week who had criticized his leadership style. Now, Twitter employees are deleting internal Slack messages they fear Musk won't like, so as to avoid his wrath. A Twitter exec went so far as to warn employees to use Slack "wisely."

☆ After FTX's collapse, VCs across industries are finally admitting to crypto's failures — and they're preparing for 'more blows to come'
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-14 | by ( April Joyner | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Investors stuck to crypto startups they considered "safe bets," but FTX's failure challenges that idea. Crypto startups held yacht parties through the summer and into early fall at events such as NFT.NYC and Messari Mainnet. "The whole crypto space is a high-leverage space, and it's susceptible to cascading failures." The events of the past week are unlikely to whet risk-averse LPs' appetite for crypto, investors told Insider. Even so, several investors who have backed crypto startups told Insider that despite the industry's recent travails, they remain believers in the technology.

☆ How Y Combinator-backed Web3 startup Courtyard raised $7 million and plans to redefine NFTs and the marketplace for digital collectibles
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-02 | by ( April Joyner | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

The Y Combinator-backed Web3 startup Courtyard has raised $7 million in seed funding led by NEA. Nicolas le Jeune was working at YouTube when he caught the NFT bug. Le Jeune, Courtyard's CEO, cofounded the startup with Paulin Andurand, who serves as the company's CTO. Le Jeune and Andurand launched a proof of concept by buying up packs of Pokémon cards with money lent from a friend. Fortunately, le Jeune and Andurand had already begun to make inroads with investors.

☆ Crypto winter ‘only going to get worse,’ blockchain firm CEO says
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-02 | by ( Jenni Reid | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

There's something about the latest crypto crash that makes it different from previous downturns. Artur Widak | Nurphoto | Getty ImagesThe ongoing crypto winter is "only going to get worse" as the industry recalibrates to a higher interest rate world, according to the chief executive of blockchain firm Tezos. "Crypto hasn't been evaluated by that metric, and neither has technology in the last 10 years that we've had low interest rates," Breitman told CNBC. "It remains to be seen, but basically I think what you'll find is the things that are useful are going to thrive." The notion of the end of the era of easy money in crypto is one that analysts have been discussing in recent months amid the downturn.

☆ NFT Prosecution Sparks Debate Over Insider-Trading Label for Digital-Token Cases
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-27 | by ( James Fanelli | Corinne Ramey | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Insider trading typically evokes the idea of a well-connected investor using secret information to profit from stock trades. Now, a federal judge has allowed the Justice Department to use the same kind of narrative in a first-ever case about the trading of digital tokens—even though prosecutors didn’t bring traditional insider-trading charges. The use of insider-trading language emerged as a flashpoint in the New York case, which the Justice Department says is its maiden prosecution for insider trading of NFTs, or nonfungible tokens, which are digital proofs of purchase for goods such as art. Prosecutors allege a former employee of NFT marketplace OpenSea profited from nonpublic information by purchasing tokens that he knew would soon be featured on OpenSea’s home page. The defendant, Nathaniel Chastain, knew the tokens would rise in value after being showcased, prosecutors say.

☆ 3 things not to do when pitching your startup to a VC, according to a partner at a $750 million crypto venture firm
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-26 | by ( Morgan Chittum | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Marc Weinstein, a partner at VC firm Mechanism Capital, has cut 100 checks as an angel investor. The crypto venture firm grew from $500,000 to a peak AUM of $750 million in two years. But venture firms like Mechanism Capital say there are still tons of deals to be made. Founders who are 'catching the latest fad'The Mechanism Capital partner is focused on the team's backgrounds and what they've accomplished in the past. The firm, Weinstein included, looks for a certain level of consistency in their potential portfolio companies.

☆ Crypto startup Edge & Node's newly named interim CEO has a plan to make Web3 easier for software developers to build in
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-12 | by ( April Joyner | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Edge & Node, the startup behind the Web3 protocol The Graph, has a new interim CEO, Brandon Ramirez. The same goes for the developers seeking to build decentralized apps, or dapps, as they're commonly called. Companies such as the decentralized-finance startups Sushi and Lido and the crypto research startup Messari have used The Graph for their development. Like many blockchain developers, Ramirez earned his programming chops in enterprise software. Ramirez, Tal, and Pohlmann founded The Graph in 2018 to help create some of that basic infrastructure.

☆ Grammy-nominated DJ Steve Aoki told us he's made more money from NFTs than royalties. Here's how he says he's profited $10 million — and how Web3 can disrupt the multi-billion-dollar music industry.
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-11 | by ( Morgan Chittum | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Aoki was "shocked and excited" when he realized he made more from NFT sales than music royalties. NFTs can disrupt the music industry by creating a new revenue stream for artists, Blau previously told Insider. "This could facilitate a change that I've been waiting to see for most of my career as an independent artist," Blau said of tokenized music royalties. NFT earnings vs music royaltiesThe 2X Grammy-nominated artist says he's made more from NFTs than a decade of music royalties, Decrypt first reported. Aoki touts Web3, or the metaverse, as a chance for artists to truly own their work via the blockchain.

☆ Crypto’s bear market is unlike others before it. This time the Fed's steering the ship
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-20 | by ( Tanaya Macheel | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +17 min

In any other year, the bitcoin price would have skyrocketed after the BlackRock announcement, but it didn't. Bitcoin hit its all-time high on Nov. 8, less than a week after the Fed first introduced the tapering . "Bitcoin OGs want to believe that it's a risk-off asset – that's a long-term trajectory," said Burak Tamac, senior researcher at CryptoQuant. It's bitcoin that's received so much hostility about being environmentally unfriendly, but myths about the cryptocurrency's environmental impact are slowly being debunked . Beyond bitcoin, crypto remains just a little too out of reach for many.

☆ I sold one of my 20 metaverse properties for $30,000. The rest are getting me perks, like citizenship on a real-life island, and will be bringing me passive income.
▼ + stars: | 2022-07-06 | by ( Jenna Gyimesi | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Angelica Saldaña is a full-time crypto investor who owns more than 20 virtual properties. There are many different virtual worlds and some of the most popular ones are Decentraland and The Sandbox. Someone offered to buy my NFT world for $38,000 last week but the transaction fee would have been $5,000. I'm confident in the future of virtual real estate because it offers something totally unique, beautiful, and helpful. If you own virtual properties and would like to share your story, email Jenna Gyimesi at jgyimesi@insider.com.

☆ Cryptovoxels is an artist-dominated metaverse featuring wearable blunts and eclectic locales like the Temple of Doge. Here's why OpenSea CEO Devin Finzer named it one of his favorite growing NFT proje
▼ + stars: | 2022-04-25 | by ( Lisa Kailai Han | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +18 min

As the self-described "first non-engineer hire" to join Cryptovoxels, Robinson was brought on to fix these kinds of user nuisances. As part of the next rollout of features, Robinson tells me that Cryptovoxels will allow users to sell custom dances. According to Robinson, users can make money in other ways, like selling mini-game scripts and renting land for events like dances or NFT collection releases. For some reason, the Cryptovoxels world is also abundant with shrines, like the ancient Greece-inspired Frenetik Temple and the Jedi-themed Dark Junction. It's reminiscent of attending a presentation in the real world, except instead of pinning name tags to our shirts, they're superimposed over our heads in large white letters.

It cost me more to make and list the NFT than what I made, but I have no regrets. I set up my digital wallet and an NFT accountBefore I created my NFT, I had to get my infrastructure set up. While you can create collections of NFT and sell multiple (some people sell 250 NFTs in a collection or 10,000), I decided to just create one NFT. Because of how I set up the NFT, I get 5% of the sale price every time this NFT sells, forever. This time, a collection of 250 NFTs that will hopefully net thousands of dollars.

☆ OPINION: Play-to-earn games like Axie Infinity are blowing up right now, but they look a lot like Ponzi schemes
▼ + stars: | 2022-01-11 | by ( Paul Butler | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +13 min

He suggests Axie Infinity only creates value by taking money from new players and distributing it to established players. One of the most apparently successful examples of web3 that people point to, aside from art NFTs, is so-called play-to-earn games. NFT EconomyAxies, the tradable characters at the center of Axie Infinity, are tradable as NFTs outside of the official Axie Infinity game. I've focused on Axie Infinity because it's the prominent, genre-defining play-to-earn game. I fully suspect that the pitfalls that it has encountered are ones that all play-to-earn games will eventually encounter.

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