cryptocurrency
Soulja Boy & Lil Yachty Latest Celebs Being Sued For Alleged Pump & Dump Cryptocurrency Jig
HipHopWired Featured Video Source: Jerritt Clark / Getty This is definitely one thing Soulja Boy won’t boast about being the first to do if this news turns out to be true. Spotted on Complex, per Classaction.org, Soulja Boy, Lil Yachty, and Jake Paul are being sued for allegedly being involved in a pump and dump cryptocurrency scheme meant to fatten the pockets of SafeMoon CEO Braden John Karony and other top-level executives. According to the lawsuit, Soulja Boy, Lil Yachty, Paul, Nick Carter, and YouTuber, Ben Phillips were used by the company to help promote SafeMoon and increase the number of investors for tokens. Their cosigns helped increase the value of the tokens, with misleading statements promising investors giving them the impression that better things were on the horizon. The s...
Solana’s weekend bounce risks turning into a bull trap — Can SOL price fall to $60 next?
A rebound move witnessed in the Solana (SOL) market this weekend exhausted midway as its price dropped below the $90 level from a high of $96 on Feb. 21. In doing so, SOL price technicals are now risking a classic bearish reversal setup. Solana price risks dropping to $60 Dubbed head-and-shoulders (H&S), the technical pattern emerges when the price forms three peaks in a row atop a common support level (called a neckline). As it typically turns out, the pattern’s middle peak, called a “head,” comes longer than the other two peaks, called theleft and right shoulders, which come to be of similar heights. The H&S pattern tends to send the prices lower—at length equal to the maximum distance between the head and the neckline—once they decisively break below its ...
Harmony launches Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT Passport
On Friday, blockchain platform Harmony — whose mainnet runs on the Ethereum network, claiming to have two-second transaction finality and fees 1,000 times lower than Ethereum — announced the launch of its Bored Ape Yacht Club Passport. The Passport enables users to import proof of their apes into DeFi Kingdoms, a play-to-earn game built on the Harmony blockchain with over 120,000 monthly active users. During its initial stages, Ape holders will be able to validate and display their assets in the game across multiple blockchains when they connect their MetaMask wallet to DeFi Kingdoms. The infancy of cross-chain technology means that funds could be at risk when bridging across chains, as the biggest decentralized finance hack thus far this year showed. However, as stated by its develop...
Exec at Composable Finance allegedly doxed as convicted fraudster Omar Zaki
Late Friday afternoon, decentralized finance, or DeFi, investigator @zachxbt published a series of tweets accusing fraudster Omar Zaki of hiding behind the facade of 0xbrainjar, the anonymous head of product at Composable Finance. From last November to this February, Composable Finance raised over $167 million through seed funding, as well as crowdloan auctions on the Polkadot (DOT) and Kusama (KSM) parachains. Over 9,000 participants contributed to the DOT crowdloan alone. As told by zachxbt, who cited documents from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, Omar Zaki, then a 21-year-old New York resident and graduate of Yale University with a bachelor degree in physics and economics, was charged with fraud after misleading investors while operating an unregistered hedge ...
Did Melania Trump Buy Her Own NFT?
Melania Trump auctioned off an NFT last month for about $170,000, but as Vice reports, the funds for the winning bid came from the same crypto wallet that created the NFT. So did the former First Lady buy her own NFT? And if not, what happened? Trump first got into selling NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, last year. Her latest auction involved the “Head of State Collection, 2022”, which included an NFT, a water color, and a white broad-brimmed hat that she wore for a visit from French President Emmanuel Macron in 2018 (pictured above). The sale took place three weeks ago on the Solana blockchain for 1,800 SOL (about $182,000 today, but closer to $170,000 last month). As The New York Times reported at the time, this was significantly below the $250,000 that Trump had been seekin...
RCMP asks crypto exchanges to halt trading for wallets connected to truck convoy protests
As reported by Canadian news outlet The Globe and Mail, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (Canada’s federal police force) sent letters to several cryptocurrency exchanges demanding that they “cease facilitating any transactions” with more than 30 specific cryptocurrency wallet addresses linked to the ongoing truck protests in the country. The letter writes: “Any information about a transaction or proposed transaction in respect of these addresses, is to be disclosed immediately to the Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.” Just two days prior, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, representing the ruling Liberal Party of Canada, invoked the Emergencies Act in response to a convoy of truckers occupying the nation’s capital (Ottawa) in protest of COV...
Chainlink Verifiable Random Function v2 goes live on mainnet
On Wednesday, blockchain oracle solution Chainlink (LINK) announced the release of Chainlink Verifiable Random Function, or VRF, v2. As told by its developers, the new, improved version of the random number generator can reduce transaction fees by 60% compared to v1. Randomness is a core component of making nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, and gaming applications fair and secure. On their own, blockchains and smart contracts cannot guarantee randomness, but rather require an oracle network to deliver such solutions on-chain. Since its launch, Chainlink VRF (v1) has become the most widely adopted random number generator solution in the blockchain industry, fulfilling more than 3 million request transactions and currently providing verifiable randomness to more than 2,200 unique smart contracts ...
CryptoPunks community reacts to the ongoing copyright battle between v1 and v2
During its initial release, 10,000 CryptoPunks were sold and made it to the secondary market before users discovered a critical smart contract exploit that made it possible for Punks’ buyers to withdraw their Ether (ETH) post-purchase. As a result, creator Larva Labs withdrew recognition of the v1 collection, fixed the exploit and released the v2 Punks collection we have now. Though, they’ve also sent mixed messages about the collection by selling off dozens of their own V1 Punks. The battle over the copyright of the CryptoPunks v1 collection is heating up as the images recently gained in market value, with Larva Labs filing a DMCA take-down notice to OpenSea and members of the v1 community striking back with their own. To complicate the matter, Larva Labs purposefully coded th...
Canada enforces restrictions on crowdfunding and crypto payment platforms
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has invoked the Emergencies Act to stop funding to the ongoing protests against COVID-19 mandates in the country Crowdfunding platforms and crypto payment providers associated with them will be required to register with FITRAC They are also to flag unusual transactions and report them to the regulator. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has invoked the country’s Emergencies Act for the first time. The Act is a set of regulations coined in 1988 that temporarily gives the federal government leeway to exercise additional powers for the good of the public. Assistant Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, who also serves as the Minister for Finance, confirmed yesterday that following the invocation of the Act, the government has expanded the scope of anti-terr...
OpenSea customer service migrating from Discord to Metalink to more adequately protect its community
On Tuesday, nonfungible token, or NFT, platform OpenSea launched a server on Metalink to give the verified owners of its collections a direct channel for support, feedback and updates. In addition, OpenSea said it would no longer offer customer support over Discord DMs. Metalink is a collaboration app for NFT communities that offers users a place to view their collection’s value and monitor its associated real-time transaction feed. In addition, channels hosted on Metalink are token-gated, meaning that proof of ownership of an NFT or social token is required to access the content. According to OpenSea, the platform is making the switch after fraudsters began impersonating support associates on its Discord page. As one crypto enthusiast, @seanbonner writes: “[It happens li...
Report: 74% of stolen funds from ransomware attacks went to Russian-affiliated wallet addresses in 2021
According to a new report published by blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis on Monday, approximately 74%, or over $400 million USD, of ransomware revenue last year were funneled into high-risk wallet addresses that are likely to have been based in Russia. The report analyzed ransomware hacks throughout 2021 and determined their affiliation to Russia through three key characteristics: Traces of Russia-based cybercriminal organization Evil Corp being behind a given breach; the group has alleged ties to the Russian government. Ransomeware programmed only against victims of non-former-Soviet countries. Ransomware strains that share documents and announcements in the Russian language. In addition to the selection criteria, it appears that web traffic data confirms the vast majority of ext...
Where do crypto donations go? Here are six charities that have benefited, as told by The Giving Block
Charities and donations have been a trending topic in the cryptocurrency realm as of late. And it’s not simply an act of giving. In countries such as the United States, the country’s revenue authority provides generous tax deductions for those who donate their crypto to registered charities. One company, The Giving Block, provides such crypto-fundraising onboarding solutions to more than 1,000 nonprofits. But just how does investors’ money make a difference? In a series of case studies provided to Cointelegraph, The Giving Block illustrated how six such charities benefited as overall donations volume on its platform surged over 1,000% year over year in 2021. As told by Tammy Tibbetts, co-founder and CEO of She’s the First, a charity organization helping gender equal...
