Month: August 2023

Rarible To Stop Aggregating Orders From These Three NFT Marketplaces

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Non-fungible token (NFT) aggregator Rarible has plans to cease aggregating orders from marketplaces OpenSea, LooksRare, and X2Y2. The decision comes after OpenSea decided to shift to an optional royalty model. On Thursday, August 17, OpenSea disclosed that royalties – pay cuts from secondary sales – will become optional for new NFT collections after August 31, 2023. Meanwhile, royalty fees for NFT collections that currently utilize the Operator Filter – a feature that enforces creator royalties – will become optional after February 29, 2024. Although the optional royalty model has always…

Tornado Cash co-founders charged with money laundering, sanctions violations

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The United States Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) added Roman Semenov, one of the co-founders of the Tornado Cash cryptocurrency “mixer,” to its list of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN) on Aug. 23. Another co-founder, Roman Storm, was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation division in Washington state the same day. Semenov and Storm are being charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to commit sanctions violations and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business in an…

Bitcoin Ordinals volume dips 98%, OpenSea to disable royalty tool, and Frend.tech hype: Nifty Newsletter

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Welcome to the latest edition of Cointelegraph’s Nifty Newsletter. Keep reading to stay up-to-date with the latest stories on nonfungible tokens. Every Wednesday, the Nifty Newsletter informs and inspires you to dig deeper into the latest NFT trends and insights. In this week’s newsletter, read about the newly-launched decentralized social media platform Frend.tech, which has gained over 100,000 new users since its launch. Yuga Labs plans to wind down support for OpenSea after the nonfungible token (NFT) platform announced it would disable its on-chain royalty enforcement tool, and Bitcoin Ordinals…

Unstoppable Domains launches instant messaging with XMTP

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Unstoppable Domains (UD) has launched an instant messaging system for owners of Web3 usernames, according to an Aug. 23 announcement from principal engineer Aaron Quirk. Owners of .crypto, .wallet, .polygon or other UD-registered usernames can now message each other across most apps that use XMTP, including the UD iOS app and website, Coinbase Wallet, and Lens protocol apps such as Lenster and Buttrfly. The announcement clarified that the Android version of UD will not provide messaging at launch but will provide this feature soon. Unstoppable Messaging is here. Built on…

Bitcoin Exchange Reserve Shoots Up, Pain Not Over Yet?

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On-chain data shows the Bitcoin exchange reserve has shot up during the past day, indicating that more drawdown may be coming for the price. Bitcoin Exchange Reserve Has Registered A Large Increase A few days back, a crash shook both Bitcoin and the wider cryptocurrency market, as the BTC price plummeted from above $29,000 to below $26,000 instantly. In the days since then, the asset has failed to show any signs of recovery, either, as its value has only continued to move sideways, as the chart below displays. Looks like…

Will SBF’s ‘Blame-the-Lawyers’ Strategy Work?

His emerging strategy defense is certainly clever in theory, and aligns with some of the other messaging that SBF has been making since the spectacular collapse of FTX last November. The 31-year-old fallen crypto king has been presenting himself as young and hapless, too callow to have orchestrated any great evil. As he tells it, he was simply out of his depth, a creature molded by older, more experienced collaborators – like his lawyers at Fenwick & West, a mid-sized firm specializing in advising tech startups. Source

Sam Bankman-Fried can meet with lawyers outside of jail with 48 hours’ notice, says judge

A federal judge is allowing former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, or SBF, access to his legal team outside of jail, provided he gives sufficient notice. In an Aug. 23 order filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, Judge Lewis Kaplan said SBF would be allowed access to discovery materials in his criminal case in a courthouse cell block with 48 hours’ notice to prosecutors and the U.S. Marshals Service. The order came prior to Kaplan reaching a decision on motions from the Justice…

Bitstamp halts ETH staking in the United States

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Crypto exchange Bitstamp will discontinue staking services for customers based in the United States. In a message shared with Cointelegraph, the exchange announced the ending of Ether (ETH) staking as of Sep. 25. “Customers will continue earning staking rewards up until September 25, 2023, and after that, all staked assets will be unstaked. Rewards, along with the principal, will be credited to users’ main Bitstamp account balances,” said Bobby Zagotta, U.S. CEO and global chief commercial officer at Bitstamp, warning that it could take a few days for users’ balances…