"No network can withstand the electricity consumption that is recorded there", says energy company chairman of the effects of cryptocurrency mining in Georgia
Board chairman of Energo-Pro Georgia, an energy company serving the Svaneti region of Georgia, wrote, "This can no longer continue. No network can withstand the electricity consumption that is recorded there." He called out the illegal cryptocurrency mining happening in the region, which has damaged the infrastructure so badly that he predicted it would take four to five years to fix. Miners have been taking advantage of free electricity provided to residents of the region, but the chairman wrote that the company was "approaching the decision" to begin billing residents for electricity to try to thwart the miners. In 2019, the company had been forced to go door-to-door with police to shut down mining operations, and in the process removed about $1.6 million worth of mining equipment.
Traders duped out of $1.8 million in a fake MetaMask governance token scheme
Scammers took advantage of rumors that MetaMask, a popular Ethereum wallet, would be airdropping governance tokens. The scammers created a fake MetaMask token, $MASK, and managed to inject code into the popular DEXTools trading app to show the token as verified. The token reached over $9 million in traded volume before scammers pulled the liquidity, making off with about $1.8 million worth of Ethereum.
- "Fake MetaMask Governance Token Soars 2600% and Gets Rug-Pulled", CryptoPotato
- "$1.8M Lost to Fake MetaMask Token Honeypot Scam", Crypto Briefing
Rapper Waka Flocka Flame has an OpenSea account hacked to the tune of $19,000
Waka Flocka Flame posted to Twitter: "@opensea One of me wallets was hacked wtf man". In a video, he showed NFTs in his OpenSea wallet, saying "This is fake, this is fake, this is fake, this is fake. They popped up in my wallet, I clicked on it to delete it, immediately they stole 19 grand. Happily I just started this wallet, they already stole 19,000 out of it. I need fucking help immediately."
MetaSwap Gas project rugpulls about $600,000
1,100 BNB, or around $600,000, were transferred out of the MetaSwap token MGAS, dropping the price of the token nearly 50%. The funds went to a Tornado Cash account, a popular cryptocurrency tumbler. After the transfer, MetaSwap Gas social media accounts were deactivated.
MetaDAO project rugpulls for more than $3.2 million
A project that promised to be "the DAO of DAOs" managed to accumulate and then make off with 800 ETH, which was worth around $3.2 million at the time of the scam. The project creators took the invested tokens and quickly tumbled them using Tornado Cash.
- "MetaDAO Makes Off With $3.2M in Rug Pull", Cryptobriefing
Another NFT project sells NFTs depicting real people without their consent
The "Cipher Punks" NFT project tried to sell NFTs with illustrations of various cypherpunks, or at least the ones that were listed on Wikipedia. The project said that it intended to "[honor] everyone involved in the CypherPunk movement. They are our heroes, and we need to recognize them". Apparently honoring them did not also involve asking for their consent to be used in the project, as Jillian York tweeted on December 26, "I don't approve of this whatsoever and would like it removed."
ItsBlockchain, the group behind the project, subsequently announced that they would scrap the project and apologized. This apology rang a little hollow, to me, after they retweeted a tweet saying "never meet your heroes" in reference to the individuals asking that the project stop using their likeness without their consent, for their own profit.JungleFreaks and Sandbox NFTs are stolen from a collector
bergpay.eth checked his MetaMask wallet on the day after Christmas only to discover that all his NFTs had been stolen, including five from the popular "Jungle Freaks" collection and 2 from "Sandbox". Jungle Freaks average about 0.9 ETH ($3,700) each; Sandbox NFTs average around 2.75 ETH ($11,300) each.
A DAO forms with the goal of "liberating" Blockbuster, hoping to raise $5 million from NFTs
A group called "BlockbusterDAO" emerged, with the stated goal of "liberat[ing] Blockbuster and form[ing] a DAO to collectively govern the brand as we turn Blockbuster into the first-ever DeFilm streaming platform". Ideas for the DAO's plans after buying the corporation included creating original films and also getting into crypto gaming, for some reason. Some outlets noted that it's unlikely Dish, the current owner of Blockbuster, would sell the corporation for any amount (and particularly for an amount $315 million less than what it bought them for ten years ago), but I suspect that minor detail is unlikely to slow the group down much.
Elon Musk tweeting a photograph of his dog in a Santa suit somehow pumps a memecoin
On Christmas, Elon Musk tweeted a very cute photograph of his pet dog, Floki, wearing a Santa suit with the caption "Floki Santa". Creators of a memecoin called "Santa Floki" ($HOHOHO, of course) capitalized on this with a claim that he'd been tweeting about their coin, and the token surged by 18,840% in about 48 hours (from $0.000000012935 to a whopping $0.00000245). The value quickly fell back below this new high, and settled back to around the pre-tweet price not long after.
An attempted governance attack aims to defraud 25 million MIR (about $64.2 million) from Terra's Mirror protocol
A scammer created a public poll on Mirror's official website, proposing to "Freeze the community pool in case of scam". However, if the poll passed, it would send 25 MIR to the poll creator. Because of the design of the poll system, Mirror can't remove the poll, and so has attempted to inform its community of the potential scam by creating a different poll, as well as tweeting about it. The governance platform shows a slew of polls, including, "Alert: Poll 211 is SCAM -- sending 25,000,000 MIR to itself", "Vote NO on fraudulent pools #185, ..., #208", "VOTE NO ON POLL 185 IT IS A SCAM", and "poll 205 is right ! vote yes !"