It turned out that "Beutrec", a co-founder and the primary artist behind the collection, had used his access to the project metadata to identify and buy the rarest NFTs in the collection. Although he attempted to use distinct wallets to perform the transactions, they were trivially linked back to him. He made around 50 ETH (~$140,000) in profit from flipping the NFTs he bought with insider knowledge. After his actions were revealed in April 2022, Beutrec's new NFT project, Boki, announced that Beutrec would no longer be a part of their team.
Co-founder and primary artist for Starcatchers NFT project uses insider knowledge to buy the project's rare NFTs to flip after reveal
The Starcatchers NFT project sold NFTs which did not immediately show the image associated with them, but would instead be revealed at a later date. An observant collector noticed that several of the NFTs in the project sold for considerably higher than others. Following the reveal, it turned out that these were the rarest NFTs in the project. One of the NFTs (#1755, pictured) has been described as the "project mascot", and later sold back to the Starcatchers team for 30 ETH (~$83,400).
Discord server for the Doodles NFT project is compromised
The enormously popular "Doodles" NFT project announced on February 26 that their Discord server had been "penetrated by a hacked bot", and that all messages should be ignored. They wrote, "Our lawyers, friends at discord, and the community are helping us". Later that day they announced that they had regained control of the server, and that they would compensate community members affected by the attack. It wasn't clear the scale of losses that may have been suffered by members of the Discord who believed that messages coming from an attacker were from the official team.
Howlerz NFT drop goes incredibly badly, with heavy botting, a poorly-implemented contract, and buyers falling for a scam contract
A heavily-hyped NFT project called "Howlerz" released its project via "secret mint" with no allowlist, and it went very, very poorly. Would-be buyers who were excitedly waiting for the mint to begin were fooled by a fake contract that scammed buyers for a total of 250 ETH ($675,000). When the project did mint for real, its NFTs sold out within seconds to the swarm of bots waiting to snap up the assets. Some prospective buyers who tried to buy the NFTs ran into "out of gas" problems, where they spent too little gas to cover the transaction, and ended up losing the gas fee on a failed transaction. This is a problem that is usually addressed by NFT developers in their contracts by adding a buffer to the estimated gas required.
Part of this collection's draw has been the promise that "you own the art". However, the artwork is released under the CC0 license, which dedicates the work to the public domain — that is, any ownership of the work in a copyright sense no longer exists.
Crypto and NFT scammers take advantage of the invasion of Ukraine to boost their grifts
Cryptocurrency scammers have turned to the crisis in Ukraine to provide fodder for their scams. Some have taken the tactic of pretending to be a person trying to escape the country and asking people via private message to send cryptocurrency; others have set up sketchy crowdfunding projects that claim they will send the money to various Ukrainian causes. One scam project tried to get people to buy "UkraineToken", with vague promises of "regular donations and support".
Ukraine-themed NFT projects have also sprung up all over the place, promising to donate portions of proceeds, with very few avenues to distinguish the legitimate from the scams. Some existing NFT projects have created Ukraine-themed items to add to their collections. Other NFT projects that have nothing to do with Ukraine have tried to tempt buyers by claiming they will donate a portion of proceeds (5%, in one case) to Ukrainian war relief funds. Individual sellers have also tried to use the crisis to increase the sales of NFTs they own, promising to donate their profits.
Needless to say, my advice if you're hoping to donate to relief would be to skip the cryptocurrency and NFTs altogether and pick any of the many verified relief funds out there.
Pixelmon raises $70 million only to reveal hilariously bad NFTs
The Pixelmon project promised an ambitious roadmap including a Pokémon-like game where the pixelized Pokémon could be caught and traded, a land project, and rewards to buyers of their "Generation 1" Pixelmon. The 3D pixelized Pokémon on their flashy website and on social media certainly looked promising to the buyers who sunk a total of $70 million into the project. Those buyers, who spent 3ETH per mint (~$9,300), were excited to unveil their "fully modeled 3D character[s] that you can interact with". However, when they "hatched" their Pixelmon, buyers were greeted with some truly terrible models, if they were lucky enough to have a model at all — some unveiled just an empty patch of grass, and others found their models appearing partway in the ground.
Although the project lead wrote on the Discord that they had "made a horrible mistake" but that they would "completely revamp and redesign" the NFTs, the project appeared to be a cash grab. On the night of the reveal, 1,000 ETH ($2.8 million) had already been transferred out of the project and split among various addresses. One of the recipients who received 400 ETH ($1.1 million) immediately went on a shopping spree, buying various big-ticket NFTs with their windfall.
Bitconnect founder indicted by federal grand jury on charges of orchestrating a global Ponzi scheme
BitConnect founder, Satish Kumbhani, founded the Bitconnect "investment program" in 2016, which attracted investors with its impossibly high payouts. From then until its dramatic 2018 shutdown, Kumbhani and his team drew in around $2.4 billion from investors. The whole thing turned out to be a Ponzi scheme, as many had suspected, and Kumbhani now faces a long list of charges: "conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit commodity price manipulation, operation of an unlicensed money transmitting business, and conspiracy to commit international money laundering". If convicted of all charges, Kumbhani faces up to 70 years in prison.
- "BitConnect Founder Indicted in Global $2.4 Billion Cryptocurrency Scheme", United States Department of Justice
The Associated Press continues to mishandle its NFT fiasco with mass Discord bans and scrubbing of messages
After the fiasco the previous day in which some group of people at the Associated Press apparently decided turning an image of human suffering into an NFT was a brilliant idea, some at the Associated Press seem to be intent on tarnishing the organization's reputation even further. Horrified individuals took to the project's Discord, as the AP had previously invited people to use that as a way to give feedback and ask questions. The AP's "Director of Blockchain" Dwayne Desaulniers spent a while trying (but not really succeeding) to explain why the AP has decided to turn some of its photojournalism into NFTs. However, around 24 hours after the initial NFT tweet had been made, he apparently decided enough was enough and nearly everyone who'd asked a question was banned from the Discord, with their messages were removed. Some of Desaulniers' replies were also removed, such as where he had replied "Fucking right" to a user who said, "Dwayne wants a world without adblock, without archive.is, without a possibility that someone somewhere might wring a tiny bit of the AP's journalistic output out of them without paying for the privilege."
Nelson Mandela's paintings from prison to be sold as NFTs
The Guardian reported that five watercolor paintings created by former South African president Nelson Mandela depicting scenes from his years of incarceration will be sold as NFTs next month, as well as a handwritten description of why he created the artwork. His daughter is the one behind the project, and she says that "My dad was all about creating an accessible society. This is a way of democratising his art." She does not explain why there is a need to sell them as NFTs in order to accomplish this, or why this makes them more accessible than them already being available to view online. She also doesn't explain how pricing them at $3,500 for a set including one of each, or $700 apiece, can be considered "accessible".
The Associated Press wants to sell you an NFT of migrants adrift at sea
The Associated Press announced they would be dropping a new NFT on the platform they launched in January, which notably doesn't allow users to sell their NFTs off-platform or really do much at all with the image or video associated with their NFT. Most NFTs they've offered to date have been fairly benign, like a photo of a shooting star over a house in a field, or of a person spray-painting "illegal" on a brick wall (edgy!)
However, on February 24 they announced that their newest NFT would show a short, top-down video of around fifty migrants crammed into a small inflatable boat, adrift at sea in the Mediterranean. Any goodwill the AP might have had for their NFT project was likely shattered by their choice to monetize a video of human suffering. The already horrific NFT announcement was particularly ill-timed, given its juxtaposition on many Twitter feeds amongst news of Russian military action against Ukraine. The Associated Press deleted the announcement tweet four hours later.
Founders of BitMEX crypto exchange take guilty plea, pay $10M fine for failing to implement an anti-money laundering program
Arther Hayes and Benjamin Delo, the founders of the BitMEX cryptocurrency exchange, pled guilty to violations of the Bank Secrecy Act, which they violated by ignoring requirements to implement any anti-money laundering (AML) programs, including programs that would verify customer identities (KYC). They also separately agreed to pay a $10 million fine, which represents the monetary gain from their crime. "BitMEX was in effect a money laundering platform", said the U.S. Department of Justice statement, which also described how the platform was reportedly used to launder funds from a hack of another exchange, and how the executives both had direct knowledge that some of their customers were from countries under OFAC sanctions.
In March, the third co-founder, Sam Reed, also pled guilty and agreed to pay a $10 million fine. In August, top BitMex employee Gregory Dwyer entered a guilty plea and agreed to pay a $150,000 fine.
BitMEX had attempted to evade sanctions by claiming they didn't serve customers in the United States, though in reality they served thousands of U.S. customers and marketed in the U.S. At one point, when an early investor inquired as to why an investment in the company hadn't triggered a report to regulatory authorities, Delo responded with a meme of a man smiling, superimposed with the text "Incorporated in Seychelles, come at me bro". Hayes and Delo face a maximum sentence of five years in prison as a result of this plea. The exchange had in August paid $100 million to settle a separate lawsuit from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, in an agreement which had also required them to implement proper blocks to prevent U.S. customers from using the service.
- "Founders Of Cryptocurrency Exchange Plead Guilty To Bank Secrecy Act Violations", The U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York
- "BitMEX to Pay $100 Million to Resolve Regulator’s Lawsuit Over Crypto Derivatives Trading", The Wall Street Journal
- "Third BitMEX Founder Pleads Guilty to Anti-Money-Laundering Violation", The Wall Street Journal
- "Top BitMEX Employee Pleads Guilty to U.S. Charge", The Wall Street Journal