Celebrity-promoted Rich Dwarves Tribe NFT project rug pulls for around $3 million
The Rich Dwarves Tribe was an NFT project announced in December 2021, which minted in January 2022. The project had been heavily promoted by musicians including NeYo, Jason Derulo, BowWow, and Fred Durst. It promised a metaverse "tavern", giveaways, a crypto project incubator, and NFTs that would "mine coins for you". However, shortly after the project minted out, its creators disappeared with the funds and abandoned the project.
Developers of the Frosties NFT project make off with about $1.1 million
An hour after releasing their ice cream-themed NFTs, developers of the Frosties NFT project closed their social media accounts and disappeared with $1.1 million, plunging the token value to nearly zero.
Doodled Dragons takes at least $30,000 after tweeting "our charity will instead now be... my bank account"
A SolSea-verified NFT project on the Solana blockchain, Doodled Dragons, touted that they would distribute all profits "straight to charities protecting animals on the brink of extinction". They announced on Twitter that they would be donating $30,000, "our first donation", to the World Wildlife Fund. Two hours later, they tweeted, "actually. fuck that. our charity will instead now be... my bank account. cya nerds." They deleted the Twitter account shortly after.
$6.8 million emptied from crypto exchange LCX
The Liechtenstein-based cryptocurrency exchange LCX suffered a $6.8 million loss when one of its hot wallets was compromised. Assets including ETH, USDC, EURe, and LCX were moved to an Ethereum wallet belonging to the attacker, then quickly tumbled using the Tornado Cash mixing service.
Gary V announces his new "NFT restaurant" where you'll still have to pay regular money for your meals
Gary Vaynerchuk announced plans for his New York City "NFT restaurant", Flyfish Club. The cheapest NFT, giving access to only parts of the restaurant, was listed at 2.5 ETH (at the time around $8,000); a full-access membership was listed at 4.25 ETH (around $14,400). However, the NFT only grants access to the restaurant. Patrons will still pay for their food and drink — and in real money, not crypto.
Class action lawsuit names Kim Kardashian and other celebrities who hyped Ethereum Max
An investor filed a class action lawsuit against Kim Kardashian, Floyd Mayweather, and Paul Pierce, all of whom promoted the EthereumMax currency (not to be confused with the completely unrelated Ethereum project). The lawsuit also names the creators of the coin, who are still unknown, but who the filer hopes to unmask through legal discovery. The filer alleges that the group of defendants were hyping a "pump-and-dump scam" that caused him to suffer investment losses.
Users of Hong Kong crypto exchange Coinsuper reportedly haven't been able to withdraw funds for several months
Users reported not being able to withdraw currency from their accounts with Coinsuper, a Hong Kong-based crypto exchange. Although trading has remained active on the platform to date, some users have said they have spent months trying to withdraw their funds, to no avail. A group have filed a complaint to the police. Communication from Coinsuper has been practically nonexistent, both to users and to their investors.
SEC sues CrowdMachine founder, alleges illegal ICO and operation that secretly diverted funds to gold mining companies
The SEC alleged that Craig Sproule, founder of companies CrowdMachine and Metavine, ran a fraudulent and unregistered ICO when he launched "Crowd Machine Compute Tokens" (CMCTs). Although he claimed that the money raised from the token sale would be used on technical development of the "Crowd Computer", a "global decentralized" peer-to-peer network, he made no effort to create this technology. Instead, he secretly sent more than $5.8 million of the more than $33 million raised in the ICO to South African gold mining companies.
Mozilla pauses cryptocurrency donations after backlash
Someone on the Mozilla Foundation's social team inexplicably thought that tweeting "Dabble in @dogecoin? HODLing some #Bitcoin & #Ethereum? We're using @BitPay to accept donations in #cryptocurrency" would go over well with their supporters. Unsurprisingly it did not, and it also earned them scathing replies from the founder of Mozilla and the designer of the Gecko browser engine (upon which Firefox is built). Mozilla tweeted on January 6 that they were "listening, and taking action", and that they would review "if and how our current policy on crypto donations fits with our climate goals", pausing cryptocurrency donations in the meantime.
Internet shutdown in Kazakhstan reveals that 12–18% of all Bitcoin mining is done there, which has alarming energy implications
Fuel shortages and spiking electricity costs in Kazakhstan have contributed to protests and a governmental crisis in the country. The electricity issue is partially thanks to cryptocurrency mining to begin with, with about 8% of electricity generation in the country going towards crypto mining (as of last year — it's likely to be higher now). During the crisis, the Kazakh president ordered the nation's largest telecom provider to shut down Internet service in the country to try to quash communications among his opponents. On doing so, the total amount of Bitcoin mining taking place in the country was revealed: at least 12% of Bitcoin's computational power disappeared, though the numbers could swell closer to 18%. This has extremely concerning implications as far as Bitcoin's environmental impact (which we already knew was bad): Kazakhstan's electricity generation relies heavily on "hard" coal being burned in old and inefficient power plants, producing comparably enormous amounts of CO₂.