Gm team
Coming to you from sunny London Bridge today.
Hope you are having a sunny day - inside and out.
We are moving to a Friday release so you’ve got all your roundup at the end of the week.
Hope you enjoy - all the best!
B
Contents
This Week in Crypto
This Week in NFT World
Half A Billion Hacked In Your Sleep
Thought of the Week
Meme of the Week
This Week in Crypto
BNB Chain paused after $100m hack - You know it’s breaking news when I’ve just got a reddit source for you… It appears that the whole BNB Chain had to be paused because a hacker was able to create $100m worth of coins out of thin air. The team have moved to identify these ‘false coins’, freeze them, and restart the network.
MakerDAO is converting $500M worth of DAI into bonds and U.S. treasuries. Interesting that a hugely successful DAO is moving into high-quality government debt to prove that their assets are backed by reliable reserves. This comes after many “stablecoins” have been questioned - even though many are collateralised better than the $$$ in your bank (lol)
South Korea froze $39M of crypto assets linked to Terraform Labs Founder Do Kwon and have asked him to return his passport. Since the heat was turned up on Do after the collapse of his coins, he has been on the run from the authorities who say he is on the run - whilst he maintains he is not on the run and is happily going for walks in the mall. Didn’t say which mall though…
Celsius users doxxed in latest court filing - As part of Celsius’ bankruptcy proceedings it published 14,000 pages of user data which appears to include the names and transactions of every user on the platform. So much for anonymity in crypto..!
Also this relating to the Celsius execs who withdrew funds before freezing everyone else’s funds….
2. This Week in NFT World
$1.26 million settlement paid by Kim Kardashian for promoting a crypto asset - Apparently because she doesn’t have enough money already, Kim K promoted a crypto project without the proper disclosures - interesting thing here is that she was still fined even though she included #ad.
Three Arrows Capital liquidator Teneo moved Starry Night Capital’s “grail” NFTs - Advisory firm Teneo, the liquidator of bankrupt crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC), moved Starry Night Capital's more than 300 NFTs yesterday. Teneo will eventually be selling these NFTs, some of which were bought for millions of dollars - ready your bids!
$127,065.95 Fewo sale of David Bowie piece - The David Bowie estate collabed with a number of NFT artists to raise money for charity. Fewo’s piece included an irl statue which you can see in the background of this video!
Manifold launch a creator marketplace with 0% fees - Artists can now create their very own single page auction sites via the Gallery app in Manifold Studio. The process requires zero code and is FREE for all creators (just pay gas). Simply choose your work minted with Manifold Studio and set a reserve price. This is pretty cool for creators - I need to look into this more too…
3. Half A Billion Hacked In Your Sleep
More than $500,000,000 was stolen last night.
In this piece I will simplify and explain three things: what really happened; what was the “real” financial impact”; and what is the significance of this.
(i) What really happened
Last night there was an exploit on a BNB bridge.
In simple terms, this bridge connected two blockchains in the Binance ecosystem (which is separate from the Ethereum blockchain).
A total of 2 million BNB (~$566M USD) was withdrawn.
In this fantastic thread, samczsun explains that the hacker managed to simply convince the Binance Bridge to send them 1,000,000 BNB twice (!)
Whilst they go on to explain some very technical aspects of the hack, for our purpose to understand we can say some very sophisticated forging took place.
ii) What was the real financial impact?
$500 mill may be the headline figure, but this isn’t really the whole story.
The current “impact estimate” is around $100m.
This “impact estimate” is the estimated funds which were taken off the Binance Smart Chain.
Why did the hacker want to get off the Binance chain?
Because they knew that Binance is pretty centralised so would be able to switch off the chain relatively quickly and potentially freeze their funds.
We have asked all validators to temporarily suspend BSC. The issue is contained now. Your funds are safe. We apologize for the inconvenience and will provide further updates accordingly.
At this stage it has been stated that because of the quick response by validators and community $7M has already been frozen.
The official Binance response has gone on to confirm that “the vast majority of funds are under control.”
As such, and although more investigation will probably be needed to confirm numbers, it seems like a high headline number is not so bad if the hacker can’t actually trade those coins to extract the value out of the Binance ecosystem.
(iii) What is the significance of the hack?
Once again this is a bad headline for crypto as an unsafe space for your funds. Or at least somewhere where you can have a free heart attack, before having it confirmed your funds are okay.
More interestingly, the Binance response of switching the network off strikes at the core of a crypto ethos: decentralisation.
If at least one of the reasons why crypto is supposed to flourish is because it is permissionless and will not be centralised, nor negatively impacted by decades of centralisation and the associated stagnation/corruption - then are we comfortable with a small group of people switching off a whole chain of economic activity to correct a wrong?
In this instance I was surprised to learn how few validators are involved on the Binance chain - just 44 in different timezones:
It was not that easy as BNB Smart Chain has 26 active validators at present and 44 in total in different time zones.
Perhaps in this instance it is just - but in future whose transactions will be blocked and censored?
In reality, there will be chains that prioritise decentralisation and censorship resistance; and there will be other chains which favour centralisation and a more active management of the chain’s transactions.
At a minimum, being aware of the setup of your chosen blockchains seems wise.
4. Thought of the Week
Thoughts of the week are going to become more about creating - getting out of your head and just starting to write or pressing record - not falling into an imposter syndrome - managing your schedule so that you can reliably create whilst fulfilling all your other duties - and hopefully making some money.
Ali is a hyper successful YouTuber from whom I am stealing a lot of tips and tricks.
Here he outlines a methodology for how to turn your sidehustle into a full-time thing.
Main takeaway for me: “build systems to remove friction and boost creative output”
One way I do this is by spending a little time each day bookmarking the interesting things I see on Twitter as I read them; at the end of each day posting them into this draft; which means by Friday when I am writing I already have all of the interesting news for the week in here, so I just need to edit it.
It’s not life-changing, but it is a small change which saves me at least an hour. Do that with other things, save a few more hours - now we are talking.
5. Meme of the Week
Your chain gets paused so you worry - this has happened enough now that we know nobody cares. Long live Solana ! (Which stops working all the time if you are new here) Shoutout @backbooked
Have a great week,
B
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Disclaimer: The content covered in this newsletter is not to be considered as investment advice. It is for informational and educational purposes only.
I hold some of the NFTs mentioned in these newsletters.