Nobody Cares: the Non-Fungible Thread

[Argent Stonecutter]

(two astronauts meme) They always were.

 

[Jopsy Pendragon]

 

[Veritable Quandry]

(two astronauts meme) They always were.

 

[Jopsy Pendragon]

The first time I heard about NFTs, my response was "They found a way to repackage the Beanie Baby 'investment' phenomenon? Oh this will be ugly..."

 

[Free]

BTW, there's one person I'm glad benefited from NFTs.

The World Knows Her as ‘Disaster Girl.’ She Just Made $500,000 Off the Meme. (Published 2021)

Zoë Roth, now a college senior in North Carolina, plans to use the proceeds from this month’s NFT auction to pay off student loans and donate to charity.

www.nytimes.com

 

[Innula Zenovka]

95% of NFTs now totally worthless, say researchers

95% of NFTs now totally worthless, say researchers

'Even the most prominent collections are struggling to maintain demand'

www.theregister.com

The Guardian has the same story:

The vast majority of NFTs are now worthless, new report shows

 

[Free]

This is also our crypto thread, right? <---(buy this NFT for just $1.00!)

New York sues crypto firms for losing over $1 billion

Gemini, Genesis, and DCG are facing some legal trouble.

www.theverge.com

New York Attorney General Letitia James is suing three cryptocurrency companies — Gemini, Genesis, and Digital Currency Group (DCG) — over claims they misled investors, leading to the loss of over $1 billion. In a lawsuit filed on Thursday, James says their alleged fraudulent schemes affected over 230,000 investors.

The lawsuit targets Gemini, the crypto exchange owned by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and its Earn program. The firm marketed Gemini Earn as a high-yield program that involved customers investing with Genesis Global Capital, which is owned by DCG. However, James alleges that Gemini knew investing with Genesis was risky and misled customers as a result.

 

[Isabeau]

My god that’s cute.
I’m stealing your NFT

 

[Veritable Quandry]

Take one...they're free!

 

[Free]

I did not know the T in NFT stood for Thievery!

 

[Khamon]

nostalgic for dancing hamsters noa

 

[Veritable Quandry]

I did not know the T in NFT stood for Thievery!

 

[Free]

Is Magic Unicorn Farts an NFT? Asking for a friend.

 

[Essence Lumin]

Last April I wrote:

I made myself a bet in my head about bitcoin when it was at $25,000. If I were into spending real money and shorted it till it got to $17,000 I won. If it went up to $32,000 I lost. Hmm, it's sitting at $30,000 right now. Maybe it's good I don't spend real money.

It took a long time but I have lost my bet with myself. Bitcoin is at $34,205 right now.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Laughing at the misfortune of others is bad.

 

[Free]

Bored Ape NFT event attendees report ‘severe eye burn’

Some reports claim the injuries were caused by event lighting.

www.theverge.com

Several people have reported experiencing eye pain, vision problems, and sunburnt skin on Sunday after attending ApeFest, a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection event in Hong Kong that ran from November 3rd-5th. Some ApeFest attendees posted on X (formerly Twitter) after seeking medical attention, with one person reporting that they had been diagnosed with Photokeratitis — aka, “welder’s eye,” a condition caused by unprotected exposure to ultraviolet radiation — and another saying the issue was a result of UV from the stage lights, leading to speculation that the injuries were caused by improper lighting used at the event.

I'm not sure if this is an example of dramatic irony. But I could be convinced to lean into it.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Yeah it's suspected that whatever stage builders the NFTbros cheaped out by hiring, might have accidentally bought florescent bulbs of the kind used for UV disinfection rather than just colored party lights, and of course the attendees were dancing in front of the lights for hours. Ooops.

Myself I'm kinda fascinated that they had this event at all. Since it's recently been publicized that like the vast majority of their ape pictures have lost 70% or more of their value since they bought them, I can't imagine what they're all there celebrating. Although, I mean if we're being fair, if you're already dumb enough to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on one of those jpegs it probably wouldn't take much to convince you that the devaluation is just temporary and all you have to do is hold onto them and never sell them and eventually, one day, they'll be worth bajillions.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

The CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, pleaded guilty and resigned as well. His company has to pay 4 billion US$ as penalty.

To quote the attorney general: "Binance’s and Zhao’s willful violations of anti-money laundering and sanctions laws threatened the U.S. financial system and our national security, and each of them has now pleaded guilty. Make no mistake: when you place profits over compliance with the law, you will answer for your crimes in the United States. Because Changpeng Zhao knowingly operated a financial platform without basic anti-money laundering safeguards, the company caused illegal transactions between U.S. users and users in sanctioned jurisdictions such as Iran, Cuba, Syria, and Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine – transactions for which Binance profited with significant fees."

Binance and CEO Plead Guilty to Federal Charges in $4B Resolution

Binance Holdings Limited (Binance), the entity that operates the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance.com, pleaded guilty today and has agreed to pay over $4 billion to resolve the Justice Department’s investigation into violations related to the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), failure to...

www.justice.gov

 

[Free]

Blockchain? More like blockedchain, am I right???

 

[Free]

I always thought 'Binance' was a stupid name.

US regulators will now have access to years of Binance transaction data

Binance and its customers will get "24/7, 365-days-a-year financial colonoscopy."

arstechnica.com

One attraction of Binance, as the company grew from its 2017 founding into the biggest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, was the firm's freewheeling flouting of rules. As it amassed well over 100 million crypto-trading users globally, it openly told the United States government that, as an offshore operation, it didn't have to comply with the country's financial regulations and money-laundering laws.

Then, late last month, those years of brushing off US regulators caught up with the company in the form of one the most punitive money-laundering criminal settlements in the history of the US Justice Department. The crackdown doesn't just mean a chastened Binance will have to change its practices going forward. It means that when the company is sentenced in a matter of months, it will be forced to open its past books to regulators, too. What was once a haven for anarchic crypto commerce is about to be transformed into the opposite: perhaps the most fed-friendly business in the cryptocurrency industry, retroactively offering more than a half-decade of users' transaction records to US regulators and law enforcement.

When the Department of Justice announced on November 21 that Binance's executives had agreed to plead guilty to criminal money-laundering charges, much of the attention on that settlement focused on founder Changpeng Zhao giving up his CEO role and on the company's record-breaking $4.3 billion fine. But Binance's settlement agreements with the DOJ and the US Treasury Department also stipulate a strict new regime of data-sharing with law enforcement and regulators. The company has agreed to comply with regulators' "requests for information"—a term that carries none of the evidence or suspicion requirements necessary for obtaining a warrant or even a subpoena—to the point of producing any "information, testimony, document, record, or other tangible evidence."