Nobody Cares: the Non-Fungible Thread

[Free]

Bitcoin is back in the news...

Feds Seize Record-Breaking $15 Billion in Bitcoin From Alleged Scam Empire (archive.today)

Over the last five years, criminals behind widespread romance and investment scams—often inelegantly referred to as “pig butchering”—have stolen tens of billions from people around the world. Now law enforcement has carried out one of its biggest operations yet against that sprawling scam industry, targeting the operators of several modern slavery scam compounds in Southeast Asia—where, as a whole, hundreds of thousands of human trafficking victims have been forced to run the fraud operations on behalf of criminal gangs.

On Tuesday, officials in the United States and United Kingdom took coordinated action against one giant Cambodian organization and its boss who has allegedly run a series of notorious scam centers in the country. The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced it has issued financial sanctions against 146 “targets” linked to the newly designated Prince Group Transnational Criminal Organization. This action includes targeting individuals and shell companies linked to the alleged criminal enterprise. As part of the sweeping action also involving the FBI, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) has also seized almost 130,000 bitcoin worth around $15 billion at the time of the announcement—the largest US cryptocurrency seizure to date.

 

[Free]

Look, I barely got what this shit was supposed to be about when it started. I certainly don't get it at all at this point.

The Ape Pivot Has Arrived

Would you like to fully immerse yourself in the digital world of the Bored Ape Yacht Club?

gizmodo.com

Time to dust off your apes everyone, because Otherside, the Bored Ape Yacht Club metaverse from Yuga Labs, is finally about to be released!

This string of words probably didn’t find much purchase in your brain, because if you’re not part of the Web3 world, the last time you were cognizant of Bored Ape-related news was likely October of 2022. That was around the time Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs had seemingly become toxic assets, and the Biden Administration was targeting parent company Yuga Labs with a probe into whether or not the Apes were unregistered securities.

In any case, that’s the popularity timeline a search for “bored apes” on Google Trends suggests—a spike in early 2022, a jagged drop-off, and a seemingly asymptotic decline to almost zero. And that’s where things sit today.

 

[Noodles]

The freshest indignity for the apes was just last week, when the Amazon Web Services crash reportedly disconnected all the Bored Ape Yacht Club images from marketplaces like OpenSea.

Thats so hilarious.

 

[Khamon]

Web3 <insert Mandark laugh track> oh my <insert Mandark laugh track> web. three. <insert Mandark laugh track | rinse & repeat>

 

[Free]

More crypto hacking news.

$120 Million Exploit Has Chilling Effect on Entire Crypto Ecosystem

The incident casts a dark shadow on the trustworthiness of defi protocols.

gizmodo.com

Balancer, which is a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol focused on automated market making (AMM), was exploited early Monday morning in an attack that may have led to $120 million or more in losses for its users.

The specific details of how the attack was pulled off are still unclear at this time. According to an early analysis published on the Blocksec Phalcon X account, the exploit was “highly sophisticated” and involved manipulating prices within the protocol that allowed the attacker to profit. On the other hand, Cyvers CEO Deddy Lavid told Bloomberg that the attacker may have been able to manipulate balances directly via an exploit involving the control mechanisms of the protocol.

 

[Free]

I like this dad.

 

[Free]

Bitcoin is finding out it lives over the cliff.

Bitcoin price outlook: $70,000 could be in play for BTC, say analysts

Despite hopes for a macro hedge, bitcoin continues to trade like the riskiest of risk assets in turmoil.

www.coindesk.com

Amid broad traditional market declines, crypto once again was the standout underperformer on Thursday.

Modest overnight declines in crypto turned into a major rout in the U.S. morning as the Nasdaq shed more than 2% and gold tumbled nearly 10% from an overnight record. But while both of those markets managed sizable afternoon bounces — the Nasdaq closing with a decline of just 0.7% and gold reclaiming the $5,400 per ounce level — bitcoin and the rest of crypto held not far from session lows. Bitcoin was trading just above $84,000 at press time. Losing almost 6% over the past 24 hours, bitcoin is on the brink of breaking below its two-month range, which could be a prelude to an even deeper pullback.