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The founder of Blur, a rival to OpenSea targeting savvy traders, came to the defense of the marketplace today amid a prolonged slump in NFT prices.

Pacman, whose real name is Tieshun Roquerre, responded to Twitter chatter about whether Blur is to blame for killing the market.   

“We launched in October 22. Since then, some floor prices have gone up, some floor prices have gone down,” Pacman tweeted late on July 5. “One of the few times floor prices went up in concert was when we injected liquidity into nfts via our airdrop. One of the few times floor prices went down in concert was when $40m of liquidity was removed via the Azuki mint (not throwing stones, the market just moves based on liquidity more than anything else).”

The NFT market has been in a supressed state for over a year, at least relative to the dizzying heights of 2021. Lately, even the premier collections have suffered.  

The floor price — the cheapest point of entry for an NFT collection — of Yuga Labs’ Bored Ape Yacht Club currently sits at 28 ETH (around $53,000), as low as it’s been in over 18 months and less than half its value at the start of the year, according to NFT Price Floor data. The floor price of Azuki, another popular collection, crashed after its creator Chiru Labs botched the launch of a new set of NFTs last week.

In both cases, fingers were pointed at Blur, the Paradigm-backed marketplace for pro traders.

Lior Messika, whose venture firm Eden Block is an investor in Yuga Labs, said that NFT whales who had previously identified as “collectors” now brand themselves traders or even “Blur farmers,” adding that the space had become distorted by the “fear and greed of a few traders.” Brad Kay, a research analyst at The Block Research, said a large part of the Azuki sell-off could be attributed to Blur’s lending platform.

Dominating trading volumes

Blur is certainly dominating trading volumes. It currently accounts for 70% of NFT marketplace volume on Ethereum, according to The Block Research’s data. The Block reported earlier this year that the company is raising money at a billion-dollar valuation. 

In his tweet today, Pacman suggested criticism of Blur’s success is misplaced.

“When asset prices are up, ppl don’t really talk about the root cause (ie blur injecting liquidity), but when they are down, the pitchforks come out,” he said. “Bad takes spread like wildfire and at this point I just consider it the cost of doing business.”

Despite the selloffs in major collections, data from The Block Research suggests the wider market is holding up roughly as it has for the past year. The chart below reflects the combined market capitalization of the top 20 NFT collections, multiplying floor price by supply.

NFT market capitalization. Source: The Block Research.

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Circle, the issuer of USDC, the second-largest stablecoin by market capitalization, is considering issuing a stablecoin in Japan.

Jeremy Allaire, co-founder and chief executive officer of Circle, said in a CoinDesk interview published Thursday that Japan will be a significant market if stablecoins become widely used in cross-border trade.

The bullish statement comes after the country’s rules overseeing stablecoin issuance took effect on June 1. The Circle chief did not give more details on potential stablecoin issuance, but said the company is interested in partnerships in the world’s third-largest economy.

Tough legislation

In June 2022, Japan’s parliament passed a bill for stablecoins, requiring the coins to be pegged to the yen or another fiat currency and stating that holders must have the right to redeem them at face value.

The legislation clarifies that stablecoins can only be issued by licensed banks, registered money transfer agents and trust companies.

Circle has been expanding its presence in Asia. Last month, it obtained a Major Payment Institution license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore, allowing its affiliate Circle Internet Singapore to offer digital payment token services and cross-border and domestic money transfer services in the city-state.

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Japan’s biggest bank, has also shown interest in stablecoins, outlining in June its Progmat Coin platform that aims to enable the issuance and trading of stablecoins.

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Investigators at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission have concluded that bankrupt cryptocurrency lender Celsius Network and its former chief executive officer broke United States rules before the firm collapsed, according to a report from Bloomberg News.

The agency could file a case in federal court as soon as this month if a majority of the CFTC’s commissioners agree with that conclusion, Bloomberg reported citing people familiar with the matter. Attorneys at the CFTC found that Celsius misled investors and should have registered with the regulator, while adding that former CEO Alex Mashinsky also broke regulations, Bloomberg reported. 

The CFTC did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Block.  

Celsius’ downfall

The firm filed for bankruptcy about a year ago owing billions of dollars to investors. A court-ordered bankruptcy examiner’s report found that Celsius made risky investment bets with customer funds and hid the extent to which it was market-making for its native token. 

The examiner also accused former CEO Mashinsky of selling the native token, CEL, while telling the public that he was either buying more or holding. 

New York Attorney General Letitia James sued Mashinsky for defrauding investors, including more than 26,000 New Yorkers, out of billions of dollars in crypto, earlier this year. 

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Crypto behemoth Binance is seeking a new policy officer for its European operations, following a number of major setbacks on the continent. 

The new hire would “develop and write new policies, standards, guidelines, and procedures for the firm,” a recent job advertisement notes. 

The past few weeks have been complicated for the exchange in the region, with media in France reporting that the company is under investigation by authorities in the country. Binance confirmed that authorities visited its offices in June. 

In the UK, the country’s financial watchdog said in June that its local division was not permitted to offer services in the country. The company also announced its departure from the Netherlands last month after it was unable to secure a license from the country’s central bank. 

Other Binance jobs also posted

The new policy hire will be tasked with articulating “complex information clearly and persuasively.” 

The global exchange has a number of international job ads posted, including one for a government affairs associate director in Spain and compliance director in Thailand. 

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Conor Grogan, a product director at Coinbase, found over $320,000 worth of crypto for someone who didn’t know the funds existed. 

As Grogan explained in a Wednesday Twitter thread, the Ethereum blockchain forked in 2016 and resulted in Ethereum Classic, with its native token ETC, and the main Ethereum blockchain with ETH that we know today.

Those with onchain funds at the time of the fork would have been credited an equal amount of ETH for their ETC, but many people probably weren’t aware they would have received those funds, Grogan said.

“Forgetting you have funds onchain (or not keeping track of airdrops) is common,” he said. “I’ve found 6+ figures for people previously.” 

Grogan said he went through a list of accounts that hadn’t touched their ETC balances, finding 20 addresses with over $250,000 worth of the tokens in the wallets. With the list narrowed down, Grogan had to find ways to track down the owners with no feasible way of actually identifying them. 

The hunt for the wallet owner

“Tagging isn’t great for 2016-era Ethereum, and most of the activity that doxes people (ENS’s, NFTs, Twitter) wasn’t around yet,” Grogan said. “I ran into a number of dead ends; most users ended up sending their full balances to exchanges leading no paper trail to find out who owned them.” 

Grogan found an address containing “0x475” that appeared to be yet another dead end, until he saw that the wallet contained a cryptocurrency dubbed “EOSDAC.” Many holders of that token received an Ethereum airdrop in 2018, but had to first register their ETH address.

“Using the airdropped amount and the snapshot date, I then I had a connection to an EOS wallet” Grogan said. “As it turns out, this EOS wallet has quite the history!”

The owner of the 0x475 wallet had their life savings taken in a 2019 hack and had since engaged in a legal battle with their cybersecurity provider along with the crypto exchange Bitfinex. After lots of digging, Grogan said he was able to obtain the owner’s legal name attached to that ETH address. 

Grogan then contacted the owner, who proclaimed that they hadn’t even known the funds had existed.

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.