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Blue-chip NFT collection Bored Ape Yacht Club has frozen the leaderboard for players of Dookey Dash, the video game inspired by the popular non-fungible token brand.

For three weeks users who possessed Bored Apes’ “Sewer Pass” NFTs were able to play the Dookey Dash video game in an attempt to get the highest possible score, which on Wednesday afternoon Pacific Time, became locked to each individual token. When the leaderboard closed, sales volumes for the NFTs had clocked in just shy of $73 million, according to CryptoSlam.

Although the process is shrouded in mystery, Bored Apes’ creator Yuga Labs has plans to award gamers based on how high they scored. The top score will win a “key,” which is expected to lead to a prize that could carry significant monetary vale on the open market, considering the high value attached to Bored Apes’ NFTs. Some BAYC tokens have sold for more than $1 million.

Yuga Labs said via Bored Apes’ Twitter account that it had frozen the leaderboard and would share the results once the company had completed validation and reviewing the locked scores. Earlier in the day, Yuga Labs said it was removing some Dookey Dash scores from the leaderboard due to cheating. 

During the three weeks, some Sewer Pass holders hired more experienced gamers to play on their behalf in an effort to secure a better score. Although the leaderboard is frozen, Sewer Pass holders are allowed to continue trading the NFTs among themselves for a week. Then, Bored Apes will award each Sewer Pass its prize based on its highest score. 

Yuga Labs is calling the awarding phase “The Summoning.”

© 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.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong used a Twitter thread to warn about what he said would be a “terrible path” for the U.S. if it were to restrict crypto staking in the country.

“We’re hearing rumors that the SEC would like to get rid of crypto staking in the U.S. for retail customers,” he wrote in a thread on Twitter, arguing that it was an important innovation in the space that fosters scalability, increased security and reduced carbon footprints. “Staking is not a security.”

Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler raised eyebrows last year after Ethereum’s proof-of-stake transition when he hinted that the commission could classify tokens in proof-of-stake networks as securities.

Armstrong said Wednesday that it was important that companies are encouraged to grow in the U.S. and not be stifled by a lack of clear rules.

“It’s a matter of national security that these capabilities be built out in the U.S.,” he wrote. “Regulation by enforcement doesn’t work. It encourages companies to operate offshore, which is what happened with FTX.”

© 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 Twitter took to the social network on Wednesday afternoon to poke fun at the service run by Elon Musk amid reports of an outage that left some users unable to tweet.

“Elon can’t keep Twitter running but thinks he can take us to Mars,” wrote crypto YouTuber Tiffany Fong.

While Twitter’s API status page said that all systems were operational, some users reported that they were “over the daily limit for sending Tweets.” Downdectector.com, which tracks outages, was able to report on Twitter that the social network had been having issues since 4:49 p.m. EST.

The troubles came shortly after the company announced that Longer Tweets were now live in U.S. for subscribers of the Twitter Blue paid service. Twitter’s support account hasn’t yet tweeted about the apparent bug. 

© 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.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Kristin Johnson said the agency should consider steps it can take under its current regulatory authority to protect customers following the failure of FTX. 

Democratic Commissioner Johnson said she has spoken with fellow commissioners and with other divisions inside the agency to look at differences in custody regulations for intermediated and disintermediated market structures.  

Futures commissions merchants, or FCMs, for example, must separate out customer assets as an intermediary, Johnson said on Wednesday at a conference hosted by Berkeley Law. FCMs solicits or accepts orders to buy or sell futures contracts.  

“In non-intermediated markets, we don’t have parallel statutory or regulatory protections,” Johnson said.  

Johnson said regulations need to be revisited to figure out where the CFTC has not “introduced parallel protections for customers in this nonintermediated space.” 

LedgerX

Johnson also spoke about LedgerX, which was bought by the now collapsed FTX in 2021 and is registered as a derivatives clearing organization with the agency. The CFTC had no ability to be a part of that sale’s approval in advance, Johnson said, saying that should be revisited.

Johnson made a call-to-action last month, calling for new rules and asking Congress to give the CFTC authority to conduct due diligence on firms seeking to buy into registered entities. 

Lawmakers introduced bills last year to regulate crypto including the Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act, or DCCPA. That bill had support from former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and would have given the CFTC the authority to regulate digital assets. The bill would need to be reintroduced 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.

Robinhood saw transaction revenue fall in the fourth quarter from the previous period, including a 24% decline in cryptocurrencies, while a slew of other numbers also took a turn lower. The firm also said it was looking to buy back Sam Bankman-Fried’s shares in the company.

Crypto transaction revenue dropped to $39 million in the fourth quarter, missing the $51 million estimate of analysts compiled by FactSet. The company posted a net loss of $166 million, which was wider than the estimate for a $131 million loss.

Robinhood said that it will attempt to buy back most or all of the 55 million shares purchased in May 2022 by Sam Bankman-Fried’s Emergent Fidelity Technologies. The agreement is subject to final approval from the firm’s Board of Directors, who have tentatively authorized the move.

“Since there is limited precedent for this type of situation, we cannot predict when, or if, the share purchase will take place,” the company said in a statement.  “We will provide updates as appropriate.” 

Robinhood’s co-founders also said they will cancel nearly $500 million of their share-based compensation in an effort to reduce the firm’s operating expenses. Shares whipsawed in after hours trading, jumping as much as 7% before giving back gains.

Users Decline

The platform’s monthly active users dropped 800,000 in December to 11.4 million, compared to 12.5 million in the prior month, while net revenue rose 5% to $380 million, versus the estimated $396 million.

The online brokerage platform’s adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) totaled $82 million, compared to the average analysts’ estimate of $49 million. 

Overall, Robinhood’s transaction revenue was down 11% from the third quarter to $186 million, compared with $208 million in the third quarter. 

Revenue increased this quarter despite falling transaction-based revenue because of a rise in interest-based revenue that totaled $167 million versus the expected $160 million.

Crypto may have dropped from the spotlight for Robinhood, but customers continue to flock to the firm’s crypto-based products. In September, for example, Robinhood launched its crypto wallet to a waitlist of 10,000 users.

In December CEO Vlad Tenev said that his firm had gained from the collapse of crypto exchange FTX. “These events weed out the weaker companies that have invested less in risk management and compliance,” he said at the time, adding that the firm had “no direct exposure.

© 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.

Consello Digital tapped a “key architect” of Citigroup’s digital asset strategy to serve as its new CEO, with the firm announcing the appointment of Itay Tuchman on Wednesday.

The news comes months after Tuchman departed Citigroup, where he worked for more than two decades.

“Thrilled to join the Consello Group and to lead our digital assets practice, working with some of the world’s leading companies in how to navigate this burgeoning technology and complex ecosystem,” Tuchman wrote in a LinkedIn post.

Tuchman will helm Consello’s digital advisory business in his new role, working with companies to navigate and grow in the digital financial ecosystem. 

Tuchman previously served as global head of foreign exchange at Citigroup, where he was a “key architect” of the company’s digital asset strategy and industry connectivity.

© 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.

Bitcoin mining stocks tracked by The Block were mostly lower on Wednesday, with three gaining and the other 16 declining.

Bitcoin fell 1.6% to $22,843 by market close.

Here is a look at how the individual miners performed today:

© 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.

A16z crypto said Wednesday that it promoted Eddy Lazzarin to chief technology officer to oversee research and security teams at the venture capital fund. 

“It takes a truly special intellect to stand out among the technologists in this field, and we’re fortunate to have one of those people on our team,” a16z crypto founder and managing partner Chris Dixon wrote in a blog post.

Lazzarin, who previously served as the firm’s head of engineering, will continue to lead the engineering and data science teams. A16z crypto invests in crypto and web3 startups and has raised more than $7.6 billion, according to its website. 

© 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.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and big data tokens are rallying amid the sudden fascination with AI chatbots. Google is promoting its Bard bot, while Microsoft relaunched its Bing search engine with ChatGPT built in.

Crypto assets in the AI and the big data space have jumped. Big data protocol (BDP), the native token of an emerging decentralized data marketplace, leads the pack with a 1,400% rally in the last week, to trade around $0.48, according to CoinGecko data.

BBig data protocol’s move over the past week BDPUSD chart by CoinGecko  

It’s closely followed by AI-focused tokens such SingularityDAO (SDAO) and SingularityNET (AGIX), with gains anywhere from 170%-200%. Fetch.ai (FET), measurable data (MDT), matrix AI network (MAN), deepbrain chain (DBC), oraichain (ORAI) and Vectorspace AI (VXV) are some of the other notable gainers in the AI and data intelligence space, with price gains ranging from 75%-95%.

AI buzz

The recent hype around text and image generation models like ChatGPT, StableDiffusion, and DALL-E has fueled the speculative rallies for crypto projects operating in the niche.

Many of the projects offer blockchain-based data analytics and a distributed infrastructure to support decentralized AI and data science models.

SingularityNET provides incentive for individuals to contribute data that improves proprietary AI models, for example. Users are then compensated with tokens. Projects like DeepBrain Chain reduce the cost of training AI models, letting users contribute data and processing power on a distributing network.

While traders appear to be piling into these tokens, not everyone is convinced. 

“Blockchain and AI are not complementary, and (for now) anyone that jumps on the ‘AI’ bandwagon is simply doing so for pump & dump reasons,” Andre Cronje, lead developer at Fanton, said. 

Projects that pivot into AI were likely running out of ideas and are “dead in the water,” the Yearn Finance founder said. 

“If (and that’s very unlikely if) we get to a point where blockchain could handle the kind of throughput required for neural net needs, we may be able to see them on-chain,” he said, before adding this would still raise the question as to why someone would want to do that. “Blockchains don’t improve AI, and AI doesn’t improve blockchain.”

© 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.

MetaBirkins creator Mason Rothschild didn’t mince words when speaking out after a Manhattan federal jury ruled that the NFT artist had violated the trademark rights of the famous French luxury brand Hermès. 

“Take nine people off the street right now and ask them to tell you what art is, but the kicker is whatever they say will now become the undisputed truth,” Rothschild said in a lengthy Twitter post. “That’s what happened today. A multibillion-dollar luxury fashion house who says they ‘care’ about art and artists.” 

On Wednesday, a nine-person jury said the MetaBirkins NFTs do not carry the protection of First Amendment and free speech and ordered Rothschild to pay Hermès $133,000 in trademark-infringement damages. The case could have a long-lasting impact on the non-fungible token industry where many creators often appropriate images or iconography from famous intellectual property.

Rothschild created customized blockchain-enabled, digital versions of the iconic Birkin handbag, which has been featured in TV shows such as “Sex and the City.” In its physical form, an original bag can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Rothschild estimated that he made about $125,000 from the NFTs, The New York Times reported.

The NFT artist also suggested on Twitter that the luxury brand had come after him for his lack of a traditional artistic background.

“[They] feel they have the right to choose what art IS and who IS an artist,” Rothschild said. “Not because of what they create but because their CV doesn’t scream artist with a pedigree from a world class art school. That’s what happened today.”

Update: This story was updated to add the amount of money Rothschild estimates he made from the NFTs.

© 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.