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The founder of the NFT project Moonbirds, Kevin Rose, lost at least $1 million in a wallet exploit. 

The Block identified the hacker’s address, which appears to have taken around 40 of Rose’s NFTs. 

A Twitter user who goes by CirrusNFT first noticed the drain on 1:49 p.m. EST. Rose confirmed the hack himself on Twitter at 2:02 p.m. 

Rose confirming on Twitter his wallet hack on Jan. 25.

OpenSea transaction history for Rose’s wallet shows that several NFTs were stolen, including Cool Cats, Squiggles and OnChainMonkeys.

Rose appears to have saved his most valuable NFTs by placing them in a separate vault. One such NFT includes a Zombie CryptoPunk (CryptoPunk #5066), of which there are only 87 other NFTs.

A few NFTs Rose saved by placing in a separate vault.

Neither Rose nor Proof Collective, the NFT community that Rose founded, responded to The Block’s requests to clarify how the hack occurred or whether community members were affected. Some users speculate that Rose’s wallet was compromised from signing a malicious seaport bundle, which is a way to trade numerous assets for another item of the same value.

A Twitter user speculating on how Rose’s wallet was compromised.

Rose was also an early founder of Facebook, and on Jan. 6, Rose signed with major talent representation firm United Talent Agency. 

Moonbirds is one of the few NFT projects to be in the public domain. At its peak on April 17, the project brought in $280 million in trade volume, according to The Block’s Data Dashboard. 

© 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.com CEO Roger Ver, also known as “bitcoin Jesus,” says he has enough funds to pay Genesis after its affiliate GGC International Limited said he failed to settle nearly $21 million in cryptocurrency options transactions.

GGC International Limited issued a court summons on Tuesday to Ver. On social media, Ver said he was “happy to pay what I actually owe.” 

“However, Genesis was required by our agreement to remain solvent — as Genesis can’t ask its clients to play a ‘heads clients lose, tails Genesis wins’ game,” Ver said. 

A spokesperson for Genesis declined to comment via email.

Genesis’s lending arm filed for bankruptcy protection last week in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. At the time, the firm said it had more than $150 million in cash on hand to provide “ample liquidity” to support its business operations and facilitate the restructuring process. 

Ver said he asked Genesis for “assurances of their solvency” and was provided with financial information that he asked for them to clarify. Ver said Genesis refused and filed suit.  

Other lawsuits

“I look forward to an explanation from Genesis as to how exactly they valued some of the questionable line items, including what appear to be discrepancies between the valuation of customer collateral and their own digital assets,” Ver said.  

Genesis is also embroiled in a lawsuit with the Securities and Exchange Commission after the U.S. regulator said both Genesis and Gemini were involved with the unregistered offering and sale of securities through the Gemini Earn lending program.  

Ver didn’t immediately respond to a request for further comment.

© 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.

Neal Stephenson’s brainchild Lamina1 announced it is under new leadership after elevating Rebecca Barkin to the role of CEO. 

Barkin, acting president since last August, will take over the web3 project co-founded by Stephenson and Peter Vessenes, who is also co-founder of the Bitcoin Foundation. Lamina1 is a “Layer 1 blockchain optimized for the Open Metaverse,” the project said in a statement posted to Medium.

“When Rebecca joined us as president we hoped she would move up to CEO,” Stephenson said in a statement. “Everything we’ve seen since then makes it clear that this is the right choice.”

Stephenson rose to a new level of prominence in recent years after the term he used to label the virtual world featured in his 1992 science fiction novel “Snow Crash” — the metaverse — entered the lexicon of influential tech executives like Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. 

Barkin brings more than two decades of technology experience to her new role including five years at augmented-reality developer Magic Leap.

As head of Lamina1 she will “oversee all business operations … including partnerships, fundraising efforts, developer relations and the execution of the company’s product roadmap.”

© 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’s Twitter account was hacked earlier on Wednesday and used to promote a fraudulent crypto project.

The hackers announced the launch of a new token called $RBH, which they said was available on the Binance Smart Chain for $0.0005.

According to data from Blockchain explorer, around 1o people purchased the scam token before the link was taken down. The total amount purchased was less than $1,000.

Crypto hacks accelerated rapidly in 2022, topping a total of $3 billion in total funds loss throughout the year, according to a report from Chainanalysis.

© 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.

Failed crypto lender BlockFi says it “disclosed accurate information” to a New Jersey bankruptcy court after an unredacted court filing showed the firm has a $1.2 billion exposure to troubled exchange FTX.

BlockFi had $831 million in loans to the crypto trading firm Alameda Research and $416 million in assets tied up with FTX, according to court documents, which is $200 million more than was previously known. The filing was first reported by CNBC.

“Stating that these numbers are ‘secret financials’ is inaccurate,” BlockFi said in a statement to The Block. “Throughout the Chapter 11 process, BlockFi has prioritized transparency.”

BlockFi filed for bankruptcy protection in November, weeks after FTX and Alameda filed for bankrutpcy. FTX, which sought to acquire BlockFi in June, is among the lending firm’s largest creditors, according to court documents.

A person familiar with BlockFi’s operation also said claims that the firm employed several people making an average $823,000 a year in salary was inaccurate, noting that no one at the firm earned that much. BlockFi’s chief people officer is requesting the court increase salaries to keep staff from leaving the firm amid its ongoing bankruptcy process.

Disclaimer: Beginning in 2021, Michael McCaffrey, the former CEO and majority owner of The Block, took a series of loans from founder and former FTX and Alameda CEO Sam Bankman-Fried. McCaffrey resigned from the company in December 2022 after failing to disclose those transactions.

© 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.

Decentralized exchange dYdX delayed its token unlocks for investors to Dec. 1 from Feb. 3, according to a note sent out to investors obtained by The Block.

The exchange was set to release 150 million tokens ($282 million) to investors, community members and the project’s treasury next month, a move that would have doubled the current supply — with more tokens to be unlocked over the following months. Postponing the unlocks for investors will reduce this amount by 83 million tokens ($156 million), shifting a significant part of the impact to the end of the year.

Under the new schedule, the 83 million tokens — 30% of the 277 million tokens destined for investors in total — will be unlocked On Dec. 1, according to the note. After that happens, 40% of the total tokens will unlock monthly over the following six months, then 20% over the following year and 10% the year after that.

DYdX is currently based on StarkEx, a zero-knowledge proof-powered layer running on top of Ethereum, but it’s in the process of abandoning this platform in favor of its own application-specific blockchain in the Cosmos ecosystem. 

The price of dydx has rallied in the last few days, rising to $1.88 today from around $1.30 on Jan. 19. The token is now at its highest point since early December. Tokens in the wider crypto market have also grown during that time, but typically by much less.

DYdX declined to comment on this story.

© 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.

You can now foster a real-life dog in the metaverse. 

Pet food company Pedigree unveiled the Fosterverse, a new program that allows real-life rescue dogs to be virtually fostered in Decentraland. Property owners in the virtual world, of which there are less than 8,000, will be able upload 3D avatars based on real dogs that are up for adoption. 

Landowners will then be able to place the dogs on their lots in Decentraland and should you come across one, you can chat with and adopt the real rescue dog the avatar represents or donate real-life money to the Pedigree Foundation to help similar dogs in need, though not necessarily the virtual dog you interacted with.

“As the first brand to bring adoptable dogs to the metaverse, we are proud to be at the forefront of this new virtual reality, supporting our ambition to end pet homelessness,” said Jean-Paul Jansen, vice president of marketing for Mars Petcare North America, Pedigree’s parent company.

The announcement is the latest attempt by corporations and other groups to boost their marketing with metaverse integrations: Oreo recently launched the Oreoverse and Hyundai offers a “Mobility Adventure” on Roblox.  

Last year, frozen food firm McCain’s launched a potato farming game that teaches children about regenerative farming. Earlier this month, the World Economic Forum launched its global collaboration village, where its says organizations can take action on the world’s most pressing challenges.

© 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.

For fans of the Doodles NFT collection the wait is nearly over. Doodles 2 is set to launch at the end of the month.

Confirming months of speculation, the new “NFT experience” called Doodles 2 will launch on the Flow blockchain, a distributed ledger created by the prolific NFT studio Dapper Labs.  

Why the move? Like a lot of NFT collections which achieved early success during the bull run for digital assets — that has since cooled drastically — the companies behind them are seeking alternative revenue streams by expanding the scope of their businesses.

Doodles CEO Julian Holguin said in a statement that as the brand aims to grow across “other verticals like animation and music,” using Flow should help attract consumers unfamiliar with owning digital assets as it is perhaps by some measure more user friendly. In the same statement, Doodles suggested its updated strategy could lead to the onboarding of “millions” of new customers.

This new initiative labeled Doodles 2 appears to be focused on not only growing the community but also spurring increased engagement. The company said that because Doodles holders won’t have to pay gas fees with Flow they should “enjoy endless customization” of their Doodle.


With Doodles 2, users will be able to “personalize” Doodles by changing “attributes like body, hairstyle, emotion, apparel and accessories,” the company said.

On Twitter especially, people often use NFTs from famous collections like Bored Ape Yacht Club, CryptoPunks and Doodles as their personal profile photo. Because of the high value attached to some of the NFTs from these collections, employing the digital assets as a personal avatar is considered trendy by some as a way to demonstrate not only one’s prestige but also enthusiasm for NFTs.

“Doodles is one of the most recognizable brands in web3,” Dieter Shirley, chief architect of Flow said in the statement. 

Growing brand awareness and diversifying beyond the initial NFT collection — based on characters created by the artist Burnt Toast — appears to be top of mind for Doodles executives. The NFT shop earlier this week acquired the animation studio Golden Wolf, which has worked on shows like “Rick and Morty” plus Hollywood’s most powerful movie studio, Disney.

Additionally, musical artist Pharrell Williams became Doodles’s chief brand officer late last year.

Doodles entered the NFT market with its debut collection out in October 2021. It then raised $54 million last September in a funding round led by Reddit co-founder and NFT enthusiast Alexis Ohanian’s venture capital firm 776.

© 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.

Cryptocurrency prices began to pullback overnight, with ether leading the drop. Equities were in the red during the early session, with Block and Silvergate declining. 

Bitcoin was trading at $22,390 by 10:10 a.m. EST, down about 1.6% over the past 24 hours, according to TradingView data. 

BTCUSD chart by TradingView

Ether slipped below $1,600 as it fell over 4.5%. Cardano’s ADA dropped 4.8%, and Polygon’s MATIC was down 4.6%.

Dog-themed memecoins experienced a sharp sell-off with Dogecoin and shiba inu down 5.1% and 6.2%, respectively. 

The pullback in crypto prices tracks a downtrend in equities, with the correlation between bitcoin and equities on the rise since the middle of December. Bitcoin’s correlation to the Nasdaq composite is currently at 0.66, according to The Block data. 

The last time correlations were this high was before the FTX collapse.

Crypto stocks

Silvergate shed 4.6% to around $13 by 10:10 a.m., according to Nasdaq data. The crypto-friendly bank soared at the top of the week, but today’s losses mean it has retraced most of those gains.

Coinbase slipped 6.4% to $50, and Jack Dorsey’s Block fell about 5.9% to $76. MicroStrategy was down 4.5% shortly after the opening bell. 

© 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.

Injective, the layer 1 blockchain, launched a $150 million ecosystem fund to support interoperable infra and DeFi adoption, TechCrunch reported, citing platform CEO and co-founder Eric Chen.

“There isn’t really an established ecosystem fund for Injective and Cosmos as a whole,” Chen told TechCrunch. “We call it a venture consortium because they can get investments from there or direct institutions.”

The fund will be deployed over a few years, Chen added. Pantera, Jump Crypto, Kraken Ventures, Kucoin Ventures and Delphi Labs, among others, joined in backing the fund that aims to support projects involving interoperability, DeFi, trading, proof-of-stake infrastructure and scalability solutions.

Injective raised a $40 million round in a private token sale led by Jump Crypto in August of last year. Jump also acts as a market maker for Injective Pro, one of the ecosystem’s decentralized apps.

© 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.