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A new report from the blockchain analytics firm Elliptic sheds light on non-fungible token (NFT) theft, scams and other illegal activity. 

Elliptic’s report found that over $100 million worth of NFTs were stolen between July 2021 and July 2022, though the true amount is likely higher as thefts are retroactively identified.  

While seemingly high, the estimated $100 million of stolen NFTs comprised about 0.65% of overall trading volume during that time, according to The Block’s data dashboard. Between July 2021 and July 2022, approximately $15.3 billion worth NFT transactions occurred.  

Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs were the most likely NFT to be publicly reported stolen, according to the report. Elliptic identified 167 stolen Bored Apes worth over $43.6 million. Mutant Ape Yacht Club and Azuki NFTs were the second and third most likely to be stolen, losing $14.5 million and $3.9 million respectively. 

The highest value of NFTs stolen through scams happened in May of 2022 at $24 million, and the most NFTs stolen in a month occurred in July of 2022 at 4,600.

Elliptic suggests that this year’s bear market, which began around May following the UST-Terra collapse, did not slow down NFT thefts. 

© 2022 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.

Holders of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) from some popular collections will be able to play as avatars based on their NFTs in The Sandbox’s Alpha Season 3, which launches on Wednesday.

Thirteen major NFT collections, including the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), Moonbirds and World of Women are part of the rollout.

“If you own those NFTs, those 2D images, you will be able to see them become a 3D character on the avatar creator and immediately interact with them,” explained The Sandbox COO and co-founder Sébastien Borget during a walkthrough of the platform on Tuesday.

The company said the decision to roll out this option was part of The Sandbox’s commitment to interoperability. A subsidiary of Animoca Brands — whose chairman Yat Siu regularly speaks about interoperability — The Sandbox was a founding member of the Open Metaverse Alliance for Web3 (OMA3) DAO.

“We are excited to develop new use cases for the owners of these collections, starting with digital identity and the ability to create the worlds for these NFTs to be played with and evolve,” said Borget.

The Sandbox released Alpha Season 1, the first playable version of its metaverse, in late 2021. The second season launched in March 2022 and attracted 350k players. 

It is hoping to top that with its third run. The company said it will feature nearly 100 experiences over 10 weeks, including collaborations with brands such as Ubisoft’s Rabbids, Care Bears, Snoop Dogg and Atari. It will also feature user-generated content and 20 experiences supported by The Sandbox Game Maker Fund.

© 2022 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.

Quick Take

• 28 out of the top 100 publicly traded firms ranked by Forbes have at least one crypto/blockchain investment since 2021
• SoftBank and Samsung have the most investments, with Finance and Technology sector’s largest companies having the biggest exposure
• NFTs/Gaming, Infrastructure, and Enterprise crypto categories were the most popular, whereas DeFi was the least popular
• Axoni, ConsenSys, Blockdaemon, and HQLA were among the most sought-after (most top 100 companies investing) projects 

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Malaysia’s largest independent investment bank Kenanga announced today that it is partnering with China’s technology powerhouse, Ant Group, to launch a wealth generation and management “SuperApp.”

The “SuperApp” will feature a suite of financial solutions, such as stock trading, digital investment management, foreign currency exchange and crypto trading, according to a release published on Wednesday. 

“Having spent the year conceptualising and designing the SuperApp, we are thrilled to partner with Ant Group, a globally recognised and experienced infrastructure and platform provider, to develop this platform and bring it to life,” said Datuk Chay Wai Leong, group managing director at Kenanga, in the release. 

Ant Group is the technology firm behind the development of Alipay, which is now China’s largest digital payment platforms. The investment bank will leverage Ant Group’s mobile development platform, mPaaS, for the app, according to the release. 

“With almost 50 years of retail experience serving over half a million customers, we believe the Kenanga Wealth SuperApp will leapfrog our growth to the next level,” Datuk Chay said.  

The investment bank, founded in 1973, started its digital journey five years ago, per the release. It also recently partnered with Tokyo-based e-commerce company Rakuten to launch Rakuten Trade, a fast-growing stock trading app. 

Kenanga also launched a robo-advisor that has amassed over $55 million in assets under management in six months, per the release. 

© 2022 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.

A well-known crypto trader known as Cobie has donated $100,000 to a YouTuber called Erling Mengshoel (known as Atozy) to help defend against a lawsuit by another YouTuber called Ben Armstrong (known as BitBoy Crypto).

Mengshoel said on Twitter today that he is being sued by Armstrong over a video he made in November 2021, where he claimed that BitBoy scammed his followers. In the lawsuit, Armstrong claims the video damaged his reputation and that he has been suffering emotional damage.

Mengshoel asked his Twitter followers to donate to a fundraising campaign or to make direct crypto donations. At first Cobie replied that he would send $100,000 or so when he was at his computer. A few hours later a donation of 100,000 USDC came through from crypto exchange FTX and he confirmed that the transaction was sent.

In his Twitter thread, Mengshoel pointed to reports that Armstrong does paid promotions for crypto projects and that he feels bad for viewers that lost money on his calls.

Shortly after Mengshoel’s tweets came out about the lawsuit, Armstrong tweeted, “You can’t literally make up lies and accusations about people. There are consequences for this, Because you tell two truths and one lie, that doesn’t excuse the lie.” In later comments he refused to go into further details on the advice of his lawyers.

Cobie previously led a drive to raise money for a child, known as J.O., who had leukemia. This push ended up raising $800,000 from a variety of crypto notables.

The Block reached out to Mengshoel and Armstrong for comment and will update this article should we hear back.

© 2022 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.

Teneo, the financial advisory firm appointed to liquidate the assets of defunct crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital, secured recognition from the Singapore High Court to probe the hedge fund’s local assets, according to a Bloomberg report that cited sources familiar with the matter. 

The Singapore High Court granted the request from Teneo on Monday, meaning it legally recognizes the liquidation order that Teneo originally filed in the British Virgin Islands (BVI). Liquidators started petitioning the court for recognition in mid-July, The Block reported. 

The nod from the Singapore High Court means that Teneo will be able to request all financial records associated with Three Arrows Capital that are held in Singapore, such as bank accounts, real estate, and assets like cryptocurrencies, according to the Bloomberg report. The hedge fund was initially based in Singapore before relocating to the BVI last year. 

New-York based Teneo was appointed to handle the liquidation of Three Arrows Capital in June on the orders of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court in the BVI’s High Court of Justice. 

Three Arrows Capital started to face financial issues following the implosion of the Terra ecosystem in mid-May. Losses from its investments in Terra’s native token Luna, coupled with subsequent turbulence in crypto markets, prompted a string of liquidations by the hedge fund’s lenders, resulting in its collapse.

Teneo has thus far gained control of at least $40 million of Three Arrows Capital’s assets, according to a report from Bloomberg. This is only a fraction of the total owed by the company to creditors. Crypto trading firm Genesis lent $2.36 billion to Three Arrows Capital. Having taken on Genesis’ liabilities, Digital Currency Group (DCG) made a $1.2 billion claim against the hedge fund. 

The Singapore court ruling comes after Three Arrows Capital filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy in July. Its founders — Su Zhu and Kyle Davies — have been mostly unreachable since, according to Teneo. Court documents show that both had “failed to cooperate” during the process.  

However, in mid-July, the pair spoke to Bloomberg in a wide-ranging interview about the collapse of the fund. 

Representatives for Teneo as well as Zhu and Davies did not respond to Bloomberg’s request for comment on recent developments. 

© 2022 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.

Episode 78 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and Plaid head of UK/EU Keith Grose.

Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Email feedback and revision requests to podcast@theblockcrypto.com.

Plaid, a fintech infrastructure and payments provider aiming to simplify the digital financial ecosystem through a single API, recently announced big crypto players such as Gemini and Binance.US are joining its network of financial institutions.

The move is part of Plaid’s broader effort to integrate both legacy institutions and crypto service providers into its platform, which was valued at more than $13 billion last year after a $425 million fundraise.

In this episode of The Scoop, Plaid’s head of UK/EU, Keith Grose, joins host Frank Chaparro to discuss how its integration with crypto platforms is helping bring new users into the ecosystem, and to break down what the future of digital finance will look like.

According to Grose, users’ digital financial interactions will increasingly be controlled by a single wallet that is able to move seamlessly between different platforms:

“You are essentially, as a user, going to have this back end wallet, whether it’s your bank account or your crypto wallet, that you control the keys to and you can take wherever you want to use it around the digital world. That’s where we’re headed.”

While Plaid is built to cater to a range of digital financial platforms, Grose points out that all financial transactions ultimately come down to trust:

“What we’re really talking about when you’re talking about payments is trust… and I think we’re more and more moving to a place where trust is becoming digital, and proving trust online in the digital world is very different than proving trust in a physical, community based system that most of humanity has been in for most of history.”

In this episode, Chaparro and Grose also discuss:

• The role of stablecoins in digital finance
• How Plaid handles KYC and why it’s important
• Instant payments and risk modeling

This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Tron, Chainalysis &IWC Schaffhausen

About Tron
On August 1st, 2022, Poloniex launched a faster and more stable trading system along with a brand new user interface. Poloniex was founded in January 2014 as a global cryptocurrency trading platform. With its world-class service and security, it received funding in 2019 from renowned investors, including H.E. Justin Sun, Founder of TRON. Poloniex supports spot and margin trading as well as leveraged tokens. Its services are available to users in nearly 100 countries and regions with various languages available. For more information visit Poloniex.com.

About Chainalysis
Chainalysis is the leading blockchain data platform. We provide data, software, services, and research to government agencies, exchanges, financial institutions, and insurance and cybersecurity companies in over 60 countries. Backed by Accel, Addition, Benchmark, Coatue, Paradigm, Ribbit, and other leading firms in venture capital, Chainalysis builds trust in blockchains to promote more financial freedom with less risk. For more information, visit www.chainalysis.com.

About IWC Schaffhausen
IWC Schaffhausen is a Swiss luxury watch manufacturer based in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. Known for its unique engineering approach to watchmaking, IWC combines the best of human craftsmanship and creativity with cutting-edge technology and processes. With collections like the Portugieser and the Pilot’s Watches, the brand covers the whole spectrum from elegant timepieces to sports watches. For more information, visit IWC.com.

© 2022 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 Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) has issued another consumer alert calling out a swath of crypto firms, including Kucoin and its affiliates, for not being registered to deal in the Canadian province.

The OSC issued a similar alert earlier this month that also named Kucoin as an unregistered entity. Today’s alert names 13 firms, many of them crypto businesses, as companies that are not registered to deal or advise in securities in Ontario. The list includes subsidiaries of Kucoin, which the commission took aim at earlier when it successfully barred the firm from operating in Ontario with a courtroom win – one that also included a $1.6 million fine. 

The Kucoin case came as part of a wider crypto crackdown following a 2021 decision from regulators to treat custodial exchanges as securities exchanges regardless of whether the assets traded were securities. Since then, the OSC has gone after unregistered platforms.

As Kucoin has weathered the storm, CEO Johnny Lyu sought to dispel rumors that suggested the company might halt withdrawals. 

© 2022 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.

Heather Morgan, accused of laundering billions of dollars stolen from the crypto exchange Bitfinex, broke a six-month silence on Twitter to announce that she is not, indeed, involved in any crypto projects.  

“I am not involved in any crypto project,” Morgan wrote on Twitter. “Any crypto or NFT project bearing my name or likeness is a scam that I do not endorse.”  

This is Morgan’s first public Twitter post since her run-in with law enforcement earlier this year. 

Prior to accusations of money laundering, Morgan had a blossoming rap career under the moniker “Razzlekhan” and led a copywriting business called SaleForce as CEO. In addition, she gave advice on how to protect businesses from cybercriminals and how to more effectively socially engineer “your way into anything.”

On February 8, however, Morgan and her husband Ilya Lichtenstein were accused of allegedly laundering $4.5 billion in stolen bitcoin from the crypto exchange Bitfinex, The Block previously reported. The US Department of Justice retrieved $3.6 billion of the stolen funds on the same day. 

While Morgan and Lichtenstein could face up to 25 years in jail if convicted for their charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the United States, the two were released on a collective bail of $8 million.  

© 2022 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 markets showed signs of recovering at the top of the week following a sharp sell-off last Friday. 

As has been the theme of the month so far, ether was the big winner on Tuesday as it gained more than 4.2% over the past 24 hours trading at $1,644. Meanwhile bitcoin was up 1.9% trading at $21,541, according to CoinGecko.  

Elsewhere, EOS – which jumped over 17% following court ruling on the Block.one settlement last week – has maintained its momentum despite the sell-off, now up 40.1% over the past week, trading hands for $1.79.  

Here’s what commentators and key players have suggested as a reason for last week’s sell-off. 

Marco outlook and liquidations blamed for crash

The global crypto market cap briefly dipped below $1 trillion on Tuesday before recovering to $1.08 trillion – a gain of about 2.5% over the past 24 hours. The market cap first flirted with the $1 trillion mark on Saturday following a dramatic drop in digital asset prices.  

21Shares suggested a raft of long-liquidations may have caused the downtrend in the crypto market, the asset manager wrote on Tuesday: 

“According to data gathered by Coinglass, over 157K traders got liquidated on Friday, resulting in total liquidations of over $600M [million]; bitcoin traders lost over $239M, while Ethereum lost over $224M. With around $562M worth of long positions and $79M in shorts, this marks the biggest liquidation of long positions on futures since June 13, a few days before bitcoin’s price fell below $20K.” 

Meanwhile other market commentators have attributed the plunge in prices on Friday to a widespread risk aversion in the market. 

BlockFi wrote in its weekly market report on Monday that the meeting of Federal Reserve officials in Jackson Hole on Friday would be the “key event for the week,” as traders watch out for Fed signposting on future rate hikes – which have moved crypto markets throughout the summer. 

LedgerPrime shared similar sentiments in its weekly market update on Tuesday, noting that investors “seem worried about further aggressive interest rates and a slowing economic backdrop, driving them to sell assets seen as risky such as tech or crypto, and buy the US dollar.” 

The crypto investment firm went on to say, “as trader’s appetite for risk assets continues to collapse across the board, the US dollar seems to gain speed, setting track for its highest week in value in over 20 years.” 

Double trouble for crypto stocks 

Crypto-related stocks – those with exposure to cryptocurrencies on their balance sheet or with business models closely linked to blockchain technology – have suffered twofold over the past five days.  

Digital assets and equites have both seen a large sell-off since August 18, with the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100 down 3.76% and 4.65% in that time. Coinbase, MicroStrategy and Block all closed on Tuesday.  

Since the close on August 18, Coinbase lost 14.7%, while Jack Dorsey’s Block lost 11% and MicroStrategy shed almost 18%.  

© 2022 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.