FreeCryptoCurrency.Me

The Ethereum Name Service (ENS) domain 000.eth was purchased for 300 ETH ($315,000) on July 3, making it the second-largest sale measured in both ether and dollars.

The name was sold by an OpenSea user named EtheOS, according to on-chain data. They received the ENS name in June 2020 from another address that they may or may not own. They first listed the ENS name in September 2021 for 100 ETH (around $300,000 at the time), before relisting it in January this year for 500 ETH (around $1.6 million at the time). They then listed it again in March, where the offer sat for three months before being accepted.

The user that sold the ENS name also owns a few other NFTs, including another ENS name kimjonghyung.eth.

ENS domains are human-readable addresses designed to be used to replace blockchain addresses when sending blockchain transactions. Instead of a crypto user having to copy and paste their blockchain address, they can use such names to select where they are sending money. ENS names are also non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and can be sold on NFT marketplaces like OpenSea.

The biggest sale so far of an ENS name was for paradigm.eth, which was purchased in October 2021 for 420 ETH (about $1.5 million at the time). Despite the name, crypto investment firm Paradigm reportedly denied that it made the purchase. Plus there was a few other indicators that suggested it might be a prank — although a rather expensive one.

© 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.

Over the weekend, the British Army’s official Twitter and YouTube accounts were compromised, with hackers using the accounts to promote non-fungible token (NFT) projects. 

Hackers initially changed the account’s profile picture, banner and description to promote Bapesclan NFTs – a collection which depicts cartoon apes face-on. Those in control of the account later promoted another collection called The Possessed. 

The Army regained control of the account by Sunday evening, tweeting: “Apologies for the temporary interruption to our feed. We will conduct a full investigation and learn from this incident. Thanks for following us and normal service will now resume.”

On YouTube, videos were posted promoting cryptocurrencies, featuring images of Tesla CEO Elon Musk. 

A twist in the tale came as the self-professed creator of The Possessed NFT project hit back at the hackers on twitter, claiming they had been impersonated.

“.@BritishArmy has been hacked and is spreading fake @ThePossessedNFT info. Forget us, please report their account as compromised as this is not okay,” the account @TMW_buidls tweeted. 

The Block contacted @TMW_buidls and Bapesclan for comment. 

“We can confirm that yesterday there was a breach of the Army’s Twitter and YouTube accounts and an investigation is underway,” an Army spokesperson told The Block. 

“We take information security extremely seriously and whilst we have now resolved the issue an investigation is ongoing and it would be inappropriate to comment further.”

Hacks to verified accounts such as this one are commonplace in the NFT world and are a method of running scam giveaways or selling fake NFTs through official-looking sources. This hack hints at a lack of extra layers of security on official UK government accounts. This could potentially have been prevented through measures such as two-factor-authentication. The hack could also have been carried out through the owner visiting a malicious URL. 

The British Army currently has 362,000 Twitter followers, while the YouTube channel has 177,000 subscribers.

© 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.

Ted Lin, chief growth officer at Binance, has left the company after working for it almost since its inception.

Lin posted the news on his Twitter and LinkedIn profiles on Saturday, saying that “it was a difficult decision to leave, but I wanted to spend more time with my young family and be more flexible with my time.”

Lin joined Binance in September 2017, two months after the exchange was formed, as its head of international markets, according to his LinkedIn profile. Lin worked in that role for one year before being promoted to chief growth officer (CGO) in September 2018. As Binance’s CGO, Lin led the company’s growth, commercial and education initiatives with a mission to grow the Binance ecosystem, per his profile. 

“The past 5 years have been the busiest yet most intellectually rewarding years of my career,” said Lin. “The experience has been eye-opening and humbling. Having bootstrapped multiple teams and initiatives on the rocket ship taught me many valuable lessons in business and in life.”

Looking ahead, Lin will take a role as a mentor and angel investor in the crypto space. 

“I will spend a lot more time with my family and continue to help advance the ecosystem through angel investing and mentorship,” he said. “I will continue to stay immersed in crypto and Web 3, 4, 5 and share my cumulative learnings with new builders and operators in the space.”

Lin and Binance did not immediately respond to The Block’s requests for comment.

Lin’s departure comes a month after Binance Labs, the venture capital and incubation arm of Binance, lost two top executives, as The Block previously reported. Bill Qian, the head of Binance Labs, and Nicole Zhang, the firm’s executive director, both left the firm in quick succession. 

© 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.

Vauld, a Singapore-based crypto trading and lending platform with most of its team in India, has become the latest crypto firm to halt customer withdrawals amid the market tumult.

CEO Darshan Bathija said in a blog post on Monday that the firm has “made the difficult decision to suspend all withdrawals, trading and deposits on the Vauld platform with immediate effect.”

Vauld is struggling financially due to a combination of factors, including a volatile market and the financial difficulties of business partners, according to Bathija. Since June 12, the platform has seen customer withdrawals of nearly $198 million, triggered by the implosion of the TerraUSD stablecoin, Celsius’s decision to halt withdrawals and Three Arrows Capital’s woes, said Bathija.

Vauld is open to potential restructuring options. To that end, the firm has hired Kroll as its financial advisor and Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas and Rajah & Tann Singapore LLP as its legal advisors in India and Singapore, respectively.

“Our management remains fully committed to working with our financial and legal advisors to the best of our abilities to explore and analyse all possible options, including potential restructuring options, that would best protect the interests of Vauld’s stakeholders,” said Bathija.

Vauld is currently also in discussions with potential investors, according to Bathija.

“We intend to apply to the Singapore courts for a moratorium i.e. a suspension of the commencement or continuation of any proceedings against the relevant companies so as to give us breathing space to carry out the proposed restructuring exercise,” he added.

Vauld (formerly Bank of Hodlers) is backed by high-profile investors, including Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures, Coinbase Ventures and Pantera Capital. The firm has raised $27.5 million in total funding to date.

The news comes less than a month after Vauld said it “continues to operate as usual despite volatile market conditions” on June 16. “We do not have any exposure to Celsius or Three Arrows Capital, and we remain liquid despite market conditions. Over the last few days, all withdrawals were processed as usual and this will continue to be the case in the future,” the firm said at the time. 

© 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.

President Faustin-Archange Touadéra of the Central African Republic launched Sango Coin as the country’s national cryptocurrency in a virtual event broadcast on Sunday.

The virtual event, dubbed the “Sango Genesis Event,” saw the country’s president enumerate plans for bitcoin and crypto utilization.

“Sango Coin will be the next-generation currency for [the] Central African Republic,” President Touadéra stated in his address.

The landlocked African country became the first on the continent to recognize bitcoin as an official currency in April.

© 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

• Nouns is an experimental NFT project aiming to revolutionize the way digital avatar communities are conceptualized, controlled, and funded
• Based on the intertwined nature of its treasury and artwork, Nouns has activated a powerful flywheel effect that enables it to scale at a rapid pace
• The Nouns DAO treasury has already accumulated 22.7K ETH and 4.6K stETH, which corresponds to a total of $28.4mm as of this writing

This research piece is available exclusively to
members of The Block Research.
You can continue reading
this Research content on The Block Research.

Circle’s founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire tweeted a thread of statements and linked blog posts on Saturday addressing rumors that the company’s USDC stablecoin was near collapse amid the crypto market downturn. 

The first post, titled “How to be stable,” noted among other points that USDC is fully backed:  

“USDC has always been backed by the equivalent value of U.S. dollar denominated assets; USDC reserves are kept in the management and custody of leading U.S. financial institutions, including BlackRock and Bank of New York Mellon,” the post read, before launching into a lengthy disclosure on Circle’s reserves and procedures. 

Allaire went on later in the thread to add: “It’s understandable why some users would be paranoid given the history of hucksters in crypto. We have always tried to hold ourselves to the highest standards afford to us. That’s enabled us to work with regulators, top-tier assurance firms, and leading FIs.” 

He concluded by saying that crypto payments company Circle was “in the strongest position it has ever been in financially, and we will continue to increase our transparency.” 

At the time of writing, USDC was 1:1 with the US dollar, according to CoinGecko. 

In mid-June, Circle introduced a new euro-centric stablecoin, EUROC. Earlier in the month it agreed to acquire Cybavo, a crypto infrastructure startup that serves institutional customers. 

© 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 growth of China’s blockchain market has accelerated, with the total number of services registered with the country’s internet regulator reaching 1,821, according to a review of government documents and interviews with industry insiders, the South China Morning Post reported on Saturday. 

The pace of certification for new blockchain services began speeding up late last year, with the Cyberspace Administration of China releasing new lists of recent ventures every two to four months. 

While the country has banned the trading of cryptocurrencies, an increasing number of Chinese companies are looking for new applications for blockchain, potentially opening a huge market for services run on the technology, which is a type of immutable distributed ledger maintained by different computer nodes on a network, the SCMP reported. 

Most of the registered services are for legal and financial applications and Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS), which allows customers to apply pre-existing blockchain technologies like smart contracts to their own businesses, the report said. 

© 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.

Macro investor Raoul Pal said today in a LinkedIn post that he has co-founded a new business in web3. 

ScienceMagic.Studios is a “token venture asset studio working with the biggest communities and brands,” Pal said in the post. 
 
He added that the company’s mission is to “tokenize the world’s largest cultural communities – music, fashion, movies/book/TV franchises and sports – utilizing NFTs, social tokens and metaverse.” 

Pal’s LinkedIn profile lists him as co-founder and CEO of the Real Vision Group, publisher of the Global Macro Investor and co-founder of Exponential Age Asset Management.  
 
Pal said that investors in the new enterprise include Liberty City Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, DCG, Brevan Howard Digital and other firms. He also identified his co-founders as Kevin Kelly of Delphi Digital and David Pemsel, ex-CEO of the Guardian Media Group.

© 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.

Troubled cryptocurrency lending platform Celsius has cut 150 employees, Israeli business website Calcalist said today in a story tagged “exclusive.” 

The company’s LinkedIn profile lists 651 employees, with its headquarters in Hoboken, New Jersey. It also has offices in Israel and the UK. 

Calcalist said some of the retrenched workers were in Israel, adding that Celsius did not respond to a request for comment. 

The Block reported recently that Celsius had appointed Citigroup to advise on its financial options, and the Wall Street Journal said the lender was working with restructuring consultants from advisory firm Alvarez & Marsal. 

Crypto exchange operator FTX held talks with Celsius about providing financial support or making an acquisition, but decided against proceeding after examining Celsius’s finances, two people with knowledge of the matter told The Block last week. 

“We are focused and working as quickly as we can to stabilize liquidity and operations, in order to be positioned to share more information with the community,” Celsius wrote on its blog late last week. 

© 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.