The Cryptocurrency market experienced a crazy weekend! Bored Ape owners registering to rent their NFTs to the marketers, The average Ethereum gas charge decreasing to $1.57 and Argentina seizing cryptocurrency wallets belonging to tax evaders are all generating significant discussion in the cryptocurrency industry. So much has taken place! Read on!
In this issue:
1. Many Bored Ape owners register to rent their NFTs to marketers.
2. CFTC pursues $1.7B Bitcoin fraud complaint against a South African national.
3. The average Ethereum gas charge decreases to $1.57, the lowest level since 2020.
4. SBF denies that FTX is interested in struggling crypto mining firms.
5. Crema Finance suspends Solana liquidity procedure over investigation of a hack
6. Argentina seizes cryptocurrency wallets belonging to tax evaders.
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Many Bored Ape owners register to rent their NFTs to marketers.
Hundreds of Bored Ape owners have joined a new nonfungible token (NFT) licencing marketplace that allows holders to lease their Apne’s intellectual property to marketers.
Blockchain accelerator Mouse Belt Labs established the marketplace known as Boredjobs, saying it would publish all 10,000 BAYC NFTs on its website for businesses to “signal interest in recruiting for campaigns.”
Obviously, 10,000 Apes will not be accessible for hiring until the relevant BAYC owners confirm ownership and sign up to see offers.
“The Bored Ape Yacht Club provided its owners with a tremendous chance to leverage the intellectual property rights of the NFTs they owned. Unfortunately, they did not give an instruction manual for putting them to use. “Bored Jobs is developing this guide,” the notice states.
In contrast to the majority of NFT initiatives, Bored Ape Yacht Club gives its owners with commercial rights, which they are using in inventive ways. Seth Green (Robot Chicken) will use his gorilla as the primary character in a forthcoming television series. Andy Nguyen, a culinary entrepreneur and owner of BAYC NFT, decided in April to open a BAYC-themed restaurant titled Bored & Hungry in Long Beach, California.
There is also a virtual metaverse band called KINGSHIP that debuted late last year and is represented by four BAYC avatars.
CFTC pursues $1.7B Bitcoin fraud complaint against a South African national.
The United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or CFTC, has launched enforcement action against a South African citizen for its “biggest Bitcoin fraud scheme,” as described by the regulatory agency.
The CFTC said on Thursday that it has launched a civil enforcement action in federal court against Cornelius Johannes Steynberg for fraud and registration breaches. The South African native reportedly built and maintained a worldwide foreign currency commodities pool with a total value of more than $1.7 billion, permitting solely Bitcoin payments from members (BTC).
The CFTC stated that Steynberg utilised Mirror Trading International Proprietary Limited, a company registered in South Africa, to seek BTC donations through social media and numerous websites. From May 2018 to March 2021, according to the regulatory agency, he took at least 29,421 BTC — worth at more than $1.7 billion at the time, but around $564 million at the time of writing — including from U.S. citizens.
The prosecution against Steynberg is the most recent in a string of enforcement proceedings filed by the CFTC against people and digital asset organisations for breaches of the Commodity Exchange Act. The CFTC filed a complaint against Gemini in June, alleging that the cryptocurrency exchange submitted false or misleading claims to the regulatory agency in 2017.
In October 2020, a federal court ordered the founders of crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX to pay $30 million in fines as part of the resolution of a lawsuit brought by the CFTC.
The average Ethereum gas charge decreases to $1.57, the lowest level since 2020.
The extraordinarily high transaction costs — also known as gas fees — that Ethereum needs to conduct transactions are often cited as the largest obstacle to its widespread domination. Nonetheless, once Ethereum’s average gas costs decrease to 0.0015 Ether (ETH), the story will shift.
The average transaction price on the Ethereum blockchain has decreased to 0.0015 ETH, or $1.57, a figure last saw in December 2020. Nonetheless, beginning in January 2021, Ethereum’s gas costs increased as a result of the euphoria around nonfungible tokens (NFT), decentralised finance (DeFi), and an optimistic bull market.
According to statistics from BitInfoCharts, between January 2021 and May 2022, the average gas charge needed by the Ethereum network was around $40, with the highest gas cost being $196,638 on May 1, 2022.
In June, the NFT ecosystem had its poorest performance of the year, as the total number of daily transactions decreased to about 19,000 at an estimated value of $13.8 million.
In November 2021, after a number of investors observed exorbitant gas prices, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin presented a proposal to lessen the network’s unprecedented levels of strain. Buterin has suggested a short-term solution to further reduce rollup costs by implementing a per-block call-data restriction to reduce ETH gas expenses.
SBF denies that FTX is interested in struggling crypto mining firms.
Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of crypto exchange FTX, said on Twitter on Saturday that the firm is not actually looking into the area, in response to rumours that it is considering purchases of struggling crypto mining companies.
“Really not sure why the meme about FTX and mining companies is spreading, the actual quote was that we aren’t really looking into the space,” clarified Bankman-Fried on Twitter on July 2.
In an interview with Bloomberg on July 1, the founder of FTX said that he would not rule out the prospect of a “compelling opportunity” in the mining business. This led to rumours that the company was on the hunt for mining companies.
Bankman-Fried was asked whether he was investigating mining operations in light of the declining crypto market, which has resulted in a dramatic decline in Bitcoin mining income this year.
Simultaneously, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has caused energy prices to increase, impacting both small and major miners.
According to Bitinfocharts, mining profitability, as measured by daily dollars per terahashes per second, has hit lows not seen since October 2020.
Bloomberg reported on June 24 that there were as much as $4 billion in Bitcoin mining debts, with an increasing amount now underwater due to the decline in Bitcoin and mining gear prices.
Crema Finance suspends Solana liquidity procedure over investigation of a hack.
Crema Finance, a system for concentrating liquidity on the Solana blockchain, has temporarily suspended its services due to a successful attack that has drained an unknown amount of cash.
As soon as Crema Finance realised that its protocol had been compromised, it ceased its liquidity services to prevent the hacker from depleting its liquidity reserves, which included the service provider’s and investors’ cash.
While the corporation has not yet provided an update based on an ongoing investigation at the time of writing, the Crypto Twitter community has taken it upon themselves to locate the hacker’s wallet and acquire a better grasp of the problem.
Other members of the cryptocurrency community, however, estimate that the hacker stole 90 percent of Crema Finance’s entire liquidity. Du also stated that all protocol functions have been paused indefinitely and urged investors to remain tuned for more updates.
Crema Finance is unrelated to Cream Finance, a decentralised finance DeFi lending technology that lost $19 million in a flash loan hack the previous year.
A member in the crypto community, @HarveyMackinto2, apparently discovered the hacker’s wallet address via personal research. This address contains 69,422.89 Solana (SOL) tokens, worth about $2.3 million, which were acquired via a series of transactions over the course of many hours.
Argentina seizes cryptocurrency wallets belonging to tax evaders.
Argentine tax authorities have confiscated over a thousand cryptocurrency wallets belonging to delinquent individuals.
Argentine courts have ordered the seizure of 1,269 bitcoin wallets belonging to persons with outstanding debt to Argentina’s Federal Administration of Public Income, according to a report by local media site iProUP (AFIP).
In May, AFIP revealed its determination to pursue cryptocurrency wallets belonging to tax evaders by requiring cryptocurrency exchanges and payment service providers to provide monthly information on their platforms’ users.
A 19-month moratorium on asset seizures was enacted as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak to reduce financial constraints on residents.
Requests were made for crypto services to authenticate the identities of customers, maintain user account records, and provide thorough financial statements, including revenue, costs, and monthly balances.
With these companies providing this information to the tax administration, AFIP has been able to impose embargoes on the wallet holdings of tax evaders over the previous several months.
The present standard operating procedure of AFIP primarily targets bank accounts and other liquid assets to recover debts. If a taxpayer cannot pay their obligation or does not have a bank account, the AFIP will attempt to take their other assets.
Closing
That’s it for now! Thanks for reading todays newsletter! Be sure to have a look at the Blog section to read our previous editions as well! Have a look at our Guides section if you’re interested in learning more about crypto! And finally, don’t forget to follow us on Twitter!