Axie Infinity says it was never about the money after describing their game as a job-creator

June 14, 2022

Axie Infinity says it was never about the money after describing their game as a job-creator

After playing up how Axie Infinity had "created hundreds of thousands of jobs in the Philippines" and other locations where salaries are low, Axie Infinity has crumbled. Some players had quit their traditional jobs to become full-time Axie players, and for a few months in 2021, some skilled players could make more than the average wage in the Philippines by playing the game.

Even without the $625 million hack in March, Axie's economy was in trouble. A November 2021 report from Naavik, titled "Infinite Opportunity or Infinite Peril?" wrote that the game's "economic policies are fundamentally unsustainable" and that "the value of new Axies and SLP is propped up by new players putting fresh money into the game".

As of May, even top-ranked players were making around $0.68 a day — certainly well below the $41.50 average daily wage in the Philippines that the game was once beating. Now, Axie Infinity downplays the financial promises of its game, with the company's head of product writing, "Axie Infinity first and foremost needs to be a game".

"A Billion-Dollar Crypto Gaming Startup Promised Riches and Delivered Disaster", Bloomberg

June 14, 2022

Coinbase lays off 1,100 employees in 18% cut

(attribution)

Coinbase announced that they would be cutting 18% of their employees, amounting to 1,100 people. This announcement came only two weeks after they rescinded already-accepted job offers from some new employees, a move that itself came only two weeks after the company announced a hiring freeze. Coinbase has attributed their decisions to "current market conditions" and "crypto winter".

Coinbase broke the news to affected employees in a particularly cold way: by email, sent to employees' personal email accounts because they immediately cut access to employees' work accounts. "Given the number of employees who have access to sensitive customer information, it was unfortunately the only practical choice, to ensure not even a single person made a rash decision that harmed the business or themselves," wrote CEO Brian Armstrong in a message to employees that was subsequently published as a blog post.

"A message from Coinbase CEO and Cofounder, Brian Armstrong", Coinbase blog
"Crypto Exchange Coinbase to Lay Off 18% of Staff", Wall Street Journal

June 14, 2022

Known Origin is the latest project to have their Discord compromised

(attribution)

The Discord server for Known Origin, a fairly major NFT platform, was compromised. The scammer used their access to advertise a fake free NFT mint, which actually would steal NFTs if a user tried to connect their wallet.

This is the latest in a long string of Discord compromises. Other hacked servers in recent days included those for Curiosities, Meta Hunters, Parallel, Goat Society, RFTP, and Gooniez.

Tweet by KnownOrigin

June 13, 2022

NFT collector sells pixel art toad at a $1 million loss

A bright blue pixel art toad skeleton with bright yellow eyes and a yellow watch, on a bright blue background that is almost the same color as the skeleton

CrypToadz #2155 (attribution)

In October 2021, an NFT collector dropped 300 ETH (then $1.05 million) on CrypToadz #2155, a pixel art image of a blue toad skeleton on a blue background. On June 13, they sold the NFT for 6.9 ETH (~$8,300), a $1.02 million loss.

It's hard to say why the collector accepted such a low offer. Some have speculated that they were tax loss harvesting to offset other gains, while others have wondered if the collector's account might have been compromised. It's also possible that the collector was cutting losses, not expecting the demand for their NFT to rebound anytime soon.

Tweet by Flip McBot

June 13, 2022

Tron's algorithmic stablecoin (USDD) wobbles

(attribution)

USDD, the algorithmic stablecoin belonging to the Tron network, dipped as low as $0.91 from its $1 peg on June 13 amidst a day of turmoil elsewhere in the crypto ecosystem. Blockchain analytics firm Nansen observed that Oapital, one of the funds that successfully profited off the Terra de-peg, had started to move large amounts of USDD (as well as other stablecoins). "Doesn't look great", Nansen tweeted.

Tron founder Justin Sun tweeted that the Tron DAO would deploy $2 billion (with a B) in capital to fight short sellers, writing: "Short squeeze is coming".

June 13, 2022

Crypto.com and BlockFi announce layoffs

(attribution)

On June 10, Crypto.com announced they would be "making targeted reductions" of 260 people, amounting to around 5% of their workforce. On June 13, BlockFi announced that they were in "the gut wrenching position of needing to reduce our headcount" by around 20%. BlockFi has around 850 staff, suggesting they plan to lay off 170 people.

These announcements followed a June 2 layoff announcement by Gemini and the announcement by Coinbase that same day that they would be rescinding already-accepted job offers.

Rumors of a downturn across the tech industry more broadly have been swirling for several months, but crypto companies appear to be being hit particularly hard as they simultaneously endure "crypto winter".

"Crypto crash wreaking havoc on DeFi protocols, CEXs", Cointelegraph

June 13, 2022

Binance pauses Bitcoin withdrawals for 3 hours due to "stuck" transactions

(attribution)

Binance paused Bitcoin withdrawals for three hours on June 13, explaining that some network maintenance resulted in transactions becoming "stuck and not able to be processed successfully". Although founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao predicted the pause would only take thirty minutes, the issue took closer to three hours to resolve.

I love it when I go to my bank to grab some cash from the ATM and discover that I can't, because someone else's cash clogged up the pipe.

The pause occurred as Bitcoin was reaching record low prices not seen since 2020, contributing to the ongoing pattern of Binance suddenly pausing withdrawals or undergoing maintenance during periods of chaos in the crypto ecosystem.

"Binance paused bitcoin withdrawals for several hours Monday due to a 'stuck transaction'", CNBC

June 13, 2022

Terra investors file class action lawsuit against Binance.US

(attribution)

A group of people who put money into Terra (UST), the stablecoin that collapsed in May, have filed a class action lawsuit against Binance.US. Binance.US is a crypto exchange that operates within the US, managed independently from Binance, which is not available to US customers due to fears that it would run afoul of US securities regulations.

The lawsuit argues that UST is an unregistered security, and that as a result, Binance.US was violating securities laws by listing it. The lawsuit also alleges that Binance.US misled investors, leading them to believe that UST was more stable than it actually was. More than 2,000 investors have joined the lawsuit.

June 12, 2022

"SeaFlower" hacks target crypto users via backdoored iOS and Android crypto wallets

The Confiant security research group has discovered a group that is backdooring and distributing versions of legitimate crypto wallets including Coinbase Wallet, MetaMask, TokenPocket, and imToken. The hackers have created reverse-engineered versions of the crypto wallets that operate as designed, but also steal the user's seed phrase, later using it to drain the users' cryptocurrency.

The attackers have distributed the tampered applications through websites that clone the legitimate applications' websites. Through search engine poisoning, primarily via Chinese search engines like Baidu, the attackers have successfully gotten unsuspecting users to install the malicious programs.

"Hackers clone Coinbase, MetaMask mobile wallets to steal your crypto", BleepingComputer

June 12, 2022

Lido-staked Ether (stETH) loses peg

(attribution)

Lido-staked ETH, a project that offers to allow users to stake ETH for the purposes of securing it after the Ethereum "merge" — that is, the ever-delayed move to proof-of-stake. Although stETH is backed 1:1 with ETH, it's not very liquid aside from the primary liquidity on Curve. Huge sell-offs of stETH for ETH have been causing slippage in the Curve pool, which was off peg by around 5% and heavily imbalanced on June 12.

Crypto researcher Small Cap Scientist suggested on June 9 that the sell-offs may have been triggered by a "canary in the coal mine": a 50,000 stETH (nominally worth $45.8 million) sell-off by Alameda Research, a trading firm founded by Sam Bankman-Fried. SCS also reported that Celsius Network was "quickly running out of liquid funds to pay back their investors", and "they are taking massive loans" against "billions in illiquid positions" to pay back customers.

Tweet thread by SmallCapScience
"Lido-Staked ETH Prices Slip Due to Liquidity Issues", CryptoBriefing

No JavaScript? That's cool too! Check out the Web 1.0 version of the site to see more entries.