Blockchain

Yuga Labs, the company behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club, sold 55,000 virtual plots of land in its upcoming metaverse, Otherside, for about $5,800 each. While the transactions were done in ApeCoin, the NFTs were minted on Ethereum, where gas fees for each mint ranged from 2.6 to 5 ETH ($6,500-$14,000) at the time of the transactions. By the time the virtual land deeds sold out, buyers paid a total of about $123 million in gas fees to send Yuga Labs about $320 million. Ouch! Continue Reading →

Elon Musk has an option to purchase Twitter for $44 billion. For argument's sake, let's say Twitter has 300 million monthly active users (MAU). If so, he is paying approximately $147 per MAU. Telegram, on the other hand, has approximately 550 million MAUs. Using the same math, Telegram should be worth approximately $80 billion, but Twitter and Telegram are apples and oranges. Twitter is a publicly traded company with a traditional corporate form. Telegram is something completely different. Continue Reading →

Fidelity Investments, the largest retirement plan provider in the United States, plans to allow investors to allocate up to 20% of their 401(k) accounts to bitcoin. It's the first major retirement-plan provider to do so. Continue Reading →

Online payments processor Stripe will allow businesses – beginning with Twitter – to start paying customers in USDC, a stablecoin whose value is tied to the U.S. dollar. Continue Reading →

Coke and Pepsi, McDonald's and Burger King, Tide and Gain. In the physical world, there are many competitive pairs. In the digital world (Google, Amazon, eBay, Netflix, etc.), the biggest companies tend to completely own their categories, which raises the question: Can Coinbase's new NFT marketplace find a place alongside category-leading OpenSea, or will one have to completely dominate the other? Continue Reading →

There is a new phishing scheme targeting MetaMask users on Apple devices. You’ll get a phone call with a legit-looking Apple caller ID. The caller will ask you to call them back so that you “know” the call is real (which it isn’t), at which point the scammer will ask you for a code that is being sent to your phone. That’s it; your MetaMask wallet is now drained because a hot (online-only) MetaMask wallet stores your seed phrase in your iCloud account. Continue Reading →

On the morning of January 23, 2022, I saw a tweet about purchasing a Bored Ape NFT for 135 ETH that I assumed was completely fake. It turned out to be fake. But the transaction was absolutely real. How do I know? The Ethereum blockchain is a public ledger. Transactions are viewable by anyone (including you and me), so let's do a little exploring and see who spent $337,500 (1 ETH = $2,500 at the time) to get their Bored Ape. Continue Reading →

Miami is fighting to be America's crypto capital. Wyoming is doing its best to become America's most crypto-friendly economy. Portugal is at a whole other level. Continue Reading →

Axie Infinity, the world's most popular play-to-earn game, can't catch a break. Two weeks ago, the company was hacked for $625 million, the largest hack in crypto history. Now, it looks like the game's economy is under extreme pressure. Continue Reading →

Two weeks after being hacked for $625 million (the largest hack in crypto history), the price of Axie Infinity (AXS) has fallen by nearly 30 percent. Despite a $150 million raise (led by Binance) to help Axie Infinity reimburse players whose ETH was stolen, the market for AXS appears bearish. Continue Reading →