Author: Decrypt

A Massachusetts man has been sentenced to eight years in prison after selling drugs for crypto on the dark web. Binh Thanh Le of Brockton, Massachusetts, has been sentenced to eight years in prison and will forfeit approximately $2.3 million worth of Bitcoin after starting the “EastSideHigh” darknet market, per the Boston Herald. “This sentence sends a clear message to Dark Web criminals: the federal government is entering this space. We will find you and we will hold you accountable,” Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins said. “Thanks to the incredible work of our law enforcement colleagues, there is one less…

Yuga Labs, the company behind one of the biggest and most valuable NFT collections in the industry, the Bored Ape Yacht Club, today announced that it has bought the rights to the intellectual property of the CryptoPunks and Meebits collections from Larva Labs. And step one for Yuga Labs is to grant full commercial license to CryptoPunks and Meebits holders, according to a statement from the company: “With this acquisition Yuga Labs will own the CryptoPunks and Meebit brands and logos, and as they’ve done with their own BAYC collection, Yuga Labs will transfer IP, commercial, and exclusive licensing rights to individual…

Don’t look now, but there are signs that Ethereum’s high-gas-fee woes may be abating. Those high fees have long been a source of frustration for Ethereum users, but a series of so-called Layer 2 innovations have begun to offer a fix—the latest in the form of StarkNet, which is now integrated into crypto infrastructure giant Alchemy’s development kit. For those unfamiliar, the idea of Layer 2 solutions (aka “roll-ups”) is to process big batches of transactions apart from Ethereum’s core blockchain, and then periodically write a record of those activities to Ethereum itself. The idea is to produce high transaction…

Will Carsola is the co-creator and artist of two animated shows on Adult Swim, and now he’s designed an Ethereum NFT collection for canned water brand Liquid Death. Carsola’s shows, “Mr. Pickles” and “Momma Named Me Sheriff,” are irreverent comedies that combine elements of Americana with the grotesque and surreal. As an NFT artist, Carsola has taken his signature art style and applied it to his project, which is a collection of 6,666 severed heads known as the Murder Head Death Club. NFTs are unique tokens that exist on a blockchain such as Ethereum and indicate ownership of an asset, such as digital art,…

Children’s film and television company Dolphin Entertainment is partnering with the Ethereum NFT collection The Flower Girls to make scripted and unscripted television series, books, games, music, events, and merchandise inspired by the NFT collection. NFTs are unique cryptographic tokens that exist on a blockchain like Ethereum and signify ownership over an asset. In the case of Flower Girls—designed by female artist Varvara Alay—each NFT signifies ownership over a renaissance-style portrait of a young woman. “Dolphins’ [sic] storied history of working with children and their ongoing support of children’s charities across the globe align flawlessly with our mission,” Alay said in a statement. Dolphin has…

A recent investigation by Decrypt uncovered a thriving trade on the work-for-hire platform Fiverr where people offer to work as Discord grinders. The crypto industry is in a hiring frenzy with companies dangling six- and seven-figure salaries to attract top blockchain talent. But the boom has also extended to the lower strata of the labor market, where people are engaging in a new form of social media engagement known as “Discord grinding” for as little as $5 an hour. Discord grinding takes its name from the popular platform of the same name, which is beloved by students and gamers, but…

Snowcrash, a startup focused on the Solana blockchain, has announced that Sony Music and Universal Music Group will be a part of its upcoming platform, which later this year is planning Bob Dylan and Miles Davis NFT drops. NFTs are unique tokens that exist on a blockchain like Ethereum or Solana. The music industry has taken a strong interest in NFTs as a way to further monetize artists and content, with musicians like Dolly Parton, Steve Aoki, Kings of Leon, and 3lau cultivating NFT-focused brands. Snowcrash will be competing against other Solana-based NFT marketplaces like Solanart and Solsea. OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace, saw nearly $3.6 billion in sales last…

The hackers behind last week’s Nvidia data breach claim to have a customized driver that unlocks the limitations on the GPU manufacturer’s graphics cards that prevent them from being used to mine cryptocurrencies. According to PC Mag, the LAPSUS$ hacking group posted messages in its public chat room offering a customized driver for sale that, it claims, is capable of unlocking the hash rate limiter on Nvidia’s RTX 3000 GPUs. “If someone buy us the LHR, we will provide ways to fuck LHR without flashing anything,” the hackers wrote, adding, “Without flashing = big money for any miner developer.” The hackers…

European Union lawmakers have scrapped a section of a pending bill that could have made it illegal for crypto services to deal in coins based on proof-of-work—the consensus mechanism Bitcoin and Ethereum use to “mine” new currency and secure their networks. The Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) bill, put to the European Parliament by a coalition spearheaded by Stefan Berger, was set for a vote on Monday, February 28. But it was delayed late last week after many in parliament objected to a paragraph regarding proof of work. Berger confirmed today that paragraph 61 (9c) of the bill has been removed altogether,…

Decentralization of Web3 infrastructure is critical to its success as it gives us back the freedom that we are currently paying for using Web2. The transition from Web2 to Web3 is inevitable. Yet, as the demand for decentralization gains momentum, several important questions are being raised about the current state of blockchain technology and its promised “decentralization.” Vitalik Buterin responded with a confession that “a lot of it comes down to limited technical resources and funding. It’s easier to build things the lazy centralized way, and it takes serious effort to ‘do it right.’” Or, Jack Dorsey’s recent tweet where he claimed that it’s actually the…