Coinbase is one of the big web3 companies. They provide one of the most trusted cryptocurrency exchanges. Even though it is considered a trusted party, they might have done some bad things.
Former Coinbase employee Ishan Wahi got arrested. He is suspected of insider trading. He was a product manager and he had access to information about trades that could impact a stock. Ishan, his brother, and his friend are accused of buying tokens before they were listed on the exchange.
There is a clear message sent from the U.S. Attorney. Fraud is a fraud, whether it occurs on the blockchain or on the traditional stock market.
This is not the first example of web3 world inside trading. Almost 2 months ago, a former OpenSea employee was charged and arrested. Nathaniel Chastain is suspected of using confidential information.
He knew what NFTs were going to be displayed on OpenSea's homepage. He is accused of using it for personal gain. It is interesting how it was spotted. One of the wallets had strange transactions with NFTs, which landed later on the main page.
Looks like web3 has an advantage, against potential financial abuse.
Dictionary Insider trading - trading on a publicly listed asset, by someone who has non-public information about this particular asset and uses that knowledge for personal gain, example:
A company's CEO sells some of his shares before publishing a bad quarterly report.
Fun Fact - How to lose 50 BTC in 10 years
Today in the Fun Fact section, a sad and fun story in one. This is a tell of BFCs CTO - ลukasz. He described how he had lost 50 BTC.
How to lose 50 BTC in 10 years
Back in 2009, I heard about something called Bitcoin.
For a student of computer science at university, it seemed interesting. So I've looked for some information about it and found that you can get 50 BTC for mining a new block.
I've decided to give it a try on my laptop. It was working for 30 days 24/7 and after that period I found out that 1 block.
I won!!!
But it was worthless at that time so I'd forgotten about it for 10 years.
So 10 years later in 2019, I remembered about Bitcoin. It was worth $4,000 per coin.
And then I find out that my seed phrase needed for recovering my wallet with 50 BTC is gone.
The only digital version was on my laptop. Because of too many disk formats.
It is unrecoverable.
ลukasz โHarry89PLโ Charubin
If you want to give some support to Harry, please reply to that mail ;)
Interesting project - Ledger Market NFT
Ledger is one of the biggest producers of hardware wallets.
Their Ledgers Nano are greatly designed and very popular in the crypto world.
Today the [Ledger] Market NFT public mint begins. The collection has only 10k NFTs. This is a Genesis and it gives access to:
exclusive collaborations,
limited edition of hardware,
airdrops,
ability to buy a limited edition black-on-black Ledger Nano X. Only 10k manufactured.
Ledger is working on a new platform [L] Market. It is
supposed to be the most secure place to release NFTs. The safest place to buy NFTs. There will be support for the Ledger Live application.
Sounds big.
Ledger has been creating hardware wallets since 2014. Who could know more about web3 security?
Of course, owners of Genesis NFT will have early access to all these
products and services. Announced collaborations:
RTFKT - a digital fashion manufacturer, owned by Nike,
TAG Heuer - Swiss
watch company, that created the first Swiss luxury smartwatch,
Brick - music venue and creative space. Made by musicians Lee Spielman and Garrett Stevenson.
Deadfellaz - a pop-culture brand, that launched NFT a year ago,
Jen Stark - artist, creating conceptualizing visual systems.
We will see where this project will go. It looks solid and has a chance of success.
One more from Ledger -Ledger Nano S Color Edition. You could now store your wallet private key on a yellow, pink, green, blue, or transparent device :D
Vitalik about the Future of Ethereum
Vitalik Buterin had a speech about Ethereum's future at Ethereum Community Conference 5. It looks like Ethereum will be optimized to be the
secure base for Layer 2. Complex features will be left for L2.
Vitalik said that after the Merge Ethereum will be 55% complete. You could watch the full presentation here.
There is also an interesting summary of it here, from Sachin Tomar.
