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  • 10/10/24: The FBI's Crypto Trap 🕸️📜🦄

10/10/24: The FBI's Crypto Trap 🕸️📜🦄

Top News

  1. FBI creates fake cryptocurrency and catches 14 fraudsters

  2. World Liberty Financial submits proposal to AaveDAO

  3. Uniswap launches Unichain, a new Ethereum L2

Specs’ Insights

1. FBI creates fake cryptocurrency and catches 14 fraudsters

⌐◪-◪ → The ultimate honeypot. The FBI created a memecoin called NextFundAI and successfully entrapped 4 companies for fraud and market manipulation — here is the contract address.

The best part? Their smart contracts appear to be in direct violation of the MIT license and thus subject to copyright infringement — shoutout to Cygaar for this one.

A fellow NFT collector, Pop Punk, audited the FBI’s smart contracts without knowing he was working with the feds. It’s okay, Pop Punk, we forgive you!

This shows the lengths to which authorities will go to bust crypto criminals and fraudsters. The FBI fully committed to the bit.

That said, they didn’t cover their tracks very well. Twitter user @jconorgrogan identified multiple wallets connected to the FBI’s primary funding source, one of which holds 1.7B “Pornrocket” tokens. What a time to be alive.

2. World Liberty Financial submits proposal to AaveDAO

⌐◪-◪ → Trump’s DeFi project, World Liberty Financial (WLFI), just posted a governance proposal on Aave, the world’s leading DeFi lending/borrowing protocol.

In addition to onboarding new DeFi users and expanding Aave’s user base, Aave DAO stands to gain two other major benefits:

  1. Aave DAO will receive a 20% revenue share.

  2. Aave DAO will receive 7% of WLFI governance tokens.

The move shows strong Ethereum alignment, as the team chooses to build on top of existing standards/protocols instead of reinventing the wheel.

Next steps? WLFI plans to build on Scroll, the leading zero-knowledge proof rollup, to deliver low transaction fees and high throughput. They’re also planning a $300M raise.

Honestly, I’m starting to feel pretty bullish on World Liberty Fi, and from the looks of it, the Aave community is responding favorably too.

3. Uniswap launches Unichain, a new Ethereum L2

⌐◪-◪ → Another L2 enters the fold! Uniswap Labs just revealed Unichain, their new Ethereum L2 within the Optimism Superchain ecosystem.

Generally speaking, I’m pretty tired of new Layer 2 blockchains; it’s starting to feel oversaturated, but this is different — this is Uniswap.

The network is launching with 1-second confirmation times but plans to work with Flashbots to introduce 250 millisecond block times, delivering near-instantaneous transactions.

If you want to learn more, read the full blog post and whitepaper.

Everything Else

⛓️ Crypto & DeFi

🏦 Wallstreet & VC

  • Ark Invest buys $2.2M Coinbase shares, offloads $36M Robinhood

  • State Street working on tokenized bond and money market fund

  • Bernstein predicts Bitcoin could hit $80-90k if Trump is elected

  • VanEck launches $30M venture fund for crypto, fintech, and AI

🏛️ Legal & Regulatory

  • Iris Energy accused of overstating data center capacity in lawsuit

  • Gary Gensler says it’s unlikely crypto will become a currency

  • Gary Gensler gets grilled by NYU law students over crypto

  • Tucker Carlson interviews Ryan Salame, former FTX exec

  • Former FTX exec asks to delay prison sentence due to dog attack

  • US gov says Bitfinex may be sole victim of Razzlekhan’s 2016 hack

  • Mt. Gox extends repayment deadline by 1 year to Oct. 31, 2025

  • Wisdomtree introduces debit card for tokenized onchain fund

  • 47% of traditional hedge funds have crypto exposure

🌎 Rest Of The World

  • South Korea to review lifting ban on spot crypto ETFs

  • Thai SEC proposes new rules for crypto mutual funds

  • Stablecoin use booms in Argentina amid rapid inflation

  • Palau tests digital savings bond on blockchain, may issue more

  • LatAm bank Littio to switch from Ethereum to Avalanche

  • India delays crypto policy discussion paper amid other priorities

  • Argentina overtakes Brazil in terms of crypto inflows

🖼️ NFTs & Metaverse

  • Decentraland reveals launch plan for long-awaited desktop client

  • Rhynotic launches first memecoin on shape, hits $14M market cap

  • SHILLR launches Media S3 mint on Base via Highlight

  • XCOPY 1/1 sells for 800 ETH ($1.95M)

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