This Week on Crypto Twitter: NFT Community Wants Creator Royalties Back

There were ubiquitous losses among the leading cryptocurrencies this week as the latest inflation readings prompted fears among investors that the Federal Reserve will keep raising interest rates this year, as it did all of last year.

Prices were the last thing on people’s minds when there was a plethora of other issues on people’s minds this week. M Shadows, the singer for California metal band Avenged Sevenfold, took umbrage on Monday with NFT marketplace OpenSea, after the latter last week stopped enforcing the practice of ensuring creators get a 5-10% cut on the future resale of their work.

18 months ago, when we started the DBC, we had a discussion about how marketplaces collected royalties and understood the fact that someday they could simply not comply. In response, we built some fail safes that could simply block these platforms from accessing our collection.

— M. Shadows (@shadows_eth) February 20, 2023

That day, the Financial Times broke a story that Galois Capital, a crypto-focused hedge fund, had closed down after having earlier deposited half of it $200 million in assets-under-management at the time in the now-collapsed FTX exchange. Co-founder Kevin Zhou appeared to be tweeting from the fund’s account.

In spite of that, I am proud to say that although we lost almost half our assets to the FTX disaster and then sold the claim for cents on the dollar, we are among the few who are closing shop with an inception-to-date performance which is still positive.

— Galois Capital (@Galois_Capital) February 20, 2023

On Tuesday, NFT news account @NFTnow broke the story of what appears to be an elaborate, multimillion-dollar rug pull.

Fox Business journalist Eleanor Terrett that day gave an update on the ongoing case against FTX founder and former CEO Samuel Bankman-Fried, who stands charged with eight crimes, including wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

NEW: Just filed today, the defense expects to propose one or more potential candidates to act as an independent technical expert to advise the court on @SBF_FTX‘s bail conditions by the end of the week. pic.twitter.com/WfkF5frBAn

— Eleanor Terrett (@EleanorTerrett) February 21, 2023

That day, self-professed “Crypto Data Nerd” @0xKofi expressed his concerns that upstart NFT marketplace Blur, which recently surpassed OpenSea in sales volume, was being dominated by a handful of professional traders. He called the lack of creators’ royalties “short-sighted” in a later tweet.

53% of Blur’s volume comes from just 500 wallets

(research by Archmage @jphackworth42 )

The marketplaces are killing their profits, long-term relationships with creators and future growth prospects to compete for ~500 pro traders

— Kofi (@0xKofi) February 21, 2023

Similar numbers to Kofi’s made the rounds again the following day.

Hey! Here are some fun facts about NFT volume:

20% of Blur’s volume comes from only 15 wallets.

50% of Blur’s volume comes from less than 300 wallets.

Watch the top 500 farmers drive artificial volume live over any timeframe with source below pic.twitter.com/chDM6B7uMv

— poof (@poof_eth) February 22, 2023

That same day, crypto-friendly Republican House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) introduced a bill proposing to bar the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency (CBDC) directly to individuals, a move which he argues would erode Americans’ rights to financial privacy. The CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act would also require the American central bank to report to Congress about its experiments with digital currencies.

Today, I introduced the CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act to halt efforts of unelected bureaucrats in Washington, DC from stripping Americans of their right to financial privacy. pic.twitter.com/lONbHFZMk7

— Tom Emmer (@GOPMajorityWhip) February 22, 2023

Crypto sleuth Isabel Hunter on Wednesday posted the results of an investigation into where the $1 billion in Shiba Inu (SHIB) tokens that Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin donated to India’s COVID-19 relief effort actually went. It turns out $58 million of it reached its intended recipients in the end. The rest is a wild story…

$58 million has reached India through @CryptoRelief_ so far – the last funding was made in July 2022. Approximately $40 million is sitting in cash with Puerto Rico-based @fvbankus, according to screenshots of February 2023 bank statements provided by Nailwal

2/8

— Isabel Hunter (@isabelhunter) February 22, 2023

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s Hester Pierce, who last week broke ranks to criticize her agency’s crypto custody proposal, tweeted her mind again this week. On Wednesday, she appeared to fire a subliminal shot at her boss, chairman Gary Gensler, who is unpopular in the crypto industry for his regulation-by-enforcement strategy, which has so far involved suing high-profile crypto companies while offering the industry little guidance on how to be compliant.

Getting lots of questions re stablecoins & SEC: Facts & circumstances of course, but SEC should defer to Congress, which is actively considering the issue. In the meantime, we & other regulators could hold public roundtables. Enforcement actions aren’t the way to write the rules.

— Hester Peirce (@HesterPeirce) February 22, 2023

That day, Bitcoin bull @ZK_Shark hyped up Bitcoin NFTs, although he conceded between the lines that they have less utility than their Ethereum counterparts.

Ordinals:

No royalties
No meta data
No good wallets (yet)
No marketplace (yet)
No holder verification
No mutability
No Smart contracts
No Tokens
No AMMs

Every inscription WILL live FOREVER on the most decentralized public ledger known to man.

That’s the damn utility

— zk- (@ZK_shark) February 22, 2023

On Thursday Ryan Selkis, founder of crypto market intelligence company Messari, announced a 15% cut to his company’s workforce.

1/ Yesterday we made the difficult decision to restructure several of Messari’s internal teams, leading to a 15% staff reduction.

We’re grateful for the contributions of the teammates we have parted ways with, and will provide resources and connections to help them transition.

— Ryan Selkis (@twobitidiot) February 23, 2023

Also that day, Montana state’s decision to protect the interests of crypto miners went down a treat on Crypto Twitter.

On Friday, an NFT researcher who tweets as @punk9059 shared a chart that no doubt worried a lot of Bored Ape Yacht Club fans.

Finally, Polygon (MATIC) crashed hard this week, shedding 21% in seven days to trade at $1.22 at the time of writing. MATIC began its downward slide on Tuesday when news broke that Polygon Labs was laying off 100 employees (20% of its workforce) after restructuring. Avalanche (AVAX) founder and CEO Emin Gün Sirer fired some shots at the rival blockchain.

ProTip: there’s no reason a good proof of stake protocol should ever reorg.

— Emin Gün Sirer (@el33th4xor) February 24, 2023

Meanwhile, Uniswap founder/CEO Hayden Adams offered technical advice.

Polygon needs to make moves publicly to solve its re-org problem

157 block reorg (5mins of history) yesterday and 120 in December is bad, and can break bridges, CEX, etc

Maybe a consensus algo change? Or a social consensus based hardfork to slash the validator?

— hayden.eth (@haydenzadams) February 23, 2023