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The Nifty #8: A stolen Cryptopunk and a money laundered Meebit

Happy Monday!

I’m still figuring out the cadence of these emails but I think I’ve come up with something a little more structured. I’ll fill you in when I figure it out though ;)

In the interim, I wanted to share some interesting stories from the past week.

A Temporarily Stolen Cryptopunk

On Friday, a Cryptopunk was stolen by replicating the Meebits hack I wrote about a couple weeks ago. An unknown hacker figured out that another project, Apymon, has an identical vulnerability.

To understand the exploit you first need to understand how Apymon works. Essentially the project involved purchasing one of 10,000 available eggs. After the sale, holders of the eggs have the opportunity to open them to reveal a surprise NFT, one of which could have been a Cryptopunk.

Some enterprising hacker figured out that you could cancel the transactions after finding out the NFT you would be granted. The result was a slew of cancelled transactions which you can view via this address.

Somehow, Cryptopunk 7207 was reverted back to Apymon as per the project’s Twitter account though and all is well in the world.

An Overpriced Meebit

Then over the weekend Meebit #16920 was sold for 201 ETH only 11 hours after being acquired for 1.44 ETH. Crypto Twitter was absolutely confounded by the transaction.

The Meebit was a fairly basic one with a jersey. Speaking of which, my Meebit has a jersey and I’ll gladly sell it for less than 201 ETH.

Most people speculated that it was some form of money laundering. Or perhaps some famous basketball player will come out and say they purchased it?

Or perhaps I’m projecting my wish that the Meebits would hurry up and increase in value…

Market “Volatility”

Speaking of increases in value … how about that crypto market?

This weekend it plunged once again. Fortunately we have been given a little bit of a respite as of this morning but things were pretty tough for a bit there. If you were fortunate to pick up some cheaper tokens, congrats!

I added more ETH, more BTC, more MATIC, and more AAVE. Not financial advice though …. Blah, blah blah.

The Sale of Charlie Bit My Finger

On Saturday, 3F Music who I have written about numerous times was back at it again. This time he purchased the viral sensation “Charlie Bit My Finger” for $760,000. It seems every couple of Saturdays he just casually buys another meme for $500k+.

What was concerning for many people is that the video may be taken down from YouTube following the sale. I read somewhere else that Farzin Fardin Fard of 3F Music will get to determine what the future holds for the video.

Given that the spirit of the NFT community is focused on sharing the art with others to experience, taking it off YouTube would seem counterintuitive. We’ll have to wait and see what happens…

Upcoming Shows

This week I have another awesome lineup of podcast guests:

  • Ben Nolan, founder of Cryptovoxels - Tonight I’ll be discussing one of the more popular metaverses, Cryptovoxels, with the founder and CEO of the company.
  • Swopes - On Tuesday I’m speaking with the wildly popular iPhone artist, Swopes, to discuss her art, her experience in the NFT world so far, and may touch on minority representation in NFTs (a subject which first brought us together).
  • Nate Alex - On Wednesday I’m speaking with Nate Alex, an OG crypto investor, NFT collector, and co-founder of NFT42, the company which recently launched Gary Vaynerchuk’s NFT project.
  • Sebastien Borget - On Friday I’ll be doing a call with Sebastien of The Sandbox, one of the other major metaverses.

Most of these shows are hosted on Clubhouse. You can join The Nifty clubhouse group with this link. I also recommend searching for and subscribing to “The NFT Nick Show” on your favorite podcast app :)

Enjoy your week,

Nick