Where there's smoke, there's fire..? 😳

GM, GM. Bean Boy is back and ready to get you through hump day. We’ve had a hell of a week so far, and it looks like it’s not slowing down anytime soon. We’re working overtime at Bean Boy, but that’s what we do best. Anyway, enough about us, let’s see what’s in the pod for today.

How we looking today?

Back on track, let’s end the week strong…right?

SAM STEALING CZ’S SPOTLIGHT YET AGAIN.

It’s no secret that Sam Bankman-Fried (aka SBF) and Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (aka CZ) are not the best of friends. They two traded verbal barbs over Twitter in the midst of the FTX saga, with SBF indicating the CZ did not negotiate in good faith when trying to save FTX from it’s eventual implosion. Now it seems Sam can’t let CZ have all the spotlight yet again. After seeing CZ all over the headlines yesterday, SBF wanted in on the action. After all, where there’s smoke, there’s fire, right?

On top of the 12!!! charges SBF is currently facing from U.S prosecutors, yesterday a 13th was added into the mix. On Tuesday, U.S prosecutors accused SBF of attempting to bribe at least one (and possibly more) Chinese government officials as part of an effort to unfreeze certain accounts. SBF was charged with paying a $40M bribe to a Chinese government official. That’s right, $40M! And he still got caught…

What’s even worse, is earlier this morning news broke that SBF’s whole legal defense is being funded with money gifted to his father. Not only is this bad as is, but when you take into account the fact that this money “gifted” to his father is actually money from retail investors who got scammed as a result of the FTX collapse, you’re left baffled by this whole ordeal. Time to get the popcorn out again…

Despite all of this, SBF has yet to be arraigned on 5 of the 13 outstanding charges. Not only that, he’s still out on bail! Selfishly, Bean Boy would love to see him and Do Kwon do their time together and bond over their love of scamming people.

SAFEMOON - NOT SO SAFE AFTER ALL?

Earlier today, Safemoon, the notorious Cryptocurrency project run by John Karony, a former Data Analyst for the U.S Army, was exploited to the tune of $8.9M. I know what you’re thinking, how does this keep on happening? Well in Safemoon’s case, hackers seemingly manipulated a faulty feature on one of it’s smart contracts, draining almost $9M from their liquidity pool (LP).

These attacks happened merely hours ago, with the attack all able to be tracked through the block (see here). The hacker didn’t just take Safemoon tokens and run though, but instead, here’s what he did. The hacker was able to artificially raise the price of SFM tokens using a code function, and then sold enough tokens back to the liquidity pool in the same transaction. Honestly, Bean Boy is impressed Mr Hacker-man.

After news broke of this, John Karony took to Twitter to assure all Safemoon holders (people actually hold Safemoon still?) that their tokens remain safe, and that the Safemoon team is working to patch the faulty exploit.

Whilst it feels like every other day we’re writing about yet another hack, this one doesn’t seem too bad in comparison. Of course it’s still bad that a hacker was able to exploit Safemoon, but the good news is no actual holders were affected. Let’s pray this is the last time Bean Boy has to write about a hack this week…

OK FINE, LET’S TALK ABOUT NFT’S

We’ll admit it, Bean Boy has been harsh on NFT’s and the Metaverse in general. Most of the news in recent times has been not good for the NFT World, so Bean Boy is here to talk about something other than lay-offs, or failed projects. Let’s take a deep dive into some of the most Expensive NFT’s ever.

1. The Merge

By an Artist called Pak, the Merge sold for a whopping $91.8 million via Nifty Gateway, an NFT marketplace. Interesting to note, although the sale price was indeed $91.8M, the purchase was actually made by 29,983 people, meaning that while this is still technically the biggest sale ever, there has been bigger individual sales.

2. Everyday

Created by Mike Winklemann aka “The Beeple,” Everyday was a portrait that featured 5000 images, drawn over 5000 days by the man himself. Auctioned off in the famous Christie house, it sold for $69 Million to Vignesh Sundaresan, a popular angel investor with ties to Tron founder, Justin Sun.

3. CryptoPunk #5822

As part of the famous CryptoPunk NFT collection, founded by Matt Hall and John Watkinson, CryptoPunk #5822 sold for $23.7 Million. One of only nine “alien traits,” the Punk is considered to be one of, if not the rarest Cryptopunk.

PEAS IN THE POD

• Crypto exchange Kraken has inked a deal with Formula 1 team Williams to be one of their main sponsors. First NBA, now F1? Let’s hope this lasts…

• After news of the CTFC lawsuit broke, Binance saw $627M in Ethereum outflow alone.  Yikes…

• An Irish farmer is using the excess energy from his farm to mine Bitcoins. Now that’s real news. Good on him!

HOW YOU BEAN - A READERS CONFESSION

I just got sandwich or front run attacked for 99% of my transaction. When I was trying to buy this low market cap token on Uniswap, my slippage was at 99% as my son was on the computer before. Safe to say that he is not sleeping in my house any time soon and I’m down -49k from my 50k buy in. He’s going to be working for me for free for a long long time…

To be featured in ‘HOW YOU BEAN’ please email: [email protected]

MEME OF THE DAY

DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.