Stephen Katte
Crypto-friendly billionaire Elon Musk has become the sole director of Twitter, following the dissolution of nine former board members, according to newly filed documents.
In an SEC filing dated Oct. 27, the “consummation” of Musk’s takeover of Twitter came with the dissolution of Twitter’s board members, including Bret Taylor, Parag Agrawal, Omid Kordestani, David Rosenblatt, Martha Lane Fox, Patrick Pichette, Egon Durban, Fei-Fei Li and Mimi Alemayehou.
“On October 27, 2022, and as a result of the consummation of the Merger, Mr. Musk became the sole director of Twitter,” the filing reads.
The Tesla CEO later tweeted in a response to a Twitter user that the arrangement was “just temporary.”
Previously, Musk has said the platform under his ownership will focus on free speech, eliminating spam bots and fake accounts, an edit function and possibly even crypto payments.
In the days since the Tesla CEO assumed ownership of Twitter, Musk has been busy providing updates on what his new platform could bring to the table.
He has already floated the idea of a monthly $19.99 payment to get the blue tick verification and bringing back Twitter’s defunct short-form video service Vines, which saw 69% of five million voters in favor of its comeback in an online poll.
The whole verification process is being revamped right now October 30, 2022
Meanwhile, Musk has also declared the formation of a “content moderation council” aimed at ensuring free speech on the platform and considering reversing bans on certain Twitter accounts, such as that of former United States president Donald Trump.
A crypto wallet is rumored to be in development as well, but Musk has not made any comments about whether this is true.
Of course, the takeover has also seen CEO Parag Agrawal, chief financial officer Ned Segal and head of legal and policy Vijaya Gadde all ousted from their executive roles for allegedly misleading Musk about the number of spam and fake accounts on the platform.
Meanwhile, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, who left Twitter’s board in May and supported Musk’s purchase, appears to have doubled down on his stance by rolling over his stake of over 18 million shares, worth around $975 million at the buyout price of $54.20, into the new private company, according to a filing with the SEC dated Oct. 27.
The platform is a popular communication tool for crypto enthusiasts with roughly 120,000 tweets per day about #Bitcoin alone, according to BitInfoCharts.
Musk changed his Twitter bio to “Chief of Twit.” The same day, he visited Twitter’s San Francisco-based office carrying a sink.
On Oct. 31, he changed his bio again to “Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator” and, at one user’s suggestion, made his profile picture what appears to be him answering the phone as a child.
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Brayden Lindrea
National Basketball League (NBA) megastar Steph Curry looks set to introduce his own version of the Metaverse to NBA’s 650 million fans — filing a “Curryverse” trademark application on Oct. 26.
If approved, the United States-based trademark application, filed by SC30 Inc., will grant the four-time NBA champion exclusive rights for “entertainment services, namely, personal and virtual and metaversal appearances.”
According to the filing, the Curryverse will also provide “online gaming services in the nature of virtual worlds,” where players will be able to earn both fungible and nonfungible tokens (NFTs), which will be able to be bought or sold at an “online marketplace.”
The application also covers virtual clothing and goods, business management and investment services, charitable fundraising services, and software as a service (SaaS) featuring software platforms for designing, promoting, selling and exchanging NFTs, among others.
While more specific details of the Curryverse haven’t been announced, the NBA star’s metaverse will likely garner a lot of attention given his 47 million fan base on Instagram and 17.1 million followers on Twitter.
While the metaverse-related trademark appears to be a first for Curry, it definitely isn’t his first move into Web3.
In August 2021, Curry first became a part of the NFT community following a $206,000 Bored Ape Yacht Club purchase.
The Golden State Warriors player’s liking for golf also led him to invest in LinksDAO — a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that aimed to build the “world’s greatest golf community.”
The NBA superstar has also featured in an FTX advertisement in March as part of his ambassador role with the popular crypto exchange.
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Martin Young
The month of October has broken all records for crypto exploits and the amount of digital loot pilfered — living up to its new moniker of “Hacktober” — according to the latest figures.
On Oct. 31, blockchain security firm PeckShield tweeted some scary statistics for the month, reporting a total of $2.98 billion in stolen digital assets as of Oct. 31, 2022, which is nearly double the $1.55 billion lost in all of 2021.
“Hacktober” saw around 44 exploits affecting 53 protocols, it added. Malicious actors made off with a whopping $760 million in the month. However, $100 million had been returned.
After October, March was the second-highest month for hacked funds, with just under $710 million stolen. The majority of this was from the Ronin bridge exploit, which resulted in $625 million in crypto assets being pilfered.
The top exploit for October was by far the BNB Chain which lost $586 million, according to PeckShield. It listed the Mango Markets DeFi protocol as second, despite it including an agreement with the exploiter to return some of the funds.
There were several other notable exploits in October, according to DeFiYield’s Rekt Database. These include the Freeway crypto yield platform, which it classified as a $60 million rug pull, Transit Swap, which losted $29 million, Team Finance taking a $13 million hit and Moola Market, losing $9 million.
DeFiYield released its own report on Nov. 1, depicting the dire state of the hackfest that took place last month.
It claims that more than $1 billion was lost to crypto scams in October though it includes what it considers as rug pulls and Ponzis in addition to direct protocol exploits. DeFiYield reported 35 total incidents for the month, 15 of which were rug pulls.
On a brighter note, the report stated that almost $890 million in crypto funds had been recovered so far in 2022.
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This Daily Dose was brought to you by Cointelegraph.
