Brayden Lindrea
American rapper and actor Snoop Dogg has been revealed as one of the co-founders of a Web3-powered live streaming app called “Shiller" — adding to yet another Web3 partnership for the well-known hip-hop artist.
The app is described as a “live broadcast platform” that aims to combine Web3 technology with real-time live-streaming content. The rap star has been named as a co-founder of the app along with technology entrepreneur Sam Jones.
It follows a wave of Web3 partnerships by Snoop Dogg in the last year.
In April last year, Snoop Dogg partnered with Sandbox metaverse to launch an NFT collection called “Snoop Avatars” and released a hip-hop single titled “A Hard Working Man,” which was later accompanied by a 50,000-piece NFT drop.
The rap star also partnered with Yuga Labs — the team behind Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and CryptoPunks — to perform on a metaverse-transformed stage at MTV’s Video Music Awards on Aug. 29.
Snoop Dogg also recently partnered with crypto casino Roobet, where he will serve as the firm’s “Chief Ganjaroo Officer,” according to a March 1 statement from Roobet.
As for Shiller, blockchain will feature heavily in the platform, allowing content creators to “token-gate” their streams and promote nonfungible tokens or other products from e-commerce websites.
These content creators can be paid out in cryptocurrencies such as Ether or NFTs, which can be cashed out as fiat.
It was slated for a January release but has been delayed until April, according to Shiller’s latest update on March 2.
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Martin Young
A Bitcoin (BTC) technology firm and its executives have been indicted for allegedly operating unlicensed crypto kiosks in Ohio which knowingly benefited from victims of cryptocurrency scams.
S&P Solutions, which operated as Bitcoin of America, along with three of its executives are facing charges of money laundering, conspiracy, and other crimes connected to the operation of more than 50 unlicensed crypto kiosks in the state.
A Cuyahoga County grand jury returned the indictment on Mar. 1 against the firm, the owner and founder, Sonny Meraban, manager Reza Meraban, and company attorney William Suriano. The trio was arrested last week and search warrants were executed on their residences in Florida and Illinois.
According to the prosecuting attorney Andrew Rogalski, romance scammers, law enforcement impersonators, and “robocallers” exploited the lack of anti-money laundering protections in the firm’s systems to transfer funds out of users’ crypto wallets.
Rogalski commented during a press conference that “these ATMs are ready-made for scammers,” adding that they:
“Direct the victims, which are often elderly or otherwise vulnerable, to specifically go to Bitcoin of American ATMs, take money that they’ve withdrawn from their savings accounts or 401Ks,”
They are then instructed to put the cash into the machine in exchange for BTC in a wallet they think is theirs but have no control over, he explained.
He added that in one instance, an elderly gentleman lost $11,250 in three transactions to one of the dodgy kiosks in under an hour to this scam.
Meanwhile, the company allegedly pocketed a 20% transfer fee each time this occurred and continued to do even after learning they were fraudulent.
The indictment also accuses the company of being able to operate due to “written misrepresentations regarding the nature of their business to government agencies,” helping it run the kiosks without a money transfer license, according to a Mar. 3 report from Law360.
52 Bitcoin ATMs were seized last week, but the firm has more in Ohio and other states. Bitcoin of America made $3.5 million in profits from cash deposits at these unlawful kiosks in 2021, Rogalski said.
Officials believe the firm has been operating and evading regulatory safeguards and financial compliance requirements since 2018.
The investigation into the firm and its executives was reportedly spearheaded by the United States Secret Service's Cyber Fraud and Money Laundering Task Force.
In October, the FBI’s Miami Field Office warned that crypto ATMs were becoming a popular vehicle for scammers to defraud victims in an increasing trend of “pig butchering” scams.
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Ciaran Lyons
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) regulation through “enforcement” is not a “healthy way” to regulate an industry, and may result in the U.S. being a less attractive location for crypto firms, suggests Ripple’s CEO.
In a March 3 Bloomberg interview, Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of blockchain-based digital payment network Ripple, suggested that the SEC’s regulation approach puts the U.S. at “severe risk” of missing out on being an attractive hub for the next evolution of blockchain and crypto innovation.
Garlinghouse noted that the SEC’s case against Ripple is the SEC simply playing “offense” and “attacking” the industry as a whole, adding that if the SEC is “able to prevail,” there will be “a lot of other cases.”
He suggested that the crypto industry has “already started moving outside” of the U.S., given its crypto regulation process is “behind” other countries like “Australia, the United Kingdom, Japan, Singapore and Switzerland.”
He commended these countries for taking “the time and thoughtfulness” to create “clear rules of the road,” adding that the approach taken by the U.S. is not a “healthy way to regulate an industry.”
Garlinghouse recalled when he “first got into the tech industry in the late 90s,” there were proposals to ban the internet due to “illicit activity,” but the government refuted the idea and decided to “create a framework.”
He emphasized “the benefits” this early adoption brought on a “geopolitical basis,” to have the “Amazon’s and Google’s” based in the U.S., suggesting that the same opportunity is currently on the table with creating a framework for crypto.
Garlinghouse believes the framework process should begin with outlining “clear protections for consumers.”
He added that consumers are suffering from the “lag,” as they lack the “same protection” that regulatory frameworks “can provide.“
Garlinghouse believes that a decision should come this year in the SEC’s case against Ripple.
More recently, John Deaton, founder of legal news outlet Crypto Law Lawyer put a call to action to his 245,000 Twitter followers on March 5, stating that all companies in “active litigation” with the SEC should collaborate and develop “coordinated strategies,” calling it “war.”
This comes after Kristin Smith, CEO of the Blockchain Association, told Bloomberg in a Feb. 22 interview that the crypto regulation process in the U.S. is happening “behind closed doors,” adding that it is vital for more industry involvement in an “open process."
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This Daily Dose was brought to you by Cointelegraph.
