ETH developer programs AI-generated memecoin AstroPepeX using ChatGPT

September 21, 2023 Coin Telegraph

“What if ChatGPT could deploy its own token?” You probably guessed the answer - AstroPepeX has been minted and is being traded on a handful of DeFi and centralized exchanges.

An Ethereum developer has managed to get ChatGPT to launch its own ERC-20 token, AstroPepeX, modeled off data from the top traded tokens on Uniswap.

X (previously Twitter) user CroissantETH unpacked details of how they integrated ChatGPT into a custom application using OpenAI’s API. They told it to design and issue its own ERC-20 token with an estimated market cap of $3.5 million.

Data from Etherscan reveals that there are now over 2,300 APX holders that have carried out over 17,700 transactions since the token mint on Sept. 20.

What if ChatGPT could deploy its own token?

Surely this shouldn't be possible, right? pic.twitter.com/Wz5OvakwxC
— ‍.eth (@CroissantEth) September 19, 2023

The developer managed to get ChatGPT to be able to deploy smart contracts on the Ethereum network after feeding it data on the top 10,000 traded tokens on Uniswap.

“In essence, it asks ChatGPT to form an ERC-20 token using Open Zeppelin standards. The token name & other parameters are designed to be passed in by values given by GPT in the code's constructor.”

CroissantETH also explained how ChatGPT’s first attempts at potential names for its ERC-20 token were not ideal. The developer’s solution was to integrate data from the top traded Uniswap tokens to give the LLM a more natural sounding output.

“GPT-4 evidently had a much better understanding of crypto culture while also offering its own creativity in responses.”

To ensure the token was made solely by GPT before deploying the contract, CroissantETH addressed ownership of the private keys and the contract contract with a solution that rules out any human intervention.

“Once the contract is deployed, ownership is immediately revoked and 100% of the tokens are added alongside 2 ETH to liquidity on Uniswap upon creation.”

Thus AstroPepeX (APX) was created by ChatGPT, sending 65,000,000,000 APX tokens and 2 Ether (ETH) in liquidity to Uniswap’s decentralized exchange.

It's time to let GPT takeover.

I just ran the script, & it created:

AstroPepeX

65,000,000,000$APX

0xed4e879087ebD0e8A77d66870012B5e0dffd0Fa4

(Note: There is a require condition that limits transfers >0.5% of the supply)

Enjoy! pic.twitter.com/FjoQpDdhM3
— ‍.eth (@CroissantEth) September 19, 2023

Using exclusive access to blockchain analysis tools from Nansen 2’s beta, Cointelegraph confirmed that APX tokens have indeed moved onto DeFi platforms like Poloniex and centralized exchanges including Bitget, MEXC and LBank.

Nansen 2 beta's Token God Mode dashboard for the AstroPepeX token.

Poloniex also promoted the listing of the token on X (previously Twitter), opening deposits and trading on its exchange on Sept. 21.

AstroPepeX #APX is Poloniex newest listing! @CroissantEth

Deposit will be opened on September 21st, 12:00 (UTC)

September 21st (UTC), Post-only mode will be enabled on 12:00 & Full trading will be enabled on 13:00https://t.co/d17DLkFcUL #NewListing #crypto pic.twitter.com/zzKPVFSVoZ
— Poloniex Exchange (@Poloniex) September 21, 2023

AstroPepeX’s website links to its Ethereum address and social media handles. Among these is a community Telegram group with some 1,500 members, as well as a BuyTech bot posting automatic updates of APX trades and the current market capitalization of the token. CroissantETH later tweeted that the token does not have an official Telegram group.

Magazine: Make 500% from ChatGPT stock tips? Bard leans left, $100M AI memecoin: AI Eye

Dogecoin (DOGE) Founder Billy Markus Reveals His Number One Rule for Crypto Plus His Favorite Tokens

August 18, 2023 The Daily Hodl

MIT Digital Currency Initiative introduces at-scale, programmable CBDC platform

August 2, 2023 Coin Telegraph

CBDC

PARSEC (Parallelized Architecture for Scalably Executing Smart Contracts) runs on the ERC-20 standard, so it could have other applications too.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Digital Currency Initiative (DCI) has introduced the experimental Parallelized Architecture for Scalably Executing Smart Contracts (PARSEC) platform. The platform is open-source and developed with central bank digital currency (CBDC) in mind.

The developers highlighted the platform’s speed. It performed 118,000 ERC-20 transactions per second on 128 hosts – exceeding public permissionless blockchains, they said. The platform was thus capable of handling cross-border contracting, and could be used to innovate supply chains and compliance checks as well.

PARSEC supports ERC-20 tokens, so an automated market maker launched on the platform could transact with such assets as bonds, tokenized securities and repurchase agreements in addition to CBDC. Because it supports virtual machines, it would simplify interactions between central and commercial banks.

The platform required “significant” amounts of continuing research, the developers said. They pointed to security, key management, and data migration tooling as areas that required refinement. Privacy was also left as an open question.

Privacy of CBDCs is a particularly painful point for the crypto community, which is largely opposed to any form of CBDC. Programmability is no less controversial. The PARSEC summary stated:

“We focused on smart contracts because they provide the highest degree of expressivity and functionality to users.”

That functionality is exactly what many in the crypto community objects to. Crypto researcher Nikhil Raghuveera stated in Cointelegraph in April:

“Programmability allows for asset backing and decentralization that is not possible under current CBDC designs. Developers should be taking advantage of the programmable opportunities that stable[coin] assets offer rather than trying to compete with CBDCs.”

Programmability allows restrictions to be placed on the uses of a digital currency, which can be useful in a decentralized finance environment, but it could enable governmental overreach in a CBDC by preventing certain purchases or imposing conditions such as negative interest, opponents argue.

MIT just released PARSEC, our distributed VM runner! We’ve shown PARSEC running the EVM over 100k transactions per second.

Web: https://t.co/gUkYvDDeGG
Code: https://t.co/nvcHc3OKEc
— Anders Brownworth (@anders94) August 1, 2023

PARSEC is the result of research conducted in 2022. It is another product of Project Hamilton, a joint undertaking by the DCI and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. Project Hamilton was declared completed in late 2022, shortly after a group of Republicans in the United States House of Representatives wrote to the head of the Boston Fed expressing their reservations about the project.

The Fed has stated repeatedly that it would not introduce a CBDC without a Congressional mandate, but CBDC research by the Fed is continuing.

Collect this article as an NFT to preserve this moment in history and show your support for independent journalism in the crypto space.

Magazine: Are CBDCs kryptonite for crypto?

Israeli crypto entrepreneur joins privacy-focused project amid fraud allegations

June 14, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Business

Moshe Hogeg said he was a “small” but “significant” part of the Tomi team, handling a network solution that seemed to allow transactions of ERC-20 tokens without an Etherscan record.

Moshe Hogeg, an Israeli entrepreneur, has returned to the spotlight of the crypto industry after speaking at a conference in Morocco on ‘alternative internet network’ Tomi.

Speaking at the Nakamoto Forum in Marrakech on June 6, Hogeg was one of a handful of project leaders at Tomi who spoke on the network’s privacy features to a crowd of investors, representatives from crypto and blockchain firms, and members of the media. The entrepreneur was arrested by Israeli authorities in November 2021 for allegedly engaging in financial fraud related to cryptocurrency as well as trafficking and underage prostitution.

In an interview with Cointelegraph, Hogeg compared himself to other industry leaders including Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, who was targeted by United States authorities in their case against the global exchange. The Israeli entrepreneur claimed officials understood the power of public opinion among those in crypto and the financial world, and conducted “a well-orchestrated attack” to damage his reputation.

“I see that more and more key figures in the crypto industry are becoming targets to authorities,” Hogeg told Cointelegraph. “Whenever there’s something like this [...] they try to eliminate the risks. I think that something very similar happened to me in Israel.”

*Moshe Hogeg speaking at the Nakamoto Forum at the Royal Mansour hotel in Marrakech, Morocco on June 6*

Hogeg said there had been no official indictment in his case, which largely required him to be under house arrest for several months in 2021 and 2022. He reportedly received permission from an Israeli court to visit Morocco for the conference, temporarily lifting his travel restrictions between May 27 and June 13.

Several members of the Tomi team introduced features of the project, ranging from a content creator platform to minting nonfungible tokens. Hogeg described himself as being a “small” but “significant” part of the Tomi team amid his own controversies in his talks at the Nakamoto Forum.

As part of a demonstration for attendees, Hogeg and a Tomi developer showed how they encrypted Tether (USDT) to create a “totally private” token. He spoke on the network’s privacy solution, which seemed to allow crypto users to send ERC-20 and Ethereum-based tokens without any trace of the transaction on blockchain analytics platform Etherscan.

“Ethereum is great — but Ethereum is not private,” Hogeg told attendees. “Privacy is a basic, basic right. So developing a technology that allows you to transact billions of dollars without risking your privacy is groundbreaking.”

With the addition of Hogeg to the team, Tomi recently raised $10 million for the project on top of a $40-million funding round the firm announced in March. The price of the network’s tomiNET (TOMI) token surged to an all-time high of $6.59 on June 6 amid the Nakamoto Forum, but has since dropped to $4.70 at the time of publication.

Magazine: Bitcoin in Senegal: Why is this African country using BTC?

5 charged by DOJ over alleged crypto price manipulation scheme

April 25, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

Five people have been charged in relation to alleged market manipulation of an Ethereum-based token called “Hydro.”

A freshly unsealed indictment has charged five individuals with “conspiring to manipulate the market” in relation to an alleged scheme involving the ERC-20 Hydro (HYDRO) token.

An April 24 statement from the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) said the indictment charged three people for conspiring to manipulate the market for Hydro. Two other individuals were separately charged for their roles in the scheme.

The DOJ alleges that from June 2018 through April 2019, Michael Ross Kane, the former CEO of Hydrogen Technology Corp., Shane Hampton, Hydrogen’s chief of financial engineering and George Wolvaardt defrauded market participants looking to trade the Hydro tokens Hydrogen issued.

Five Individuals Charged in $2M Virtual Asset and Securities Manipulation Schemehttps://t.co/qLrHjkTKlY
— Criminal Division (@DOJCrimDiv) April 24, 2023

According to the indictment, Wolvaardt, who was the chief technology officer for a market-making firm called Moonwalkers Trading Limited designed a trading bot that executed a number of high-value “spoof orders” at obscure intervals to make it appear as though there was high demand for the token. The bot also bought and sold large volumes of the token from the same account — a practice known as wash trading.

Following the alleged artificial manipulation of the price of Hydro, the DOJ claims the co-conspirators sold large chunks of their holdings netting an approximate total of $2 million in ill-gotten profits.

In addition, Tyler Ostern, the former CEO of Moonwalkers, and Andrew Chorlian, a blockchain engineer from Hydrogen Technology Corp. were also charged for their involvement in the alleged manipulation scheme.

Kane, Hampton, and Wolvaardt have each been charged with one count of conspiracy to commit securities price manipulation, one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and two counts of wire fraud.

If found guilty on all charges, they each face a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment in relation to the conspiracy to commit securities price manipulation charge and a staggering 20 years in prison on each of the other charges.

Ostern and Chorlian have each been charged with one count of conspiracy to commit securities price manipulation and wire fraud. If found guilty they stand to face a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

On April 20, a New York District Court Judge ruled against Hydrogen Technology Corporation and its former CEO Michael Ross Kane in a suit brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), ordering them to pay $2.8 million in remedies and civil penalties.

Cointelegraph contacted Michael Kane for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

Magazine: Unstablecoins: Depegging, bank runs and other risks loom

SEC accuses Utah firm of ‘fraudulent’ $18M crypto mining scheme

March 7, 2023 Coin Telegraph

<div>SEC accuses Utah firm of 'fraudulent' M crypto mining scheme</div>

bitcoin miner

The SEC said Green United’s operation was a fraud and the community was quick to quell fears of the SEC classing crypto mining as a security in the suit.

Software and crypto mining equipment offered by the Utah-based Green United LLC was part of an $18 million "fraudulent scheme" that never mined the crypto it said it would, according to allegations by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The regulator filed a complaint in a Utah District Court on Mar. 3 against Green United, its founder, Wright Thurston, and a contracted promotor Kristoffer Krohn.

It alleges the company and the two representatives fraudulently offered securities between April 2018 and December 2022 by selling investments in $3,000 “Green Boxes” and “Green nodes” purported to mine the GREEN token on the “Green Blockchain.”

Investors were allegedly told the firm was to develop the Green Blockchain to create a “public global decentralized power grid” and the GREEN token would increase in value based on its efforts with returns of up to 50% a month.

However, the SEC claimed the hardware sold didn’t mine GREEN as it was an Ethereum-based ERC-20 token that could not be mined and the Green Blockchain didn’t exist.

It added the GREEN token was created “several months” after the first hardware sales to investors and was periodically distributed to “create the appearance of a successful mining operation.”

Instead the real scheme, according to the SEC, was using the funds to buy S9 Antminers — Bitcoin (BTC) mining rigs — which were passed off as the Green “boxes” and “nodes” to investors. The firm mined Bitcoin, not GREEN tokens, which the investors “did not receive.”

Is the SEC going after mining?

Meanwhile, the crypto community on Twitter has hosed down one interpretation of the SEC complaint, which suggests that the SEC is going after crypto miners arguing that selling miners or offering hosting for them is a securities investment contract.

The take came from a Mar. 6 tweet from pseudonymous lawyer “MetaLawMan.”

However, crypto advocate and investment advisor, Timothy Peterson, argued the interpretation was a “bad take” adding the case doesn’t “target mining in general.”

Somewhat of a bad take; the SEC's case does not target mining in general, but a specific ASIC that was supposed to mine an ERC-token but instead mined #bitcoin for the ASIC sellers. Alleged fraud. Agree the "investment contract" application to this case is a stretch. But the #SEC… https://t.co/KK5cVqFCAi
— Timothy Peterson, CFA CAIA (@nsquaredcrypto) March 6, 2023

“The SEC is not saying ‘all sales of mining equipment is now a security,’” Peterson clarified.

Another crypto commentator, Dennis Porter, CEO of the Bitcoin advocacy group the Satoshi Action Fund, tweeted that “the SEC is not coming after mining” and it “did not classify hosting as a security” and said Green United’s operation was “a scam disguised as mining.”

Please see official documents here explaining what was actually happening.

A scam disguised as mining. pic.twitter.com/1pUMk1M5NM
— Dennis Porter (@Dennis_Porter_) March 6, 2023

The SEC has asked for a court order to require Thurston, Krohn and Green United to cease operations, seeks civil penalties for securities law violations and repay the $18 million in allegedly ill-gotten gains.

Wrapped Bitcoin supply drops to negative after 11,500 wBTC burn linked to Celsius

February 28, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Bitcoin Trader

Wrapped Bitcoin garnered DeFi traders' support in the 2021-22 bull season, but the demand started to fade post numerous crypto contagions led to redemptions.

The supply of wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC) dropped to its lowest since May 2021 after the second-largest single-day burn on Feb. 27.

A total of 11,500 WBTC worth about $260 million linked to now-bankrupt crypto lender Celsius was burned, turning its growth rate to negative. The current total supply of the wrapped token is 164,396 WBTC, with a monthly growth rate of -7.39.

*wBTC Daily mint and burn. Source: Dune*

WBTC is an Ethereum-based ERC-20 token that mirrors the value of Bitcoin and is pegged 1:1 with the Bitcoin (BTC) price. Bitgo co-developed wBTC in 2019 alongside blockchain interoperability protocol Ren and multi-chain liquidity platform Kyber. wBTC is also managed by the decentralized autonomous organization wBTC DAO, which comprises over 30 members.

When a merchant wants to exchange BTC for wBTC, they start a burn transaction and alert the custodians. The custodians then send the matching amount of BTC to the merchant's bitcoin address. Users can then exchange their wBTC for BTC at merchants, who burn the received tokens.

Being an ERC-20 token makes the transfer of wBTC faster than normal Bitcoin, but the key advantage of wBTC is its integration into the world of Ethereum wallets, decentralized apps and smart contracts.

During the peak of the bull run, wrapped tokens became a popular tool of use in the DeFi ecosystem. wBTC's supply peaked at 285,000 in April 2022 when the BTC price was trading above $48,000.

However, with the advent of the bear market and numerous crypto contagions, the demand started to fade away. The first signs of lowering demand came after the Terra-LUNA-led crypto contagion that forced several crypto lenders to redeem their wBTC. According to one report, Celsius Network redeemed about 9,000 wBTC amid a growing withdrawal demand.

A similar scenario occurred in November 2022 after the FTX collapse, where reports indicate the now-bankrupt crypto exchange tried redeeming 3,000 wBTC right before filing for bankruptcy. After the FTX's collapse in November, wBTC experienced its largest monthly coin redemption, with over 28,000 wBTC redeemed back to the original coin.

Interesting nugget from today's $WBTC Twitter Space w/ @BitGo and @KyberNetwork:

During FTX turmoil, someone from Alameda tried to redeem 3k WBTC for BTC.

BitGo refused to honor.

Tokens were burned anyway.

BitGo isn't sure what to do w/ the 3k BTC.https://t.co/A1wYY72skb
— Chris Blec (@ChrisBlec) December 14, 2022

The market contagion caused by the FTX collapse also depegged wBTC from the original value of BTC. Although the slippage was just about 1.5%, it raised serious concerns at the time about whether such synthetic tokens is a viable mode of value transfer.

Coinbase Adds Support for Euro-Pegged Stablecoin After Binance CEO Predicts New Trend for Crypto Sector

February 23, 2023 The Daily Hodl

350 new ‘scam tokens’ were created every day this year: Solidus Labs

December 19, 2022 Coin Telegraph

BEP-20

Nearly 118,000 scam tokens were deployed from the start of January through the end of November, according to blockchain risk monitoring firm Solidus.

More than 350 fraudulent cryptocurrency tokens were created per day this year, defrauding millions of investors, according to blockchain risk monitoring firm Solidus Labs.

From the start of the year to Dec. 1, 117,629 “scam tokens” were deployed, according to Solidus’ 2022 “Rug Pull Report.” That’s a 41% increase from the nearly 83,400 scam tokens that Solidus detected in 2021.

The report claims that BNB Chain harbors the greatest number of scam tokens, with 12% of all BEP-20 tokens being fraudulent.

The Ethereum network was second, with a purported 8% of ERC-20 tokens alleged to be scams.

*Solidus claims that 2022 is the biggest year on record for fraudulent crypto-tokens. Image: Solidus Labs*

A rug pull is a type of crypto exit scam where an individual or team creates a token and pumps up its price before extracting all the value from the project, abandoning it as the token price plummets to zero.

Almost 2 million investors have lost money to these scams since September 2020, a greater numberthan the estimated 1.8 million combined creditors affected by the bankruptcies of crypto exchanges and lending platforms FTX, Celsius, and Voyager.

*FTX, Celsius, BlockFi and Voyager bankruptcies are estimated to affect over 2.3 million users combined. Image: Solidus Labs*

The most popular type of scam token was a “honeypot," which is a token smart contract that doesn’t allow buyers to resell.

Solidus said the most prolific “honeypot” successfully executed in 2022 was the $3.3 million Squid Game (SQUID) token scam, which grew 45,000% in a few days as investors bought the hype but were unable to sell, ending with the anonymous founders apparently running off with investor funds.

Centralized exchanges (CEXs) are also affected by rug pulls as many behind these malicious tokens use them to fund their fraudulent project and cash out the ill-gotten gains.

Solidus claims around $11 billion worth of Ether (ETH) pilfered from scam tokens flowed through 153 CEXs since September 2020, with the majority of the exchanges being overseen by United States regulators.

Nearly $4 billion dollars flowed to U.S. CEXs in the analyzed time frame which was nearly double that of the second-most exposed CEX jurisdiction: The Bahamas.

Coinbase launches tool to recover ‘mistakenly sent’ ERC-20 tokens

December 15, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Business

“Our recovery tool is able to move unsupported assets directly from your inbound address to your self-custodial wallet without exposing private keys at any point,” said Coinbase.

Major cryptocurrency platform Coinbase has offered an asset recovery tool for users who “mistakenly send unsupported tokens” to exchange addresses.

In a Dec. 15 announcement, Coinbase said users who sent any of roughly 4,000 ERC-20 tokens to a Coinbase address could recover their previously unrecoverable funds by providing “the Ethereum TXID for the transaction where the asset was lost and the contract address of the lost asset.” The exchange said certain ETC-20 tokens including Wrapped Ether (wETH), TrueUSD (TUSD), and staked Ether (STETH) would be eligible for recovery, with a 5% charge on transactions of more than $100.

“Our recovery tool is able to move unsupported assets directly from your inbound address to your self-custodial wallet without exposing private keys at any point,” said Coinbase. “We did this by using patent pending technology to send the funds directly from your inbound address without processing the funds through our centralized exchange infrastructure.”

Many users have been dealing with mistakenly sent funds since almost the beginning of the crypto space. In a 2018 case in Canada, a court ruled that a user who received 530 Ether (ETH) instead of 530 Copytrack (CPY) tokens — now defunct — was required to return them. An Australian judge made a similar ruling for a case in which Crypto.com mistakenly sent $10.5 million to a user instead of a $100 refund.

Other major exchanges seem to offer recovery for similar transactions on a case-by-case basis. Binance said on its support pages that it may choose to assist users “solely at its discretion” and largely “does not offer a token/coin recovery service.” Crypto.com instructed users to contact its customer service department, adding “fund retrieval may not be possible in some cases.”

Coinbase has more more than 100 million users globally. CEO Brian Armstrong reported in December that the exchange’s trading revenue for 2022 was projected to be “roughly half” that of 2021. The platform also reported that law enforcement agencies had increased requests for information related to criminal investigations.

erc-20