Summary: On this week's episode of the Unhashed Podcast we talk about the latest in NFT weirdness with celebrity "Stoner Cats", how video game grinding is the original PoW, Blockfi's regulatory setback, ThorChains incompetency, the new EU proposal on crypto regulations, and more! In a hard hitting piece from Coindesk, a new animated web series, 'œStoner Cats,' launches Monday, featuring Mila Kunis, Ashton Kutcher, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, Jane Fonda, and others. To watch the first five-minute episode, viewers must purchase a non-fungible token (NFT) for 0.35 ETH each, which is both a digital artwork of a character from the show, as well as a ticket to unlock all 'œStoner Cats' episodes as they are made. Actress and entrepreneur Mila Kunis, along with Sound Ventures Partner Maaria Bajwa were interviewed to 'œshare insights' into their project. Last week, Ukrainian authorities busted a massive illegal Sony PlayStation 4 farm for what they believed was a crypto mining operation. As it turns out, the warehouse was actually grinding for FIFA Ultimate Team coins and cards. According to the Ukrainian business journal Delo, which undertook an investigation itself following skepticism from initial findings by the authorities, the 3,800 PS4s discovered weren't actually being used to mine cryptocurrency, which makes sense given how their hardware and graphics cards aren't ideal. It also pointed out that in many photos you can see game discs actually sticking out of the consoles. The Security Service of Ukraine has refused to comment on Delo'˜s findings, explaining that the ongoing investigation must be kept a secret. For those unfamiliar, the Ultimate Team game mode within FIFA allows gamers to build their own custom teams with various player cards. To get better players, you'll have to play and win more matches, giving you in-game currency to buy packs. Alternatively, you can also pay with real currency to buy coins to unlock these packs. On the flip side, the in-game currency earned or cards you obtain can be sold back in black markets for actual money. To give you a sense of just how big this market is, official FIFA Ultimate Team transactions brought in $1.6 billion USD for EA in just the past year. '" https://hypebeast.com/2021/7/ukraine-playstation-4-farm-fifa-ultimate-team-account-grinding Big woes this week for Blockfi. It started with the state of New Jersey, Blockfi's home turf, sending in a cease and desist, causing Blockfi to stop offering its Bitcoin Interest Account (BIA for short) to new customers from the state. Within the next several days, Alabama, Texas and Vermont followed suit. At issue is whether or not the BIA is to be deemed a security. In a piece for Coinbase, Preston Byrne lays out the security laws at issue. TLDR, you bank can pay you interest on your dollars and that is not a security because of the tiny risk (due to FDIC insurance), but with BlockFi and other platforms, according to Byrne's interpretation and the suits by the states, you are actually trading your bitcoin for BIA promises, and these promises are securities. '" https://www.coindesk.com/blockfi-securities-law-defi Last week, the Thorchain protocol was drained of around 4,000 ether. A couple of days ago Thorchain was hit by another exploit, this time costing around $8 million. The hacker claims they deliberately minimized the damage from the exploit in a bid to teach THORChain a lesson, stating: 'œDo not rush code that controls 9 figures,' and 'œDisable until audits are complete.' The hacker adds that they could have stolen Ether, Bitcoin, Binance Coin, Lycancoin, and many BEP-20 tokens if they had wanted to, asserting that 'œmultiple critical issues' were found and that a 10% bug bounty could have prevented the incident. '" https://cointelegraph.com/news/possible-white-hat-hacker-exploits-thorchain-for-8m-proposes-10-bounty Proposed changes to EU law would force companies that transfer Bitcoin or other
