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4th Annual NFT.NYC Conference
Billboards display Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT art (Noam Galai/Getty Images)
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Crypto’s boom is so big people are even kicking the tires on Bored Ape NFTs again

Just like last cycle, a bitcoin boom has sent more money back into the NFT market.

Jack Raines

On the Snacks Mix podcast last week, we had the pleasure of chatting with Nat Eliason, the cryptocurrency entrepreneur-turned-author of “Crypto Confidential,” to chat about the recent resurgence of bitcoin. During our conversation, he noted an interesting trend that happened during the last bull market (emphasis ours):

Once we hit peak mania, prices correct and retail money that bought the top gets burned, and then things start to get more competitive.

Don’t get me wrong, there is still a lot more money to be made at that point, but the total crypto market cap might go sideways for a year like it did in 2022. But a lot can happen in these sideways markets. That’s when NFTs got huge, and you had Olympus, and ConstitutionDAO, and these other crazy DeFi projects. After bitcoin and ethereum had come down from their peaks, people were chasing other opportunities.

Basically, once people had made their money on the “blue chip” cryptocurrencies, and that money was still in their crypto wallets, they looked for opportunities — hence the NFT and DAO boom. If history doesn’t repeat itself, it certainly rhymes. On Sunday, Cointelegraph noted that NFT weekly sales volume from November 11-17 had jumped 94% week over week, from $93 million to $181 million. And it’s not just volume that increased: prices of NFTs have been climbing, too. Floor prices for the “Bored Ape Yacht Club,” everyone’s favorite pixelated primates, jumped from ~10.5 ETH to 13.5 ETH over the last week as well.

I’m not going to declare that “NFTs are back,” but the recent bitcoin run certainly hasn’t hurt their prospects.

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Solana drops to price not seen since February as Drift exploit rattles sentiment

Solana has historically seen its largest price declines on Thursdays, and today is no exemption as the crypto industry reels from the over $270 million exploit that occurred yesterday on Drift, a trading venue native to the solana blockchain.

The price of solana has decreased 5.5% to around $78, a level not seen since February, data from CoinGecko shows.

Drift was one of the largest protocols on the solana network by total value locked, which now sits at nearly $245 million. The total value locked on solana has shrunk by nearly $1 billion since the incident, per DefiLlama.

Exploit likely involved from social engineering

The attack, which has turned into a wider contagion event, is unsettling for those in the industry. It did not come from a bug in the protocol’s smart contracts or programs. Humans remain the bottleneck, Mert Mumtaz, cofounder and CEO of solana development firm Helius, said in response to the incident.

The exploit involved unauthorized transaction approvals likely facilitated through social engineering. The sophisticated operation “appears to have involved multi-week preparation and staged execution,” the team said on Thursday. 

Omer Goldberg, founder of risk management firm Chaos Labs, added, The DeFi [decentralized finance] ecosystem continues to grow in scale, but not in operational security.

“Protocols now have custody of hundreds of millions in user funds while depending on admin key setups that would be considered unacceptable in TradFi for a fraction of that AUM [assets under management],” Goldberg wrote on X. 

“Most hacks come down to the simple act of one clicking a link they shouldn’t have clicked. These are picking up in pace, be extra cautious clicking any link or file,” continued Helius Mumtaz.

$270M

April 1 is known as a day for funny pranks. However, a popular trading venue on the solana blockchain, Drift, is suffering from an ongoing exploit today, on-chain data shows.

Drift Protocol is experiencing an active attack. Deposits and withdrawals have been suspended. We are coordinating with multiple security firms, bridges, and exchanges to contain the incident. This is not an April Fools joke,” the team said on social media at 2:58 p.m. ET.

TheBlock reported the exploit is at least $200 million, while blockchain sleuth Lookonchain estimates the figure is $270 million. It could be even more. At this range, the Wednesday hack is among the largest ever, according to the exploits ranking dashboard from Rekt.

Drifts exploit is concerning for those within the crypto industry. Solana treasury firm DeFi Development Corp. allocates a portion of its balance to on-chain strategies to generate yield, including Drift, though the firm announced it had no exposure to the protocol and was not impacted by an alleged exploit affecting the platform, per its press release.

Drift also provides to qualified users sACRED, a derivative token of a tokenized feeder fund that is linked to Apollo Global Management Inc.s traditional Diversified Credit Fund.

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