Crypto Market Overview April 13th | Dex-Trade

NASA Astronaut Sells His Original NFTs and Donates Money to Help Ukraine

Former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, who spent almost a year on the International Space Station, launched his own Dreams Out of This World NFT collection on International Cosmonautics Day and announced his intention to transfer all proceeds from sales to support Ukraine, which is fighting for its sovereignty in the aggressive war unleashed by the Russian Federation. Kelly's NFT collection consists of 3,333 artworks created in collaboration with content development studio Orange Comet. Each painting in the series is an image of the astronaut himself under different circumstances and with a different background: in space, in a gorilla suit or in the colors of the Ukrainian flag. The sale of the collection started on April 12. It was on this day, in 1961, that a man first went into outer space. The first astronaut was a pilot from the USSR, Yuri Gagarin, who circled the Earth in low orbit. In honor of this, the Kelly collection is also complemented by some memorabilia of an astronaut who has been in space. It was planned that the OpenSea auction was to last at least three days. However, the entire collection sold out in just minutes, raising more than $500,000. The money was donated to the Global Empowerment Mission (GEM) in Ukraine, a non-profit organization that helps countries and communities affected by natural disasters.

 

Virgil Griffith Sentenced to 5 Years in Prison for Visiting North Korea

The infamous Ethereum Foundation Senior Fellow, Virgil Griffith, who visited North Korea back in 2019 as one of the participants in the “Pyongyang Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Conference,” was sentenced in the United States to five years in prison. The U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement that Griffith began formulating plans back in 2018 to provide services to individuals in the DPRK by developing and funding cryptocurrency infrastructure there, including for mining. At the conference also he gave “instructions” on using blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies to launder money and evade the country from international sanctions. However, the only direct evidence of Griffith's criminal actions is only his participation in a crypto conference. That is, it is assumed that the “instructions” given by him are tantamount to transferring some ETH from his personal crypto wallet to his other wallet in North Korea. Therefore, a very philosophical question arises: are these coins located in Pyongyang or on the Internet, that is, simultaneously everywhere where there is access to the Ethereum network? By the way, Vitalik Buterin believes that Griffith did something that really led to bad consequences. According to the developer of Ethereum, his former colleague did not even receive any personal benefit from this trip.

 

Crypto Payment Platform MoonPay Raises $87 Million From Celebrities

Already valued at $3.4 billion, cryptocurrency payment platform MoonPay has raised $87 million in funding from influencers and top tier stars including Maria Sharapova, Justin Bieber, Jason Derulo, Bruce Willis, Paris Hilton, Gal Gadot, Matthew McConaughey and Snoop. Dogg. In addition, several celebrity-owned firms have joined the mass euphoria of investing in the platform. Drake's DreamCrew, Ashton Kutcher and Guy Osiri's Sound Ventures, Gwyneth Paltrow & Moj Mahdara's Kinship Ventures and others participated in the fundraising round. That is, MoonPay with a clear conscience can be considered a “unicorn”, and a very large one. The platform promises to become quite a popular Web3 resource with direct access to entertainment, sports, music and a number of business solutions. The main task of the company is to optimize and simplify the payment crypto-infrastructure. How well this will be implemented remains to be seen in the near future.