Axie Infinity

The hacking of $600 million worth of crypto puts more pressure on regulators to act.

Get your Etsy purchases in now because many sellers are going dark in mid-April. Thousands of vendors on the marketplace, largely home to custom and made-to-order items from independent sellers, plan to boycott the site from April 11 to April 18 in protest of new, higher transaction fees, The Verge reported Wednesday. Etsy executives announced last month that the company would start taking a 6.5% cut, up from 5%, from transactions on the platform, starting April 11. The move riled thousands of vendors, who organized on Reddit and other social media sites to close up their online shops for one week. Dubai wants to be the new capital for crypto and oligarchs. The instant-delivery outfit GoPuff is expected to lay off 3% of its workforce, adding to the list of cutbacks in a sector struggling with deep financial losses, frenzied competition, and a cooling IPO market, The Information reported Tuesday. The layoffs would follow a hiring freeze and the departure of several top executives at the Philadelphia-based company, which was eyeing an IPO later this year. Chinese regulators are planning new restrictions on popular live-streaming platforms, part of their broader crackdown on online entertainment, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. Chinese officials are crafting regulations that would limit how much money live-streaming personalities can collect in tips from viewers in the $30 billion industry, while also considering tighter regulation of content. The issues we had before we are solving, right now.” It’s why exchanges and venture capitalists bullish on crypto— Coinbase, FTX, Andreessen Horowitz—are building a stable of lobbyists in Washington, D.C. To curry much-needed favor with lawmakers, the crypto community will need to prove that its underlying technology is trustworthy. The records show staffers at Targeted Victory, one of the Republican Party’s largest consultants, coordinating on media and lobbying plans that involve disparaging TikTok, the fast-growing social media platform owned by Chinese company ByteDance. Meta officials defended the arrangement, arguing that TikTok deserves “a level of scrutiny consistent with their growing success,” while TikTok representatives argued the campaign stokes false information about the site. But deeper regulation is fast approaching, and the most powerful figures in crypto know that you can only fight city hall so hard. The latest example of crypto’s immaturity came Tuesday, when Sky Mavis, developer of the groundbreaking non-fungible token game Axie Infinity, disclosed that a hacker stole about $600 million worth of crypto from its players last week. Crypto entrepreneurs also are successfully accumulating gatekeeping power through exchanges, marketplaces, and digital networks, turning massive profits in the process. Crypto champions described it as an unfortunate but necessary part of the movement’s maturation, further reinforcing the importance of improving security protocols.