NFT Ethics Profile picture
Jan 28 11 tweets 6 min read
1/ We have a couple of questions for @moonpay/@isotowright, and its concierge service that a lot of celebrities already seem to have used to purchase some high value NFTs. We created a non-exhaustive list of these celebrities below. Image
2/ The CEO of MoonPay, @isotowright, gave an interview with @TheBlock__, but some of the questions were not (properly) answered, so we would like to ask these questions again. The article can be found here (and we will refer to it in the tweets below): theblockcrypto.com/post/128517/mo…
3/ Is there a commercial relationship between MoonPay and the clients that use the MoonPay concierge service? Are they paid in any way or required to promote MoonPay when using this service? Image
4/ We noticed that some Bored and Mutant Apes have been transferred (for free) to MoonPay’s OS account from different other accounts including (for example) @nft42_/@j1mmyeth’s OS account. Can you clarify why that is the case and how these people have been compensated? ImageImage
5/ Is there a commercial relationship between MoonPay and Bored Apes Yacht Club (BAYC) or any other NFT project? If so, what are the conditions? ImageImage
6/ The Bored Ape that Gwyneth Paltrow announced to have received via MoonPay on 26 Jan 2022 was already purchased by MoonPay more two months earlier (15 Nov 2021). Does that imply that MoonPay is actively investing in NFTs, even before a potential celebrity wants to purchase one? Image
7/ Only high net worth individuals can use the concierge service, but there is no minimum purchase. So people with a net worth of $50k and willing to spend $25k are declined, but people with a net worth of $10 million that want to spend $10k are accepted? Why? ImageImageImage
8/ Do you think it is appropriate for you, as the CEO of MoonPay, to have an avatar on Twitter with a (verified) Bored Ape when your actions/communications can have a material impact on the value of that NFT? Image
9/ Do you think it is appropriate for you, as the CEO of MoonPay, to personally trade in NFTs, when you have insider information about (celebrity) deals that can have a material impact on the value of that NFT? Image
10/ As an important player in the crypto/NFT space, do you think that MoonPay should (continue to) provide a service that actually makes transactions less transparent? It is now for example not possible for us to see if/how much Gwyneth Paltrow paid for her Bored Ape.
11/ Thank you in advance for answering these questions and looking forward to your perspective on these issues.

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More from @NFTethics

Feb 12
1/ An interesting story on Squiggles and how one of the largest German social media influencers (>8 million followers across all platforms) was involved. He just "apologized" for promoting this scam by three voice tweets. Writing it would probably do more reputational damage. Image
2/ The person in question is MontanaBlack with 1.1M Twitter followers. He basically says he didn't know it was a scam, and couldn't believe it was because it was so "hyped". He was happy that others pointed out it was a scam before everything sold out. And DYOR of course!
3/ In the meantime he deleted all his tweets with references to Squiggles and also changed the names of his OpenSea accounts. This is a person with a very dubious past, who last month advertised an NFT project that included a Swastika.
Read 5 tweets
Feb 11
1/ A quick reflection on what happened in the past days/weeks. It started with us mentioning the scam ring responsible for Squiggles. We wanted to release that information, but our account got suspended after one of the people involved paid someone to take our account down.
2/ How does that work? A verified Twitter account changes its handle to “NFT Ethics” and then reports to Twitter that our account impersonated them. Because probably 95% of these cases are legit, Twitter automatically suspends the non-verified account.
3/ We can understand the logic behind it, and also we are fallible to the same “flaw”. When we report something, we might be 95% “right” but there could be collateral damage. You can’t check each & every detail (certainly not with NFTs) and these details can also change over time
Read 24 tweets
Feb 7
1/ Sometimes there are brilliant individuals out there who really take the time and effort to check connections between wallets and projects. Already 2 months ago, someone created the below chart and dropped it in the Ancient Cats Club Discord after it was rugged. Image
2/ We were alerted by other individuals that provided us with an extensive Excel spreadsheet with 24 tabs full of wallet transactions that had an overlap with the other information. Thank you @tylengyel, @rugpullfinder & others for your work on this. We verified the data provided
3/ And we found indeed the exact same wallet connections with even more projects. It confirms the suspicion that there are various scam rings that churn out project and project as we already mentioned before. ImageImageImageImage
Read 6 tweets
Jan 17
1/ In this thread we will disclose the identity of one of the (currently) most (in)famous NFT influencers. But before we do that, we first explain our (philosophical) justifications and provide some important disclaimers.
2/ In real life, certain identifying data (name, (tax) ID, bank accounts, …) can be compared to blockchain addresses. Based on (combinations of) that data everyone is able to trace our historical actions and it allows scrutiny over our personal and professional lives.
3/ Decentralization has various advantages, but also specific disadvantages for which the NFT space currently does not have a solution. Anonymous people have less of an incentive (or even no incentive at all) to act morally/ethically and to take accountability for their actions.
Read 70 tweets

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