Friend.tech Faces Allegations of Carpet Mining Scam and Liquidates $52 Million in ETH, and other News
After liquidating $52 million in ETH, Friend.tech is accused of mocking its users.
The team behind the Friend.tech protocol, once thought to be the next big social platform, is now accused of manipulating shareholders in its projects. Other allegations include that the team is running a Ponzi scheme.
The pseudonymous cryptocurrency analyst @waleswoosh published a lengthy post on X to highlight the actions of the Friend.tech team over the course of months to back up their accusations, starting with the statement, “Friendtech is resilient.”
They referenced the company’s evolution from a Web3 social networking platform to an “advanced trading” protocol, and called it a Ponzi scheme. They also mentioned how Friend.tech changed the terminology of its concept from ‘shares’ to ‘keys’.
An article in Forbes covered this and explained how the protocol decided to do this because of the “regulatory uncertainty surrounding cryptocurrencies.” Keys, or shares, are portions of user profiles that other users buy to send them messaging. These keys are used to generate revenue through transaction fees.
As Friends.tech’s popularity reached viral proportions, the creators got in on the action and reaped huge profits. The team made over “$60 million in total commissions” at the same time. @waleswoosh claimed that the team promised keyholders “amazing things,” such as splitting half of the airdrop amount between them.
This happened as Friends.tech became popular. But users eventually lost interest. Now their native FRIENDS asset and the keys to the platform have lost a tremendous amount of value.
In the meantime, between December 2, 2023 and June 11, 2024, the platform team has been continuously liquidating approximately 19,477 ETHs, valued at $52M.
Friend.tech Responds to Allegations
Friend.tech responded to the allegations in order to reassure its user base and said, “We have no plans to shut down or discontinue the Friend.tech web application”. It also mentioned that no further changes can be made to its contracts, as mentioned in a previous announcement. In that announcement, it was explained that the Friend.tech team has changed its ownership parameters to the null address of Ethereum.
However, the X account of Friend.tech mentioned that “everything you know and use will remain the same”.
Coinbase’s cbBTC Tokenized Bitcoin Reaches $100 Million Market Cap in One Day
The market capitalization of cbBTC surpassed $100 million just one day after its launch, with more than 1,700 tokens in circulation, most of them in Ethereum, according to data from Dune Analytics first reported by Crypto Briefing. Coinbase Wrapped BTC (cbBTC) is an ERC-20 token. It is backed 1:1 by bitcoin held by Coinbase.
Wrapped tokens will allow users to leverage their existing Bitcoin holdings in a variety of ways within the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem. Users will be able to provide their Bitcoin as liquidity to a variety of DeFi protocols, use it as collateral to borrow other crypto assets, and participate in a broader range of blockchain activities. T
he tokens are already supported on several leading DeFi platforms, including Aerodrome, Curve, Sky Protocol, Compound, Maple and Aave.
As a result of the launch, more than $20 billion in retail bitcoin and $200 billion in institutional bitcoin “can move freely on the blockchain and be used on Base,” according to Luke Youngblood, a Moonwell DeFi contributor. Other users, however, have said that Coinbase may “freeze or blacklist any addresses that transact directly with cbBTC through a smart contract.”
By Audy Castaneda