KAWS, Serena Williams, iMessage, and more. Let’s dive in…
Tornado Cash Receives Sanctions
The United States Treasury Department has banned Tornado Cash, a decentralized cryptocurrency mixing service. The service, along with 45 related Ethereum wallet addresses, are now a part of the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list, which U.S. citizens are prohibited from transacting with. Following the announcement, the Tornado Cash repository was deleted from GitHub and contributors to the repo had their accounts permanently deleted.
Serena Williams Retiring
Serena Willaims has announced her retirement from professional tennis. Her last match will be in the U.S. Open, which concludes in early September. In her legendary career, she has earned 73 singles titles, 23 doubles titles, and over $94 million in winnings. Post-retirement, Williams plans to focus on her family and expand her VC firm, Serena Ventures. According to Williams, only 2% of venture capital investments go to women. She hopes to change that.
Curve Compromised
Digital asset exchange Curve Finance was recently exploited. A hacker compromised the server for the curve.fi website, which prompted visitors to approve their wallet with an unofficial smart contract. According to @0xfoobar on Twitter, roughly $570,000 worth of tokens were stolen.
KAWS Monster Cereals
Every fall, General Mills releases a collection of Halloween-themed cereals (and matching boxes). This year, KAWS artist Brian Donnelly designed the set of limited edition cereals, featuring the signature KAWS x’ed-out eyes. Specially marked boxes will have codes that can be used to enter a sweepstakes to win a set of collectible monster toys.
Google Shames Apple for iMessage
Apple’s infamous green-bubble text message gets more stigmatized each and every year. This week, Google launched an ad campaign to rally public support to force Apple to adopt RCS. Since Apple uses the standard (and very outdated) SMS/MMS protocol on messages between Androids, pictures are often heavily pixelated and features like read receipts are unavailable. If Apple adopted RCS, Google argues, the industry standard for cross-platform messaging, instant messaging would be more secure, higher quality, and better for consumers across the board.
Disney+ Price Increases
Disney announced upcoming price changes to Disney+. A new ad-supported tier will be released in December for $7.99 per month. The no-ads tier will increase to $10.99 per month. According to the company’s most recent earnings report, they were able to add 14.4 million new subscribers in the third quarter.
Fun fact: Tornado Cash has facilitated over 150,000 deposits with 40,000+ users.
