This Week in Web3...

🐱 Stoner Cats get smoked. This week, the SEC announced charges against Stoner Cats for an unregistered securities offering. Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher’s Stoner Cats NFT project collected $8.2M in mint fees in 2021, promising holders an animated web series with actors such as Seth MacFarlane, Jane Fonda, and Chris Rock.

Part of the SEC’s case included screenshots from their Twitter and Discord promising financial rewards for purchasing, encouraging people to “sweep the floor”, and other statements that the SEC used to allege that they strongly suggested a return on investment. Stoner Cats settled the case out of court and will be paying a $1M fine and destroying any NFTs in their possession.

🚨 Another week, another hack. Mark Cuban shared on Twitter that he was hacked for over $870k. Cuban shared that it was the first time he had been on Metamask for months and he’s not clear how the hack took place, although it was confirmed to be a “hot wallet” (not associated with a hardware wallet).

🪧 NounsFork. NounsDAO’s fork was finalized and $27 million has exited the treasury. More than half of Nouns holders chose to join the fork, unhappy with the project.

Quick Headlines

• FriendTech continues to thrive, hitting a record 529,000 daily transactions last week.

• The mood is bearish this week as many wait for FTX to offload its cryptocurrency assets as part of their bankruptcy proceedings. They are allowed to sell up to $100 million per week.

• Visa put out a deep dive outlining their reasons for choosing Solana for their stablecoin settlement pilot.

Join me Thursday evening for a Generative AI and Blockchain panel and happy hour for Techcrunch Disrupt in San Francisco.

AI Corner

🔎 Snap and search. Amazon adds visual search, allowing you to take a picture of an item & find it in their product listings. You can also combine visual and text search for better results or use a product image from the internet to find the item on Amazon.

👩‍💼 Linkedin adds AI. Linkedin adds AI-powered tools to their Sales Navigator, used by recruiters and salespeople to find prospects. You can use conversational search prompts to find clients and see an AI-generated summary of their account. 

📊 Send my AI to the all-hands. Google’s Workplace product added a new productivity tool where you can send an AI to a meeting in your place. The AI will even give that presentation you created over in Google Drive.

🥤 Coca-Cola cracks open AI. Coca-Cola announces Coca-Cola Y3000 Zero Sugar, their newest beverage partly created with AI. Coke says it combines “fan perspectives across the world and AI insights to create the unique flavor.”

This Week We’re Bullish On

Sinead Bovell

Sinead Bovell is the founder of WAYE, Weekly Advice for Young Entrepreneurs, an organization that prepares the next generation of leaders for a future with advanced technologies. WAYE’s community is reflective of the need for more diverse voices in tech and meets monthly to talk about blockchain, AI, AR, and other emerging technologies and how we can prepare for them.

Positive Affirmation for the Week

Don’t talk yourself out of who you are and what you know. ❤️

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With gratitude,

ShiraFrom Bitcoin Setbacks to AI Art Exhibits