FTI Consulting News Bytes – 1st April 2022

This week’s news

$625m stolen from the blockchain behind NFT game Axie

The Verge this week reports that roughly $625 million (£467m) worth of cryptocurrency has been stolen from Ronin, the blockchain underlying the popular crypto game, Axie Infinity. Ronin and Axie Infinity operator Sky Mavis revealed the breach on Tuesday and froze transactions on the Ronin bridge, which allows depositing and withdrawing funds from the company’s blockchain. Thousands, perhaps even millions of people may have lost money in the second-largest crypto hack in history. Ronin said it is working with law enforcement officials, forensic cryptographers and investors to recover or reimburse the stolen funds. The Ronin bridge and Katana decentralised exchange have also been halted as a security measure.

Rise of the ‘Tiktots’

Research revealed by media regulator Ofcom, found that 16% of three to four-year-olds have watched videos on the social media platform, TikTok, as reported by BBC News. Eighty-four per cent of this age group use YouTube, while 17% have their own phone. Ofcom strategy and research director Yih-Choung Teh said the findings were “really striking… I have an 11-year-old and an eight-year-old… [and] 60% of their peers have a social media profile, which I find a bit surprising… Big-tech platforms set minimum ages in their terms and conditions – but it does seem that they aren’t really being enforced.” The survey also found 22% of parents of three- to four-year-olds and 38% of parents of eight- to 11-year-olds said they would allow their child to have a profile on social media before they reached the minimum age.

UK video games market hits £7.16bn valuation

According to The Guardian, the UK video games market hit a new record of £7.16bn last year (an increase of 2% from 2020) as the pandemic continued to fuel an unprecedented boom in home entertainment, with gamers rushing to stock up on new consoles and virtual reality kit even as overall sales of games fell. Lockdown conditions have made gaming one of the biggest pandemic winners with the value of the UK market now a third higher than in 2019 before the coronavirus crisis hit and worth more than the music and video streaming markets combined.

Air-purifying mask

Wearing a face mask in public has gone from a peculiar sight to an everyday occurrence in the past two years, but people may still not be ready for Dyson’s latest invention. The Telegraph notes that the company has a headset designed to purify the air and protect the user from pollution. The device, called the Zone, doubles as a pair of headphones and filters micro particles out of the air through a visor that covers much of the face including the mouth and nose – removing 99% of particles before creating a pocket of clean air to breathe. Dyson has not claimed that the system removes coronavirus particles as they travel through the air, having not tested the headset using the virus. Instead, it is aimed at the nine in 10 people around the world estimated to breathe air exceeding World Health Organisation pollution limits. Dyson, which relocated its business to Singapore last year, says Asia is its fastest-growing region, and the headset may receive a more welcome reception there. The majority of the world’s most polluted cities are in Asia.

Musicians turn up the volume on NFTs

The Financial Times reports that in recent months the hype surrounding Web3 — the buzzword for a decentralised, blockchain-powered iteration of the internet — has swept the music industry, drawing the world’s largest music companies to the fray and fuelling hope that non-fungible tokens will become a new source of money for musicians. To sell an NFT, musicians assign their song, video or other piece of media to a digital token. The token is sold through an online auction enabled by blockchain technology, which keeps a record of the transaction. Beyond songs or images, NFTs could also be used to sell perks such as backstage passes or meetings with stars.Head-spinning examples abound. Rapper Snoop Dogg in February sold an NFT attached to Bacc on Death Row, his latest album, that reportedly generated more than $40mn in sales in just five days. DJ Steve Aoki claims he has made more money through NFTs than he did from a decade’s worth of advances from record labels.

Top Tweets of the Week

• BBC World tweets, ‘Facebook drives sceptics towards climate denial, report says’
• Forbes tweets ‘The need for tech talent was always in demand, but now the business needs are insatiable’
• Ethan Mollick, Professor at Wharton, tweets ‘This is cool: when AI is better than humans, it makes humans better. In 2016, the Go world was shocked when AI beat the best human player. Since then, by playing against AI, professional players have gotten unprecedentedly better at the world’s oldest game’

Number of the Week

£764bn – According to UKTech , this is what the UK tech industry is now valued at, a landmark milestone that has previously only been reached by the US and China.

What’s happening next week?

• 2 April –  Muslim month of Ramadan begins
• 5 April – Last day of the current tax year
• 6 April – Mandatory climate disclosures for the largest companies comes into effect
• 6 April – Samsung Electronics Q1 pre-earnings guidance

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