- Marmoush double denies Bayern outright Bundesliga top spot
- Rallies worldwide call for Gaza, Lebanon ceasefire
- Maresca hails Chelsea's 'fighting' spirit after draw with 10-man Forest
- New 'Joker' film, a dark musical, tops N.America box office
- Man Utd stalemate keeps Ten Hag in danger, Spurs rocked by Brighton
- Drowned by hurricane, remote N.Carolina towns now struggle for water
- Vikings hold off Jets in London to stay unbeaten
- Ahead of attack anniversary, Netanyahu says: 'We will win'
- West Indies cruise to T20 World Cup win over Scotland
- Arshdeep, Chakravarthy help India hammer Bangladesh in T20 opener
- Lewandowski's quickfire hat-trick powers Liga leaders Barca to Alaves victory
- Man Utd fire another blank in Aston Villa stalemate
- Lewandowski treble powers Liga leaders Barca to Alaves victory
- Russian activist killed on front line in Ukraine
- Openda strike briefly sends Leipzig top of Bundesliga
- Goal-shy Man Utd have to 'step up', says Ten Hag
- India bowl out Bangladesh for 127 in T20 opener
- Madueke rescues Chelsea in draw with 10-man Forest
- Beckett's belief rewarded as Bluestocking storms to Arc glory
- Trump on the stump, Harris hits airwaves in razor-edge US election
- Flash flooding kills three in northern Thailand
- Kaur leads India to victory over Pakistan in Women's T20 World Cup
- Juventus held by Cagliari after late penalty drama
- In France's Marseille, teen 'stabbed 50 times' then burned alive
- Ruthless Gauff beats Muchova in straight sets to win China Open
- India restrict Pakistan to 105-8 in Women's T20 World Cup
- England target repeat of Pakistan Test whitewash
- Penrith Panthers win fourth straight NRL title after downing Storm
- Weary Sinner happy for day off after battling into Shanghai last 16
- Pakistan's Masood warns England still a force without Stokes
- Madrid's Carvajal to miss several months after serious knee injury
- Israel pounds Lebanon ahead of Hamas attack anniversary
- Two elephants die in flash flooding in northern Thailand
- Sabalenka targets world number one and Wuhan hat-trick
- Toddler among 4 dead in migrant Channel crossings
- Tunisia votes with Saied set for re-election
- Bagnaia sets 'example' with Japan MotoGP win to cut gap on Martin
- Intense Israeli bombing rocks Beirut ahead of war anniversary
- Mozambique vote: no suspense but some disillusion
- Austrian rapper channels anti-racist rage in Romani hip-hop songs
- Ohtani magic powers Dodgers over Padres in MLB playoff thriller
- Five of the best: Pakistan-England Test thrillers
- Man sets arm on fire as marches across US mark Gaza war anniversary
- Vietnam's young coffee entrepreneurs brew up a revolution
- Trump rallies at site of failed assassination: 'Never quit'
- Too hot by day, Dubai's floodlit beaches are packed at night
- Is music finally reckoning with #MeToo?
- Fans hail Trump's 'guts' as he returns to site of rally shooting
- Lebanon state media says 'very violent' Israeli strikes hit south Beirut
- Guardians maul Tigers, miracle Mets rally in MLB series openers
Why crypto creators want to stay anonymous
The two lifelong friends from Florida never sought the limelight, but then they built a multi-million-dollar empire selling digital art and people wanted to know who they were.
Under the pseudonyms "Gargamel" and "Gordon Goner", they created the "Bored Ape Yacht Club", a collection of 10,000 cartoons of apes with various hairstyles and outfits.
They sell these images as digital tokens (NFTs), and it is now hard to get one for less than $280,000, thanks partly to celebrity endorsements from the likes of Paris Hilton to Serena Williams.
US news outlet BuzzFeed did some sleuthing earlier this month and uncovered their true identities -- sparking an outpouring of anger among fans on social media.
"Doxing is wack, putting people at risk," wrote one Twitter user, employing internet slang for identifying someone against their will.
The story has refocused attention on anonymity in the world of cryptocurrencies.
While the creators of the "Bored Apes" may like to hide in the crypto world, they are owners of a business called Yuga Labs, so they have to follow all the usual rules of company filings, including providing named beneficiaries.
"Using a pseudonym does not make you anonymous," says Alexander Stachtenko, a cryptocurrency expert for the firm KPMG.
- Risk of robbery -
It is unclear why the Bored Apes founders wanted to stay anonymous -- they had given several interviews under their pseudonyms.
Critics say anyone making money from NFTs would be wise to seek anonymity as what they are selling is worthless.
Fans though revel in being part of a community where NFT ownership is often a gateway to games and other perks.
Either way, anyone making serious wealth in this field has obvious reasons to stay under the radar.
"I don't need the public in crypto to know who I am, what I look like, my origins," says a creator who goes by the name "Owl of Moistness".
"I don't want to run the risk of having people rob me, or harm my family."
He co-founded Yield Guild Games, a startup focused on NFT video games in the Philippines, where the NFT craze has taken hold across the population.
He points out that the technology that underpins cryptocurrencies and NFTs -- the blockchain -- is a ledger where anyone can trace transactions.
So linking his crypto and real-world identities would allow anyone to find out his wealth.
But the bigger a project gets, the more complicated it is to remain unknown.
"It becomes more difficult if you're going to expand your team," says Soona Amhaz of Volt Capital, a cryptocurrency-focused fund.
- 'The fairest way' -
One of the favoured ways of remaining anonymous in the crypto world is to form a DAO (decentralised autonomous organisation).
DAOs allow people to collaborate and act as a company might, essentially acting like shareholders, but without formal legal standing or named owners.
Anyone extracting profit would still need to pay tax, but linking real-world individuals to these entities is a much trickier task than, say, searching public records to reveal the Bored Apes founders.
This model has served anonymous entrepreneurs well, from "Zeus", the creator of the Olympus cryptocurrency, to "Code Monkey" who set up the Port Finance cryptocurrency.
However, plenty of people use the expectation of anonymity for nefarious purposes.
DAOs and other decentralised entities are particularly vulnerable to fraud, according to analysis firm Chainalysis.
AnubisDAO was one such entity, created by pseudonymous programmers last October with little more than a Twitter account and a logo.
It vanished less than a day after it launched, taking almost $60 million of investors' money, according to Chainalysis.
And it seems the tide is turning against anonymity in the crypto world.
Most of the larger cryptocurrency exchanges now require identity checks to combat this kind of fraud.
But Soona Amhaz believes there are still positives to the DAO idea, arguing that they are policed by the blockchain.
Anyone can trace the transactions of a particular DAO and find out if they are legitimate or suspicious.
There is also another major advantage, she says.
"If you are pseudonymous, it does't matter if you didn’t go to the right school," she says.
"It's just your work that’s being evaluated and your reputation. And that truly is one of the fairest ways to evaluate someone."
Ch.Havering--AMWN