Aave-Ethena USDe Peg Sparks Concerns

️ On today's Top Picks:

Crypto News

• ⭐️ Aave $AAVE proposal to peg Ethena’s $ENA USDe to USDT raises concerns over potential conflicts of interest.

• ⭐️ Terra Co-founder Do Kwon pleads not guilty to criminal charges in US court following extradition; charged with commodities fraud, wire fraud, securities fraud, & more.

• Coinbase obtains unredacted documents between the US FDIC and US banks; shows a coordinated effort to stop crypto activity.

• Morgan Stanley’s E-Trade considers offering crypto trading; Morgan Stanley previously disclosed owning ~$272M of spot Bitcoin ETFs at the of Q3 2024.

• Tether & Bitfinex General Counsel Stuart Hoegner retires; Michael Hilliard to take charge of legal affairs.

• Binance to acquire Sim;paul, a licensed broker-dealer in Brazil; becomes first crypto exchange to obtain broker license in Brazil.

• Coinbase acquires Cyprus subsidiary of BUX & renames the entity as Coinbase Financial Services Europe; to provide financial products to member countries of the European Economic Area.

• Pump[.]fun Team deposits ~63K Solana $SOL (~$14M) to Kraken; has deposited ~1.56M SOL (~$340M) to Kraken in total.

• FTX Debtors Plan of Reorganization officially goes into effect today; also the initial distribution record date for holders of allowed claims in the Plan's Convenience Classes.

Alpha

• Solana Optimistic Network (SOON) launches Alpha Mainnet & releases $SOON tokenomics; 51% of token supply allocated to the community.

• Namada launches discussion for phase 3 governance proposal; $NAM transferability in phase 5.

• Newton launches Crystal of Unknown Origin NFT mint on Guild; Newton is a ZK L2 by Magic Labs.

• SatLayer launches Referral Program; earn 1,100 Sats² for each referral & earn up to 30% boosted Sats² referral rewards until January 17th.

• Treehouse launches $gtETH, a Growth Vault designed to simplify yield farming; earn 100% extra rewards.

• ⭐️ Hyperlane Co-Founder Jon Kol posts Hyperlane token ticker poll on X; Hyperlane TGE & airdrop potentially coming soon.

• DeBank launches USUAL Airdrop Hunter Web3 Badge; users who received $USUAL airdrop are eligible.

• Hey (Lens client) launches Blooming Connections NFT mint on Zora; Lens recently teased "Lens mainnet is imminent".

Airdrops

• Weekly Airdrop Recap by Earndrop.

• Sahara Airdrop Strategy by Earndrop.

• Solayer Introduces Solayer Foundation, $LAYER Token, & Season 1 airdrop; Solayer stakers, sUSD participants, & whitelisted ecosystem partners to be eligible.

• ⭐️ Mint launches NFT Legend Box eligibility checker; various NFT holders, active NFT traders, & more eligible; to launch Legend Box opening on February 16th.

• Sonic SVM launches $SONIC airdrop eligibility checker; Odyssey participants, SonicX users, & more eligible; to launch airdrop claim January 7th.

• Taiko launches $TAIKO season 2 rewards claim; season 3 with 6M TIAKO reward pool ongoing until March 17th.

• IDRISS to launch $IDRISS airdrop claim January 27th; IDRISS users & partner communities eligible.

Finance News

• US IRS delays new tax reporting requirements for cryptocurrencies until 2026; new rule requires users to choose tax accounting methods.

• ⭐️ MicroStrategy $MSTR to raise up to ~$2B through public offerings of perpetual preferred stock in Q1 2025; part of previously announced 21/21 Plan.

• Michael Saylor $MSTR meets with US President-elect Trump's son Eric Trump; Eric posts, "Two friends, one passion: Bitcoin" on X.

• Tesla $TSLA stock drops amid annual sales decline; Tesla still holds ~9.7K Bitcoin worth $950M.

• Cango $CANG, a Chinese lender, buys 50 EH/s of mining power for ~$400M; to become one of the largest miners once its fleet goes online.

• BitFuFu $FUFU signs two-year deal for 80K Bitcoin Miners with Bitmain; to be utilized for self-mining operations & customer services.

• Fold to raise $20M through convertible notes offering with additional $10m option; to be used to support growth initiatives & accelerate product development,

• Apple $AAPL to pay $95M to settle class action lawsuit accusing Siri of eavesdropping; Apple isn’t acknowledging any wrongdoing in the settlement.

Security and Exploits

• T3 Financial Crime Unit has frozen over $100M in $USDT involved in illicit activities since its inception in September last year.

• Virtuals Protocol $VIRTUAL patches security vulnerability after security researcher jinu posts about it on X; to launch a bug bounty program.

• Tangem patches security vulnerability that exposed private keys via email; claims "...no private keys were compromised, no user funds were lost, and no accounts were accessed."

• New "DoubleClickjacking" attack exploits double-clicks to hijack accounts; attack overlays a legitimate webpage in a hidden iframe over a web page created by the attackers.

• 2024 Blockchain Security and AML Annual Report by SlowMist.

Token Unlocks

• Kaspa $KAS / ~$23M / JAN 06th
• Neon $NEON / ~$20M / JAN 07th
• EigenLayer $EIGEN / ~$5M / JAN 07th
• Ethena $ENA / ~$15M / JAN 08th
Sourced from Tokenomist

Funding

• Silencio raises $1.3M in Community funding on Legion.

• DataDance raises an undisclosed amount in Seed funding from Hash Global.

• Haedal raises an undisclosed amount in Seed funding.

• Hyperfluid raises an undisclosed amount in Pre-Seed funding from Ankaa & BlockBooster.

• VC Yearly Report by Wu Blockchain.

The Degen Farmer