Anthropic Designated as "Supply Chain Risk", OpenAI Signs Agreement

️ On today's Top Picks:

Crypto News

• ⭐️ Magic Eden $ME to sunset Bitcoin & EVM marketplaces on March 9th; to sunset Magic Eden Wallet on April 1st; to focus on Solana & Dicey, a crypto casino & sportsbetting platform.

• Morgan Stanley $MS files for US national trust bank charter to custody crypto assets; to also use charter to conduct staking and trading for its investment clients.

• Barclays $BARC.L considers blockchain platform for banking services; reportedly sends request for information to potential technology suppliers; aims to select providers as soon as April.

• ICYMI Ethereum Foundation $ETH releases 'strawmap', a strawman roadmap for Ethereum; highlights include fast L1, gigagas L1, post quantum L1, private L1, & teragas L2; outlines seven forks by 2029, one fork every six months.

• ICYMI Vitalik Buterin finishes selling Ethereum $ETH; sold total of 19,326 ETH (~$39M) since February 2nd; previously announced he would sell 16,384 ETH to fund several projects in January.

• ICYMI Aave-Chan Initiative $AAVE publishes audit of Aave Labs' prior work ahead of 'Aave Will Win' proposal; highlights Aave Labs ~$86M in funding to date as it requests ~$51M for operating expenses in the proposal.

Alpha

• Paradigm CTO Georgios Konstantopoulos teases "REDACTED Meridian Testnet"; currently pushing ~500 TPS & 800+ Mgas/s according to Rollup[.]wtf; uses Optimism's OP Stack & EigenCloud's EigenDA.

• ⭐️ MetaMask $MASK launches MetaMask Card in the US; offers up to 1% back in mUSD for standard cardholders and up to 3% back (on the first $10,000 spent per year) for metal cardholders.

• ICYMI Backpack $BACK to offer users 20% stake in the company; users who stake Backpack's upcoming token for at least one year will be able to exchange for equity; recently launched TGE Verified for upcoming airdrop.

• ICYMI Nado $INK raises NLP cap from $6M to $7.4M; Templars of the Storm NFT holders are whitelisted for early access; to open to the public after 48 hours (February 28th).

• ICYMI Abstract $ABS to change Abstract XP system; to focus XP distribution primarily on onchain activity (e.g. app interactions, trading, and DeFi participation); also launch Portal Streaks.

Airdrops

• ⭐️ Ink Foundation $INK teases "something’s loading in the deep… INK"; to potentially launch TGE & airdrop soon; Nado & Tydro points holders and more will be eligible for the airdrop.

• OpenMind $ROBO launches airdrop claim; OpenMind points holders, community members, & more were eligible to register; claim closes on March 13th.

• Freedom Factory (ethOS) to close Epoch 1 of the dGEN1 airdrop pool on March 1st; to launch Epoch 2 of dGEN1 unclaimed airdrop pool on March 2nd.

• ICYMI MetaMask $MASK launches MetaMask LINEA Rewards Season 1 claim; closes in ~2 weeks; to potentially launch Season 2 soon; Polymarket projects ~31% chance MetaMask launches token by end of 2026.

• ICYMI Jupiter $JUP Net-Zero Emissions proposal passes; Jupuary airdrop postponed indefinitely; Jupuary tokens go into the Community Cold Multisig until the community decides what happens next.

Finance News

• US January PPI Inflation comes in at 2.9%, above expectations of 2.6%; Core PPI inflation rises to 3.6%, above expectations of 3.0% (highest level since July 2025).

• ⭐️ Anthropic (Claude) designated a "supply chain risk to national security" by US Government after refusing demands for unrestricted access; releases statement stating it will challenge the designation in court.

• OpenAI reaches agreement with US Department of War amid Anthropic being designated a "supply chain risk" by US government; to deploy models on DoW classified network.

• OpenAI raises $110B at $730B valuation; includes $30B from SoftBank $9984.T, $30B from Nvidia $NVDA, & $50B from Amazon $AMZN; more investors expected to join as funding round remains open.

• PayPal $PYPL reportedly NOT looking to be acquired despite recent reports; previously reported to be meeting with banks following unsolicited approaches with Stripe considering to acquire.

• Block $XYZ Q4 2025 Earnings: $6.3B in revenue (+2% QoQ, +4% YoY), beating expectations; EPS of $0.65 (+20% QoQ, +38% YoY), in-line with expectations; to reduce workforce from 10,000 to 6,000.

• SpaceX to reportedly file confidentially for IPO as soon as next month at $1.75T valuation; Polymarket projects 51% chance SpaceX's market cap closes above $2T.

Security and Exploits

• ICYMI ZachXBT: Axiom employees allegedly engaged in insider trading; "abused the lack of access controls for internal tools to lookup sensitive user details to insider trade by tracking private wallet activity since early 2025."

• ICYMI World Liberty $WLFI reports "coordinated attack"; claims hackers compromised cofounder accounts, paid influencers to spread FUD, and opened WLFI shorts to profit from the chaos; USD1 briefly depegged but has since recovered.

• ICYMI Kraken lists alleged "bundled token" $WAR; Bubblemaps previously reported that WAR creator 'GaCagz' initially controlled 70% of the token supply & quietly dumped it over time.

• ICYMI Anthropic accuses DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, & MiniMax of "industrial-scale distillation attacks"; alleges the labs created fraudulent accounts to extract Claude's capabilities to train and improve their own models.

• ICYMI Discord delays rollout of age verification from March to H2 2026 after community backlash; recently clarified that majority of users will NOT have to do age verification.

Token Unlocks

• Optimism $OP / ~$4M / FEB 28th
• Grass $GRASS / ~$12M / FEB 28th
• Jupiter $JUP / ~$39M / FEB 28th
• Sui $SUI / ~$39M / MAR 01st
• EigenCloud $EIGEN / ~$7M / MAR 01st
• Ethena $ENA / ~$4M / MAR 2nd
Sourced from Tokenomist

Funding

• ⭐️ Paradigm to raise up to $1.5B for next fund.

• STS Digital raises $30M in Strategic funding led by CMT Digital.

• JYPC raises $11.9M in Series B funding led by Asteria Japan.

• Blueprynt raises $4.25M in Seed funding led by Valor Capital Group.

The Degen Farmer