Arthur Hayes Predicts March Crypto Peak

️ On today's Top Picks:

Crypto News

• ⭐️ Arthur Hayes predicts crypto market will peak in mid-March and then experience a severe correction.

• ⭐️ Ethereum Co-founder Vitalik Buterin liquidates ~$2.5M worth of memecoins to fund his Kanro charity.

• Echo alleges hostility from venture funds either trying to restrict founders from selling cheaper on Echo or trying to stop founders from doing community sales at all.

• Solana Seeker, the second phone developed by Solana Mobile, to launch in mid-2025; Seeker has received ~145K pre-orders.

• MicroStrategy buys an additional 1,070 Bitcoin $BTC for ~$101M at ~$94,004 per BTC; now holds 447,470 BTC worth ~$45B.

• Digital Assets see $585M of inflows so far in 2025; 2024 saw a record $44.2B of inflows, four times higher than 2021 (last record year).

• Winklevoss-led Gemini Trust Co to pay $5M to settle US CFTC charges over alleged misleading statements; Gemini does not admit or deny the allegations.

• MoonPay, BitStaete, FinTech ZBD, & HiddenRoad secure MiCA licenses from Netherlands AFM; license allows companies to operate across the EU.

• GSR secures approval from UK FCA as a registered crypto asset business; first crypto liquidity provider to secure regulatory approvals from UK FCA & Singapore MAS.

• d/acc: one year later by Vitalik Buterin.

Alpha

• Berachain announces Boyco dapps & asset issuers; Boyco is a pre-launch liquidity platform designed to help Berachain’s application layer before Mainnet.

• Story posts "Next week will be fun" on X; teases AI, Yap, & big IP updates.

• ⭐️ ZKsync launches ZKsync Ignite Season 1 from January 6th to March 31st; to distribute up to 100M $ZK to DeFi users.

• ink launches DeFi Training Grounds - Week 3 quest on Guild; complete the tasks for a chance to win 1 ETH.

• Babylon to launch Phase-2 testnet (bbn-test-5) on January 8th; Phase-1 testnet stakers to have opportunity to register into Phase-2 testnet.

• StakeStone adds support for Bitcoin deposits to its Berachain Vault; deposit $SBTC, $WBTC, and/or $cbBTC to earn rewards & points.

• Reddio posts "The countdown is on... something big is about to drop" on X; Mainnet to potentially launch soon.

• Newton extends Crystal of Unknown Origin NFT mint until January 10th; Newton is a ZK L2 by Magic Labs.

• Resolv launches the Grand Epoch; features +25% base points boost for all participants, new integrations, & more.

• Blockscout launches 2x Merits on SwapScout; swap or bridge on SwapScout to earn double the amount of Merits.

• Upcoming Events In January by Aram Z.

Airdrops

• ⭐️ Solv takes snapshot of season 1 points; to launch $SOLV airdrop checker soon; to launch TGE & airdrop claim on January 17th.

• Binance launches $SOLV Megadrop; lock BNB or complete Web3 Quests to participate.

• Dolomite unveils $DOLO; to launch TGE & airdrop soon after Berachain launch; 20% of token supply allocated for airdrops.

• Morph launches 100K Morph Points airdrop; S1 Genesis Jungle participants eligible.

• Enjoy ends $ENJOY SZN 6; to launch airdrop claim this week; launches Airdrop 2 SZN 7 through February 17th.

• ICYMI Weekly Airdrop Recap by Earndrop.

• ICYMI Sahara Airdrop Strategy by Earndrop.

Finance News

• Nvidia $NVDA briefly surpassed Apple $AAPL to become the largest company by market cap; Apple has since reclaimed the top spot.

• Microsoft $MSFT to invest $80B in FY 2025 to expand AI datacenter capabilities; more than half of total investment will be in the US.

• ⭐️ MARA Holdings $MARA lends 7,377 Bitcoin to third parties to generate yield; the BTC represents ~16% of it total reserves.

• Core Scientific sold 27% of mined Bitcoin in December for $7.7M; may resume a partial hodl strategy after two years of full liquidation.

• Metaplanet to increase Bitcoin holdings to 10K; currently holds 1,762 BTC; to use loans, equity, & convertible bonds to increase holdings.

• Indonesia joins BRICS economic alliance as full member; becomes 10th member to join BRICS.

Security and Exploits

• Ethereum Developers targeted with malicious npm packages impersonating Hardhat tools to steal private keys & mnemonics.

• Discord Users targeted with fake game sites spreading info-stealer malware to steal browser-stored credentials, crypto wallets, & more.

• US Treasury sanctions Integrity Technology Group, a China-based cybersecurity firm, for cyberattacks against the US.

• Charter Communications, Consolidated Communications, & Windstream added to list of telecommunications firms hacked by Salt Typhoon

• 2024 Q4 MistTrack Stolen Funds Analysis by SlowMist.

Token Unlocks

• Neon $NEON / ~$21M / JAN 07th
• EigenLayer $EIGEN / ~$5M / JAN 07th
• Ethena $ENA / ~$16M / JAN 08th
• Movement $MOVE / ~$56M / JAN 09th
• Optimism $OP / $9M / JAN 09th
Sourced from Tokenomist

Funding

• AlloyX raises $10M in Pre-Series A funding.

• JAN3 raises $5M in Seed funding led by Fulgur Ventures.

• ZKcandy raises $4M in Seed funding.