Binance Fires Employee for Insider Trading

️ On today's Top Picks:

Crypto News

• ⭐️ Ripple's $XRP recent $500M share sale included investor protections guaranteeing profits; investors have the right to sell their shares back to Ripple after three or four years at an annualized return of 10%.

• BlackRock $BLK files registration statement with US SEC for iShares Staked Ethereum $ETH Trust ETF; 21 Shares, Grayscale, & others have previously filed to add staking to their existing Ethereum ETFs.

• Vitalik Buterin proposes Ethereum $ETH onchain gas futures market; says "people would get a clear signal of people's expectations of future gas fees, and would even be able to hedge against future gas prices."

• US CFTC launches digital assets pilot program for tokenized collateral in derivatives markets; includes Bitcoin $BTC, Ethereum $ETH, & $USDC.

• Digital Asset Investment Products saw ~$716M in inflows last week; Bitcoin $BTC ~$352M inflows, Ethereum $ETH ~$39M inflows, Ripple $XRP ~$245M inflows, Chainlink $LINK ~$52M inflows.

• Binance $BNB secures full suite of licenses from FSRA under ADGM; to operate through three distinct licensed entities: Nest Services Limited, Nest Clearing & Custody Limited, and Nest Trading Limited.

• Coinbase $COIN reopens app in India; users can currently trade crypto, with a fiat on-ramp expected in 2026; Coinbase had ceased operations in India in 2023.

• Bybit partners with Circle $CRCL to expand USDC access across Bybit’s ecosystem; to launch series of campaigns & initiatives to increase the utility of USDC across Bybit’s products and services.

• Crypto[.]com $CRO partners with 21Shares to launch new investment products tracking CRO; to establish a CRO private trust and ETF.

• HashKey launches Hong Kong IPO; seeks to raise up to $215M; trading scheduled to start on December 17th.

• ZKsync $ZK to deprecate ZKsync Lite (ZKsync 1.0) in 2026; says "this is a planned, orderly sunset for a system that has served its purpose and does not affect any other ZKsync systems."

• US SEC closes investigation into Ondo $ONDO without any charges; inquiry which began in 2024, focused on whether Ondo’s tokenized products & the ONDO token complied with federal securities laws.

Alpha

• ⭐️ Stable $STABLE launches mainnet & TGE; users who participated in the Pre-Deposit Campaign can claim their STABLE tokens on Merkl.

• MegaETH $MEGA to open Frontier mainnet beta to app builders next week; notes infrastructure teams have already deployed on mainnet.

• Aztec $AZTEC public sale ends; 16,741 participants committed 19,476 Ethereum $ETH (~$61M); participants can now create a token vault on the sale website.

• Abstract $ABS launches new Flash Badge; users who cash-in at least 1 Cambria artifact in Season 3 are eligible to claim.

• Rainbow $RNBW founder teases Polymarket integration; to announce update regarding TGE this week.

• Farcaster shifts focus to in-app wallet citing its social-first approach "didn't work for us"; new features & product positioning to be wallet-focused.

Airdrops

• ethOS launches Token Claim app & Epoch 1 claim; dGEN1 holders are eligible; to launch Epoch 2 claim on March 1st, 2026.

• Espresso $ESP announces another path to airdrop eligibility; hackathon participants & accelerator cohort members to be eligible.

• ICYMI Kraken teases "Get exclusive airdrops with Kraken+" on X; Kraken Drops webpage notes "Airdrops may occasionally have additional criteria for eligibility..."

• ICYMI Seeker $SKR (Solana Mobile) to launch TGE & airdrop in January 2026; 30% of SKR token supply is allocated for Airdrops.

• ICYMI Kyo $KYO launches airdrop eligibility checker; Kyo & Soneium users are potentially eligible.

Finance News

• Key Events This Week: September JOLTS Job Openings data (DEC 9th) December Fed Interest Rate Decision (DEC 10th), Initial Jobless Claims data (DEC 11th).

• ⭐️ US Department of Commerce to allow Nvidia $NVDA H200 chip exports to China; 25% of the revenue to be paid to the US.

• US President Trump to sign “one rule” executive order on AI this week.

• US Labor Department to release October & November PPI data together in January 2026.

• US President Trump announces the US will take a “small portion” of tariff revenues and give it to farmers.

• US Treasury Secretary Bessent says they are still working on a trade deal with India.

• Circle $CRCL secures Financial Services Permission license from Abu Dhabi's FSRA to operate as a Money Services Provider under ADGM.

• Robinhood $HOOD to expand into Indonesia; to acquire Indonesian brokerage PT Buana Capital Sekuritas & licensed digital asset trader PT Pedagang Aset Kripto; deal expected to close in H1 2026.

• Strategy $MSTR buys an additional 10,624 Bitcoin $BTC for ~$963M at ~$90,615 per BTC; now holds 660,624 $BTC (~$59.6B) acquired for ~$49.35B at ~$74,696 per BTC.

• Bitmine $BMNR buys an additional 138,452 Ethereum $ETH (~$430M); now holds 3,864,951 ETH (~$12B) & $1B in cash.

• Hyperliquid Strategies $PURR announces $30M stock repurchase program; currently holds 12.6M Hyperliquid $HYPE (~$367M) & $305M in cash.

Security and Exploits

• ⭐️ Binance $BNB suspends employee for alleged insider trading; the employee advertised a newly listed token using official Binance social media channels to “obtain personal gain”.

• ⭐️ @notnotstorm discovers many 3rd party Polymarket data dashboards have been double counting volume; DefiLlama, Blockworks, & Allium are updating their dashboards to fix the issue.

• ZachXBT offers $5K bounties for user data sets of Kaito Yaps, Wallchain, Galxe, Layer3, Cookie, & Xeet; says these projects have caused much harm by incentivizing AI bot networks.

• Google launches new security architecture for AI agents in Chrome; introduces layered defenses to counter prompt injection attacks and ensure agent actions remain aligned with user intent.

Token Unlocks

• Linea $LINEA / ~$11M / DEC 10th
• Aptos $APT / ~$20M / DEC 11th
• Starknet $STRK / ~$14M / DEC 15th
Sourced from Tokenomist

Funding

• Crown raises $13.5M in Series A funding from Paradigm.

• Magma raises $6M in Strategic funding from several investors.

• AllScale raises $5M in Seed funding led by YZi Labs, Informed Ventures, & Generative Ventures.

• Pye raises $5M in Seed funding led by Coinbase Ventures & Variant.

The Degen Farmer