Bitboy arrested

☕️ On today's Top Picks:

⚡ Alpha

• Arbitrum Odyssey: Reignited campaign begins. Week 1 features GMX where user must and completing all tasks will make participants eligible to claim the Blueberry Nebula NFT Badge.

• AltLayer announces Altitude Phase IV: Autonomous Worlds campaign. AltLayer is a decentralized interlayer for rollups and previously raised $7.2 million led by Polychain.

• Stargate Community Call is today at 1600 UTC. The community call will discuss recent updates to the protocol and governance.

• Guild Community Call #31 is today at 1700 UTC. The community call will discuss UI updates, happy news, and a new social integration.

🪂 Airdrops

• Celestia airdrops 20 million $TIA to over 7000 developers and over 500K onchain addresses. Eligible participants can claim now until October 17 1200 UTC.

📰 Finance News

• Gary Gensler set to testify in front of the House Financial Services Committee today at 1400 UTC.

• Four US Congress members ask Gary Gensler to approve Spot Bitcoin ETFs. In the letter to Gary Gensler, the members of Congress claim that spot Bitcoin ETF is “indistinguishable” from the cryptocurrency futures ETFs for which the SEC has already granted approval.

• SEC moves to delay decision on ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF with a new deadline of January 10. SEC also delays decision on Global X Bitcoin Trust to November 21. The SEC cites, "That it is appropriate to designate a longer period within which to issue an order approving or disapproving the proposed rule change so that it has sufficient time to consider the proposed rule change," in its filing.

• FTX deadline to file a proof of claim is September 29 at 2000 UTC.

• Celsius Network creditors approve $2 billion reorganization plan. Plan needs final approval from the US Bankruptcy Court.

• Binance sells Russia operations to CommEX. Existing Russian users will be slowly off-boarded and new Russian users will be redirected to CommEX. Binance cites that operating in Russia is not compatible with its compliance strategy in its reason for the sale.

• Chase UK will block customers from buying cryptocurrency starting October 16. Chase UK cites a rise in crypto-based scams as its reasoning for the policy change.

• Coinbase registers with Central Bank of Spain to offer Bitcoin & cryptocurrency custody services in the country.

• Kraken granted an EU e-money license by the Central Bank of Ireland and also secures a VASP registration with the Bank of Spain in its commitment to grow European business.

• MoneyGram announces plans to launch its own non-custodial digital wallet built on Stellar Network. The wallet will official debut in Q1 2024 and will enable MoneyGram consumers around the world to leverage stablecoin technology to seamlessly move from fiat to digital currency, to fiat again.

• Paradigm launches Paradigm Policy Lab. The lab will be a gathering place for academics, policy experts, lawyers, and technologists to study how to address the biggest policy challenges in crypto.

• Ben Armstrong also known as "BitBoy" was arrested following livestream rant outside his ex-business partner's house.

📰 DeFi News

• Ethereum Holesky second attempt to launch will go live in less than 24 hours. Ethereum Holesky will replace Ethereum Goerli testnet.

• Casey Rodarmor, founder of Bitcoin Ordinals; proposes a new protocol "RUNES". Rune is an alternative to BRC-20.

• Chainlink CCIP is live on Base. Chainlink CCIP provides developers tools to create natively cross-chain apps.

• Circle launches $EURC stablecoin on Stellar Network.

• Orbiter Finance bridge integrates Manta Network.

• Pheasant Network bridge integrates Base Network.

🛡 Security and Exploits

• Hong Kong recovers $11 million worth of assets linked to the JPEX scandal.

• CZ states Binance security team will assist HTX in its investigation tracking stolen funds after $8 million hack.

• US Treasury sanctions a member of Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel using Ethereum to move funds connected to the smuggling of fentanyl into the US.

• MetaDock releases version 4.0 supporting 7 new chains and 19 related test chains.

Token Unlocks

• Yield Guild Games $YGG - 12.42M (~$2.56M) on SEP 27
• SingularityNET $AGIX - 9.68M (~$1.73M) on SEP 27
• Euler $EUL - 188.74K (~$507.71K) on SEP 27
• Sui $SUI - 6.68M (~$2.95m) on SEP 29
• Optimism $OP - 24.16M (~$30.20M) on SEP 29
• STEPN $GMT - 23.64M (~$3.58M) on SEP 30
• Acala $ACA - 27.43M (~$1.33M) on OCT 01
• 1inch $1INCH - 15.00K (~$3.89K) on OCT 01

💰 Funding

• Rated, a platform which offers Ethereum infrastructure datasets; raises $12.888 million in Series A funding round led by Archetype.

• Fhenix, a blockchain powered by Fully Homomorphic Encryption; raises $7 million in Seed funding round led by Multicoin Capital and Collider Ventures.

• Avantis, a perpetuals DEX; raises $4 million in Seed funding round led by Pantera Capital.

• Pimlico, an infrastructure layer powering Ethereum’s transition to ERC-4337; raises $1.6 million in pre-seed funding round led by 1confirmation.

• Aptos Foundation and Thala Labs launch $1 million fund aimed at incentivizing the creation of “Aptos-native” DeFi protocols. The fund will scale to $5 million “as protocols launch and scale.”

That's it for today's dose! See you soon.