Circle Acquires Interop, Leaves AXL Holders Behind

️ On today's Top Picks:

Crypto News

• ⭐️ Circle $CRCL to acquire Interop Labs, developer of Axelar $AXL; though Axelar Network, Axelar Foundation, & the AXL token are not part of the acquisition.

• ⭐️ Coinbase $COIN to host System Update event on December 17th; to reportedly announce prediction markets & tokenized stocks.

• Ripple $XRP to launch RLUSD on Optimism, Base, Ink, & Unichain; powered by Wormhole’s Native Token Transfers (NTT) standard.

• Bitwise amends Hyperliquid $HYPE ETF filing; finalizes ticker (BHYP) & management fee (0.67%); to potentially begin trading soon.

• Digital Asset Investment Products saw ~$864M in inflows last week; Bitcoin $BTC ~$522M inflows, Ethereum $ETH ~$338M inflows, Hyperliquid $HYPE ~$14M outflows.

• Cronos $CRO appoints Ryan Wyatt as CEO of Cronos Labs; Wyatt was previously President at Polygon Labs & Chief Growth Officer at Optimism.

• Gemini $GEMI launches Gemini Predictions; live across all 50 US States; offering no fees on trades for limited time.

• Startale Group & SBI Holdings partner to launch Yen stablecoin; expected to launch in Q2 2026; Startale recently launched its Startale USD USDSC stablecoin.

• Anchorage Digital acquires Securitize For Advisors (SFA) for an undisclosed amount; SFA is a crypto wealth management platform for registered investment advisors (RIAs).

Alpha

• Daylight to launch Pre-Deposit Vault on December 16th; deposits to be initially capped at $50M & locked for 2 months; earn boosted GRID Games points & more.

• VOOI $VOOI launches support for Lighter perps on VOOI Pro; supports zero-fee trading; VOOI is a perp DEX aggregator backed by YZi Labs.

• Cascade launches limited-time window to join early-access; Cascade is a perps dex that recently announced $15M in funding from several investors.

• Re launches new reUSDe pool on Pendle; earn 30x Re Points & 5x Sats; pool ends (matures) in June 2026; existing pool participants (matures on December 18th) can migrate to the new one.

• ⭐️ OpenSea $SEA to unlock Wave 3 of Treasure Chests on December 17th; Wave 4 of Treasure Chests is now live; TGE & airdrop is expected in Q1 2026.

• Infinex $INX distributes Crates to early Infinex users; claim expires on December 22nd; CrateRun campaign is ongoing.

• MetaMask $MASK launches support for Bitcoin $BTC; MetaMask Rewards points program is ongoing.

• Rainbow $RNBW to launch Polymarket integration on the TestFlight version of the app on December 16th; Rainbow points program is ongoing.

• Zerion teases “Zerion Feed coming soon” on X; also says “Early access begins today”; powered by clicker.

Airdrops

• Aster $ASTER launches Stage 3 airdrop claim; Stage 3 participants are eligible; Stage 4 is ongoing until December 21st.

• ⭐️ Rainbow $RNBW to announce TGE & airdrop date on December 16th; 15% of the total token supply is allocated for the airdrop at TGE.

• Moonbirds $BIRB to launch TGE & airdrop in Q1 2026; Moonbirds NFT holders & more will be eligible.

• Espresso  $ESP announces another path to airdrop eligibility; Kaito Capital Launchpad pledgers will be eligible; to launch airdrop registration on December 22nd.

• Infrared $IR launches airdrop eligibility & allocation checker; Infrared points holders, Boyco pre-deposit campaign participants, & more are eligible; claim on December 17th.

• RateX $RTX launches airdrop eligibility & allocation checker; RateX points holders are eligible.

• ICYMI Coinbase adds Lighter $LIGHTER to the listing roadmap; Lighter to potentially launch TGE & airdrop before the end of December; Polymarket currently shows ~90% chance.

• ICYMI Fogo $FOGO to launch airdrop on January 13th; Fogo Flames (points) holders will be eligible; also allocates more of the token supply towards the airdrop after cancelling its public token sale.

Finance News

• Key Events This Week: November Jobs Report on Dec 16th, November CPI Inflation data on Dec 18th, & October PCE Inflation data on Dec 19th.

• Nasdaq to file with the US SEC for 23-hour weekday trading of US stocks; expected to launch in Q2 2026.

• CME Group launches Spot-Quoted Ripple $XRP & Solana $SOL futures; CME also supports Spot-Quoted Bitcoin $BTC & Ethereum $ETH futures.

• Strategy $MSTR buys an additional 10,645 Bitcoin $BTC for ~$980M at ~$92K per BTC; now holds 671,268 BTC (~$58B) acquired for ~$50B at ~$75K per BTC.

• Bitmine $BMNR buys an additional 102,259 Ethereum $ETH (~$304M); now holds 3,967,210 ETH (~$11.8B); also holds $1B of cash.

• Tether's $1.3B offer to buy Juventus football club rejected; Exor said it has “no intention of selling any of its shares”; Tether still owns a minority stake of over 10%.

Security and Exploits

• @tayvano_ warns (again) that DPRK threat actors are still hacking & exploiting users via fake Zoom/Teams calls.

• ⭐️ ZachXBT alleges edgeX is “linked to the MEXC cartel” & “my working theory on who attacked HL via Jelly Jelly / Zerebro”; the founder of edgeX rejects these claims.

• Aevo’s $AEVO legacy Ribbon DOV vaults exploited for $2.7M due to oracle upgrade; team advises Ribbon vault depositors to withdraw their funds.

• Google $GOOG to shut down Dark Web Monitoring Tool in February 2026; says “While the report offered general information, feedback showed that it didn't provide helpful next steps.”

• Telegram launches support for passkeys; advises that users should still maintain an active phone number linked to their accounts due to legacy dependencies in the platform's architecture.

Token Unlocks

• Starknet $STRK / ~$13M / DEC 15th
• Sei $SEI / ~$7M / DEC 15th
• Arbitrum $ARB / ~$18M / DEC 16th
• ZKsync $ZK / ~$5M / DEC 17th
• ApeCoin $APE / ~$3M / DEC 17th
• LayerZero $ZRO / ~$36M / DEC 20th
Sourced from Tokenomist

Funding

• YO raises $10M in Series A funding led by Foundation Capital.

• Space raises $3M in Seed & Strategic funding from several investors.

• SemiLiquid raises an undisclosed amount in funding from Oasis.

The Degen Farmer