Coinbase Goes To Zero

️ On today's Top Picks:

Crypto News

• ⭐️ Coinbase faces outages and shows zero balances for some users amid surge in traffic.

• Ethereum Mainnet Dencun Upgrade set for March 13th.

• ⭐️ Ethereum Foundation deposits 4K Ethereum $ETH worth ~$13M to Kraken.

• US Senator Ted Cruz introduces legislation to ban a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).

• Sam Bankman-Fried's lawyers request no more than 6.5 year prison sentence.

• Binance Executives Detained by Nigeria’s Department of State Security.

• Do Kwon to miss start of SEC trial amidst the delay in his extradition.

• Justin Sun posts screenshot of ~$1.6B HTX account balance.

Alpha

• ⭐️ Blast Mainnet Launch set for February 29th.

• Taiko launches Guild: Define Your Role campaign on Galxe.

• ⭐️ Karak launches XP Early Access Program for limited time.

• Orbiter launches 20 O-Points campaign with Base and Zora.

• Lens is now permissionless and open for everyone to join.

• SkyArk Chronicles launches Tenjin & Spellbook NFT staking.

Airdrops

• Blast Mainnet Launches Tomorrow by Earndrop.

• Kelp $KEP claim is live.

• Aleo posts The Road to Aleo Mainnet on X.

• Aevo introduces AGP-1 proposal covering TGE, airdrop, and future plans.

• ICYMI Bebop Airdrop Strategy by Earndrop.

• zkSync Uncommon Airdrop Route by Crypto Snooper.

Finance News

• Microsoft $MSFT probed by European Commission for preventing certain security software.

• Apple $AAPL reportedly cancels electric car plans and shifts affected employees to AI projects.

• Sony cuts 900 jobs from its PlayStation unit and shuts down a London studio citing post-pandemic slump.

• Qatar's Sovereign Wealth Fund to invest over $1B in international and regional capital funds.

Security and Exploits

• ZachXBT posts investigation into phishing scammer Ultra (Nicolas) on X.

• Seneca exploited for ~$3M due to an open external call vulnerability.

• SlowMist AML team collaborates with Taiwanese agencies and XREX to crack cryptocurrency scam case.

Token Unlocks

• Echelon Prime $PRIME / 1.66M / ~$21.5M / FEB 28
• Sui $SUI / 4M / ~$6.7M / FEB 28
• Optimism $OP / 24.16M / ~$92.5M / FEB 28
• Euler $EUL / 92.5K / ~$588K / FEB 29
• Manta $MANTA / 1.87M / ~$5.6M / FEB 29
• dYdX $DYDX / 33.33M / ~$113.7M / FEB 29
• ZetaChain $ZETA / 5.29M / ~$13.5M / FEB 29
• Acala $ACA / 27.43M / ~$3M / FEB 29

Funding

• ⭐️ EtherFi, an Ethereum liquid restaking project; raises $27M in funding led by Bullish & CoinFund.

• Backpack, a crypto wallet and exchange; raises $17M in Series A funding led by Placeholder.

• Initia, a network for interwoven rollups; raises $7.5M in Seed funding led by Delphi Digital and Hack VC.

• Validation Cloud, a node, staking, and data-as-a-service platform; raises $5.8M in funding.

• Talus, a blockchain network for AI; raises $3M in funding led by Polychain Capital.

• QED, a zk-native blockchain protocol; raises $3M in funding.

• Arkis, a DeFi prime broker; raises $2.25M in Pre-Seed funding led by gumi Cryptos.

• BuildBear, an automated & continuous testing engine; raises $1.9M in funding.

• Saturn, a non-custodial P2P orderbook for Satoshis; raises $800K in funding led by Sora Ventures.

• Babylon, a Bitcoin staking protocol; raises an undisclosed amount in funding from Binance Labs.

• Aerodrome, a trading and liquidity marketplace on Base; raises an undisclosed amount in funding from Coinbase Ventures.

The Degen Farmer