CZ & Coinbase Clash

Alpha Team
July 14, 2025

Coinbase Accused of Crypto Smear

Accusation by X User: On July 13, 2025, X user Matt Wallace posted that evidence shows Coinbase as the anonymous source behind reports attacking President Trump's World Liberty Financial and Binance. He stated, "Coinbase learned that a pardon for Binance’s CZ may be on the table and due to their industry high fees and poor customer service, higher ups at the crypto company fear their rival Binance returning to the states with full legal status." Wallace added that Binance, the world's #1 crypto exchange, returning to the U.S. would cut into Coinbase’s market share and damage their bottom line. He called targeting Trump anti-American and asked, "Will Coinbase fess up and face the heat for their poor decision? It will all come out soon!"

CZ Amplifies Claims: Following the post, Binance founder CZ reposted Matt Wallace's tweet on July 13, 2025, amplifying the accusations against Coinbase. The claims suggest Coinbase executives feared a possible pardon for CZ allowing Binance’s return to the U.S., threatening their market share and prompting actions to undermine competitors. The reports in question include a Bloomberg article from July 11, 2025, alleging that Binance developed the smart contract for USD1, a stablecoin issued by World Liberty Financial linked to Trump, months before CZ sought a presidential pardon, raising questions about potential conflicts of interest in Trump's crypto ventures.

Coinbase Issues Denial: In response, on July 13, 2025, Coinbase's Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal quoted Wallace's post and denied the allegations, stating, "Sorry— this is pure misinformation. We absolutely did not contribute to this story. We don't attack competitors, and we welcome any businesses that share our goal of growing the crypto pie. You should keep looking for an actual source." This denial addressed the claims connected to the Bloomberg report on CZ's potential pardon and Binance's involvement with World Liberty Financial. Read More.

️ On today's Top Picks:

🚀 PumpFun launches $PUMP; raised ~$600M through token sale.
📈 Grayscale files confidential IPO submission with US SEC.
🔜 Linea to release $LINEA tokenomics at the end of July.
💰 Strategy $MSTR buys 4,225 Bitcoin $BTC for ~$472.5M.

Read time: ⏰ 5 minutes

Crypto News

• Bitcoin $BTC reaches a new all-time high of ~$123K.

• ⭐️ CZ reposts X post by Matt Wallace alleging Coinbase $COIN was the anonymous source behind reports targeting Binance $BNB & World Liberty Financial $WLFI.

• ⭐️ PumpFun launches $PUMP token; raised ~$600M in ~12 minutes through public token sale.

• ⭐️ Grayscale confidentially submits draft S-1 registration with US SEC; indicates plans for an IPO.

• ICYMI Tornado Cash $TORN co-founder Roman Storm's trial begins; Storm faces charges of money laundering and sanctions violations.

Alpha

• ⭐️ Linea to release $LINEA tokenomics & governance details at the end of July; to launch airdrop checker a few days before TGE; TGE date depends on a few eternal factors.

• Fogo co-founder Robert Sags posts, "Ok head down until public Testnet now. See you in a few," on X; to launch Fogo public testnet soon.

• Reya launches Reya Chain Points (RCP); earn RCP by trading, staking, & more; past XP has been converted into RCP & is available to claim.

• Relay posts, "tomorrow," on X; to potentially launch yield-generating vaults.

Airdrops

• Airdrops, Checkers, & Points by Olimpio.

• Chainbase launches $C airdrop season 1 claim; Chainbase users, contributors, & more are eligible.

• Weekly Airdrop Recap (July 5) by Earndrop.

• ICYMI Caldera launches $ERA airdrop eligibility & allocation checker; eligible users must complete the pre-claim process by July 17th; Caldera users, Caldera quest participants, & more are eligible.

Finance News

• Key Events This Week by The Kobeissi Letter.

• US President Trump threatens "severe tariffs" on Russia if no deal is made within 50 days.

• US President Trump announces 30% tariff on the EU & Mexico; to go into effect on August 1st.

• ⭐️ Strategy $MSTR buys an additional 4,225 Bitcoin $BTC for ~$472.5M at ~$111,827 per BTC; now holds 601,550 BTC worth ~$72B.

• Metaplanet $3350.T buys an additional 797 Bitcoin $BTC for ~$93.6M at ~$117,451 per BTC; now holds 16,352 BTC worth ~$2B.

• Upexi $UPXI raises $200M to buy more Solana $SOL; currently holds 735,692 SOL worth ~$120M.

• Sonnet BioTherapeutics $SONN to merge with Rorschach I to form Hyperliquid Strategies & launch $HYPE treasury strategy; expected to hold $888M in HYPE tokens & cash when deal closes.

Security and Exploits

• ZachXBT helps freeze $5M across multiple exchanges and blockchains after C&M, a services provider for the Central Bank of Brazil, suffered cyberattack.

• ICYMI GMX exploiter returns ~$40M of stolen funds; retains $5M as bounty.

• ICYMI Microsoft releases Windows July 2025 update; patches 130 vulnerabilities.

• ICYMI Coinbase $COIN launches new bug bounty program exclusively focused on onchain vulnerabilities with rewards of up to 5M USDC.

Token Unlocks

• Starknet $STRK / ~$17M / July 15th
• Sei $SEI / ~$19M / July 15th
• Arbitrum $ARB / ~$37M / July 16th
• deBridge $DBR / ~$14M / July 17th
• UXLINK $UXLINK / ~$14M / July 17th
• Solv $SOLV / ~$11M / July 17th
• ApeCoin $APE / ~$10M / July 17th
Sourced from Tokenomist

Funding

The Degen Farmer

Top stablecoin yield farms of the day, more than $3,000,000 in TVL. DYOR and step up your farming game!

PROTOCOL	ASSETS	APY
GrowiHF (Hyperliquid)	USDC	117.35%
Peapods Options (Ethereum)	USDC	50.25%
Merkl (Ethereum)	KPDUSDC	35.00%
Convex Finance (Ethereum)	USDCUSDF	32.15%
Aerodrome Slipstream (Base)	EURCUSDC	31.11%
Uniswap V3 (Ethereum)	USDTUSDF	26.14%
Indigo (Cardano)	IUSD	20.46%

. . .

Socket: First Chain Abstraction Protocol

Socket: The first chain-abstraction protocol, Socket empowers developers to build applications that seamlessly interact across multiple blockchains as if they were one. By unifying liquidity, users, and assets, Socket eliminates the complexities of cross-chain operations, offering a secure, efficient, and decentralized framework for the multichain future.

Bungee: Powered by Socket, Bungee is a global liquidity marketplace that simplifies cross-chain swaps. With over $20B in volume and integrations in major wallets and dApps, Bungee finds the fastest, cheapest, and most secure routes to move any token across any chain, delivering a gasless and user-friendly DeFi experience.

v2 & Solana: Bungee’s newly launched v2, the Open Liquidity Marketplace, makes trading across chains even smoother with BungeeAuto ensuring reliable swaps and access to deeper liquidity pools. Now, with Solana support, you can bridge from over 30 EVM chains to Solana in a snap, swapping tokens to dive into its thriving memecoin markets with minimal hassle.

👉 Swap smarter with Bungee v2 today!

. . .

That’s it for today’s edition! See you soon.

Reply

or to participate.