Jump Trading Pays $123M for $UST Manipulation

Alpha Team
December 20, 2024

💰 Jump Trading's $123M SEC Settlement

SEC Settlement and TerraUSD: Tai Mo Shan Ltd., part of Jump Trading, agreed to pay $123M for misleading investors about TerraUSD's stability. The SEC claimed its trades artificially propped up TerraUSD's $1 peg in May 2021.

Manipulative Trading Allegations: The SEC accused Tai Mo Shan of buying $20M of TerraUSD to stabilize its value, deceiving the public about the algorithm's effectiveness. The firm also underwrote Luna tokens, breaching securities laws.

Fairness of the Settlement: Jump Crypto allegedly made $1B from its secret deal with Terraform Labs, while retail investors lost $40B in Terra’s collapse. Critics argue the $123M fine is only 0.3% of retail losses and a fraction of Jump’s profits. Read More.

️ On today's Top Picks:

🦄 Unichain public mainnet launch set for early 2025.
👀 OpenSea Foundation posts "ocean enters the chat" on X.
🤝 US House of Representatives passes spending bill.
💰 Rumble raises $775M in Strategic funding from Tether.

Read time: ⏰ 7 minutes

Crypto News

• ⭐️ Jump Trading's Tai Mo Shan to pay $123M to settle charges of misleading investors about the stability of TerraUSD $UST.

• Bullish, CoinDesk's parent company, forces editors to delete Justin Sun article & fires three senior editorial staffers.

• Crypto Companies Kraken, Ripple, & Ondo donate to US President-elect Trump's Inauguration fund; donors can attend a reception with cabinet picks.

• Coinbase delists Wrapped Bitcoin $wBTC; US Court recently ruled Coinbase could proceed with delisting.

• Ethereum $ETH community continues pushing for gas limit increase; ~16% of validators signal gas limit increase greater than 30M.

• Tron $TRX announces strategic collaboration with Bitget to support ecosystem growth; Bitget acquires $10M of TRX.

• Sui $SUI Foundation appoints Christian Thompson as new Managing Director; previously worked at Mysten Labs & Meta.

• Aptos $APT Co-founder & CEO Mo Shaikh steps down "to start a new chapter"; CTO Avery Ching to assume CEO role.

• Craig Wright found in contempt of court by UK judge, sentenced to 12 months in jail; Wright to appeal verdict.

• Hawk Tuah Girl Haliey Welch breaks silence following $HAWK memecoin collapse & lawsuit; claims full cooperation with legal team.

• US SEC approves Hashdex Crypto Index ETF on Nasdaq; approves Franklin Crypto Index ETF on Cboe BZX.

• Hong Kong SFC accelerates crypto exchange licensing; approves licenses for HKbitEX, Accumulus, DFX Labs, & EX[.]io.

• Chainalysis acquires Hexagate, a web3 security provider; to provide a holistic risk solution that includes prevention, compliance, & remediation.

Alpha

• Weekly Airdrop Recap by Earndrop.

• t3rn Airdrop Strategy by Earndrop.

• ⭐️ Unichain unveils roadmap to public mainnet & beyond; public mainnet launch set for early 2025.

• Corn launches Baby Corn Program V2; 4.5M Babylon Points to be distributed over 45 days.

• Mezo launches $mUSD, Mezo's native stablecoin; borrow mUSD to purchase swag & NFTs, earn bonuses for utilizing mUSD.

• Squid launches support for Solana & Bitcoin powered by Chainflip.

• DeBank launches Movement $MOVE Airdrop Hunter Web3 Badge; users who received MOVE Movedrop eligible.

• Towns to launch rewards in Q1 2025; built on River, $RVR already confirmed.

• Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino drafts site for Tether's AI platform; targeting end of Q1 2025 release.

• Blockscout launches Merits dashboard; track total Merits & referrals, monitor daily claim streaks, view badge collection, & more.

Airdrops

• ⭐️ OpenSea launches OpenSea Foundation X account & posts "ocean enters the chat"; TGE & airdrop potentially coming soon.

• Fuel launches $FUEL Genesis Drop claim; phase 1 pre-depositors, testnet users, various NFT holders, developers, & more eligible.

• Odos launches $ODOS airdrop claim; Odos users eligible, LlamaSwap & Jumper users potentially eligible.

• Doodles founder burnt toast teases token with ciphered post on X; first letter of each word spells "token is coming."

• Myriad launches Myriad Foundation (Myriad, Decrypt, Rug Radio); $MYR coming in 2025.

• Enjoy launches $ENJOY airdrop 2 szn 5 claim; Zora users potentially eligible.

• ICYMI Nekodex Airdrop Strategy by Earndrop.

• ICYMI Cytonic Airdrop Strategy by Earndrop.

Finance News

• El Salvador to make Bitcoin acceptance voluntary for the private sector & restrict the public sector's involvement under $1.4B IMF deal.

• Hut 8 $HUT buys 990 Bitcoin for ~$100M, holds 10,096 Bitcoin worth ~$1B; to use Bitcoin through options, pledges, sales, or other strategies.

• Ark Invest $ARKF sells $3.9M of Coinbase $COIN stock; previously sold $2.8M of COIN on September 23rd.

• ⭐️ US House Of Representatives passes spending bill to avoid government shutdown; bill was 118 pages, down from initial 1.5K pages.

• Bank Of Japan keep interest rates unchanged at 0.25%; policymakers uncertain of US President-elect Trump's economic plans.

• MetaPlanet raises ~$61M through bond issuance to accelerate Bitcoin purchases; recently added Bitcoin Treasury Operations as new business line.

• Groupe BPCE, France's second-largest bank, to launch Bitcoin & cryptocurrency investment services.

• Cango $CANG board members to sell $2M of CANG stock; recent stock rally follows Cango's pivot into Bitcoin mining sector.

Security and Exploits

• North Korea-linked Hackers stole $1.3B in crypto in 2024; $2.2B total stolen by hackers, thieves, & scammers this year.

• Uniswap launches token warnings powered by Blockaid; notifies users when interacting with tokens that have dangerous properties or patterns.

• Tether freezes multiple addresses holding a total of $1.82M of $USDT; nearly ~2000 addresses have been frozen in 2024.

• Blockaid launches State of the Chain dashboard; highlights 2024 activity & security trends based on Blockaid data analysis.

Token Unlocks

• Space ID $ID / ~$34M / DEC 22
• EigenLayer $EIGEN / ~$6M / DEC 24
• Ethena $ENA / ~$15M / DEC 25
Sourced from Tokenomist

Funding

• ⭐️ Rumble raises $775M in Strategic funding from Tether.

• DuckChain raises $5M in funding.

• Kettle raises $4M in funding led by ParaFi Capital.

• Valhalla raises $1.5M in Pre-Seed funding led by Robot Ventures.

• Derive raises $500K in community funding on Echo.

• UTXO Stack raises undisclosed amount in Series A funding.

• FLock raises undisclosed amount in Strategic funding led by Digital Currency Group.

The Degen Farmer

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PROTOCOL	ASSETS	APY
Uniswap V3 (Ethereum)	SUSDEUSDT	175.39%
Curve DEX (Ethereum)	IDAIIUSDCIUSDT	98.10%
Usual (Ethereum)	USD0++	71.13%
Synthetix V3 (Base)	USDC	65.16%
Turbos (Sui)	USDTUSDC	57.46%
Indigo (Cardano)	IUSD	49.01%
DeltaPrime (Avalanche)	USDC	44.25%
Notional V3 (Ethereum)	NUSDC	42.71%

. . .

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