Malaysia Orders Bybit Shutdown

️ On today's Top Picks:

Crypto News

• ⭐️ Malaysia SC orders Bybit to suspend local operations for operating without proper registration; given 14 business days to do so starting from December 11th.

• ⭐️ MicroStrategy buys an additional 2,138 Bitcoin $BTC for ~$209M at ~$97,837 per BTC; now holds 446,400 BTC worth ~$42B.

• Tether adds 7,629 Bitcoin $BTC worth ~$705M to its Bitcoin reserves; now holds 82,983 BTC worth ~$7.7B.

• Pantera Founder Dan Morehead predicts 2025 will be a bull market, but August 2025 will be the peak of this cycle.

• Foundry USA Pool refunds user who accidentally paid an 8.18 Bitcoin $BTC transaction fee worth ~$770K.

• Grayscale Research adds Hyperliquid $HYPE, Ethena $ENA, Virtuals $VIRUAL, Jupiter $JUP, Jito $JTO, & Grass $GRASS its Top 20 list for Q1 2025.

Alpha

• ⭐️ Hyperliquid launches $HYPE staking; stake HYPE & earn staking rewards.

• Berachain launches Ethena x Concrete Boyco Pre-Deposit Vault; deposit $USDe or $sUSDe to earn multipliers on Ethena Rewards, Concrete Bags, & Bera incentives.

• ink launches DeFi Training Grounds - Week 2 quest on Guild.

• Reddio Early Bird Special ends January 10th; Early Bird Special earns 10% bonus points.

• Newton posts "The seeds are planted. The crystals are coming. 01.02.25" on X; Newton is a ZK L2 by Magic Labs.

• Kernel DAO (Kelp DAO) Season 1 ends December 31st; earn a 15% loyalty boost for Season 2 by restaking before January 15th.

• Level launches on Intract; complete quests & earn extra XP.

• Hey (Lens) to close signups for Lens v2 soon; says "Get ready for Lens v3!"

Airdrops

• Initia Airdrop Strategy by Earndrop.

• ⭐️ Binance launches Solv Protocol $SOLV on Binance Megadrop; lock BNB & complete Web3 Quests to earn an airdrop.

• tea Protocol to launch $TEA TGE December 31st; to host "Token Generation Event" X Space tomorrow.

• ICYMI Weekly Airdrop News by Earndrop.

• ICYMI ZKsync $ZK airdrop claim closes on January 3rd, 2025; unclaimed tokens to be sent to the Token Assembly.

Finance News

• The Blockchain Association, DeFi Education Fund, & Texas Blockchain Council sue US IRS to challenge recent finalized rule requiring DeFi to report user data.

• Bitcoin clean energy usage hits ~57%; Elon Musk previously said Tesla $TSLA would resume Bitcoin payments when clean energy usage exceeded ~50%.

• The People's Bank of China highlights cryptocurrency regulation in its 2024 Financial Stability report; notes Hong Kong is “actively exploring” crypto licensing.

• Hong Kong lawmaker proposes incorporating Bitcoin into Hong Kong’s fiscal reserves & to consider using the Exchange Fund to continue buying & holding BTC.

• Genius Group $GNS buys ~$10M of Bitcoin at ~$93,919 per BTC.; now holds 319.4 BTC worth ~$30M.

• US President-elect Donald Trump threatens the EU with major tariffs if it does not purchase US oil & gas in large scale.

• Singapore's DBS Group appoints Rajat Verma as CEO of DBS Bank India; to succeed Surojit Shome who retires at the end of February.

Security and Exploits

• Feed Every Gorilla $FEG exploited for ~$1M; preliminary investigation points to vulnerability in the bridge.

• ⭐️ US Treasury Department hacked by Chinese state-sponsored threat actors; breached through BeyondTrust remote support platform.

• AT&T & Verizon claim their networks are secure after Salt Typhoon breach; nine US telecommunications companies were impacted by the hacking campaign.

• 5 Important Developments in BlockChain Security by Crypto ISAC.

Token Unlocks

• Optimism $OP / ~$59M / DEC 31st
• Sui $SUI / ~$275M / JAN 01st
• ZetaChain $ZETA / ~$31M / JAN 01st
• dYdX $DYDX / ~$13M / JAN 01st
• Maverick $MAV / ~$8M / JAN 01st
• Ethena $ENA / ~$13M / JAN 01st
Sourced from Tokenomist

Funding

• Accountable raises $2.3M in Seed funding led by MitonC by Zee Prime Capital.

• easeflow raises an undisclosed amount in Strategic funding from Orbiter Finance.

The Degen Farmer