Ross Ulbricht Loses $12M

️ On today's Top Picks:

Crypto News

• ⭐️ Ross Ulbricht loses ~$12M of donated memecoin due to error in adding liquidity on Raydium; Ulbricht initialized the liquidity pool at the wrong price which was then taken by an MEV bot.

• ⭐️ Pump[.]fun faces another class action lawsuit over alleged unregistered securities sales; lawsuit asserts all tokens created on Pump[.]fun are securities.

• Grayscale files for Ripple $XRP ETF with NYSE; joined five other asset managers as prospective issuers.

• Tether releases Q4 2024 Attestation Report; highlights include $13.7B profit in 2024, $45B of $USDT issuance in 2024, & $113B in holdings.

• UBS completes proof-of-concept UBS Key4 Gold offering on ZKsync $ZK; experiment aimed to scale its gold offering while preserving privacy.

• LayerZero $ZRO settles with FTX estate over Alameda deal; returns Alameda's 5% equity stake in LayerZero to the FTX estate.

• Sam Bankman-Fried's parents seek pardon from President Trump for their son; it's not yet certain if they've reached out to the White House.

• Crypto PAC Fairshake raises $116M for US 2026 midterms; Coinbase, Ripple, Andreessen Horowitz, Jump Crypto, Uniswap Labs, & more have donated.

• T3 Financial Crime Unit assists Spanish Authorities with takedown of EU crime syndicate; $26.4M seized & 23 arrested.

Alpha

• Weekly Airdrop Recap by Earndrop.

• Term Labs Airdrop Strategy by Earndrop.

• Berachain posts "The Foundation has a Bear on it..." on X; to launch mainnet & airdrop soon.

• Uniswap $UNI launches Uniswap v4; introduces hooks ‒ contracts that allow anyone to customize how pools, swaps, fees, and LP positions interact.

• Concrete launches Morph vaults; deposit into vaults to earn Morph incentives.

• Stani posts "We've spent a lot of time on building the Lens Chain stack ... We will start rolling all this out in the upcoming weeks" on X; Lens mainnet coming soon.

Airdrops

• Pudgy Penguins $PENGU airdrop claim to end in 5 days; unclaimed PENGU to be burnt.

• Kinto to launch $K airdrop by March 31st; Onsen Season ongoing.

• Fuel launches $FUEL Phase 2 Genesis Drop claim; Fuel Phase 2 Points holders are eligible; claim ends March 1st.

• Tensor launches $TNSR Season 4 airdrop claim; claim through Vector for a 25% bonus; claim ends July 31st.

• ICYMI Resolv Airdrop Strategy by Earndrop.

Finance News

• US President Trump to impose tariffs on Canada & Mexico on March 1st; to include exemptions for certain imports.

• US President Trump threatens 100% tariffs on BRICS nations if they try to replace the US dollar; Kremlin has since said BRICS is not discussing the creation of a common currency.

• OpenAI in talks to raise $40B at a $340B valuation; OpenAI previously raised $6.6B at a $157B valuation in October.

• European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde says Bitcoin $BTC will not enter an EU countries' reserves; cites liquidity, security, and regulatory concerns.

• Czech National Bank approves proposal to consider investing in Bitcoin $BTC as a reserve asset; board to decide next steps based on analysis.

• ⭐️ MicroStrategy $MSTR raises $563.4M through Perpetual Strike Preferred Stock; to use funds to buy more Bitcoin $BTC.

• Coinbase $COIN acquires Spindl, an onchain ads and attribution platform; Spindl will continue to operate under Base.

• SoftBank invests $50M in Cipher Mining $CIFR to boost high-performance computing expansion; SoftBank also recently announced its investment in the Stargate Project.

Security and Exploits

• ⭐️ DeepSeek leaks over a million log entries including chat history, API keys, & more; leak due to misconfigured database but has since been addressed.

• Geth releases Schwarzschild update to fix vulnerability; flaw makes Geth versions from 1.14.0 susceptible to DoS through malicious p2p messages.

Token Unlocks

⭐️• Sui $SUI / ~$262M / FEB 01st
• ZetaChain $ZETA / ~$19M / FEB 01st
• Ethena $ENA / ~$31M / FEB 02nd
• XDC Network $XDC / ~$90M / FEB 05th
• Kaspa $KAS / ~$22M / FEB 05th
Sourced from Tokenomist

Funding

• Irreductible raises $24M in Series A funding led by Paradigm & Bain Capital Crypto.

• Cedar Money raises $9.9M in Seed funding led by QED Investors.

• Amoma raises $2.5M in Community funding on Echo.

• Project Untitled raises an undisclosed amount in Community funding on Echo.

• Spheron Network raises an undisclosed amount in funding from Arcanum Ventures.

The Degen Farmer