SEC Approves Bitcoin ETFs

️ On today's Top Picks:

Crypto News

• Pantera Capital to invest $200M in Bitwise Bitcoin ETF.

• ⭐️ Vitalik Buterin supports idea of increasing gas limit.

• Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan states Bitcoin does not have value.

• X ends NFT profile picture support.

• Celsius to notify users who withdrew more than $100K before bankruptcy to return part of funds.

• Binance, Kraken, Huobi, & more removed from Indian Apple app store amid compliance notices.

• Bitfinex removes products and services for certain UK customers due to regulatory requirements.

• BitGo secures in-principle approval to operate as a Major Payment Institution (MPI) in Singapore.

• CFTC advisory committee calls on government to work towards understanding defi.

• Jesse Pollack shares Base's mission & top priorities for 2024.

• Solana Foundation reports improved developer onboarding and retention in 2023.

• Laser Digital and WebN Group unveil Libre protocol, a fund tokenization infrastructure built with Polygon CDK.

• Fox collaborates with Polygon to launch Verify, a blockchain-based media platform.

• Ripple $XRP to purchase $285M of shares from early investors.

• Evmos departed co-founder to return 59.4M $EVMOS worth ~$7.1M to Evmos Foundation.

Alpha

• EigenLayer to unpause restaking caps and introduce three new LSTs January 29th.

• ⭐️ Starknet v0.13.0 upgrade proposal passes enabling cost reductions and sets up for fee payment by $STRK.

• RhinoFi launches Silver Rhino Quest on Starknet Quest.

• AltLayer announces Nitrogen, an Arbitrum Orbit testnet using Celestia.

• Manta Network launches Manta New Year 2024 Campaign on Galxe.

• RhinoFi launches Manta Pacific NFT's.

• Bebop whitelists new batch of addresses for Bebop beta.

• C3 self-custodial exchange launches public mainnet.

• Pixels $PIXEL alpha thread by Layergg.

Airdrops

• ⭐️ Xai $XAI airdrop is live.

• EtherFi releases 2024 roadmap illustrating token generation event (TGE) scheduled in April.

• DeBridge airdrop strategy by Crypto Snooper.

• BracketX airdrop strategy by Alpha Drops.

• Starrynift airdrop strategy by mztacat.

Finance News

• Marathon Digital $MARA, a Bitcoin mining firm was the most traded stock on Monday.

• X to launch peer-to-peer payments this year.

• Microsoft $MSFT investment in OpenAI could face EU merger probe.

• Microsoft $MSFT closing in on Apple $AAPL as most valuable company.

• Amazon $AMZN lays off hundreds of employees in its Prime Video and MGM Studios divisions.

• Unity $U to lay off 25% of its staff as part of corporate restructuring plan.

Security and Exploits

• ⭐️ SEC X account compromised due to lack of 2FA, fake Bitcoin ETF approval announcement posted.

• Coingecko X account compromised, fake airdrop posted.

• SlowMist publishes Solana security guide on Medium.

• Hackers targeting vulnerable MS SQL servers across the US, EU, and LATAM.

Token Unlocks

• Moonbeam / 3.04M $GLMR / ~$1.2M / JAN 10
• Aptos / 24.84M $APT / ~$219.6M / JAN 11
• CyberConnect / 1.26M $CYBER / ~$8.9M / JAN 14

Funding

• Finoa, a crypto custodian and staking services provider; raises $15M in Strategic funding led by Maven 11 Capital and Balderton Capital.

• OORT, a decentralized cloud service; raises $10M in funding.

• Altitude, an automated defi loan management platform; raises $6.1M in Seed funding.

• Entangle, an interoperable data infrastructure platform; raises $4M in Seed & Private funding.

• Ta-da, an AI data collection platform; raises $3.5M in funding.

• Ringfence, a creative rights platform; raises $1.5M in Seed funding led by Rarestone Ventures & Morningstar Ventures.

• Polyhedra, an infrastructure for Web3 interoperability; raises an undisclosed amount in funding from OKX Ventures.

The Degen Farmer