Silk Road $6.5B Bitcoin Sale Approved

️ On today's Top Picks:

Crypto News

• ⭐️ US Court greenlights sale of $6.5B of Bitcoin seized from Silk Road; ruling doesn't guarantee immediate liquidation.

• Terraform Labs Co-founder Do Kwon to go to trial in January 2026; prosecutors cite delays due to decrypting four phones.

• Ethereum Foundation $ETH sells 100 ETH for ~$336K DAI; first sale by the Ethereum Foundation in 2025.

• Sol Strategies secures CAD $25M credit to accelerate acquisition of Solana $SOL tokens; currently stakes ~1.5M SOL across its validator operations.

• Ripple $XRP CEO Brad Garlinghouse meets with US President-elect Trump; posts "Great dinner last night with Donald Trump ... Strong start to 2025!"

• Hyperliquid $HYPE addresses centralization and pay-to-play criticisms; Hyperliquid Founder Jeff posts, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, fud" on X.

• Arbitrum $ARB awards largest developer grant in its history to South Korea’s Lotte Group for its metaverse gaming platform Caliverse.

• Optimism $OP to launch Holocene upgrade on January 9th; unlocks new possibilities for fault proofs and interoperability features.

• SEC Lawsuit against Coinbase pauses after judge grants move for an interlocutory appeal; case to go to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals,

• Justin Sun elected prime minister of Liberland for a second time; no other country recognizes Liberland despite its claims.

• Bitfinex Derivatives secures Digital Asset Service Provider license in El Salvador; relocates Bitfinex Derivatives operations from Seychelles to El Salvador.

• Backpack acquires FTX EU and its MiFID II License for $32.7M; to offer regulated crypto derivatives across Europe.

• HashKey Group obtains Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) registration approval from Central Bank of Ireland; part of HashKey Group's global expansion strategy.

Alpha

• ZKsync Ignite Campaign Opportunities by Olimpio.

• Unichain posts "...We're one step closer to Public Mainnet" on X; enabled Permissionless Fault Proofs on its testnet.

• Berachain announces 27 Projects that qualified for Request for Application (RFA), a program designed to help scale and support builders in the ecosystem.

• Monad posts "something just happened" on X; to potentially launch public testnet soon.

• Movement Co-founder rushi posts "somethings coming..." on X; to potentially launch Movement Mainnet soon.

• Initia launches Frozen Filet Mignon NFT mint; testnet users of various dapps & various Discord role holders are eligible.

• Lazy reveals Lazy chain, a community-driven blockchain for Celestine Sloths powered by Astria with Celestia underneath.

• Sentient launches Fingerprinting Campaign to earn ownership of its Loyal AI model Dobby; previously raised $85M in Seed funding led by Pantera Capital, Framework Ventures, & Founders Fund.

• Nansen to launch Nansen Points program in Q2; everything to be retroactively calculated; subscribe, stake, and/or refer to earn points.

• Rainbow posts "Soon enough you'll see, true believers are always rewarded" on X; trade on Rainbow to earn points.

• Guild posts "Guild V2 LOADING" on X; Guild team member raz previously posted "The Guild team is entering a new phase as we begin the fourth year of its journey." on X.

• PumpBTC takes snapshot of Season 1 points on January 1st; Season 2 begins; Season 1 & Season 2 participants to be eligible for PumpBTC airdrop.

• Reya posts "Something's brewing on ReyaDEX... Keep your eyes peeled this week" on X; to potentially launch TGE & airdrop soon.

Airdrops

• Eclipse [UPDATED] Airdrop Strategy by Earndrop.

• Sonic SVM launches $SONIC airdrop claim; Odyssey participants, SonicX users, & more are eligible.

• ⭐️ Jupiter to launch $JUP Jupuary airdrop checker next week; to launch airdrop claim by end of January.

• Solv extends opportunity to claim accumulated points for Season 1 until January 10th 00:00 UTC; to launch $SOLV airdrop on January 17th.

• BSX to launch $BSX airdrop claim in January; Epoch 19 ongoing until January 13th.

• Xterio launches $XTER airdrop claim; Xterio Points holders are eligible; also launches $XTER Ecosystem Rewards for Age of Dino NFT holders.

• Bubblemaps to launch Bubblemaps airdrop soon for active V2 users; join V2 waitlist or get an invite from an existing user to earn points.

• Jambo to launch $J airdrop in January; Jambo points holders to be eligible.

Finance News

• US SEC Chainman Gary Gensler defends crypto stance; says there is still "work to be done"; to leave agency in less than two weeks.

• US CFTC Chairman Rostin Behnam plans to step down on January 20th; pushes for regulating cryptocurrency industry in last public speech.

• China NDRC releases policy document to leverage blockchain for national data infrastructure; aims to complete such infrastructure by 2029.

• ⭐️ South Korea FSC to gradually allow institutional investment in cryptocurrencies; to start by allowing non-profit organizations first.

• Czech National Bank (CNB) considers buying Bitcoin to diversify the bank’s reserves; decision would need to be approved by members of the CNB Board of Directors.

• Bhutan’s Gelephu Mindfulness City to adopt digital assets as part of its strategic reserves; Bhutan’s state investment arm has mined over 13K BTC since 2019.

• Hut 8 $HUT receives approval for ~$2.5B AI Data Center in Louisiana, USA; to be operational by the end of 2025 and completion in 2026.

• BIT Mining Limited $BTCM announces $14M agreement with Ethiopia; to acquire 51-megawatt facility & ~18K mining machines.

• KULR Technology $KULR buys ~$21M of Bitcoin; now holds $42M of BTC

• Thumzup Media $TZUP buys ~$1M of Bitcoin; management requests Board authorization to hold up to 90% of liquid assets in BTC.

• US President-elect Trump announces $20B investment to build AI data centers in the US.

Security and Exploits

• SlowMist Weekly Security Report highlights ~$91K in total reported losses; social media account compromises on the rise.

• Solv to cover user losses for recent hack; Solv's X account was briefly compromised resulting in a fraudulent Ethereum address being posted.

• Moby exploited due to private key compromise; team has decided to step down from Boyco, Berachain Pre-deposit.

• Orange Finance exploited due to private key compromise; team has attempted to contact the exploiter to negotiate the return of funds.

• Google releases January 2025 Android Security update; patches several critical security vulnerabilities.

• ⭐️ Telegram shared data of ~2K Users with US authorities in 2024; fulfilled 900 requests between October & December, but only 14 requests between January & September.

• Upgraded EAGERBEE malware targets government entities and internet service providers in the Middle East; attributed to threat group called CoughingDown.

Token Unlocks

• Movement $MOVE / ~$43M / JAN 09th
• Optimism $OP / ~$8M / JAN 09th
• Aptos $APT / ~$100M / JAN 11th
• Starknet $STRK / ~$28M / JAN 15th
Sourced from Tokenomist

Funding

• ⭐️ Movement Labs to raise $100M in Series B funding led by CoinFund & Brevan Howard's Nova Fund.

• SoSoValue raises $15M in Series A funding led by HongShan & SmallSpark.

• Aligned raises $1M in Community funding on Echo.

• Magma raises $300K+ in Community funding on Echo.

• Wave raises undisclosed amount in Seed funding led by KuCoin Labs.

• TONCASH raises undisclosed amount in Strategic funding from TON Ventures.

The Degen Farmer