Trump Pardons Silk Road Founder Ross Ulbricht

️ On today's Top Picks:

Crypto News

• ⭐️ US President Trump pardons Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht; Ulbricht was arrested in 2013 and convicted in 2015 receiving two life sentences & forty years without parole.

• MicroStrategy $MSTR buys 11K Bitcoin $BTC for ~$1.1B at ~$101,191 per BTC; now holds 461K BTC worth ~$48B.

• Pump[.]fun sends ~116K Solana $SOL worth $28M to Kraken; Pump[.]fun has sent a total of ~1.9M SOL worth $390M to Kraken.

• Osprey Funds and Rex Shares file for several crypto-based ETFs; includes proposals for an $BTC ETF, $ETH ETF, $XRP ETF, $SOL ETF, $DOGE ETF, $TRUMP ETF, & $BONK ETF.

• ⭐️ Bitwise files Dogecoin $DOGE ETF registration; Dogecoin logo also briefly appeared on the Department of Government Efficiency website.

• US Court reverses Tornado Cash $TORN sanctions; the crypto mixing service was banned by US OFAC in 2022 due to its widespread use by hackers.

• Circle $USDC acquires Hashnote for an undisclosed amount; Hashnote is the issuer of the world’s largest tokenized money market fund, USYC.

• Crypto[.]com Exchange $CRO launches in the US; platform offers institutional-grade exchange services for advanced traders.

• Tokenize Xchange acquires Coinseeker for $30M; Coinseeker is a blockchain intelligence platform.

• CLS Global pleads guilty to wash trading charges; to pay ~$428K in seized crypto and penalties.

• ZachXBT cashes out $4M worth of Solana $SOL after receiving memecoin; ZachXBT did not sell the memecoin directly but rather through single-sided liquidity.

Alpha

• Solana Incubator announces Cohort 2 projects; Alphaledger, Chakra, Crunch, Easy, Marinade, & Stealth Company to work with Solana Labs over the next three months.

• ⭐️ Uniswap V4 deployments for builders this week; full launch expected next week.

• RedStone Oracles launches Wen campaign; participate in events & challenges to earn RSG over the next two weeks.

• Form Network launches Mainnet Quests on Guild; $1K to be given to one person every week for each quest.

• ICYMI ZKsync Ignite Program Airdrop Strategy by Earndrop.

Airdrops

• ⭐️ Jupiter launches $JUP Jupuary airdrop; traders, stakers, & voters are eligible.

• Animecoin launches $ANIME airdrop eligibility & allocation checker; Azuki community members, Hyperliquid $HYPE stakers, Arbitrum community members & more are eligible; claim on January 23rd at 1 PM UTC.

• Binance launches Animecoin $ANIME on HODLer Airdrops; BNB Simple Earn subscribers are eligible.

• Plume launches $PLUME airdrop claim; early adopters, testnet users, pre-deposit stakers, & more are eligible.

• Obol Collective launches $OBOL airdrop eligibility & allocation checker; Obol community members, Obol Contributions holders, Solo Stakers, & more are eligible.

• Timeswap launches $TIME airdrop; Timeswap V1 & V2 users, Timeswap NFT holders, Gamified Testnet users, & more are eligible;

• Lista launches $LISTA Season 3 airdrop claim; Lista Stardust holders are eligible.

• Swell launches $SWELL Wavedrop 2 claim; Swell Black Pearls holders are eligible.

Finance News

• ⭐️ US SEC Acting Chairman Mark Uyeda launches Crypto Task Force led by Commissioner Hester Peirce; group to develop regulatory framework for crypto assets.

• Utah State Representative Jordan Teuscher proposes Blockchain and Digital Innovation Amendments bill; bill authorizes state treasurer to invest public funds in digital assets.

• MicroStrategy $MSTR shareholders approve to increase number of authorized stock to 10.3B from 330M to finance the purchase of Bitcoin.

• KULR Technology Group $KULR buys 79.39 Bitcoin $BTC for ~$8M at ~$101,695 per BTC; now holds 510 BTC worth ~$54M.

• Riot Platforms $RIOT pauses 600MW Bitcoin $BTC mining expansion; to instead reserve that capacity for for AI and HPC.

• OpenAI announces Stargate Project, a new company that intends to invest $500B in building new AI infrastructure over the next four years; SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, & MGX are initial equity funders.

Security and Exploits

• Bubblemap highlights Melania Meme $MELANIA distribution still doesn’t match distribution on their website.

• Zero-click Deanonymization Attack can geolocate Signal and Discord users; attack exploits content delivery network caching mechanisms.

• Cloudflare mitigated record-breaking 5.6 Tbps DDoS attack in October 2024; attack targeted an ISP in Eastern Asia and originated from a Mirai-variant botnet.

Token Unlocks

• Immutable $IMX / ~$29M / JAN 24th
• AltLayer $ENA / ~$19M / JAN 25nd
Sourced from Tokenomist

Funding

• Corn raises $8.3M in Community funding on Legion.

• Wingbits raises $5.6M in Strategic funding led by Borderless & Bullish.

• Keplr Wallet raises $5M in Seed funding led by 1confirmation.

• GRVT raises $5M in Strategic funding from Further Ventures.

• Sorella Labs raises $2.25M in Community funding on Echo.

• Hamilton raises $1.7M in Pre-Seed funding led by DisrupTech Ventures.

• Sonex raises $1M in Seed funding led by Outliers Fund.

• Próspera raises an undisclosed amount in Strategic funding led by Coinbase Ventures.

• Project Untitled raises an undisclosed amount in Angel funding from several investors.

The Degen Farmer