US Court Approves Silk Road 69K Bitcoin Forfeiture

️ On today's Top Picks:

Crypto News

• ⭐️ Three Arrow Capital founders' $1B in assets frozen by British Virgin Islands court.

• Sam Bankman Fried request for sentencing process extension rejected by US Judge.

• Prometheum receives green light from FINRA for digital asset securities clearing and settlement services.

• Hong Kong prepares to accept cryptocurrency spot ETF applications.

• Argentina ratifies & confirms contracts can be set in Bitcoin.

• ⭐️ Tim Beiko outlines Ethereum Dencun upgrade schedule with mainnet set for Feb/Mar.

• Circle secures conditional DASP Registration in France.

• Paxos receives approval from NY financial regulators to expand to Solana.

• Worldcoin $WLD pauses Orb verification in India, Brazil, & France.

• Aleo launches the Aleo Foundation to guide and support the network.

• Qredo $QRDO secures debt financing as its co-founder & CEO is removed.

Alpha

• Diva mainnet launch set for end of Q1 or beginning of Q2.

• Astria introduces Rollup-as-a-Service; users can test deploying a rollup.

• Aptos Ecosystem Fundamentals Quest #2 is live on Galxe.

• Lumio by Potem launches Whitelist-To-Earn event to test Lumio L2.

• ZetaChain prepares next phase for ZETA points.

• RedStone launches Holiday Special with Premia campaign on Galxe.

• Mercato Holder Tab Key NFT is free to mint until tomorrow.

Airdrops

• Ethereum staking airdrops by Olimpio.

• Frame and ZKFair airdrops by Olimpio.

• Cosmos staking tutorial by Earndrop.

• Manta Network New Paradigm by mztacat.

Finance News

• ⭐️ Ark Invest sells another $24M worth of Coinbase $COIN shares in addition to $14.3M worth of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust $GBTC.

• IRS waives $1B in penalties for millions of taxpayers.

• Intel $INTC lays off 300+ employees amid its cost-reduction strategy.

• Wells Fargo $WFC employees in New Mexico branch vote in favor on unionization.

• Citigroup $C closes global distressed-debt group business.

• Nike $NKE stock plunges as it cuts revenue outlook for the fiscal year.

Security and Exploits

• US law enforcement faces cryptocurrency training shortfall, but demand surges.

• ⭐️ Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers receive security updates due to zero-day vulnerability.

• Chameleon Android banking trojan discovered to now bypass biometric authentication.

Token Unlocks

• Acala / 4.66M $ACA / ~$362K / DEC 24

Funding

• Medallion, a direct sales and marketing platform for music artists; raises $13.7M in Series A funding led by Dragonfly, Lightspeed, and Faction.

• Addressable, a web3 growth suite; raises $6M in funding.

• Web3mine, a web3 infrastructure; raises $6M in Seed funding led by 1kx.

• 4Everland, a web3 infrastructure; raises $2M in funding.

• Immutable raises an undisclosed amount in strategic investment from Framework Ventures.

• Ammalgam, a decentralized lending exchange, raises an undisclosed amount in funding.

The Degen Farmer