Bitcoin Price Drops Below $60K, Celsius Bankruptcy Distributions Exceed $2.5B!

GM anon ☕🐺

In today’s Alpha Bytes👇

Bitcoin slips under $60K again. Sony is launching the first public testnet for its Optimism-based Soneium blockchain. Nasdaq seeks SEC approval to list and trade bitcoin index options. Celsius bankruptcy distributions exceed $2.5B to 251K creditors. “Set Telegram CEO Durov free” letter surpasses 300K signatures.

BTC $59,410 (-5.91%), ETH $2,478 (-8.01%), SOL $148.11 (-6.87%)

Crypto News 📰

• Russia challenges US dominance with new cryptocurrency exchanges

• Solana Optimistic Network raises funds in a 'cobuilder' round without participation from VC firms

• Binance urges US to intervene amid Nigeria-held exec's declining health as hearing is brought forward

• Bitwise Bitcoin ETF to acquire the assets from Osprey Bitcoin Trust

• Nigeria’s SEC issues first license to local crypto exchange

• CME to launch bite-sized Bitcoin ‘Friday’ futures in bid for retail

• New node certification could coax more institutions into Ether staking  

• Critical bug identified and remedied in Circle’s Noble-CCTP

• US lawmaker reports AERO, GRT and VELO investments in 2024

• Watchdog alleges Super Micro is riddled with accounting, sanctions scandals

• Iota completes EU blockchain pre-commercial phase

• Xapo Bank teams up with trading firm Hilbert Group to launch $200m Bitcoin fund

• Vitalik Buterin discloses $139K salary amid EF spending talks

• Donald Trump releases fourth NFT collection

• SEC charges Abra with unregistered sales of crypto asset securities

• Martin Shkreli must give up copies of one-off Wu-Tang album, says judge

Project Updates 🔥 

• Aave Labs proposes integrating GHO stability module with BlackRock’s BUIDL

• Ondo’s USDY yield coin expands to Arbitrum

• CoinDCX’s Okto becomes first Web3 wallet licensed in UAE’s RAK DAO

• Robinhood wallet adds support for Solana

• Animoca Brands-backed KOR Protocol unveils new decentralized music platform

• Solana restaking protocol Solayer reaches $80M valuation

• TON struck by outage, no new blocks produced in 3 hours

• Bitget allows Crypto Wallet users to log in with Telegram

• Meta cancels next-gen headset amidst changing market landscape

Threads 🧵 

• The future of privacy tech in blockchain

• Rollups are the final frontier of scaling

• State of the secondary OTC market

• Stablecoin market cap reaches all-time high of $168B

• BTC spot ETFs have seen strong inflows

• Wallets buying Penguins

• Finally the charges against Pavel Durov has been published

Launches 🚀 

• $SAI is now officially listed

• The Xardian Node whitelist sale is now live

• The StratoVM Node whitelist sale is officially open

• Nexon launches NXPC token to enhance MapleStory Universe

• Masa launches Subnet on Bittensor mainnet

• Artemis to launch first MEV enhancement tools on Layer 2

• Telegram mini-application called Digital Resistance

Fundraise 💰

• Nectar AI raised $3.9M in a seed funding round

• Blockchain database firm SxT Labs raises $20M in Series A round

• Gameplay Galaxy raises $24M seed round for Web3 gaming platform

• Origami Finance secures $1.5M in seed funding for Automated Leverage Protocol

• Legion secures $2M in seed funding led by Cyber Fund

• Echelon Market secures $3.5M in seed funding led by Amber Group

That's a wrap for today!

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