📈 MARKETS

Bitcoin is continuing its hike. Of its 65% gain this year, nearly 50% of it came in the past two weeks. This guy even bet $2 million that it will reach $1,000,000 in 90 days (I know everyone’s excited, but that’s still a long shot imo 😅).

🍩 DONUT HOLES

• Credit Suisse taken over by UBS, its rival bank

• Bitcoin’s correlation with Nasdaq is at 1-year low

• Nike’s new Air Force 1s👟 exclusively for its NFT holders

• Amazon lays off 9,000 more employees

• Apes in the Louvre

REGULATIONS

Jake Paul, Lil Yachty, Ne-Yo, and more in the crosshairs of the SEC

The SEC’s been chasing after Justin Sun, the mastermind behind those multi-billion dollar cryptocurrencies Tronix (TRX) and BitTorrent (BTT). They claim he's been selling TRX and BTT tokens as investments without registering them with the SEC. Oh, and there's some market manipulation and wash trading thrown in for good measure.

Celebs in the crosshairs

Eight celebrities, including Lindsay Lohan, Jake Paul, Soulja Boy, Austin Mahone, Kendra Lust, Lil Yachty, Ne-Yo, and Akon, got caught in the crossfire for promoting TRX and BTT tokens without revealing they were getting paid. With a combined Twitter following of 46.3 million, it's clear Justin Sun splurged big-time on that marketing campaign. Most of the celebs settled with the SEC for $400,000 each, except Soulja Boy and Austin Mahone.

$1B lawsuit over FTX promos

And if you think that's wild, it's not even the first time celebs have faced the heat for crypto promos. Remember when FTX, one of the largest crypto exchanges, collapsed after misusing customer funds? Retail investors are now suing nine YouTubers for over $1 billion for promoting FTX and its unregistered securities. The lineup includes Kevin Paffrath, Graham Stephan, Andrei Jikh, Jaspreet Singh, Brian Jung, Jeremy Lefebvre, Tom Nash, Ben Armstrong, and Erika Kullberg. I see some familiar names there myself, yikes.

DYOR before diving in

What’s the takeaway? Just because a celeb promotes something doesn't mean it's legit or safe. So next time you're eyeing an investment, make sure you do your own research (DYOR) before jumping on the bandwagon!

DEFI

Here’s a new career path for you - an airdrop hunter!

What are airdrops?

Basically, airdrops are crypto’s version of freebies. They’re about distributing free tokens when you complete certain missions. Remember the massive $BLUR airdrop we talked about earlier this month? Yep, that’s the kind of marketing scheme that’s all over the crypto scene.

What are airdrop hunters?

As you might’ve guessed already, airdrop hunters scavenge around just looking for airdrops to score some dough. What you’re seeing in the image above is how a airdrop hunter named cryptocp0x.nft has amassed a total of more than $277K just from airdrops alone. Who needs altcoins and yield farming when you can bring home the bacon almost risk-free with airdrops?

$ARB: The latest big airdrop

Lately, everyone’s been talking about the Arbitrum airdrop, and for good reason! Folks who have been using Arbitrum, the hottest Ethereum scaling solution, are in for a pleasant surprise—they might score more profits from this than their Bitcoin investment! Even if you made a single transaction on Arbitrum (not spending any $$, just moving your $$ into Arbitrum), you may have seen a payout of over $100.

What you can start doing today

What’s tricky about being an airdrop hunter is that you never know what “actions” these projects will reward you for, or if they’re even going to do an airdrop at all. So you’re always just doing all sorts of random stuff, in hopes that they’ll surprise you with a big, shiny “thank you” for being their avid user.

The good news? Crypto is transparent, so you can easily find out and follow what skilled airdrop hunters like cryptocp0x.nft are doing to get these insane airdrops. Just search their address on Etherscan and follow their transactions until you get a good sense of what projects to go for yourself (psst, some members of our team are betting on zkSync and StarkWare).

🐦 TWEET OF THE WEEK