SEC Investigates Coinbase, Sues Justin Sun, Arbitrum Airdrop Incoming

Top Stories 

• Coinbase: U.S. crypto giant Coinbase received a warning from the SEC regarding an ongoing investigation. The notice relates to aspects of the company’s exchange, its staking service, Coinbase Earn, and Coinbase Wallet (B).

• Arbitrum: Activity on Arbitrum, an Ethereum-layer 2 scaling system that uses Optimistic rollups technology to provide faster and cheaper transactions, has picked up the pace ahead of the planned airdrop of its native token ARB (CD).

• Bitcoin Miners: Texas lawmaker introduces resolution to protect Bitcoin miners. Cody Harris, a member of the Texas House of Representatives, has introduced a resolution aiming to have the legislature say the “Bitcoin economy is welcome” in the state (CT).

• SEC/Justin Sun: SEC sues Tron founder Justin Sun, Lindsay Lohan and other celebrities over crypto sales. The government agency charged Chinese cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun with fraud, and accused eight celebrities including actress Lindsay Lohan and rapper Soulja Boy with illegally promoting his crypto assets (R).

Web3 Games

• CCP Games: a16z has led a $40 million round for CCP Games. Iceland-based CCP Games will build a blockchain-based game set in the Eve Universe. Other participants in the round included Makers Fund, Bitkraft, Kingsway Capital, Hashed and Nexon (a16z).

• Shrapnel: First-person-shooter game Sharpnel let gamers play its pre-alpha playtest at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Reviews confirmed its AAA quality (DC). 

NFT News

• Trump NFTs: A set of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) related to former U.S. President Donald Trump have jumped over 30% in ether-denominated value over the past week amid a possible indictment and arrest of the former president (CD).

• SynFutures. Trading platform SynFutures launches alpha for Tinder-style NFT trading app, allowing up to 3x leverage by swiping left and right. NFTures is currently in alpha, and went live for a portion of SynFutures’ waiting list. The list has so far garnered around 14,000 signups (BW).

Into the Metaverse

• Shiba Inu: The much-anticipated SHIB The Metaverse has been announced to be launched on Shiba Inu’s Ethereum Layer 2 (L2) blockchain, Shibarium as part of its effort to transition from a meme community to a more technologically oriented movement (CN)

• Neal Stephenson: Best-selling author and creator of the term “metaverse” Neil Stephenson recently spoke at Paris Blockchain week. According to Stephenson, many of the current problems within the space come from people wanting to “financialize everything too fast” (CT).