Quick take
- McDonald’s Instagram Account Seemingly Hacked to Promote Solana Token ‘Grimas’
- NBA All-Stars Jimmy Butler and Ben ‘Beat Boy’ Armstrong Settle Class Action Lawsuit Against Binance
- Bitcoin Trading Slumps After Downward Revision of US Job Growth
- The following is an excerpt from The Block’s newsletter, The Daily, published weekday afternoons.
Happy Wednesday! In today’s Daily, we look at how hackers hacked McDonald’s Instagram account to promote Solana tokens, NBA players and YouTubers reach a settlement in a Binance-related class action lawsuit, Bitcoin trading is at a standstill, and more.
Let’s get started.
McDonald’s Instagram appears to have been hacked to promote ‘Grimace’ tokens
- According to Pump.fun data, the GRIMACE token surged to a market cap of $20 million before crashing below $1 million.
- The compromised Instagram account referred to GRIMACE as “Solana’s McDonald’s Experiment,” but the post has since been removed.
- The hacker also altered McDonald’s Instagram profile page to thank users for “$700,000 in Solana” and make reference to the rug smuggling.
- Pump.fun, a Solana-based Mimecoin generator, has generated over 1.8 million Mimecoins since its launch in January.
- The Solana Mimecoin market faced significant volatility in August, with weekly outflows hitting a record high due to the recent decline in Mimecoin trading activity.
Jimmy Butler and Ben ‘BitBoy’ Armstrong Settle Class Action Lawsuit Regarding Binance
- A class action lawsuit filed in March 2023 accused Armstrong, Butler and Binance of harming consumers, but the two celebrities denied any wrongdoing.
- The lawsuit claims that Armstrong and Butler promoted Binance, recruited new customers, and earned fees, as well as claimed that cryptocurrencies like BNB and BUSD were securities.
- The settlement follows broader legal action against Binance, including a lawsuit from the CFTC alleging unregistered trading activities and the SEC alleging illegal operations in the United States.
Bitcoin Trading Slumps After Downward Revision of US Job Growth
- The U.S. Department of Labor reported that 818,000 fewer jobs were created between March 2023 and March 2024 than previously estimated, indicating increased economic vulnerability.
- The biggest downward revision to jobs growth since 2009 suggests the U.S. jobs market is weaker than expected, raising questions about whether the Federal Reserve is overstating the strength of the economy to delay cutting interest rates.
- Despite cautious market sentiment, Bitcoin rose 0.9% to $59,464, while major European indices closed higher.
Aave Launches on Era Mainnet
- By integrating zero-knowledge proof technology into Aave V3, we aim to provide users with secure and cost-efficient transactions while expanding DeFi scalability and institutional use cases.
- Aave DAO has approved USDC, USDT, WETH, and wstETH as the first assets available on Era and will redistribute ZKsync airdrops through liquidity mining and other incentives.
- The Aave ecosystem’s expansion to ZKsync also includes the ongoing migration of Lens, a social media protocol, from Polygon to ZKsync, which is expected to be completed in Q4.
Base DeFi protocol BSX raises $6.2 million
- The funds will be used to expand BSX’s business beyond derivatives trading, with the launch of spot trading aggregation services and yield and staking products expected in the coming months.
- BSX plans to introduce a Layer 3 network to Base in Q1 2025 to optimize the on-chain order book and enable permissionless listing of new assets.
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© 2024 The Block. All rights reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not provided or intended to be legal, tax, investment, financial or other advice.
About the Author
MK Manoylov has been a reporter for The Block since 2020, joining just before Bitcoin first broke $20,000. Since then, MK has written nearly 1,000 articles for the publication, covering all aspects of crypto news but with a penchant for NFTs, metaverse, web3 games, fundraising, crime, hacking, and crypto ecosystem stories. MK holds a graduate degree from the Science, Health, and Environment Reporting Program (SHERP) at New York University and has also covered health topics for WebMD and Insider. You can follow MK on X @MManoylov and on LinkedIn.