PlayStation's stablecoin power-up

GM citronauts. Your daily glass of crypto OJ is ready. Packed with vitamin B(itcoin) and other essential nutrients to keep you informed on the go.

🐤 Flappy Bird's creator denies any involvement with a group claiming to revive the game with potential crypto integration.

🎮 USDC will be brought into Sony's new blockchain, Soneium.

🍊 News drops: gunshots were heard near Donald Trump again, a DeFi project on Base ghosted with $130K of user funds, SBF appealed his conviction and sentence + more

🍍 Market flavour today

Find out more about the Fear & Greed Index here.

Name	Price	24H %	7D %
Crypto Market Cap $2.12 Trillion -4.4% (24H)
Bitcoin BTC	$58,077.83	-3.04%	4.99%
Ethereum ETH	$2,284.81	-5.07%	-0.73%
BNB BNB	$544.15	-2.08%	7.99%
Solana SOL	$131.23	-3.02%	1.65%

Prices as of 10:15 AM EST. Click here to see live data.

The crypto market mood's looking up a bit, with the Fear and Greed Index climbing to 39. But prices are taking a hit today, with Bitcoin leading the drop, even though some coins are still in the green for the week. No one's quite sure why we're seeing red today. Could be jitters about the upcoming Fed meeting on interest rates. But hey, the big players aren't scared - MicroStrategy just threw another $1.11 billion at Bitcoin.

Heads up for a potentially wild week ahead. The Fed, Bank of England, and Bank of Japan are all set to make interest rate decisions that could shake things up in both traditional and crypto markets.🧑🏼‍⚖️

🐤 Flappy Bird's creator is NOT a crypto bro: Confirmed

Haven't heard about this menace of a game in a while, huh? 10 years ago, it was the reason for a lot of cursing and probably more than a few holes punched in walls. And now, it’s making a comeback… well, sorta.

A group called The Flappy Bird Foundation announced they're bringing the game back, saying they've worked with its "predecessor" and legally secured its rights.

Maybe the real predecessor was the friends we made along the way 'cause it's definitely not Flappy Bird's OG creator, Dong Nguyen. The guy's been quiet for 7 years and just popped back up to clarify that he has nothing to do with this new project and does not support crypto.

Oh yeah, about the crypto thing—a researcher named Varun Biniwale found some web pages hinting that the new Flappy Bird might be a play-to-earn game on Solana. Although those pages have since disappeared, the rumors are still flying (I know, flawless pun; hold your applause).

Biniwale also threw some shots at the company, saying it feels sketchy and might just be trying to cash in on nostalgia.

So, whether this is a comeback we didn't know we needed or just another cash grab—we'll have to wait and see.

🎮 From PlayStation to blockchain to USDC

Circle, the stablecoin issuer, is teaming up with Sony Blockchain Solutions Labs to make USDC one of the main tokens on Soneium. In case you missed it, Soneium is Sony's new Layer-2 blockchain on Ethereum that just launched last month.

This collab will bring Circle's Bridged USDC Standard into the blockchain. Ok, so? Basically, it's a bridged form of USDC that works on Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible blockchains—that's good news for devs building on Soneium 'cause now they can easily integrate digital dollar payments into their apps.

USDC can already flex its spot as the #2 stablecoin on the planet. This partnership might take it to the next level, especially with Sony's potential to reach a mainstream audience.

However, the competition won't make this level easy:

- Tether's USDT remains #1 and plans to launch stablecoins pegged to other currencies, like the UAE dirham;

- PayPal has recently launched PYUSD, which has already reached a market cap of over $1B;

- Ripple plans to launch RLUSD.

That being said—let the games begin.

📰 News drops

🔫 Former President Donald Trump is safe after gunshots were heard near him (again). The incident, which occurred at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, is under investigation to figure out if the shots were actually aimed at Trump.

🤙 BaseBros Fi, a DeFi project on Base, did a rug pull, disappearing with $130K worth of crypto. According to Chain Audits, the scam happened through an unaudited Vault contract with a backdoor vulnerability that let the project owners secretly take user funds.

🤷 The SEC “regrets any confusion it may have invited” by repeatedly claiming that tokens themselves are securities. This was mentioned in their amended complaint against Binance.

🎧 Residents in a Norwegian town saw their power bills go up by $300 a year after a local Bitcoin miner shut down because it was too noisy. The miner had been paying 20% of the area's grid fees, subsidizing electricity costs for everyone else.

⛓️ Ex-FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s lawyers have appealed his conviction on seven felony charges and his 25-year sentence. They argue that the jury only saw "half the picture" regarding FTX user funds, accusing prosecutors of pushing a false narrative that the money was permanently lost and that SBF intentionally caused it.

👾 Stablecoin issuers blacklisted two addresses linked to North Korean hackers, the Lazarus Group, which were flagged by blockchain investigator ZachXBT. These addresses held $4.96M connected to the group.

🦹 The DeFi platform Delta Prime was hacked for at least $6M in crypto. The hacker took control of the address that manages the platform's proxies and redirected them to a malicious contract.