Coinbase Announces Increase to USDC Rewards Program and the French Arm of Binance Under Investigation

Market Update At the time of writing, crypto markets have continued to lag behind other asset classes today - with $BTC and $ETH down 0.34% and 0.17%, respectively. Traditional markets continue to move higher, with SPX up 0.18% and NDQ up 0.08%. Gold has also risen 0.10%. The majority of altcoins continue to underperform Bitcoin and Ethereum. $OP is down 1.44%, $SOL is down 0.95%, and $LINK is down 1.83%. Chainlink's price fell last night and this morning when the Chainlink Foundation announced that 7% of the token's supply would be unlocked from Q3 2023 to Q1 2024. There are a couple of altcoins that are outperforming however, $LDO is up 1.31% and $CFX is up 2.69%.On Thursday, Coinbase announced an increase to its USDC rewards program, now offering customers a 4% return on their stablecoin holdings. Previously, the company offered customers a 2% reward rate on its platform. This increase aims to incentivize more users to use Coinbase to store their USDC. According to Coinbase, the specific reward rates are subject to modification, and customers will have direct visibility of the most up-to-date rates within their accounts. This move comes as the company faces scrutiny from the SEC, which sued the crypto exchange earlier this month, alleging it had violated securities laws