Good Morning,

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Here's a quick preview of today’s content: Nearly $1T has been wiped from crypto markets, BTC dips below $82k, Trump tariff announcements spook investors, Paradigm recruits ZachXBT, web3 x AI applications are finding major use cases, Oklahoma Bitcoin bill is moving forward, and so much more.

It’s almost Friday. Let’s dive in.

Market Snapshot

• Crypto has seen a $800B sell-off so far in 2025, with $300B liquidated in just the last few weeks

• Trump announced 25% tariffs against Canada and Mexico in his first week in office, which led to a negative market reaction

  • Trump recently announced plans for tariffs against the European Union, which has created negative market sentiment for American investors

• Institutions (that offer spot ETFs) have also been selling major amounts of Bitcoin in February

  • Ark, Grayscale, Fidelity, and Blackrock are institutions that have sold off large quantities of BTC this week

Headline Roundup
^{_{The major headlines driving crypto markets}}

• Trump announces 25% tariffs on the EU (WG) 

• Over $800B has been wiped from crypto markets in recent weeks (FT) 

• Bitcoin fell to a 2025 lows below $83K (CB) 

• SEC closes its investigation into Gemini (CT) 

• Bank of America plans to launch USD-pegged stablecoin if legislation passes (X) 

• Bitcoin miner Mara Holdings beats Q4 earnings expectations as 2024 revenue grew 69% YoY (TB) 

• DeFi platform Kava unveils the largest decentralized AI model to date (CD) 

• Former crypto-friendly congressman Patrick McHenry joins a16z as a senior advisor (CN)

• Polygon risks losing over $300M in TVL as Aave community votes to halt lending on PoS chain (TB) 

• Crypto sleuth ZachXBT joins the Paradigm as an incident response advisor (TB)

• SEC and Justin Sun ask a court to pause the SEC’s case against the crypto entrepreneur (CT) 

• Ark Invest acquires $8.7M of Coinbase shares and sells $8.6M of its own spot Bitcoin ETF (TB)

• Uniswap Labs spent ‘tens of millions’ fighting the SEC (BW) 

• Tron’s ‘Gas Free’ feature to support USDT payments expected to go live next week (CT) 

• A former chief attorney at the CFTC believes the agency should regulate memcoins (CT) 

Launches

• Moca Network partners with SK Planet for web3 expansion via OKI launch (CT)

• Fetch.ai launches ASI-1 mini web3 native LLM for agentic AI workflows (AI)

Venture Capital

• QuickNode launches its $65M accelerator program for L2 projects (TB)

• Blockchain-powered payments and loyalty company Raise raises $63M in a funding round led by Haun Ventures (FN) 

• ZKP technology startup Ligero raises $4M in a seed round led by Galaxy Ventures and 1kx (CC) 

• Bitcoin-backed stablecoin developer Aegis raises $2M in a pre-seed round led by on-chain DAO Dewhales (BW)

• Endless announces $1M strategic backing from Foresight Ventures (MS)

• SatoshiPay raises $890K to support its blockchain-based payments solution Vortex (SP)

Regulation

• US legislators push back their timeline for passing comprehensive crypto framework legislation (DC) 

• The House of Representatives will consider a resolution to prevent the IRS from imposing tax reporting requirements on DeFi (DC) 

• Oklahoma's strategic Bitcoin reserve bill passes its House Committee (WG)

Cybersecurity

• India is cracking down on an eight-year-old $75.8M Bitcoin ponzi scheme (CT) 

• A Washington man amassed $287K in crypto from selling drugs on the dark web (KN)

• Pump.fun’s X account is hacked to promote a fake PUMP scam token (BC)

• A recent GrassCall malware campaign has been installing malware using fake Web3 job interviews to drain crypto wallets (BC)

Extra Reads

• Robinhood is blending TradFi and DeFi and onboarding users to crypto

  Listen to co-founder & CEO Vlad Tenev discuss accelerating the future of crypto

• President Trump is in trade negotiations with the European Union that could include tariffs

  Here’s the potential impact of a US-EU tariff trade deal

Chart of the Day

Just a friendly reminder where Bitcoin adoption currently stands & its long-term potential

Meme Dump

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