Good Morning,

It’s gotta be a GM for any crypto company with an open investigation by the SEC. The SEC has dropped 4 cases (Coinbase, OpenSea, Robinhood, Uniswap) in the last week - dropping almost as fast as Bitcoin

Here's a quick preview of today’s content: SEC dropped investigation into UniSwap, CZ reposts his crazy prediction that has come to fruition, Bernstein holds strong with it’s bullish bitcoin prediction, Eric Trump thinks its a good time to buy the dip in crypto, Uranium Finance hacked funds have been seized, and so much more.

Happy Hump Day. Let’s dive in.

Market Snapshot

• Crypto markets have lost -$325B of market capitalization since Friday

  • Crypto liquidations reached $100B in 1 hour on Monday evening 😅

  • Solana has been the most notable loser, down -15% this week

• Although the Bybit hack did cause mass liquidations and negative investor sentiment, the market crash began without any major headlines

• Kobeissi Letter released a great thread on what is going on with crypto liquidity, headlines, and market trends this week - dive into the thread here

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

• OKX agrees to pay $500M in a settlement with the DOJ over regulatory violations (DC) 

• The SEC closes its investigation in Ethereum DeFi Uniswap Labs (DC) 

• Former Binance CEO CZ quotes his own Tweet from 2020 predicting this Bitcoin crash with a new price prediction (X)

• Eric Trump encourages crypto investors to ‘buy the dip’ on X (TD) 

• Grayscale files up for a spot Polkadot ETF (TB) 

• Bernstein reiterates its $200K Bitcoin price target (TB)

• Aya Miyaguchi steps down as Executive Director of the Ethereum Foundation to become its President (BL) 

• Japan’s Metaplanet acquires an additional $13M Bitcoin (DC) 

• Bitcoin miner Riot Platforms reports record 2024 revenue thanks to 34% YoY growth (TB) 

• FTT token surges 29% after SBF's strange first post back on X since January 2023 (BL) 

• Onchain social network Zora introduces new minting system that makes posts tradable as tokens (BL) 

• Strive Asset Management urges GameStop to convert its $5B cash into Bitcoin (CD) 

• University of Austin partners with Texas Bitcoin Foundation, Bitcoin Policy Institute, Unchained, and Strive to host Satoshi Papers Symposium (BTCM) 

• Starknet introduces its first gaming application-chain, Nums (CD)

Launches

• PvP game Wildcard migrates Wildpass NFTs to Ethereum and plans token launch (BW)

• Tezos L2 Etherlink launches mainnet and introduces rewards programs (TD) 

Venture Capital

• Bitwise Asset Management raises $70M from investors including Electric Capital, MassMutual, and Haun Ventures (TB) 

• Multicoin purchases $8M of GEOD tokens for GPS (CD)

• RWA startup Mavryk Dynamics raises $5.2M in an investment round led by Ghaf Capital and others (CD) 

• White Star Capital leads $5M Series A investment into AI powered blockchain risk platform Lockchain.ai (FS)

• Restaking protocol Byzantine Finance raises $3M in a pre-seed round led by Node Capital and Blockwall Ventures (TB)

• Fixed-Rate lending startup Tenor Labs raises $2.5M from Cherry.xyz (AI)

• The Hashgraph Group deploys strategic capital into startup Truesense (FS)

Regulation

• Bitcoin Policy Institute announces Bitcoin for America event on March 11 with policy experts and executives including Senator Cynthia Lummis (X)

• U.S. Senator Dick Durbin introduces new bill to protect users from crypto ATM fraud (CT)

Cybersecurity

• South Korean police have arrested 4 suspects in ‘crypto-linked’ murder (CN)

• Virginia police seize $1.4M of crypto from pig butchering scam (CN)

• Kaspersky finds hackers creating fake GitHub projects to install crypto-stealing malware (CT)

• US authorities recover $31M in crypto stolen from the 2021 hack of Uranium Finance (DC)

• Leemon Baird and Charles Hoskinson discuss the future of crypto and decentralized recovery on stage at HederaCon (X)

Extra Reads

• A Strategic U.S. Bitcoin Reserve is still in consideration to combat national debt

  VanEck created a tool to estimate offsetting impact of a strategic reserve

Chart of the Day

Solana user transactions drop 40% as memecoins bring negative perspective on ecosystem, with capital outflows heading to Ethereum and Arbitrum while DEX volumes drop to pre-election levels

Meme Dump

Pls send us crypto memes to be featured in the newsletter 🤝

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