Good Morning,

Here's a quick preview of today’s content: El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele won’t let anyone get in his way to buy BTC, top crypto execs prep for this Friday’s White House event, Alexis Ohanian has plans for TikTok and blockchain, Cathie Wood’s ARK stays bullish on Coinbase, A Mexican Billionaire keeps liquidity in crypto, 2 professional sports leagues affected by crypto scammers, and so much more below.

Halfway through the week. Let’s dive in.

Market Snapshot

Data per CoinMarketCap on 3/4/25

  • Yesterday ETH reached its lowest price in 4 months, dipping to $1,995

  • This week has included a handful on insights and news regarding crypto that have pushed it into the red:

    • Crypto Strategic Reserve – which has received lots of negative sentiment from the crypto community

    • President Trump prepares for tariff plan to kick off

Headline Roundup
The major headlines driving crypto markets

  • El Salvador’s President says it won’t stop buying bitcoin, even with $3.5B IMF deal (CD)

  • Reddit co-founder announces plans to buy TikTok and bring it on-chain (X)

  • BlackRock warns of Bitcoin shortage for 56 million U.S. millionaires amid 21 million Bitcoin supply (TD)

  • David Sacks quietly divests position in Craft Ventures portfolio company BitWise to avoid conflict of interest (CD)

  • On-chain report shows $100M Bitcoin buy order by Fidelity (X)

  • Ether hits 4 month low, dropping below $2,000 (BT)

  • Six ancient BTC addresses holding $22M in assets move after years of inactivity (DC)

  • SEC agrees to dismiss lawsuit against Cumberland DRW (DC)

  • Ark Invest buys 38,865 Coinbase shares for $8M and sells $8.2M in spot Bitcoin ETF amid market retracement (TB)

  • Nasdaq filed a 19b-4 on behalf of Grayscale’s spot Hedera ETF (TB)

  • Trump and TSMC CEO announce $100B investment in U.S. manufacturing facilities (DC) 

  • Mexico's telecom billionaire magnate Ricardo Salinas invests 70% of his liquid portfolio in Bitcoin (DC) 

  • Pump.fun trading volume plummets 94% following historic January (TB)

  • FTX/Alameda unstakes $430M in Solana, moves funds across 37 wallets (TD)

Launches

  • Zora announces its token airdrop, coming this spring (DC)

  • Megaeth expected to launch public testnet this week (TB)

  • Blockworks relaunches The Drop daily newsletter focused on gaming, web3, NFTs (BW)

Venture Capital

  • Metaplanet allegedly exercises $87M stock subscription rights for Series 13 and 14, with funding supported by EVO FUND (CC)

  • Crypto market maker Flowdesk announces $52M majority equity financing led by HV Capital (TB)

  • Interoperability-focused Across Protocol raises $41M in token sale round, led by Paradigm (TB)

  • Berachain´s liquid staking protocol Infrared Finance raises  $14M in Series A funding round, led by Framework Ventures (TB)

  • Acki Nacki prepares for network launch with $6M raise led by Hack VC and Kingsway Capital (GN)

  • Fastlane Labs reportedly raises $6M round led by Figment Capital and DBA (CC)

  • Combinder, a European decentralized energy data startup, raises $500k pre-seed at $10M valuation from 1kx, Outlier Ventures, and others (SR)

Regulation

  • IMF adds new conditions to $1.4 billion EFF for El Salvador, tightening Bitcoin restrictions (DC)

  • Vietnam expected to have new legal framework for digital assets by June (DC)

  • SBI VC Trade to introduce support for Circle’s USDC stablecoin as Japan eases regulatory barriers (CN) 

  • Crypto and AI czar David Sacks says the White House is backing bill to rescind Broker DeFi rule (X)

Cybersecurity

  • Bybit CEO Ben Zhou reports 20% of stolen funds are not traceable anymore (TB)

  • NBA and NASCAR official X accounts hacked by crypto scammers (FOS)

  • 49 Bitcoin and Monero wallet addresses tied to Nemesis darknet marketplace added to US Treasury sanctioned entities (TB)

Extra Reads

  • Solana onchain activity slowed down in February after a chaotic start of the year.

    • Real Economic Value: $196M, -64% MoM

    • App Revenue: $284M, -56% MoM

    • DEX Volumes: $156B, -54% MoM

    • Stablecoin Supply: $11.2B, -2% MoM

    A full deep dive into the February Solana data

Chart of the Day

February Spot ETF data show Ethereum as the clear winner with $60M inflows while Bitcoin sees $3.55B outflows

Meme Dump

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