Good Morning,

Here's a quick preview of today’s content: A new testnet was created by Ethereum developers, gold-backed crypto is a ‘hot commodity’, Hashdex hopes to add 7 altcoins to its ETF, Standard Chartered Bank strikes ETH prediction 60%, OKX dex activity suspended, and much more.

Happy Tuesday. Another day full of important headlines. Let’s dive in.

Market Snapshot

• Macro: The cryptocurrency market declined slightly on Monday as investors remained cautious ahead of the upcoming Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting on Wednesday, which is expected to provide insights into future interest rate policy

  • The total cryptocurrency market cap has declined by -1% to $2.83T

• “Concerns over the US economy have grown following signs of a cooling labor market and a drop in consumer sentiment,” said Konstantinos Chrysikos, Head of Customer Relationship Management at Kudotrade. “Over the weekend, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent acknowledged the risk of a potential recession, further dampening confidence.”

• PancakeSwap CAKE has also flipped Uniswap UNI by 60% to become the top DEX by 24-hour volume, processing $1.64B compared to Uniswap’s $1B. However, Uniswap still leads in terms of weekly metrics with $15.25B in seven-day volume compared to PancakeSwap’s $10B

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

• Strategy expands Bitcoin holdings in by selling a huge chunk of its own preferred stock (CD)

• Ethereum developers create third testnet, Hoodi, as Pectra upgrade delayed until late April (CT)

• White House memo reveals David Sacks and Craft Ventures sold a massive crypto bag crypto before becoming AI and crypto czar, see how much here 

• Telegram CEO Pavel Durov returns to Dubai after France detention (BL)

• Bitcoin network hashrate rises higher in first two weeks in March (CD)

• Gold-backed crypto on the rise, Gundlach forecasts gold´s rally to continue (CD)

• Robinhood launches prediction markets hub, partnering with Kalshi (TB)

• Canary Capital files with SEC to launch Sui ETF (CD)

• Hashdex revises S-1 for crypto index ETF, adding seven altcoins (CT)

• Sam Altman’s World Network partners with Razer to combat bots in video games (CD)

• Crypto exchange Kraken to launch new colocation service for ultra-low latency trading (CD)

• Gemini hires new CFO as crypto exchange braces for changes under the Trump administration (TB)  

• Momentum builds for Lummis' proposal to acquire 1M BTC (BW)

• PancakeSwap outperforms Uniswap amid surge in memecoin activity on BNB Chain (TD)

• Standard Chartered cuts Ethereum price target to $4,000, citing Layer 2 revenue concerns (TD)

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Launches

• Aave token holders reject proposal to list token linked to Horizon RWA initiative (TD)

• Binance launches zero-fee trading for all pairs in Binance Wallet (TD)

Venture Capital

• Slingshot DAO, a web3 gaming ecosystem, completes $16M financing from Dragonfly Capital, DCG, and more (CC)

• Ephyra announces $10.5M Series A led by Becker Ventures to disrupt web3 gaming with artificial intelligence (CS)

• PlaysOut hits $70M valuation with $7M seed financing from OKX and KBW Ventures (TS)

• Uphold invests $2M into decentralized credit platform Exactly Protocol (X)

• Blockchain game Kamigotchi raises $1.3M seed round from investors like Seed Club VC, TempleDAO, and DCF God (PA)

• Domin Network announces strategic backing from Animoca Labs, Kucoin Labs, DWF, and others (X)

• Plume Network raises undisclosed round from YZi Labs for on-chain real world assets (TB)

Regulation

• South Korea rejects bitcoin for foreign reserves. here’s why

• Biden-era crypto custody rule could soon be scrapped by the SEC (TV)

• Questions remain about DeFi regulation while Congress has repealed the IRS broker rule (CT)

• Former SEC Chairman gives his MIT students Bitcoin Whitepaper as assignment – watch here

Cybersecurity

• OKX suspends decentralized exchange aggregator amid EU investigation into North Korea’s crypto laundering (CD)

• Wemix CEO denies hiding $6.2 million exploit, cites delay to prevent market panic (TB)

• Kaito and founder Yu Hu's X accounts hacked, spreading false reports and causing 10% dip in token price (TB)

• Scammers exploit AI deepfakes of Musk and Trump for false giveaways (NB)

• Social engineering scams are skyrocketing (BiC)

• Nym launches NymVPN, claiming to be the world’s most secure VPN against surveillance (CT)

Extra Reads

• Solana recently celebrated 5 years since its genesis block

  Check out the major milestones the ecosystem has achieved since 2020

• Ethereum’s scalability has always been questioned with hard forks, upgrades and rollups

  Native Rollups might be a real game-changer for built-in Ethereum functions

• A venture capitalist passed on Solana’s seed round, at $0.04 per token

  Read his original memo as a junior VC against investing

Chart of the Day

Ethereum has never started a new year in the red for 3 consecutive months… until 2025

Meme Dump

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