Good Morning,

It’s a great morning to waste 40 minutes listening to the $HAWK Tuah memecoin story. Don’t worry we will save you the time.

Here's a quick preview of today’s content: Haley Welch and Faze Banks ‘talk to-us’ about Hawk Tuah memecoin rugpull, Gemini eyes 2025 IPO, VanEck drops bullish Solana prediction, pump.fun hit with cease & desist, Czech President makes pro-crypto move for long-term hodlers, and so much more below 👇

Happy Friday, the weekend is near – Let’s dive in.

Market Snapshot

As of 3/6/2025. Data per CoinMarketCap.

  • Crypto had one of it’s roughest full weeks in many months

  • BTC finishes down 6.6%, ETH and SOL down ~17%, while XRP, DOGE, ADA fall 24%

    • Lots of news headlines were potential impacts for crypto’s week in the red

      • Trump’s tariff announcements

      • Memecoin madness and legal concerns

      • Market liquidity reached new outflow records higher than Luna and FTX market collapses’

Headline Roundup
The major headlines driving crypto markets

  • ‘Hawk Tuah’ girl, Haliey Welch, broke down into tears while talking about the alleged rugpull of her coin, watch here

  • NEOS Investments announced a 29.5% distribution yield for their Bitcoin High Income ETF, BTCI

  • Franklin Templeton awaits SEC approval for crypto index ETF (CT)

  • VanEck predicts Solana will reach $520 in 2025

  • Ripple’s Brad Garlinghouse could be appointed to the White House Crypto Council (CT)

  • Crypto exchange Gemini is considering an IPO as soon as this year (TB) 

  • Trump Media and Technology Group plans to launch a Bitcoin ETF (CD) 

  • 71% of institutional traders have no plans to trade crypto this year (CT) 

  • Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin stash may be worth over $108B (CT) 

  • Coinbase executive links Satoshi Nakamoto's wallets to activity as late as 2014 (TB) 

  • Coinbase’s chief lawyer testifies in Congress about crypto debanking (CD) 

  • Grayscale files to list its Litecoin trust as an ETP on NYSE Arca (CT) 

  • Cboe BZX Exchange files 19b-4s for Bitwise, 21Shares, and Canary Capital for an XRP ETF (TB) 

  • Former Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky seeks a one-month delay in his sentencing (TB) 

  • Tornado Cash developer Alexey Perstev to be released from prison as he appeals his money laundering conviction (DC) 

  • Bybit completes registration in India after paying $1M fine for unauthorized operations (CD) 

  • 1inch Network integrates ZKsync integration to offer faster and cheaper cross-chain swaps (CD) 

  • Traders push BNB Chain’s tutorial video token to a $35M market cap (CT) 

  • Texas Rep. Al Green criticizes Trump for launching his own memecoin (CT) 

  • CME crypto trading volumes hit a record of $285M in January (CT) 

  • Two law firms issue cease & desist orders against Pump.fun for IP issues with 200+ memecoins (CT)

M&A Announcements

  • Textile and 3Box Labs announce merger for decentralized data play (YF)

Launches

  • Berachain launches its mainnet and BERA token, which hits a $1B marketcap (BW) 

  • Ondo Finance announces release of Layer-1 blockchain for institutional RWA tokenization, Ondo Chain (OF)

  • Kuroro Wilds launches play-to-airdrop campaign ahead of KURO token launch (DC) 

  • Laurence Day’s Wildcat defi platform launches new version on Ethereum (TB)

  • Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade expects testing to begin this month with hopes to launch on mainnet in April (CD)

Venture Capital

  • 0G Foundation launches $88.8M fund to support decentralized AI applications (CD) 

  • Near Foundation launches $20M AI Agent Fund to support AI-powered agent  tokens (CS) 

  • Tevau announces $10M valuation in latest pre-seed financing (TV)

  • INXY Payments raises $3M from Flashpoint Ventures and angel investors (TEU)

  • Fraktion raises €1.1M from Cabrit Capital, Tezos Foundation, and others for tokenization and fractionalization of real-world assets (FL)

  • Nextrope secures $1M for web3 security project (GNW)

  • Keystone Hardware Wallet backed by Avalanche Foundation ‘infraBUIDL()’ program (KW)

Regulation

  • Czech President signs bill to waive capital gains tax on bitcoin holdings of over three years (TB)

Cybersecurity

  • Jupiter’s X account is hacked to promote fake memecoins (TB)

  • XRP ledger back online after hour long technical glitch (CCN)

  • This week’s crypto hack roundup (BiS)

Extra Reads

Chart of the Day

With Ethereum’s Pectra Upgrade expected in April, here’s a look at the ETH Supply Total throughout the years

Meme Dump

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