Good Morning,

Here's a quick preview of today’s content: 🚨 President Trump to speak today at Digital Asset Summit by Blockworks today🚨 Plus: SEC officially dropped its case against Ripple, Holesky testnet support will be no longer, Metaplanet continues bitcoin buys, crypto venture deal count down since October, an AI influencer lost $105k of ETH in an exploit, and so much more.

Today’s a big day for crypto! Let’s dive in.

Market Snapshot

• XRP at one point in the trading day surpassed Ethereum in fully diluted market capitalization (FDV), reaching $254.87B, following a surge of 14% to a price of $2.55

  • This increase allowed XRP to overtake ETH, which has an FDV of $244.24B

  • Additionally, XRP has now flipped Tether to become the third-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, with a reported increase of 12% in the last 24 hours

• Crypto markets are seeing a positive trend following the Fed's meeting, with the U.S. central bank maintaining the fed funds rate range at 4.25%-4.50%

  • Bitcoin is higher by 4.5% in the last 24 hours, with XRP the largest gainer among majors on news the SEC won't be filing an appeal in its lawsuit against Ripple

  • Despite the positive market reaction to the FOMC meeting, some market commentators remain skeptical, questioning the Federal Reserve's confidence in the transitory nature of tariff-related inflation.

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

• Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse reveals SEC drops appeal in ongoing legal battle, sparking XRP rally – see full details of the historic moment here

• FOMC holds federal funds rate steady and slows quantitative tightening in first meeting under Trump (TB) 

• Trump to speak at Blockworks' Digital Asset Summit in NYC today (BM)

• Uniswap community approves governance proposals to boost Unichain Layer 2, v4 protocols, and activate fee switch (TB) 

• Operators of sanctioned Garantex launch new exchange, Grinex, reportedly based in Russia (TB) 

• Bakkt's share price drops 27% after Bank of America and Webull decide not to renew agreements (CT) 

• Ethereum developers to end support for Holesky testnet by September 2025 (TB)

• South Korean prosecutors seek 10-year sentence for man who stabbed Haru Invest CEO during court hearing (TB) 

• USDC and USDT boost Ethereum's stablecoin dominance, driving $850 billion in volume (TB) 

• EOS Network rebrands to Vaulta, shifts focus to Web3 banking (BL)

• EigenLayer enhances integrations with Mantle Network and ZKsync for data availability and decentralized ZK proving (BW)

• Untangled Finance and Moody’s complete Proof of Concept to move credit ratings on-chain (CD) 

• Japanese firm Metaplanet issues bonds and acquires 150 more Bitcoin (DH)

• 83% of investors plan to increase crypto allocations in 2025 (TD)

• Uniswap Foundation approved for $165M in further funding from community members (TB)

Launches

• Dubai Land Department launches blockchain-based real estate tokenization pilot (CD)

• Volatility Shares to debut two Solana-tracking ETFs using futures contracts (DC)

Venture Capital

• Crypto venture deals see 60% downturn from Q4 2024 as investors become more selective (TB)

• Institutional crypto wallet Utila raises $18 million in Series A funding round led by Nyca Partners (TB) 

• Privy raises $15 million in latest funding round led by Ribbit Capital (TB)

• Pluralis Research scores $7.6M seed funding from USV and CoinFund for decentralized AI training (GN)

• Hibachi provable exchange announces $5M seed round from Dragonfly, Electric Capital, and Echo (X) 

• Stable Sea, built by Ex-Block employees, comes out of stealth with $3.5M of funding to provide global stablecoin offramping solutions (BW) 

• Pergerine Exploration, the team behind Level, received $2.6M investment led by Dragonfly (CD)

• Oro Labs secures $1.5M pre-seed funding led by 468 Capital for tokenizing gold on Solana (AI)

• Cosmos’ Interchain Foundation funds open-sourcing of Evmos as EVM framework for multi-chain ecosystem (TB)

Regulation

• SEC acting chairman orders staff to revisit 2023 crypto custody rule (TD)

• US lawmakers aim for August to pass legislation for stablecoin and crypto market structure (CT)

• North Dakota Senate passes new bill related to crypto ATM limitations (CT)

Cybersecurity

• Coinbase launches Verified Pools to reduce counterparty risk for DeFi users (DC)

• Pi Network rolls out 2FA to enhance security and drive token migration to mainnet (CS) 

• Director Carl Erik Rinsch arrested on fraud and money laundering charges over $11M investment (TB)

• Four.Meme resumes operations after pre-launch vulnerability led to $120k sandwich attack (CT)

• AI bot and influencer AiXBT fell victim to breach resulting in loss of 55.5 ETH (DT)

• North Korea becomes third-largest Bitcoin holder with nearly 14k BTC after Bybit hack, surpassing El Salvador and Bhutan (TD)

Extra Reads

• Crypto startups have revolutionized fundraising through non-venture routes

  M13 Partners break down the risk vs. reward of bootstrapping liquidity via token launches

• Stanford recently hosted their Blockchain AI Summit

  Here’s 5 main lessons learned from speakers including Vitalik, AI researchers, and more

• BlackRock releases a video educating (institutional) investors on digital assets

  “Bitcoin is an emerging global monetary alternative”

Chart of the Day

Crypto vertical trends from December 2024 – February 2025

Meme Dump

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