Good Morning,

Here's a quick preview of today’s content: Binance.US could soon be backed by the Trump family, the Gold vs. Bitcoin argument is rough so far this year, LIBRA founder fights arrest orders from a lawyer, Blackrock is seeing major success with their tokenized fund, a crypto trader was left with $19k after $733k swap trade, and our ‘Chart of the Day’ is extremely bullish 🚀

Make sure you head into the weekend with the best curated headlines in crypto

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Happy Friday – Let’s dive in.

Market Snapshot

As of 3/13/2025. Data per CoinMarketCap.

  • The crypto market today has again pushed investors on their toes, showcasing fluctuations. Bitcoin price slipped below $82K

    • Ethereum and Solana prices were also trading in the red zone. However, XRP price gained alongside Ripple’s latest advancements in Dubai while TRUMP emerges as the top market gainer

  • Bitcoin saw a modest $13 million in positive inflows, Ethereum recorded $10 million in outflows, highlighting diverging investor sentiment between the two leading cryptocurrencies

Headline Roundup
The major headlines driving crypto markets

  • A scathing investigation from the WSJ claims that Binance.US has reportedly been in talks with Trump family about an investment in an attempt to pardon founder CZ (WSJ)

  • Not even 30 minutes later, Binance founder CZ comes out with his own statement rebuking the WSJ, see full statement here

  • Argentinian lawyer requests international arrest order for LIBRA founder, Hayden Davis (CD)

  • Solana’s latest governance proposal SIMD-228 failed to pass the required yes vote percentage of 66.67%, full breakdown of the vote here

  • BUIDL, Blackrock’s tokenized treasury fund, becomes first to reach $1B AUM (TB)

  • Gold reaches new all time high of $3,000 per troy ounce (CD)

  • Ondo Finance leads the way as tokenized treasuries reach record $4.2B market cap (CD)

  • Stark Bank, a banking startup backed by Jeff Bezos, is positioning itself to work with crypto startups (PA)

  • IATSE 728 makes history as first private union to purchase bitcoin (BM)

  • Top Democrat pressures Treasury to halt Trump's plan for a strategic bitcoin reserve (TB)

  • Aave deploys new initiative to bridge institutional real world assets (RWA) into DeFi, called Horizon (CS)

  • Trezor disclosed a potential vulnerability in one of its older crypto hardware wallets (TB)

M&A Announcements

  • MoonPay acquires Iron, a stablecoin infrastructure startup, for 9 figures (TB)

Launches

  • Ethereum Foundation developers will launch a new testnet called Hoodi, which will test the final Pectra deployment ahead of mainnet activation (TB)

  • Coinbase Ventures launches Base Ecosystem Group, an accredited investor community to support Base projects, on the Echo platform (DF)

  • SKALE network announces $2M indie game accelerator (BG)

Venture Capital

  • Axelar Network brings in strategic investors with oversubscribed $30M+ round including Distributed Global, Arrington Capital, and others (FS)

  • Solv raises $10M for Bitcoin Reserve Offering (BRO), an on-chain Strategy offering (CD)

  • Decentralized AI user agreement platform PoPP completes $6M financing from investors like Oasis Labs and Presto Labs (PA)

  • GnosisDAO votes to invest an additional $4.8M into consumer VPN developer HOPR (TB)

  • M10, a web3 game developer, raises $3M from Sui Foundation, Blockchain Founders Fund, and others to build a multiplayer game (VB)

  • Offline Protocol announces $1.1M pre-seed round led by Portal Ventures (X)

  • Solana DePIN project Shaga receives strategic equity investment from blockchain game Star Atlas (CC)

Regulation

  • Circle, issuer of USDC stablecoin, looks to bring recently acquired tokenized money market fund Hashnote under Bermuda license (CD)

  • Dubai grants license to Ripple for UAE crypto payment offering (CD)

  • GENIUS stablecoin bill advances with Senate Banking Committee approval (CT)

  • International crypto moves continue as Vietnam pushes for further adoption and Colombia introduces new regulatory bill (CG)

Cybersecurity

  • Gauntlet accused of self-dealing in Compound DAO’s proposal (TD)

  • Crypto trader loses $715k in large sandwich attack in swap attempt (TB)

  • Ledger security researchers discover potential voltage glitching vulnerability in older crypto hardware wallets from rival Trezor (TB)

Extra Reads

Chart of the Day

Public corporations doubled their cumulative Bitcoin holdings in 2024, nearing 600k BTC

Meme Dump

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