Important information last night this morning (March 19-March 20)
Reprinted from panewslab
03/20/2025·2M
Forged Microsoft Teams websites are spreading malware, alerting to the risk of wallet theft
Scam Sniffer issued a phishing alert on X platform that it detected a fake Microsoft Teams website spreading malware. Risks include data breaches, credential theft, conversation hijacking and wallet theft. Please verify the source before installation.
Czech central bank officials express "suspicion" of Bitcoin as a reserve asset
According to Reuters, Jan Kubicek, a member of the Czech Central Bank (CNB), is "skeptical" about the inclusion of Bitcoin in the bank's huge reserve assets, mainly concerned about its legal uncertainty and the volatility of digital currencies. Earlier this year, Czech Central Bank Governor Ales Michl proposed to take Bitcoin into consideration, and the bank has begun analyzing the possibility of expanding asset classes in its reserve portfolio. Eva Zamrazilova, deputy governor of the Czech Central Bank, once said that Bitcoin is not a suitable reserve asset. "We will evaluate different categories of assets, and Bitcoin is just one of them. I am quite skeptical about Bitcoin," Kubicek said in an interview Tuesday. He pointed out that Bitcoin's legal status is a problem, and holding Bitcoin directly will mean that many new processes need to be developed in terms of accounting or auditing, etc. He also mentioned that volatility is another concern and it is also difficult to assess market price trends. "We cannot be sure if Bitcoin's volatility in the next few years will be similar to the pattern observed in the past decade, because I doubt that if more institutional investors accept Bitcoin as an investment asset, it will perform differently than what we have seen so far," he said. Kubichek said the bank's research on new asset classes could be completed by October, which could explore the possibility of holding international corporate bonds, as well as investing in more targeted stock indexes (such as the tech category) and real estate investment funds.
According to a registration statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday, three senior leaders of Trump Media & Technology Group have formed a new blank check company (SPAC) to acquire businesses in cryptocurrencies or related industries — while the Trump administration is trying to shape the landscape of the industry, Forbes reported. Cayman Islands registered Special Purpose Acquisition Corp. (SPAC) Renatus Tactical Acquisition Corp I plans to raise at least $179 million through an initial public offering (IPO) and private placement, with funds to acquire another business. The company's leadership is closely related to the media companies of U.S. President Trump: Renatus Tactical CEO Eric Swider is a member of the Trump Media's board of directors and leads the company merged with Trump Media; Devin Nunes, CEO, President and Chairman of Trump Media, also serves as chairman of the board of directors of Renatus Tactical; Alexander Cano, chief operating officer of Renatus Tactical, was once the president and secretary of the merger with Trump Media. According to the SEC filing by Renatus Tactical, the company aims to acquire cryptocurrencies and blockchain, data security and dual-use technology sectors, with a large number of government involvement as regulators or major customers.
According to the monitoring of the on-chain analyst Yuchen, the "Hyperliquid 50x giant whale" announced the incident around the Federal Reserve's interest rate in the early morning, and operated crazy in the three hours between 12:00 and 3:00, and double-checked on BTC, turning 690,000 USDC into 1.826 million USDC, with a profit of 164%. The specific operations are as follows: ① At 2 a.m., the Federal Reserve wants to announce the interest rate decision. He opened short 326 BTC ($27.6 million) at 12 o'clock at $84.566, and then closed short at $83.927 before the interest rate decision is about to be announced (1:48) and made a profit of $215,000; ② As soon as the interest rate was announced at 2 o'clock, he immediately opened short 256 BTC ($84.404) at $84.404 at 2:01, and quickly went to $83.906 after 6 minutes. Quickly close the position and make a profit of US$250,000; ③ After shorting, turn long immediately, open 518 BTC ($43.8 million) at $84,500 at 2:10, then close the position at $85,700 at 2:59, making a profit of US$620,000; ④ After longing, get a profit of US$85,666 immediately: open 384 BTC ($32.9 million) at $85,146 at 2 minutes, close the position at $85,146, making a profit of US$106,000.
Decentralized trading agreement Hibachi completes seed round of $5 million
According to official news, decentralized trading agreement Hibachi announced the completion of a $5 million seed round of financing, with Dragonfly, Electric Capital and echo participating in the investment. According to reports, Hibachi is a decentralized trading protocol designed for professional traders, emphasizing the realization of proven security through zero-knowledge (zk) mathematics.
10x Research: Bitcoin is currently in a small bear market, with $90,000 being the key fulcrum level
10x Research posted on X platform: "Bitcoin is currently in a small bear market based on multiple indicators, and as we emphasized earlier, $90,000 is a key fulcrum level. The recent move is a short-term counter-trend rebound that offers opportunities to make profits in this broader consolidation phase. As we expected, the FOMC meeting was slightly dovish."
According to the official announcement, Binance is now inviting users to vote on the first batch of voting coin listing projects through the official post of Binance Plaza. The first batch of voting coin pools only include BNB smart chain tokens in Binance Alpha. Future voting rounds will expand to all tokens in Binance Alpha. A variety of factors will be considered to determine the voting pool, including project fundamentals and performance indicators, token economics, secondary market performance, technical risk assessment, team background and compliance review. This round of voting will be open for the following projects: BANANAS31 (Banana For Scale), BID (CreatorBid), Broccoli (Broccoli), Broccoli (CZ'S Dog), KOMA (Koma Inu), SIREN (SIREN), mubarak (mubarak), TUT (Tutorial), WHY (why). Binance will select two tokens to list on Binance after completing official due diligence and procedures. The voting time is from 17:00 on March 19, 2025 (UTC) to 16:59 on March 26, 2025 (UTC). Voting method: ① Each user can vote for up to 5 projects and can choose to vote for fewer projects; each verified account can only allocate one vote for one project. ② Users must log in to their verified Binance account and hold at least 0.01 BNB in their main account throughout the voting period to make their vote valid.
Trump will attend the New York Digital Assets Summit this Thursday and deliver a speech
According to Blockworks, U.S. President Trump will give a speech at the New York Digital Assets Summit (DAS) this Thursday, the first time in history that an incumbent president has spoken at the cryptocurrency industry conference. Earlier, Bo Hines, executive director of the White House President's Digital Assets Advisory Committee, said that the Trump administration plans to establish strategic Bitcoin reserves and actively hoard Bitcoin "accumulate assets for the American people." The meeting also attracted several political and industry leaders, including Councillors Ro Khanna, Tom Emmer, MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor and Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse. Trump's speech will be broadcast live through X and YouTube. In addition, according to crypto reporter Eleanor Terrett, Trump plans to deliver a speech at the Digital Assets Summit in a recorded form at 10:40 am Eastern Time on Thursday (22:44 Beijing time on March 20). Trump is expected to announce his subsequent encryption policy by then.
According to The Block, the Uniswap community has voted to pass two governance proposals aimed at promoting the development of the recently launched Unichain Layer 2 and Uniswap v4 protocols through new funding programs and other liquidity incentives. It is worth noting that this governance decision lays the foundation for activating the "fee switch" of long-term commitments. The Uniswap Foundation wrote on social media platform X that the two proposals are part of the “Uniswap Unleashed” initiative to expand the Uniswap ecosystem and mark the “start of the next era of our community” by unlocking “new opportunities to build, grow, create and capture value.” According to the proposal, these liquidity incentives were created in partnership with the Uniswap Foundation and the web3 risk management protocol Gauntlet, which will attract new users and sustain the ecosystem’s growth through developer-centric activities. The foundation requested $95.4 million to its funding budget and an additional $25.1 million for operating funds over the next two years. In another incentive proposal, the foundation requested a $45 million budget to support liquidity incentives. Gauntlet has deployed and configured an Aera vault for the Uniswap Foundation on the main network, which will inject more than 7.5 million UNI tokens worth approximately $52 million at current prices. "We recognize and thank the scale of this request. It reflects the successful investment in the Uniswap protocol and Unichain, as well as the investment in the value of the Uniswap community." As for the fee switch, it will be implemented after the Uniswap Foundation decides to take the necessary legal steps to allocate the agreement fee income to the governance members. “If passed, this step will pave the way for potential introduction (or reintroduction) governance proposals, allowing the client to earn agreement revenue,” the proposal states.
Volatility Shares to launch two Solana futures ETFs on March 20
Volatility Shares will launch two Solana (SOL)-based futures ETFs, namely Volatility Shares Solana ETF (SOLZ) and Volatility Shares 2X Solana ETF (SOLT) on March 20, according to Cointelegraph. According to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing, the Volatility Shares Solana ETF (SOLZ) has an administrative fee of 0.95%, until June 30, 2026, after which the administrative fee will be raised to 1.15%. The Volatility Shares 2X Solana ETF will provide investors with 2x leverage, with an administrative fee of 1.85%. This application is the first Solana-based ETF in the United States, after the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Group launched the SOL futures contract.
According to King Shi, Federal Reserve Chairman Powell said that the Federal Reserve does not need to rush to adjust its policy stance and needs to wait and see based on the data. Restrictive positions may be relaxed or maintained as needed. It is already at a stage where interest rates can be cut or the current clear austerity policy stance can be maintained. Inflation is still slightly higher. Further progress in inflation this year may be delayed. The baseline forecast is that inflation will be temporary. The U.S. economy is strong, and surveys show increased economic uncertainty. Recent signs indicate a slowdown in consumer spending. Signs of weakness in hard data will be closely watched. Forecasters have increased the likelihood of a recession to some extent, but are still not high. The labor market situation is stable and the overall labor market remains balanced. Both recruitment and layoffs are at low levels, and a significant increase in layoffs may quickly translate into unemployment. Layouts are important to the relevant personnel, but not significant at the national level. The slowing down the scale is a technical adjustment. Slowing the shrinking table means slower but lasts longer. There is currently no plan to slow down the reduction of MBS, and it tends to eliminate MBS in the table. There is uncertainty about the impact of tariffs, focusing on the net impact of policies, short-term inflation expectations are rising. If commodity inflation data continues to be strong in the recent past, this will definitely be related to tariffs. Staff simulated and predicted that the United States will be fully retaliated for tariffs.
The Fed sharply lowers its growth forecast for 2025, while raising inflation expectations
According to Tonghuashun Finance, the Federal Reserve's FOMC economic expectations show that the median GDP growth rate expected from 2025 to the end of 2027 will be 1.7%, 1.8%, and 1.8%, respectively, and the December forecast will be 2.1%, 2.0% and 1.9%, respectively. The median expected federal funds rate from 2025 to 2027 will be 3.9%, 3.4% and 3.1%, respectively, while December's forecast will be 3.9%, 3.4% and 3.1%, respectively. The median expected unemployment rate from 2025 to the end of 2027 will be 4.4%, 4.3% and 4.3% respectively, while the forecast for December will be 4.3%, 4.3% and 4.3% respectively. The median core PCE inflation expectations from the end of 2025 to 2027 will be 2.8%, 2.2%, and 2.0%, respectively, and the December expectations will be 2.5%, 2.2% and 2.0%, respectively.
According to King Shi, the Fed dot chart shows that among the 19 officials, 4 officials believe that interest rates should not be cut in 2025 (1 in December), 4 officials believe that interest rates should be cut in 25 basis points in 2025, that is, one rate cut (3 in December), 9 officials believe that interest rates should be cut in 2025, that is, two rate cuts (10 in December), 2 officials believe that interest rates should be cut in 2025, that is, three rate cuts (3 in December), and no officials believe that interest rates should be cut in 2025, that is, three rate cuts (3 in December). No officials believe that interest rates should be cut in 2025 (1 in December), and no officials believe that interest rates should be cut in 2025 (1 in December).
According to Wall Street News, the Federal Reserve remained unchanged -maintaining the target range of federal funds rate between 4.25% and 4.50%, in line with market expectations. The pace of balance sheet reduction began to slow down on April 1, lowering the upper limit of monthly reduction in US Treasury bonds to US$5 billion, and maintaining the scale of monthly reduction in mortgage-backed securities (MBS) unchanged at US$35 billion. The resolution statement said: The uncertainty faced by the economy has increased, lowered the growth expectations for 2025 and raised inflation expectations. Eliminate the wording about the roughly balanced risks faced by the Fed’s goals (maintaining price stability + achieving full employment). Federal Reserve Director Waller supported the FOMC interest rate decision but objected to the balance sheet decision.
Source: Kraken is considering a $1.5 billion acquisition of trading platform NinjaTrader
According to sources from the Wall Street Journal, Kraken is considering a $1.5 billion acquisition of foreign exchange and futures trading platform NinjaTrader. The announcement is expected to be announced as early as Thursday. The deal will allow Kraken to use NinjaTrader’s Futures Commissioner (FCM) license to offer cryptocurrency futures and derivatives in the United States.
Bitnomial plans to withdraw lawsuits and launch $XRP futures contract
According to Eleanor Terrett, crypto derivatives exchange Bitnomial plans to withdraw its lawsuit against the SEC after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) agreed to withdraw its appeal against Ripple. Bitnomial sued the SEC in October last year, with the focus of the dispute being the SEC claiming jurisdiction over the $XRP futures contract that Bitnomial plans to launch. In addition, Bitnomial will officially launch the $XRP futures contract tomorrow morning and has been approved by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
According to Crypto In America, commissioner Hester Peirce, who served as a Republican seat in the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission since his appointment in 2018 by President Trump, said in an interview that she hopes to complete the work as soon as possible before the end of her term, suggesting she will not seek reelection. Peirce is also currently the head of the SEC cryptocurrency task force, committed to providing regulatory clarity to digital assets. She said that although her term expires in June, she hopes to resolve the issue as soon as possible and avoid setting up a dedicated crypto task force. Peirce also emphasized that it attaches great importance to protecting peer-to-peer interactions between developers and users, and supports providing clearer regulations for the crypto market, especially in staking (staking).
Telegram founder Pavel Durov posted on his personal channel that Telegram now has more than 1 billion monthly active users, becoming the world's second largest communications application (excluding China's unique WeChat). User activity is also increasing, with each user opening Telegram 21 times a day and using it for 41 minutes a day. At the same time, Telegram's revenue grew significantly, with profits reaching US$547 million in 2024. Durov also said that Telegram is just a cheap imitation of Telegram compared to WhatsApp, and Telegram remains independent and successful despite WhatsApp trying to copy its innovations and invest a lot of money in lobbying and PR.
Opinion Labs, a decentralized forecasting market developer, announces launch of Monad test network
According to official news, Opinion Labs, a decentralized prediction market developer, has officially logged on to the Monad test network. Opinion Labs aims to create an open forecast market solution and infrastructure that allows anyone to use any token to build any forecast market and trade. It is also reported that Opinion Labs has recently announced the completion of a $5 million seed round, including the angel financing platform Echo and others.
Crypto wallet infrastructure company Privy raises $15 million, led by Ribbit Capital
According to Fortune, blockchain infrastructure company Privy has raised $15 million in a new round of financing, led by Ribbit Capital, with Sequoia Capital, Paradigm and Coinbase also involved. The financing brought Privy's total financing amount to more than $40 million. Privy provides businesses with tools to connect crypto wallets to applications or websites, aiming to simplify the use of crypto wallets so that mainstream users can access the blockchain world more easily. Privy plans to use the funds to double its team size in the next 18 months, currently serving about 50 million accounts and working with more than 1,000 companies.
DWF Labs receives 3.6 billion Xs for market making
According to Lookonchain, DWF Labs just received $3.6B (about $307K) for market making. $X (X Empire) price rose more than 100% this week.
Ripple CEO: SEC will waive appeal against Ripple
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse announced that the SEC will abandon its appeal against Ripple after more than four years of litigation, marking the end of the four-year lawsuit. Garlinghouse said the case was doomed to fail from the beginning, and Ripple always believed that he was on the right side of the law and that it would eventually be proven to be correct by history. He also pointed out that this victory is not only important for Ripple, but also has a wide impact on the crypto industry as a whole.
Blockdaemon acquires DeFi connectivity company Expand to push organizations into Web3
According to CoinDesk, crypto infrastructure provider Blockdaemon has acquired DeFi connectivity platform expand.network, aiming to help large financial institutions seamlessly access on-chain transactions. Expand provides API access to connect to more than 170 DeFi endpoints, including decentralized exchanges (DEXs), bridges, lending protocols and oracles. The amount of the acquisition was not disclosed, but Blockdaemon said the deal was worth tens of millions of dollars. Blockdaemon currently supports about 70% of the top 500 institutions in the cryptocurrency industry, helping them operate more than 250,000 nodes and handle staking rewards and other businesses.
Standard Chartered Bank: Coinbase voluntarily sells $37 million in Ethereum in Q4 2024
According to Decrypt, Standard Chartered Bank analysts believe that cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase "actively sold" 12,652 Ethereum (about $37 million) in Q4 2024. Analysts explained that Coinbase's Layer-2 network Base has driven demand for Ethereum, but its profit-taking behavior is affecting the price trend of the underlying blockchain (ETH). Standard Chartered Bank has recently lowered its 2025 Ethereum price target from $10,000 to $4,000 because of the large amount of profits from Base network sold Ethereum. Analysts pointed out that Coinbase is not holding the ETH profit generated by Base, but choosing to sell these assets as a normal risk adjustment decision.
Pluralis Research completes $7.6 million seed round, led by CoinFund and Union Square Ventures
According to Fortune, Pluralis Research has raised $7.6 million in seed funding, led by CoinFund and Union Square Ventures, with other investors including Topology, Variant, Eden Block, Bodhi Ventures and well-known crypto investor Balaji Srinivasan. Pluralis aims to provide computing power through a decentralized blockchain network, challenging the dominance of large enterprises in the AI field. The company plans to use this fund to conduct research to see if AI models can be trained through distributed networks to avoid centralized computing resources. Founder Alexander Long, who worked as an AI engineer at Amazon, and he and his team are working to make small companies compete in AI.
According to CoinDesk, digital asset platform Utila raised $18 million in a Series A financing to expand its multi-party computing (MPC) wallet service to meet the growing demand for institutional digital asset management. Nyca Partners led the round of funding, with other participants including Wing VC, NFX, Haymaker Ventures, Gaingels and Cerca Partners. Since its debut last year, the latest round of financing has brought the startup's total venture capital to about $30 million. Utila CEO Bentzi Rabi said payment providers, fintech companies and emerging banks are increasingly using digital assets, including stablecoins and tokenized assets. The Utila platform has processed $8 billion in monthly digital asset transactions, a significant increase from $3 billion in early 2024. The financing will help Utila expand global markets and enhance product capabilities, including advanced Gas management, API integration and smart contract support. Last year, the institutional encryption platform Utila completed a $11.5 million seed round of financing, led by Framework Ventures and others.
Turkish lira plunges trigger Bitcoin-lira trading volume surge
According to CoinDesk, after the arrest of Istanbul, Türkiye's mayor and president Erdogan rival Ekrem Imamogru, the Turkish lira fell to an all-time low against the dollar, plunging nearly 10%. This event caused a surge in Bitcoin-lira (BTC/TRY) transaction volume on the Binance platform. Between 7:00 and 8:00 UTC time on March 19, 2025, the BTC/TRY trading volume reached 93 BTC, the highest level in at least a year.
The first roundtable meeting of the SEC Cryptocurrency Working Group will be held on March 21
According to Solid Intel, the first roundtable of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Cryptocurrency Working Group will begin on March 21, 2025, and will explore important issues related to cryptocurrency asset regulation.
According to MELANIA (@qwatio) on Twitter, the allegations of ZachXBT (Hyperliquid 50x leverage whales are actually cyber criminals) were disappointing and unexpected, calling it "unfounded speculation." He hopes that ZachXBT will at least point out what is called “stolen funds” and mentions that their wallets receive a large number of transactions from scammers. ZachXBT then responded that it will release information in detail at 9:00 tomorrow night (UTC+8) and emphasized that it will not spread false information.
Russia and Bolivia use bitcoin and cryptocurrency to pay for international oil transactions
According to The Bitcoin Historian (@pete_rizzo_), Russia and Bolivia are using bitcoin and cryptocurrencies to make payments for international oil transactions.
According to on-link analyst Yu Ember, the Hyperliquid 50x boss changed his account name to MELANIA on DeBank DeFi and linked his Twitter account @qwatio. Its position on Hyperliquid still maintains MELANIA's 5x leverage and goes long.
Tether Treasury adds $1 billion minting to Tron network
According to Whale Alert monitoring, Tether Treasury has minted USDT (about USD1.001 billion) on the Tron network at 18:05 Beijing time. The Tether CEO replied that this was an authorized but unissued transaction, which means that the amount will be used as inventory for the next issue request and chain exchange.
