Safe Wallet Compromised in Bybit Hack

️ On today's Top Picks:

Crypto News

• ⭐️ US SEC & Justin Sun to explore potential resolution in fraud case; SEC sued Justin Sun in July 2023 alleging market manipulation, fraud, & issuing unregistered securities.

• US SEC closes investigation into Uniswap with no enforcement action; Uniswap received a Wells Notice from the SEC in April 2024.

• US SEC closes investigation into Gemini with no enforcement action; Gemini received a Wells Notice from the SEC in April 2024.

• Dunamu, Upbit's parent firm, faces 3-month partial suspension in South Korea; suspension prohibits new customers from transferring crypto to the exchange.

• Gotbit Founder Aleksei Andriunin extradited to the US; accused of using wash trading to inflate trading volumes and assist multiple companies in market manipulation.

• FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried posts on X for the first time in two years; currently serving 25-year prison sentence.

• ZachXBT joins Paradigm as an incident response advisor to assist their portfolio companies; Paradigm Co-founder Matt Huang posted "Nothing about his focus will change..." on X.

• Ethereum $ETH developers launch Pectra upgrade on Holesky testnet; to launch Pectra on Sepolia testnet in March & on mainnet in April.

• Aya Miyaguchi transitions from Executive Director to President of the Ethereum $ETH Foundation; Vitalik Buterin posted "Meanwhile, we have been working on the new EF leadership structure, and will share more news soon" on X.

• US SEC acknowledges Grayscale's 19b-4 filing for staking functionality in its spot Ethereum $ETH ETF; SEC has 45 days to approve, disapprove, or extend the proposal review.

• Ethereum Foundation $ETH donates $1.25M to Tornado Cash developer Alex Pertsev's legal defense; Pertsev currently under house arrest waiting to appeal his sentence.

• Phantom acquires SimpleHash, a token & NFT data platform, for an undisclosed amount; to integrate SimpleHash tech in Phantom.

• Pump[.]fun deposits 87,787 Solana $SOL worth ~$12M into Kraken; deposited a total of 1,322,830 SOL worth ~$177M into Kraken in 2025.

• Grayscale files 19b-4 for spot Polkadot $DOT ETF; 21Shares also filed for a spot Polkadot ETF in January.

Alpha

• Movement to launch Public Mainnet Beta soon; posted "Movement Network Foundation has sent $MOVE to our bridge multisig in preparation for Public Mainnet Beta" on X.

• RedStone Oracles updates $RED tokenomics; changes to a more restrictive token release schedule & adds Binance Launchpool section.

• Namada launches mainnet phase 3 enabling IBC asset transfers and shielding; to enable $NAM transferability in phase 5.

• Hemi to launch mainnet on March 12th; Hemi is a modular blockchain powered by Bitcoin and Ethereum.

• Cytonic launches testnet; airdrop campaign ongoing.

• Newton releases Newton Keystore litepaper; Newton is a ZK L2 by Magic Labs.

• StakeStone releases StakeStone Whitepaper; to potentially launch TGE & airdrop soon.

Airdrops

• Multipli Airdrop Strategy by Earndrop.

• ⭐️ Babylon launches $BABY airdrop eligibility checker; phase 1 stakers, phase 1 finality providers, & contributors to various Github repositories are eligible.

• Initia to launch mainnet & $INIT airdrop in March; The Rollup Co-Founder Andy posted "Initia Mainnet. March 2025. Confirmed." on X.

• ICYMI Weekly Airdrop Recap by Earndrop.

• ICYMI Monad Airdrop Strategy by Earndrop.

Finance News

• ⭐️ US President Trump to impose 25% tariffs on imports from the EU; tariffs on Mexico & Canada to be implemented in April.

• Bank of America $BAC to launch USD-pegged crypto stablecoin; CEO Brian Moynihan says “if they make that legal, we will go into that business.”

• Metaplanet $3350.T buys 135 Bitcoin $BTC for $12.9M at ~$95,951 per BTC; holds 2,235 BTC worth ~$188M.

• Ark Invest $ARKW buys $8.7M of Coinbase $COIN shares; also sold $8.6M of its own spot Bitcoin $BTC ETF.

• MARA Holdings $MARA reports Q4 2024 earnings; reports $214.4M in revenue for Q4, a 37% increase compared to Q4 2023.

• Nvidia $NVDA reports Q4 2024 earnings; reports $39.3B in revenue for Q4, 2.7% higher than expectations.

• Microsoft $MSFT cancels some AI data center leases; reason for Microsoft’s move is unclear.

Security and Exploits

• ⭐️ Bybit forensics report reveals Lazarus Group compromised Safe {Wallet}'s infrastructure; Binance Founder CZ criticized Safe for using "vague language to brush over the issues."

• Pump[.]fun X account temporarily compromised; threat actor posted scam token; ZachXBT suspects threat actor social engineered employees at X & exploited an admin control panel.

• Revoke[.]cash adds support for Hyperliquid HyperEVM.

• LockBit ransomware group sends open letter to the new director of the US FBI Kash Patel; claims to possess private information that could destroy the organization.

• Signal to withdraw from Sweden if government proceeds with proposed data retention law; would mandate backdoors for law enforcement access.

Token Unlocks

• Optimism $OP / ~$36M / FEB 28th
• Sui $SUI / ~$66M / MAR 01st
• ZetaChain $ZETA / ~$13M / MAR 01st
Sourced from Tokenomist

Funding

• ⭐️ Bitwise raises $70M in funding from several investors.

• Raise raises $63M in Strategic funding led by Haun Ventures.

• Ethena raises $16M in Strategic funding from MEXC Ventures.

• GEODNET raises $8M in Strategic funding led by Multicoin Capital.

• Mavryk raises $5.2M in funding from several investors.

• Ligero raises $4M in Seed funding led by 1kx.

• Byzantine Finance raises $3M in Pre-Seed funding led by Node Capital & Blockwall.

• MeebCo raises $3M in funding from 1confirmation.

The Degen Farmer