headlines
The Blast mainnet has been launched, and 50% of the airdrop will be distributed to point users
The Blast mainnet was officially launched this morning. Early access users can bridge to the mainnet and use Dapp applications on Blast. 50% of the Blast airdrop will be allocated to Blast point users, and the other 50% will be allocated to Blast Dapp.
Blast Gold airdrops will be allocated to Dapps every two weeks, and Dapps can choose to keep the airdrops, but most excellent Dapps have promised to distribute 100% of the airdrops to users. Mainnet users will continue to receive Blast points.
also,Blast deposits can now be migrated to Blast mainnet。
JP Morgan predicts Bitcoin price may fall to $42,000 after April halving
JP Morgan analysts predict that the price of Bitcoin may fall to $42,000 after the April halving event because the halving event will reduce the reward for Bitcoin miners from the current 6.25 BTC per block to 3.125 BTC. This reduction will have a negative impact on miners profitability and lead to an increase in the cost of Bitcoin production. Analysts further stated that the Bitcoin mining industry may further consolidate and larger miners will survive.
Analysis: BTC posted its biggest one-day gain since October 2023 on Wednesday
BTC surged 9.5% on Wednesday, marking its largest one-day gain since October 23, 2023, according to TradingView data. The price of BTC on multiple exchanges rose to $64,000, reaching its highest level since November 2021.
Bitfinex analysts said: “Our analysis predicts that BTC’s conservative price target will reach $100,000 to $120,000 by the fourth quarter of 2024, and its cycle peak in terms of total cryptocurrency market capitalization will be somewhere in 2025. The time has come.”
According to data from Glassnode, a Bitcoin Cash arbitrage strategy involving three-month futures has yielded over 14%. This is more than three times the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note (4.27%) and 2.8 times the yield on the 1-year Treasury note (5%).
Gemini settles with NYDFS, will pay $37 million in fines
The New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) announced a settlement with Gemini that will see the company return at least $1.1 billion to Gemini Earn plan customers through the Genesis bankruptcy proceedings. Gemini will also pay a $37 million fine to NYDFS for multiple violations. Gemini also agreed to coordinate with the bankruptcy court to provide $40 million in financial support for Genesis bankruptcy proceedings.
As part of the settlement, NYDFS has the right to take further action against Gemini if it fails to meet its obligation to return at least $1.1 billion to Earn customers following GGCs bankruptcy resolution. Gemini is committed to completing the bankruptcy proceedings to ensure Earn customers fully recover their cryptocurrencies.
Industry news
Galaxy Digital CEO: BTC may fall back to around $55,000 before reaching a new high
Michael Novogratz, founder and CEO of Galaxy Digital, said Bitcoin may see some correction before hitting new highs. Novogratz predicted: “I would not be surprised if there is some correction at the moment, and BTC may pull back to around $55,000 (mid-50,000) and then reach new highs.”
Novogratz also expects that a spot Ethereum ETF will receive SEC approval sometime this year, and Galaxy is working with Invesco to seek to provide Ethereum ETF services.
U.S. SEC: Terraform Labs paid $166 million in “questionable” payments to law firm Dentons
In a filing on Tuesday, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission asked a Delaware bankruptcy court to deny Terraform Labs hiring of Dentons US LLC as its special counsel, saying the company had made a questionable payment to the latter.
The SEC said in the filing that Terraform Labs transferred $166 million in upfront payments to Dentons, including $122 million in the 90 days before the bankruptcy filing. The move appears to be aimed at removing assets from the company that could be used to pay any judgments resulting from enforcement actions, the SEC said.
The agency alleges that the $122 million was diverted to an opaque slush fund tied to attorneys, which Terraform Labs could then use as a war chest to continue its legal dispute with the SEC.
Bloomberg: Binance says it has helped users recover more than $4 billion in mishandled deposits
Binance said it has recovered $4.4 billion worth of digital assets from users who mishandled their deposits over the past two years. According to Thursday’s report, users may have mishandled funds for a number of reasons, including entering the wrong wallet address, depositing incompatible coins, and issues with blockchain upgrades. Binance said it resolved 381,616 cases of cryptocurrencies deposited by users but not accounted for in 2022 and 2023.
Telegram founder Durov posted that starting in March, the Telegram advertising platform will be officially open to advertisers in nearly 100 countries/regions, and channel owners will receive 50% of the revenue Telegram earns from displaying ads in their channels. To ensure that ad payments and withdrawals are fast and secure, Telegram will use TON and share revenue with channel owners through Toncoin.
Hong Kong media: Coinbase becomes the fourth largest listed exchange in the world
Since the U.S. SEC announced in January that it approved the listing of spot Bitcoin ETFs, the market value of Coinbase, the worlds second largest cryptocurrency trading platform, has increased. Its market value exceeded US$50 billion this week (currently US$48.649 billion), surpassing the Hong Kong Exchange (HKEX) , with a market capitalization of approximately US$41.01 billion) and Deutsche Börse, becoming the fourth largest listed exchange in the world.
According to Bloomberg data, as of December last year, among the worlds major listed exchanges, Coinbases forecast price-to-earnings ratio reached 124 times, while the Hong Kong Stock Exchanges forecast price-to-earnings ratio was 26.94 times, which is still higher than most global exchanges.
Testing of Polygon’s latest upgrade will be conducted on the testnets Amoy and Cardona
Polygon announced that the latest upgrade testing of its protocol will be conducted exclusively on the new, Sepolia-anchored Polygon PoS test network Amoy and the Polygon zkEVM test network Cardona. Amoy and Cardona will provide safe and stable security for DApps, smart contracts and other functions. test environment. Polygon said this change is in line with the Ethereum Foundation’s decision to stop supporting the multi-client testnet Goerli.
According to previous news, support for the Goerli testnet will end one month after the Dencun upgrade is activated on the mainnet, and then the Polygon protocol will also abandon the testnet anchored with Goerli.
Morgan Stanley is conducting due diligence on whether to add a Bitcoin spot ETF product to its brokerage platform, two people familiar with the matter said.
One of the people familiar with the matter said that since the US SEC approved the launch of a Bitcoin spot ETF in January this year, Morgan Stanley has been evaluating providing Bitcoin spot ETFs to clients. Its unclear what products Morgan Stanley plans to offer its clients.
It is reported that Morgan Stanley currently manages more than US$150 billion in assets and is the first major U.S. bank to provide Bitcoin funds to high-net-worth clients. Former Chief Financial Officer Jonathan Pruzan said at the time that the bank would allow qualified investors to invest in two passive funds. It is understood that these funds are provided by Galaxy Digital and NYDIG.
Crypto mining company Marathon Digital announced the launch of Anduro, a Bitcoin sidechain development platform designed to help users create Bitcoin sidechains. Meanwhile, Marathon has begun building two sidechains, called Cooperative and Alys, which the company says can be further developed by open source contributors.
Marathon said the Cooperative aims to serve the Ordinals community by providing dedicated space for UTXO. Alys, on the other hand, is compatible with Ethereum and focuses on the issuance and trading of tokenized RWA.
People familiar with the matter: South Korea’s ruling party withdraws its campaign promise to “launch a spot Bitcoin ETF”
South Korea’s ruling People Power Party has “indefinitely postponed” its promised relaxation of cryptocurrency restrictions, including lifting a ban on local spot Bitcoin ETFs, according to people familiar with the matter.
Earlier this month, it was reported that the ruling party was preparing campaign promises aimed at deferring taxes on crypto earnings and allowing local institutions to launch spot Bitcoin ETFs and invest directly in cryptocurrencies.
Local news outlet Chosun Biz reported on Wednesday that the party changed its position and retracted its pledge, possibly due to difficulties in coordinating cryptocurrency policy with government and financial authorities.
Project News
Portal opens for claiming PORTAL tokens
The Web3 game platform Portal announced on the X platform that applications for PORTAL tokens will be opened at 17:30 on February 29.
Portal announces it will launch staking on Friday
Web3 gaming platform Portal announced that it will launch staking on Friday, allowing users to gain VIP access to token pre-sales, NFT mints and brand snap-ups.
Portal said it will announce its March/April roadmap on Friday, including the debut of the Launchpad project.
Telegram plans to sell TON at a discount to long-term investors to limit its token holdings to 10%
The founder of Telegram posted that some community members are worried that Telegram’s Toncoin (TON) holdings are too large and may be too concentrated for its ecosystem. In response, Telegram announced that it will take new measures to limit its TON holdings to about 10% of the supply. Telegram plans to sell over-held TON tokens to long-term investors at a price lower than the market price, and these tokens will implement a lock-up and linear unlocking plan for 1 to 4 years to reduce the free circulation in the market. , stabilize its ecology and reduce volatility.
Telegram has also set up a new email address, investors@telegram.org, for large investors (investments of more than US$1 million) to express their purchase intentions.
Derivatives trading platform Aevo said it had taken two snapshots, one for users before the mining upgrade plan and one for users participating in the two-week mining upgrade plan. Next weekend, Aevo will conduct another round of snapshots at the end of the Lucky Mining boost program. The airdrop allocation will be given priority to early users (users participating before the mining upgrade) and users during the 2-week mining upgrade plan period. The lucky mining boost (10-100x) ends, and the base mining boost (1-4x) will continue, depending on the users transaction volume in the past 7 days.
zkLend may launch token ZEND in March
Starknet ecological lending protocol zkLend released a ZEND-themed image on the zkLend will launch the governance token ZEND in March.
Shiba Inu to launch new privacy-focused network on Shibarium chain, powered by TREAT token
Shiba Inu will launch a new privacy-focused network on the Shibarium blockchain.
Shiba Inu is working with open-source encryption company Zama to develop the yet-to-be-named network. The exact mechanism is called fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), a privacy tool that allows developers to use data on untrusted domains without decryption.
Shiba developers say the move will improve on-chain privacy for SHIB token holders and help protect their personal and transaction data. Shiba Inu ecological token TREAT will provide support for the new privacy layer.
The Floki (FLOKI) development team will launch a proposal to burn 190, 918, 585, 431.84 FLOKI tokens (currently worth over $11 million), representing 2% of its token circulating supply, to increase its scarcity and network security. The tokens proposed to be burned this time will come from tokens stored on Multichain Bridge.
Mocaverse will airdrop 500,000 PIXEL to up to 5,000 Moca NFT and Moca ID holders
Mocaverse, a Web3 project owned by Animoca Brands, announced on the Pixels missions and receive mission RP, up to 2 wins. This is the first batch of launches, and more activities may be carried out in the future.
Aboard announces token economics: 50% used for liquidity mining rewards
The multi-chain sustainable trading association Aboard announced the economics of ABE tokens. The total supply of ABE is 1 billion, of which: 20% is used for ecological growth, marketing and incentives (including airdrops); 50% is used for liquidity mining rewards; 30% is divided equally between the team and early investors.
SenecaUSD hacker has returned 1537 ETH to the deployers address
According to Paidun monitoring, the SenecaUSD hacker address has returned 1,537 ETH (approximately $5.3 million) to the Seneca deployer address and transferred 300 ETH (approximately $1.04 million) to 2 new addresses.
According to previous news, SenecaUSD was hacked due to security vulnerabilities, resulting in a loss of approximately US$6.5 million. SenecaUSD sent an on-chain message to the hacker calling on him to return the funds to avoid further legal action. The team also said it is working with third-party security providers and law enforcement to track the funds and identify recipient wallets. If the funds are returned, the hacker can keep 20% as a white hat bounty.
According to MetaTrust Alert monitoring, Shido Network, a decentralized cross-chain protocol on the Ethereum chain, is suspected of running away. The owner of the SHIDO token pledge contract first upgraded the pledge contract, then withdrew a large amount of SHIDO, and finally sold a large amount of SHIDO at a price of 692 ETH (worth $2.1 million). 692 ETH are currently still at address 0x462...5dd.
data
An address received an airdrop of 1.27 million PORTALs, equivalent to approximately US$4.8 million.
According to Scopescan monitoring, a certain address received approximately 1.27 million PORTAL airdrops and began to redeem them, deposit them into CEX, and send them to other addresses. At the current price of about $3, it received about $4.8 million in PORTAL airdrops.
Bitcoin spot ETF saw net inflows of $673 million on Wednesday
According to SoSoValue data, the total net inflow of Bitcoin spot ETFs on February 28, Eastern Time, was US$673 million. Grayscale ETF GBTC had a single-day net outflow of US$216 million on Wednesday. The Bitcoin spot ETF with the largest single-day net inflow yesterday was BlackRock ETF IBIT, with a single-day net inflow of US$612 million, continuing to hit a record high. The current total historical net inflow of IBIT has reached US$7.15 billion. Followed by Fidelity ETF FBTC, with a single-day net inflow of approximately US$245 million, and the current total historical net inflow of FBTC reaches US$4.72 billion. As of press time, the total net asset value of Bitcoin spot ETFs is US$46.33 billion, the ETF net asset ratio (market value as a proportion of the total market value of Bitcoin) reaches 3.91%, and the historical cumulative net inflow has reached US$7.4 billion.
CoinGecko: Privacy coins have lost 44.3% market share since 2021
CoinGecko said in the report that privacy coins have lost 44.3% of their market share since 2021, based on the monthly average token market capitalization of major crypto privacy assets, with most of this share shifting to privacy-focused blockchains.
In January 2021, privacy coins dominated the crypto-privacy market with 96.6% (market capitalization of $4.62 billion), but as of February 2024, this share was only 52.3% ($3.08 billion). In comparison, privacy blockchain’s market share increased 14 times, from 3.4% (market capitalization of $160 million) to 47.7% ($2.81 billion).
A whale deposited 600 BTC to the exchange in the past 3 days and still holds 4,500 BTC.
According to Lookonchain monitoring, in the past three days, a smart whale deposited 600 BTC (approximately $35.5 million) into the exchange to make a profit. It currently holds 4,500 BTC (approximately $276 million), with a total profit of more than $165 million.
From August 24 to September 2, 2023, it withdrew 6,000 BTC (approximately $158.66 million) from Binance at an average price of $26,444, and on October 18, November 8, 2023 and Deposited 3,000 BTC (approximately $105.7 million) to Binance on December 4.
Between January 6 and February 26, it withdrew 2,100 BTC (approximately $93.8 million) from Binance at an average price of $44,677, and between February 27 and February 29, it withdrew 2,100 BTC at an average price of $44,677. The average price of US dollars deposited to Binance was 600 BTC (approximately US$35.5 million).
According to monitoring by on-chain analyst @ai_ 9684 xtpa, the giant whale that was long ETH with leverage once again transferred 1,970 ETH from Binance. After pledging it, it borrowed 6 million USDT and recharged it into Binance. There is a high probability that it will still increase its position.
The whale has mortgaged a total of 13,691 ETH (approximately US$47.47 million) and borrowed 30.37 million stablecoins; the average cost of ETH is approximately US$2,756, and it has now made a profit of US$9.78 million.
Suspected Justin Sun address deposited 100 million USDT into Binance
According to Lookonchain monitoring, the suspected address of Justin Sun once again deposited 100 million USDT into Binance.
Between February 12 and February 24, this address purchased a total of 168,369 ETH (approximately US$580.5 million), with an average price of US$2,894, and an unrealized profit of approximately US$95 million.
Investment and Financing
IoTeX posted on the
IOTA Ecological Foundation: Plans to invest US$10 million to support RWA early stage startups
The IOTA Ecosystem Foundation has pledged to invest $10 million in startups in the UAE and Africa. The foundation was registered in November last year. The investment will focus on early-stage startups in digital trade and tokenization of real-world assets (RWA). The investments will be publicly disclosed in the coming weeks and will include newly formed trade technology (TradeTech) businesses. IOTA will also support startups building on the IOTA platform through accelerator programs.
Silence Laboratories raises $4.1 million, led by Pi Ventures and Kira Studio
Encryption security company Silence Laboratories announced the completion of $4.1 million in financing, co-led by Pi Ventures and Kira Studio. Silence Laboratories has raised a total of US$6 million in financing and will use this round of financing to expand its team and strengthen its RD pipeline.
It is reported that Silence Laboratories uses multi-party computation (MPC) to build infrastructure to help enterprises protect data privacy and security. The company offers two products using MPC technology: Silent Shard and Silent Compute. Audited by security audit firm Trail of Bits, Silent Shard enables businesses and users to limit the risk of exposing sensitive private keys and enforce advanced authorization rules. Silent Compute enables businesses to collaborate on information without revealing their private data to third parties.
Octav completes US$4 million in strategic financing
Blockchain data analysis company Octav announced the completion of a strategic investment of US$4 million, led by high-net-worth individuals in the encryption field, but specific investor information has not yet been disclosed. Currently, Octav is mainly focused on using machine learning technology to unlock the potential of on-chain data to improve the accuracy of data annotation and classification.
Web3 traffic aggregation marketing platform LinkTo announced the completion of a seed round of financing from investment institutions including Adaverse, Ruby Capital, Warrior Wealth Fund, BitValue Capital and Block Infinity Limited.
LinkTo is committed to solving the core challenges of advertising and marketing in the current Web3 ecosystem, including improving advertising efficiency, ensuring marketing transparency, and optimizing user engagement. By introducing advanced streaming technology and AI algorithms, LinkTo aims to provide brands and advertisers with a platform that can accurately position and effectively reach target audiences while ensuring data security and user privacy.
Cetus, a DEX based on Sui and Aptos, received strategic investment from Sui Foundation
Cetus, a DEX and liquidity protocol based on Sui and Aptos, announced on the X platform that it has received strategic investment from the Sui Foundation. The specific amount was not disclosed.
In May last year, Cetus announced the completion of a seed round of financing, led by OKX Ventures and KuCoin Ventures, with participation from Comma 3 Ventures, NGC Ventures, Jump Crypto, Animoca Ventures, IDG Capital, Leland Ventures, AC Capital, Adaverse, Coin 98 Ventures and others.
