What happened in crypto the past 2 weeks? Bitcoin went down as the crypto US Federal Reserve hinted at XRP, ADA and SOL. Bybit declared war on the Lazarus Group. Some new upgrade is on work at the Ethereum headquarters. Memecoins are going down. What else? Read below:
- Bitcoin: The market started to show crypto-linked equity issuance fatigue. The best example is Strategy, raising $2B in a convertible note offering to buy additional Bitcoin. Spot BTC ETFs also saw a record $930M daily outflow. Well, Bitcoin had experienced the worst drop since the FTX collapse in November 2022, reaching $84-$85K. But you do not need to worry; overall, the OG crypto bought BTC with prices between $92K and $100K in 2025, adding more than $160B to the total.
- Ethereum: The Ethereum Foundation appointed Aya Miyaguchi as President, shifting from her Executive Director role. ETH developers deployed the Pectra upgrade on the Holesky Testnet, but they ran into technical challenges as the network slot from the moment of activation hasn't yet been finalized. The Pectra upgrade aims to improve Ethereum's scalability, security and usability.
- Altcoins and stablecoins: Jeremy Allaire, co-founder of Circle, has called for the US registration for all the dollar-backed cryptocurrency issuers, regardless of their operational base. Some people think that the USA is still the center of the world. Not anymore! If Europe can function without USDT, America can also be without some of the major stablecoins. Bank of America's CEO has signaled that the financial giant is ready to enter the stablecoin market once regulators establish a clear regulatory framework for these digital assets. Bitcoin maxis feel betrayed after Trump added XRP, SOL and ADA to the strategic reserve. Yet, all of them went up (except BTC), with XRP at 35%, SOL at 24%, and ADA at 68%. Ripple Labs was riding the wave, promising a safe, secure, and scalable layer 1 for financial institutions. With over $38M worth of SOL withdrawn, Wintermute is getting investors on edge, especially as on March 1st, more than 11.2M SOL tokens worth $2B will be released into circulation. Check out Berachain, as they now hold nearly 3% of all the TVL in DEFI. BERA is currently trading at $6.75 with a market cap of $715M. Grayscale filed for a Polkadot ETF with the SEC. Memecoins are failing us, with DOGE going below $0.20 for the first time since November, and PEPE, TRUMP and BONK, along with most of the other tokens, taking a hit too. Looks like the connection between DOGE and the White House is losing its spark.
- NFTs and blockchain games: I am big on playing Golem Overlord lately on Hive, and it is quite profitable, I would say, with some great updates lately. On Splinterlands, we are getting ready for a new card collection with some cool summoners that are now auction-only, and it seems quite expensive, but they did launch the validator nodes last week, after a long waiting time. I hope this may help the game by bringing up more speed and stability. Check my Holozing article to learn about a new blockchain game that looks full of potential. I am also playing a cute little game called Chain of Legends, which reminds me of Heroes of Might and Magic, even if the overlap is not 100%.
- Good news: OKX reached a $500M settlement with the US Department of Justice over its failure to secure the necessary licenses to operate as a money transmitter. Uniswap expanded crypto-2-fiat capabilities with Robinhood, Transak, and MoonPay. CME Group is launching Solana futures on March 17. Check all these investigations that the SEC dropped last week!
- Bad news: The Crypto Fear and Greed Index just plunged to a 10 - Extreme Fear. The last time this happened, Terra collapsed, Arrows Capital imploded, and Celsius froze withdrawals. North Korean hackers laundered 69% of the $1.4B they stole from Bybit, one of the most used tools being THORChain swap, leading to one of the protocol's developers leaving the project. Adam Back called EVM a dumpster fire, saying that this technology is complex, fragile, blind-signed and fundamentally unsecurable. In response to that, Bibyt's CEO launched a bounty program targeting the Lazarus Group, promising rewards of up to 10% for those who successfully intercept stolen funds. They also traced what happened, as it seems that Lazarus Group managed to inject malicious Javascript code into SafeWallet's AWS structure, giving them unauthorized access to deceive signers into approving a transaction. Pump.fun launchpad had its Twitter/X account compromised, and a fake official governance token was launched to steal money from the people who are way too trusting.
- Joke of the week: The SEC dropped its investigation into Uniswap Labs after they tried to charge them with operating as an unregistered securities broker and exchange, as well as issuing an unregistered security. Uniswap Labs defended its operations, asserting its legality and pledging to fight the pending charges. This is a huge win for DEFI. The SEC also closed its investigation into Gemini Exchange as founders criticized them, saying that them dropping the case "does little to make up for the damage this agency has done to us, our industry, and America". They lost tens of millions in legal bills alone and maybe hundreds of millions in lost productivity, creativity and innovation. A few days later, the SEC dropped its lawsuits against both Coinbase and Consensys, as well as distancing themselves from memecoins, saying that these are not securities. My question is: Did they bring the witchhunt to an end?
All the best,
George
Why not...
...have fun and win rewards on my favourite blockchain games (Splinterlands- a Hearthstone-like card game) (Golem Overlord - a Play2Earn game on Hive) (Upland - a real-life virtual land) (Holozing - a Pokemon-like game)and ( Chain of Legends - with a hint of Heroes of Might and Magic).
...get crypto while writing on the Publish0x blog, using the Presearch search engine to maximize your income with PRE tokens. Use Torum instead of Twitter. I am also writing for crypto on Hive.
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