Hot News
Bitcoin spot ETFs saw their fifth consecutive week of net outflows of $870.39 million last week, despite the stablecoin’s market capitalization increasing by about $1.36 billion during the same period. Affected by the continued macroeconomic uncertainty, Bitcoin prices rose only slightly by 0.78% last week.
Macro Outlook
The trade war escalated further as US President Trump announced a new 25% tariff on steel and aluminum imports. The European Commission re-imposed countermeasures on US goods worth 26 billion euros, while Canada imposed a 25% tariff on US goods worth 30 billion Canadian dollars. In addition, Trump further threatened that if Brussels imposed a 50% tariff on US whiskey exports from April 1, the US would impose a 200% tariff on EU wine, champagne and other alcoholic products. According to Polymarket's forecast, the probability of the US falling into a recession in 2025 is 42% .
The number of US JOLTs job vacancies increased to 7.74 million in January, higher than the market expectation of 7.63 million.
The U.S. inflation rate fell to 3.1% in February, lower than the market forecast of 3.2%. The PPI index remained flat during the same period, also lower than the market's expected increase of 0.3%. Although the latest inflation and PPI data are lower than market expectations, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America predict that the core PCE index in February will increase between 0.29% and 0.4%, indicating that the market still has high expectations for the upcoming PCE data.
The market estimates that there is a 99% chance that the Federal Reserve's FOMC meeting this week will keep interest rates unchanged.
Upcoming economic calendars include:
March 17 (Monday) 8:30 pm: US February retail sales data
March 19 (Wednesday) 11:00 am: Bank of Japan interest rate decision
March 20 (Thursday) 2:00 a.m.: Federal Reserve (FOMC) meeting
Cryptocurrency Market Overview
The U.S. Senate Banking Committee passed the GENIUS Act , which aims to regulate stablecoin issuers. It still needs further approval from the full Senate and the House of Representatives.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution with 292 votes in favor and 132 votes against, overturning the IRS's new regulations on brokers who collect user tax and transaction data on DeFi platforms.
According to Fox Business News, the US SEC is about to reach a settlement agreement with Ripple Labs.
Ripple has obtained the first blockchain payment service provider license issued by the Dubai Financial Services Authority and will provide regulated crypto payments and related services in the UAE.
Binance raised USD 2 billion from MGX, an investment company in the UAE, which gave MGX a minority stake in Binance.
World Liberty Finance purchased AVAX and MNT worth $2 million each.
Layer 1 and Layer 2 Public Chains
Solana’s SIMD-0228, a proposal to introduce a market-based issuance mechanism, failed to reach the required vote threshold for passage.
Nuffle (formerly NEAR DA) announced its rebrand to MoreMarket , launching a global liquidity marketplace that enables cross-chain DeFi activities through universal non-custodial accounts.
Starknet reiterated its goal to achieve settlement on both Bitcoin and Ethereum, introduce more BTC-based application ecosystems, and introduce Bitcoin assets into the Starknet second-layer network through a cross-chain bridge driven by BitVM technology.
ZKsync announced the termination of the Ignite incentive plan due to the shift of resource focus from Era to the Elastic network ecosystem and the overall sluggish market environment.
Base launches Echo , an on-chain private investment platform designed to support startup projects in the Base ecosystem.
NEAR announced that KyberSwap and Gnosis have integrated NEAR Intents to provide a seamless cross-chain experience.
Plume announced the integration of Walrus Protocol , a decentralized storage solution based on the Sui network, as its blob storage solution, and plans to develop an asset tokenization engine and cross-chain solutions based on Sui's Move technology stack.
The Movement public mainnet beta is now live .
Dapps
A Hyperliquid trader had his 20x ETH long position worth $290 million liquidated due to the gradual removal of his own collateral, causing the HLP vault to lose $4 million in slippage due to excessive positions. Afterwards, Hyperliquid reduced the maximum leverage of BTC and ETH to 40x and 25x respectively. Currently, the trader holds a 40x BTC short position and a 5x Melania long position.
Circle announced the launch of CCTP V2 , which significantly shortens the USDC cross-chain transfer time from minutes to seconds, and implements the information verification function before the final confirmation of the source chain. CCTP V2 also introduces the Hooks function, allowing developers to customize the operation logic after the transfer through smart contracts.
Drift launches Swift Protocol , a new trading standard that aims to achieve sub-second matching, better prices and gas-free transactions, covering perpetual contracts and spot markets, and improving the trading experience by integrating multiple sources of liquidity.
Compound launched Compound Blue through a proposal. The project is technically supported by Morpho, deployed on the Polygon network, and allocated US$3 million worth of COMP and SOL incentives to accelerate the development of the ecosystem.
Lit Protocol launches LITKEY token as a staking, gas payment and governance token for the protocol network. Lit Protocol is committed to providing developers with decentralized key management and secure computing functions in the protocol.
GMX Solana is now online . Users can mint GLV through SOL or USDC. The current APY can be as high as 700%.
Governance/Project Updates
Uniswap is expected to pass an incentive proposal to provide approximately $24 million and $21 million in funding to Uniswap v4 and Unichain, respectively, to accelerate the development of its ecosystem. The vote will end on March 19.
Biconomy announced the launch of Biconomy Network , a chain abstraction layer solution, which is scheduled to be launched on the Genesis mainnet in April 2025. Biconomy Network focuses on the Supertransaction function, where users only need to sign once to perform operations across multiple chains, and the decentralized node network driven by BICO ensures security.
Offchain Labs, the team behind Arbitrum, announced that it plans to repurchase ARB tokens through the open market and will do so in a gradual and progressive manner.
Soneium announced that it will launch four on-chain mini-apps on the LINE platform, namely Sleepagotchi LITE, Farm Frens, Moonveil and Pocket Mob, which are expected to be launched in the next few months.
The founder of Aave proposed Project Horizon to create a lending protocol focused on RWA and developed based on the Aave protocol architecture. The proposal originally included profit sharing and new token allocation to Aave DAO, but a consensus was finally reached to launch it as a new product line of Aave.
Initia announced that it will allow venture capital institutions and early investorsto participate in staking with locked quotas , but the staking income will follow a four-year linear unlocking mechanism, while reducing the issuance of staking tokens. At the same time, Initia will increase the INIT quota of Initia VIP from the original 10% to 25%, further strengthening the influence of Initia VIP in governance voting.
Token Unlock
IMX will be unlocked on March 21, and the unlocked amount accounts for 1.38% of the total supply of the coin.
PLUME will be unlocked on March 21, and the unlocked amount accounts for 5.41% of the total supply of the coin.
IDs will be unlocked on March 22, accounting for 18.1% of the total token supply.
OP will be unlocked on March 31, and the unlocked amount accounts for 1.98% of the total supply of tokens.
GRASS will be unlocked on March 31, accounting for 1.51% of the total supply of the token.
SUI will be unlocked on April 1, and the unlocked amount accounts for 2.54% of the total supply of the coin.
ENA will be unlocked on April 2, accounting for 1.79% of the total supply of the token.
JTO will be unlocked on April 7, and the unlocked amount accounts for 3.7% of the total supply of tokens.
IO will be unlocked on April 7, accounting for 2.09% of the total supply of tokens.
