CMC Market Pulse delivers actionable market insights, giving you all the key narratives and developments you need in under 5 minutes.
CMC Market Pulse: The Beginning of the End or a Healthy Correction?
Join us in showcasing the cryptocurrency revolution, one newsletter at a time. Subscribe now to get daily news and market updates right to your inbox, along with our millions of other subscribers (that’s right, millions love us!) — what are you waiting for?
Market Overview 📉
Markets started off the week with the Bybit hack, sending markets into a turmoil. While the markets did recover slightly over the weekend, the volatility returned as the new week began, with the markets dragged down by traditional equities to break the multi-month price range. Total crypto market cap fell 13.2% from $3.362T to $2.917T.
Bitcoin (BTC) ended the week down 13.58%, while Ethereum (ETH) did fared much worse, closing at 15.99% down from the prior week.
Daily liquidations surged this week, primarily on the long side, as markets broke down lower. A total of $2.3B in longs were liquidated over the early half of the week, with shorts making up only approximately $400M during the same time frame. Liquidations slowed down towards the end of the week, possibly signalling that the excess leverage had already been cleared. Funding rates also mostly continued to stay flat across the board, with some minor increases on BTC and ETH.
📌 Michael Saylor’s Strategy has acquired 20,356 BTC for $1.99B at an average price of $97,514 in the past week, using up the proceeds from the $2B convertible senior note offering the week before. - Link
📌 Franklin Templeton is seeking approval from the SEC for the inclusion of staking for a Solana spot ETF. - Link
📌 Coinbase and the SEC have reached an agreement to dismiss their litigation against the centralized exchange, finally ending years of legal battles. - Link
Why does it matter?
The week kicked off with the Bybit exploit pulling down the overall market sentiment, volatility spiked after several consecutive red days from traditional equities.With BTC breaking down swiftly through the lower end of the three-month consolidation range, the broader crypto market quickly followed, with many altcoins forming new lows. The S&P 500 fell over 4.1% this week, while the Nasdaq took a bigger hit, losing 7.04% over the past week.
Although the start of the week saw a surge in Bitcoin dominance as the markets broke down, altcoins quickly found their footing, perhaps due to having been sold down for the last two months already. The Bitcoin dominance trend quickly reversed, closing at 60.75%, or down 0.7% from the week prior. Some speculate that this could be a beginning of a reversal in altcoin performance against Bitcoin, which has thus far been seen as a safe haven asset.
Across the altcoin outperformers this week, some notable ones include newly launched tokens Story (IP) and Kaito (KAITO). Interestingly, several AI memecoins made a comeback as well, with ai16z (AI16Z) and Act I: The AI Prophecy (ACT) showing strength throughout the week. Select DeFi tokens such as MakerDAO (MKR) and Olympus (OHM) also fared relatively well against their peers.
Narrative of the Week 📰
Centralized exchange, Bybit, sees an exploit of their ETH cold wallet during a scheduled migration of wallets, resulting in the loss of approximately $1.5B in assets.
📌 Bybit’s ETH multisig wallet was exploited for 401K ETH, 90.4K stETH, 8,000 mETH and 15K cmETH tokens, with the stETH, mETH and cmETH quickly being dumped for ETH. - Link
📌 Bybit releases the preliminary report on the investigation into the hack, revealing that the exploit was done through a hijacked Safe UI, specifically targeting the Bybit Multisig wallet, through a compromised Safe developer device. - Link
📌 Through a series of bridging loans and ETH OTC purchases over the weekend, the gap in backing assets on the exchange has been closed as of Monday, 24th February. - Link
📌 Chainflip upgrades their protocol to block the laundering of proceeds from the Bybit hack as well as future flows of illicit funds. - Link
Why does it matter?
The Bybit hack represents the largest ever cryptocurrency hack, with the stolen amount more than 2.3x the next largest hack. The hack highlights the ever-increasing need for top-notch security especially in a space that is growing so quickly. Moreover, the hack brings into focus the need for decentralized frontends for critical infrastructure such as Safe multisig wallets, which are part of the industry’s standard practice. The hack has also highlighted the resilience of the industry today, where even a $1.5B hack can be bridged so quickly.
Major Project Updates 🗓️
📌 The Ethereum Foundation appoints Aya Miyaguchi as its President, stepping down from her prior role as Executive Director, to lead the Foundation in institutional relationships and to expand the reach of Ethereum’s vision and culture. - Link
📌 EVM Proof-of-Liquidity L1, Berachain, kicks of Governance Phase 1. Teams may now submit their Request for Reward Vault (RFRV) forms now. Following approval, selected teams will become eligible for BGT token emissions. - Link
📌 Coinbase is offering 12% APY on USDC deposits on their Perpetuals portfolio. At the moment, trading fees on perpetual trades have also been removed. - Link
📌 Multi-chain wallet, Phantom, acquires real-time NFT analytics and insights platform, SimpleHash, which has data coverage over more than 80 chains. - Link
📌 On-chain detective, ZachXBT, joins Paradigm as an Incident Response Advisor for their portfolio companies. - Link
Why does it matter?
In the recent months, the Ethereum Foundation has faced criticism from the community regarding the role of the Foundation in developing, supporting and expanding the chain’s reach, with many criticising the hands-off approach of the Ethereum leadership. Aya Miyaguchi has also been embroiled in these criticisms, with certain factions within the Ethereum community calling for her removal earlier this year. Nevertheless, in her new role as the President of the Ethereum Foundation, the role has never been more important, for Ethereum to find its direction moving forward and to maintain its position as the dominant smart contract platform.
DeFi Brief 🏦
📌 Multi-chain DEX, Uniswap, finally closes their investigation with the SEC, almost a year after the SEC first issued a Wells notice against the DEX. - Link
📌 The Aave v3.3 upgrade goes live, bringing to the protocol Umbrella, which uses staked aTokens to absorb bad debt, reducing the need for governance intervention. Users can stake aTokens to participate, and in return, are rewarded for keeping the protocol secure. - Link
📌 RWA platform, Ondo Finance, partners up with credit card provider, Mastercard, to bring tokenized RWAs to Mastercard’s multi-token network (MTN). - Link
📌 Reserve Protocol introduces the Reserve Index Protocol, allowing users to get market or narrative exposure in a single click, with supported indices including the Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index, CoinDesk DeFi Select Index and more. - Link
📌 Solana DEX aggregator Jupiter’s founder, Meow, announces the long term plan for Jupiter, including a full audit of Jupiter’s founders, the Litterbox Trust: a trust to accumulate JUP tokens over time, and more. - Link
📌 Omnichain liquidity infrastructure, StakeStone, released their whitepaper, with some speculating the upcoming release of a StakeStone token. - Link
📌 Valantis Labs introduces the stHYPE AMM for the Hyperliquid L1. The AMM is designed to prevent liquidity providers from ever selling HYPE liquid staking token, stHYPE, under the true peg through their native withdrawal mechanism. - Link
📌 Stablecoin neobank, Infini, was hacked for $49.5M in USDC, with the stolen funds swapped for DAI before being swapped for ETH. The project has offered a white hat bounty of 20% of the assets, but have not received a reply. - Link
Why does it matter?
The SEC has always been an issue for crypto projects, especially DeFi projects based in the United States. This week sees a change of heart from the SEC, perhaps under the guidance of the new, more crypto-friendly administration, with several lawsuits and investigations dropped by the SEC between companies such as Coinbase, Gemini, Uniswap and more. The move could be the first step to introducing greater clarity surrounding regulations around crypto projects and tokens in the United States and perhaps also for other nations looking to take a more crypto-friendly stance.
Meme Coins 🚀
📌 Memecoin launchpad Pump.fun’s X account was compromised this week, with the hacker releasing a single contract address through the account. - Link
📌 Pump.fun is allegedly building their own automated market maker (AMM), which could potentially see the launchpad removing the need for Raydium’s services once newly launched tokens graduate. - Link
📌 Amidst rumors of an upcoming token launch from rap icon, Kanye West, many have come forward with evidence pointing to Kanye’s X account having been sold to the BarkMeta Doginals crew for $17M. - Link
Fundraises 💰
📌 Bitcoin staking platform, Acre, raises $4M at a $90M valuation in a strategic funding round, with investors including Draper Dragon, Big Brain Holdings and Orange DAO, alongside angel investors. - Link
📌 Wallet infrastructure protocol, WalletConnect, raises $10M across four oversubscribed token sales, with $4M raised on CoinList, $4M in BitGet’s LaunchX, $500K on Echo and $1.5M in private sales. - Link
📌 Verifiable, privacy-preserving data layer, Primus Labs, raises $6.5M in their pre-seed and seed round, led by Dispersion Capital, Symbolic Capital and VanEck, with support from Alchemy, SNZ Holding, Hash Global and more. - Link
📌 Crypto ETF issuer, Bitwise, raises $70M in a funding round, with investors including Electric Capital, Haun Ventures, MassMutual, ParaFi Capital and more. - Link
📌 USDe issuer, Ethena Labs, raises $100M in a private token sale to fund the development of their new chain and institutional products. Investors in the sale include Franklin Templeton, Polychain, Pantera and more. - Link
Airdrops Abound 🎁
📌 Parallel execution EVM chain, Monad, teases on their X account that it was the “last day to be an early user of Monad testnet”, perhaps hinting at some form of future airdrop reward for early users.. - Link
Tweet of the Week 📝
Source: jon_charb
Some questions are best left unanswered, for the sake of our industry (and THORChain’s business).
This article contains links to third-party websites or other content for information purposes only (“Third-Party Sites”). The Third-Party Sites are not under the control of CoinMarketCap, and CoinMarketCap is not responsible for the content of any Third-Party Site, including without limitation any link contained in a Third-Party Site, or any changes or updates to a Third-Party Site. CoinMarketCap is providing these links to you only as a convenience, and the inclusion of any link does not imply endorsement, approval or recommendation by CoinMarketCap of the site or any association with its operators. This article is intended to be used and must be used for informational purposes only. It is important to do your own research and analysis before making any material decisions related to any of the products or services described. This article is not intended as, and shall not be construed as, financial advice. The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s [company’s] own and do not necessarily reflect those of CoinMarketCap.
