Sacks and his VC firm sold over $200M in crypto and stocks before WH role
David Sacks and his venture capital firm offloaded over $200 million in crypto and crypto-related stocks before he commenced his role as the White House AI and crypto czar on Jan. 20, according to a White House memorandum.“You and Craft Ventures have divested over $200 million of positions related to the digital asset industry, of which $85 million is directly attributable to you,” the March 5 dated memorandum said.Crypto sell-off in an effort to prevent conflict of interestThe memorandum said the “significant steps” were taken to reduce potential conflicts of interest before Sacks began his tenure as the White House AI and crypto czar — in which a major part of his role is to help create a legal framework for the crypto industry.Sacks offloaded all the “liquid cryptocurrency” in his portfolio, as well as Craft Ventures’ portfolio — the investment firm he co-founded in 2017 — including holdings in Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), and Solana (SOL), before US President Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20.The memorandum outlined which cryptocurrencies and crypto-related stocks David Sacks sold prior to Trump’s inauguration. Source: The White HouseSacks also divested from publicly traded crypto-related firms, including Coinbase (COIN), Robinhood (HOOD), and stakes in private digital asset companies.Additionally, he sold his limited partner interest in Solana-focused Multichain Capital and crypto-focused venture capital firm Blockchain Capital. At the same time, Craft Ventures offloaded its holdings in Multichain Capital and Bitwise Asset Management.Sen. Warren urged Sacks to prove he no longer holds cryptoThe memorandum is dated one day before Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren urged Sacks in a March 6 letter to prove he no longer holds any digital assets, following Sacks’ claim in an X post that he sold off all his crypto.“Despite your public statements via X, it remains unclear exactly when you personally divested from BTC, ETH, and SOL, when Craft Ventures divested from Bitwise, and whether people close to you ‘may have held positions and sold into the recent price surge,” Warren said.Since Sacks commenced the role, he has been a strong vocal advocate on various issues in the crypto industry, from the importance of a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve to not over-taxing the crypto industry.Related: Bitcoin panic selling costs new investors $100M in 6 weeks — ResearchSacks recently shut down the idea of crypto transaction taxes on an episode of the All In Podcast after host Jason Calacanis proposed charging a 0.01% tax on every cryptocurrency transaction.“That’s always how taxes start. They are described as being very modest,” Sacks said.“You know, when the income tax started, it only applied to like a thousand Americans, and the legislators swore up and down that it would never be applied to middle-class people,” Sacks added.Magazine: Crypto fans are obsessed with longevity and biohacking: Here’s why
New MassJacker malware targets piracy users, steals crypto
A new type of cryptojacking malware, known as MassJacker, has been discovered by cybersecurity firm CyberArk. This malware specifically targets users who download pirated software from the website pesktop[dot]com. Once installed, MassJacker replaces stored crypto addresses on the clipboard with addresses controlled by the attacker, allowing them to hijack crypto transactions.
According to CyberArk’s report, there are over 778,000 unique wallets linked to this malware, with a total of $336,700 worth of crypto assets stolen. However, the true extent of the theft may be higher or lower. One particular wallet stood out, containing over 600 Solana (SOL) and a history of holding non-fungible tokens (NFTs) such as Gorilla Reborn and Susanoo.
This is not the first instance of crypto malware, as the first publicly available cryptojacking script was released in 2017. Since then, attackers have targeted various devices and operating systems, including Android and iOS devices, Python Package Index, and even macOS devices.
One of the newer methods of attack involves fake job scams, where the attacker recruits victims with the promise of a job and then installs the malware during a virtual interview. Another method, known as the “clipper” attack, alters crypto addresses copied to the clipboard, making it difficult to detect.
As the use of crypto continues to grow, it is important for users to be vigilant and protect their assets from these types of attacks. Cybersecurity measures, such as regularly updating software and using reputable sources for downloads, can help prevent falling victim to crypto malware.
VanEck files for AVAX ETF
Global investment manager VanEck has filed for an Avalanche (AVAX) exchange-traded fund (ETF) with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) seeking to offer investors direct exposure to the smart contract platform. A snippet of the S-1 filing was shared on social media on March 14 by Bloomberg analyst James Seyffart, who has been closely monitoring developments in the crypto ETF industry.Source: James SeyffartThe proposed VanEck Avalanche ETF intends to “reflect the performance of the price of “AVAX,” the native token of the Avalanche network, less the expenses of the Trust’s operations,” the prospectus read. The proposed fund will hold AVAX and will “value its Shares daily based on the reported MarketVector Avalanche Benchmark Rate,” the prospectus said.As Seyffart noted in a follow-up post, the Trust’s registration “was shared widely […] earlier this week, But this is the first actual filing with the SEC.”Avalanche is the 16th largest crypto asset, with a total market capitalization of $7.7 billion. The blockchain is notable for its high throughput and Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatibility. Related: US Bitcoin ETFs break outflow streak with $13.3M inflowETF race heats upThe overwhelming success of the US spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded funds and the election of a pro-crypto administration in Washington have triggered an influx of crypto fund applications at the SEC.As Cointelegraph recently reported, nine issuers have filed for an XRP (XRP) ETF, with Franklin Templeton joining the race on March 11. Issuers are also vying to list ETFs linked to Solana (SOL), Litecoin (LTC) and Dogecoin (DOGE).Although the SEC has punted its decision on these offerings, opting to designate a longer period for review, Seyffart and fellow Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchinas say there are “relatively high odds of approval” later this year. A January report by JPMorgan said the approval of altcoin ETFs will likely trigger billions of dollars in inflows, underscoring the pent-up demand for cryptocurrencies. In particular, SOL and XRP products could attract the most institutional interest.Assuming modest adoption rates, SOL and XRP ETFs could attract billions in their first 12 months. Source: JPMorgan“When applying these so-called “adoption rates” to SOL and XRP, we see SOL attracting roughly $3 billion-$6 billion of net assets and XRP gathering $4 billion-$8 billion in net new assets,” the report said.Related: US Bitcoin ETF assets break $100 billion
Hyperliquid’s mystery 50x ETH whale is now betting on LINK
The cryptocurrency trader whose ultra-leveraged Ether (ETH) trade tested Hyperliquid’s limits on March 12 has entered another multimillion-dollar position, this time in Chainlink (LINK), onchain data shows. On March 14, the anonymous whale, referred to on X as “ETH 50x Big Guy,” took out long positions in LINK worth approximately $31 million with 10 times leverage, according to Lookonchain, a Web3 analytics service. He placed the bets on Hyplerliquid and GMX, two popular perpetuals exchanges, Lookonchain said in a March 14 X post. Additionally, the whale accumulated roughly $12 million in spot LINK. In the ensuing hours, the whale gradually reduced his LINK holdings through small swaps back into stablecoins, as per onchain data. Source: LookonchainRelated: Hyperliquid ups margin requirements after $4 million liquidation lossMassive trading gainsOn March 12, the unidentified trader intentionally liquidated a roughly $200 million ETH long position, causing Hyperliquid’s liquidity pool, HLP, to lose $4 million. The trader’s profits topped roughly $1.8 million. According to Lookonchain, the trader has earned nearly $17 million in the past month on Hyperliquid. The incident highlighted the challenges facing perpetual trading platforms such as Hyperliquid, which enable traders to take long or short positions many times larger than their deposited capital.Hyperliquid said the trader’s actions did not qualify as an exploit and were instead a predictable consequence of the mechanics of its trading platform under extreme conditions. In response to the losses, Hyperliquid announced on March 13 revised collateral rules for traders with open positions to guard against similar edge cases in the future. Launched in 2024, Hyperliquid’s flagship perpetuals exchange has captured 70% of the market share, surpassing rivals such as GMX and dYdX, according to a January report by asset manager VanEck. Chainlink, the most popular decentralized oracle service, saw the price of its native LINK token increase by more than 150% in the weeks after President Donald Trump prevailed in the US election. It has since given up much of those gains, declining from highs of nearly $30 per token in December to less than $14 as of March 14, according to data from CoinGecko. Chainlink’s market capitalization is currently around $8.7 billion. Magazine: ‘Hong Kong’s FTX’ victims win lawsuit, bankers bash stablecoins: Asia Express
UK authorizes charges against NCA officer for alleged Bitcoin theft
In a shocking turn of events, the Crown Prosecution Service in England and Wales has announced that a National Crime Agency (NCA) officer is facing charges for the alleged theft of Bitcoin worth approximately $75,000 in 2017. The officer, Paul Chowles, is expected to appear in court on April 25th to face 15 charges related to the theft of the cryptocurrency during an investigation into online organized crime.
According to authorities, Chowles could face one count of theft, 11 charges for concealing, disguising, or converting criminal property, and three counts for acquiring, using, or possessing criminal property. The 50 Bitcoin that were allegedly stolen were worth around $75,000 at the time, but with the recent surge in Bitcoin’s value, they are now valued at over $4.2 million.
This news comes just a few years after the UK’s Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act was amended to allow NCA officers and local police to seize cryptocurrency from suspected criminals without arresting them. It is unclear at this time how Chowles allegedly stole the Bitcoin or if the funds were connected to any illicit activities.
This is not the first time that UK authorities have made headlines for their involvement in the cryptocurrency world. In December 2020, the NCA announced that they had seized over $26 million in cash and cryptocurrency and arrested 84 people as part of a global campaign to combat money laundering and organized crime. Some of the crypto addresses targeted by UK authorities were linked to the founder of a Russian crypto exchange who was arrested in India and is now facing criminal charges in the US.
Despite these recent events, the UK government is still moving forward with plans to create a comprehensive regulatory framework for digital assets by 2025. This comes after the Labour government’s election victory and shows that the country remains a significant market for crypto users. In fact, Coinbase recently received approval from the UK’s financial regulatory body to operate in the country.
It’s clear that the UK is taking a strong stance on cryptocurrency and its potential use in criminal activities. As the market continues to grow and evolve, it will be interesting to see how the country’s policies and regulations adapt. In the meantime, the case against Chowles serves as a reminder to always be cautious and vigilant when it comes to investing in and using cryptocurrency.
Bitcoin apparent demand reaches lowest point in 2025 — CryptoQuant
Apparent demand for Bitcoin (BTC) has hit the lowest level in 2025, dropping down into negative territory, as traders and investors take a cautious approach to risk-on assets due to macroeconomic uncertainty. According to CryptoQuant’s Bitcoin Apparent Demand metric, demand for Bitcoin has dropped down to a negative 142 on March 13.Bitcoin’s apparent demand has been positive since September 2024, peaking around December 2024 before beginning the slow descent back down.However, demand levels stayed positive until the beginning of March 2025 and have continued to decline since that point.Fears of a prolonged trade war, geopolitical tensions, and stubbornly high inflation, which is cooling but is nevertheless above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target, are causing traders to take a step back from riskier assets and into safe havens such as cash and government securities.Bitcoin apparent demand. Source: CryptoQuantRelated: Worst crypto cycle ever? Community and history say otherwiseCrypto markets hemorrhage amid macroeconomic uncertaintyThe post-election hype has died down following the mixed reactions from investors to the White House Crypto Summit on March 7, as the realities of macroeconomic uncertainty and the political process set in.Despite lower-than-expected CPI inflation figures reported on March 12, the price of Bitcoin declined immediately following the news.Crypto exchange-traded funds (ETFs) experienced four consecutive weeks of outflows beginning in February and the early weeks of March as traditional financial investors sought a flight to safety.According to CoinShares, outflows from crypto ETFs totaled $4.75 billion over the past four weeks, with BTC investment vehicles recording $756 million in month-to-date outflows.Poor market sentiment and fears of a looming recession triggered a wave of panic selling that sent crypto prices tumbling.Since the Trump inauguration on Jan. 20, the Total3 Market Cap, a measure of the total crypto market capitalization excluding Ether (ETH) and BTC, plummeted by over 27% from over $1.1 trillion to approximately $795 billion.Bitcoin price action and analysis. Source: TradingViewSimilarly, the price of Bitcoin declined by over 22% from a high of over $109,000 to present levels.Bitcoin has been trading below its 200-day exponential moving average (EMA) since March 9, with occasional dips below the 200-day EMA during February.Bitcoin’s Average True Range (ATR), a measure of volatility, is currently over 5,035 — indicating significant price swings as markets grapple with macro factors.Crypto analyst Matthew Hyland recently argued that Bitcoin must secure a close of at least $89,000 on the weekly timeframe or risk a further correction to $69,000.Magazine: Bitcoiners are ‘all in’ on Trump since Bitcoin ’24, but it’s getting riskyThis article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.
‘Scale or fail’: RLNC technology can boost Web3 adoption — MIT Professor
After 15 years of research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Random Linear Network Coding (RLNC) is ready for commercialization in the Web3 industry, according to Muriel Médard, an MIT professor and founder of blockchain infrastructure developer Optimum.Optimum emerged from stealth on Feb. 28 as a decentralized memory infrastructure that can be utilized by any blockchain seeking to bring scalability to Web3. It utilizes the RLNC technology that was first formulated by Professor Médard. RLNC is a breakthrough in coding that is already used in the 5G, satellite telecommunications and Internet of Things (IoT) industries. In an interview with Cointelegraph, Professor Médard said RLNC is equivalent to “breaking a puzzle into small pieces, mixing those pieces together into equations, and sending them to your friends.”“Even if a few pieces get lost, your friends can still put the whole puzzle together from the pieces they receive. Rather than look for specific pieces, you look for just enough pieces,” she said.RLNC technology can help blockchains overcome “critical bottlenecks in scalability” by “encoding data into mathematical equations, enabling faster transmission, reduced bandwidth usage, lower barriers to entry for flexnodes and more reliable delivery,” said Médard.Médard co-founded Optimum with Nancy Lynch, an adviser and co-inventor of the Byzantine Fault Tolerant consensus, after “several years of witnessing the rise and maturation of Web3,” she said.“[The] vision is to bring the efficiency of traditional computer memory (RAM) to decentralized networks, laying the foundation for a breakthrough in Web3 infrastructure.”Related: The future of Ethereum scaling lies in hardware, not software“Scale or Fail”RLNC’s potential use case in Web3 has attracted notable backers, several of whom invested in Optimum as angel investors. They include Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal, Wormhole co-founder Robinson Burkey, Polychain chief technology officer Abhijeet Mahagaonkar, Bitget CEO Gracy Chen and Arthur Cheong, the founder and CEO of DeFiance Capital.Professor Médard told Cointelegraph that scalability breakthroughs in Web3 are needed, especially as blockchain adoption continues to grow for the “purposes of payments, financial instruments and even diversification of national government strategies.”“We believe this trend will continue, and as usage and demand increase, blockchains will need to scale or they will fail,” she said. Scalability remains one of the industry’s biggest bottlenecks, having plagued the development of both Bitcoin and Ethereum at various points over their history. Competing networks have vowed to fix scalability issues stemming from mass consumer adoption, though their track record has been far from perfect. Against this backdrop, the crypto payments landscape has evolved significantly in recent years, shifting from tokens to stablecoins that are much faster and cheaper. Stablecoins have emerged as one of blockchain’s most popular use cases, especially for payments and cross-border remittances. Source: DefiLlamaAn August report by wealth manager Bernstein said Solana is a leading network for stablecoin adoption, but even it struggles to scale with growing payment and remittance demand.Although Solana has piloted stablecoin payments with Visa and Shopify, it’s unclear whether the blockchain can facilitate mainstream adoption without a massive boost in capacity, Bernstein said. Magazine: How crypto laws are changing across the world in 2025
XRP flips Ether’s FDV amid change in market dynamics
XRP’s fully diluted valuation (FDV) has surpassed Ether (ETH), according to March 14 data from CoinGecko. The FDV flip signifies a reversal of fortune for both layer-1 (L1) blockchain networks behind the tokens, as XRP Ledger’s decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem gains traction and Ethereum grapples with competition from rival L1s, such as Solana.As of March 14, XRP’s FDV stood at nearly $235 billion, more than $1 billion higher than Ether’s, according to CoinGecko. Ether’s market capitalization still leads at $233 billion versus XRP’s $136 billion, the data shows. FDV measures the cumulative value of all existing tokens, whereas market capitalization only counts tokens already in circulation. XRP’s developer, Ripple Labs, holds a multibillion-dollar allocation of its chain’s native token. Cryptocurrencies by FDV. Source: CoinGeckoRelated: XRP Ledger unveils institutional DeFi roadmapChanging fortunesXRP’s price has risen by more than 300%, to around $2.3 per token, since President Donald Trump prevailed in the US elections on Nov. 5. Trump said he wants America to become the “world’s crypto capital” and has appointed industry-friendly leadership to key regulators. The thawing US regulatory environment is especially beneficial for XRP, which prioritizes enterprise users and unveiled an institutional DeFi roadmap in February.As of January, XRP’s native decentralized exchange (DEX) has handled more than $1 billion in swap transactions since launching in 2024.The XRP token saw further support when Trump said he planned to include XRP in a proposed US Digital Asset Stockpile alongside other cryptocurrencies, such as Solana (SOL) and Cardano (ADA). The stockpile will only comprise assets acquired by law enforcement and other legal proceedings and will not buy crypto. The US Securities and Exchange Commission is reportedly “in the process of wrapping up” an enforcement action against Ripple that has beleaguered the XRP developer since 2020. The regulator has already dropped actions against crypto firms such as Coinbase, Kraken and Uniswap.Meanwhile, Ether’s spot price has struggled since March 2024, when the network’s Dencun upgrade cut transaction fees by approximately 95%. As of March, trading volume on Solana, which prioritizes fast transaction execution and was central to 2024’s memecoin frenzy, rivals that of Ethereum and all of its layer-2 scaling chains combined. Magazine: ‘Hong Kong’s FTX’ victims win lawsuit, bankers bash stablecoins: Asia Express