Important news from last night and this morning (March 12-13)

POAP: Starting March 16th, the platform will enter maintenance mode and will no longer be actively developed.

Digital badge platform POAP has officially announced that due to limited growth and failure to expand into a wider infrastructure, POAP will transition its existing platform to maintenance mode starting March 16, 2026. At that time, new issuers will no longer have access to the issuance interface, while existing issuers can continue to use their existing tools. Existing POAP creations will remain intact, the collector interface will be unaffected, and APIs and existing integrations will continue to function. However, the platform will no longer be actively developed, and some operations may slow down due to reduced resources. POAP stated that operating the platform has made it clear that digital collectibles are still an emerging medium, and existing tools often reflect the constraints of their built systems rather than community needs. Future work will focus on developing open collectible standards and providing a platform that provides standardized implementations to sustainably support a truly permissionless collectible creation model.

Katana (KAT) will be listed on Binance Wallet's seventh Prime Sale Pre-TGE.

According to the official announcement, Binance Wallet's seventh Prime Sale Pre-TGE will list Katana (KAT). The subscription period is from 8 PM to 10 PM (UTC+8) on March 16, 2026. Eligibility: Eligible users must participate using Binance Alpha Points. Pre-TGE details and the event page will be released through the @BinanceWallet X account.

Ethena plans to adjust the sUSDe unstaking cooldown period to a dynamic mechanism, reducing it to as short as 1 day.

Ethena announced on its X platform that it plans to change the sUSDe unstaking cooldown period from a fixed 7 days to a dynamic mechanism, linked to the proportion of liquid stablecoins in the USDe reserves. Under the new mechanism, the current sUSDe unstaking waiting period will be shortened from 7 days to 1 day, and the future cooldown period will fluctuate between 1 and 7 days, depending on the proportion of more liquid assets in the USDe reserves.

A wallet suspected to belong to Trend Research borrowed and shorted 27,000 ETH four hours ago.

According to on-chain analyst Yu Jin, a wallet suspected to belong to Trend Research borrowed ETH through Aave and transferred it to Binance. Four hours ago, it borrowed and shorted 27,000 ETH (US$57.11 million). This address withdrew 303 million USDC from Binance on February 11th, just days after Trend Research liquidated its ETH holdings in February and transferred all its ETH to Binance. A week ago, this address transferred 150 million USDC to Binance, one transaction using a known Trend Research Binance deposit address. This address has now staked 100 million USDC on Aave and borrowed 27,000 ETH, which has already been transferred to Binance.

A whale withdrew another 10,421 ETH from Kraken, bringing its total ETH hoarding over the past three days to 73,744.98 ETH.

According to on-chain analyst @ai_9684xtpa, a whale that had been accumulating 63,324.36 ETH since March 11th withdrew another 10,421 ETH from Kraken 9 hours ago, worth $21.59 million. Over the past three days, it has accumulated a total of 73,744.98 ETH. Currently, its total ETH holdings are worth $152 million, with an average withdrawal price of $2,072.2, resulting in a floating profit of $4.04 million.

JPMorgan Chase faces a class-action lawsuit, accused of aiding and abetting Goliath Ventures' cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme.

According to Cryptopolitan, a group of investors has filed a class-action lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase, accusing it of facilitating a $328 million cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme operated by Goliath Ventures. The lawsuit alleges that JPMorgan Chase, Goliath's principal bank, failed to prevent suspicious transactions, allowing funds to be transferred through Goliath's accounts and Coinbase wallets. The plaintiffs point out that JPMorgan Chase's partnership with Coinbase led to complacency regarding Goliath's transactions, and that Goliath's status as a profitable client caused the bank to overlook its operations. Coinbase executives have denied lobbying against tax exemptions for small Bitcoin transactions.

According to Cointelegraph, Coinbase executives have denied allegations that the exchange blocked a tax exemption for small Bitcoin transactions. This comes after Bitcoin advocates speculated on social media that Coinbase told lawmakers that Bitcoin is not widely used as a medium of exchange and therefore does not qualify for tax exemption. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong responded that the allegations are "completely false" and stated that he has been lobbying for a tax exemption for small Bitcoin transactions and will continue to do so. Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal and Chief Policy Officer Faryar Shirzad also reiterated that they "have never lobbied against Bitcoin." Currently, US lawmakers are considering tax exemptions for stablecoins priced in US dollars, but Bitcoin is not included in the CLARITY bill's draft tax exemption scope.

US Senator: Crypto Market Structure Bill Not Expected to Pass Before April

According to Cointelegraph, Senate Majority Leader John Thune stated that the Senate is not expected to advance digital asset market structure legislation before April. Thune said the Senate plans to prioritize a vote on the Save America Act, which requires voters to personally provide proof of U.S. citizenship for registration. The market structure bill is expected to move forward after that vote, but may not be submitted to the Banking Committee until around April. This contradicts previous expectations from Ohio senators who hoped for April passage of congressional legislation. The Senate Agriculture Committee has advanced its version of the bill, but the Banking Committee has postponed the merger process scheduled for January. Last week, President Trump accused banks of "hijacking" the bill, and despite three meetings between the White House and crypto and banking industry representatives, it remains unclear as of Thursday whether policymakers have reached any agreement.

The U.S. SEC advisory group supports advancing tokenized securities and outlines security safeguards.

According to CoinDesk, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's Investor Advisory Committee voted to approve recommendations supporting regulatory policies for tokenized securities, allowing stock trading to bypass the decades-old intermediary settlement model relied upon by Wall Street investment firms. The committee recommended limited exemptions for blockchain stock trading, provided that mandatory disclosure, regular external oversight, and ensuring all investors receive the best possible terms in order execution are met. The SEC chairman stated that these crypto assets still legally meet the definition of securities and therefore require the same safeguards as the traditional system. The committee noted that the biggest risk of tokenized securities is that new reforms or exemptions could introduce new risks unknown to investors and incur costs higher than the tokenization gains.

The US Senate passed a housing bill that includes provisions prohibiting the Federal Reserve from issuing CBDCs.

According to CoinDesk, the US Senate passed a housing bill by a landslide bipartisan vote of 89 to 10. The bill includes a clause prohibiting the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency (CBDC), with the ban lasting until the end of 2030. This clause stipulates that the Federal Reserve may not issue or create a CBDC or any digital asset substantially similar to a CBDC, directly or through financial institutions or other intermediaries. The fate of the bill in the House of Representatives remains uncertain, with the main point of contention being that it would significantly limit the number of homes that large housing investors, such as private equity firms, can own. While President Trump supports expanding housing accessibility, he recently stated that he would not sign any bill until Congress passes a voter identification bill, adding uncertainty to the prospects of legislation such as the housing bill and the crypto market structure bill.

A whale lost nearly $50 million when exchanging USDT for AAVE because it ignored slippage warnings.

According to The Block, a whale attempted to exchange $50 million worth of USDT for AAVE through the Aave interface but failed to notice a slippage warning, ultimately receiving only about $36,000 worth of AAVE, a loss of nearly $50 million. The founder of Aave Labs stated that the user attempted to buy AAVE with $50 million worth of USDT through the Aave interface, but due to the unusually large order size, the trading interface issued an abnormal slippage warning and required the user to confirm via a checkbox. The user confirmed the warning on their mobile device and continued the transaction, accepting the high slippage and ultimately receiving only 324 AAVE. CoW Swap stated that the transaction was executed according to the parameters of the signed order, and the interface displayed clear price impact warnings; there was no indication of a protocol vulnerability or malicious behavior.

The US CFTC has released its first guidance on the risk of predicting market manipulation and is seeking public comment on proposed rules.

According to Bloomberg, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has issued its first guidance on the risks of manipulation in prediction markets, requiring exchanges to consult with regulators before launching markets that may be susceptible to manipulation and insider trading. The CFTC stated that exchanges can continue to use self-certification processes to introduce new markets, but must consider whether certain event contracts pose a higher risk of manipulation or price distortion and communicate with staff early in the design process. The agency also issued a preliminary notice of proposed rules, seeking public feedback on how existing prediction market rules could be modified. The CFTC chairman stated that this move aims to develop new rules based on a reasonable interpretation of the Commodity Exchange Act, while assuring the public that the CFTC will exercise exclusive jurisdiction over prediction markets.

Richard Heathcote will step down as chief investment officer of Tether, and will be succeeded by his deputy, Zachary Lyons.

According to Bloomberg, Richard Heathcote, chief investment officer of stablecoin giant Tether Holdings SA, will step down to a non-executive advisory role, and his deputy, Zachary Lyons, will succeed him. Heathcote spearheaded Tether's investment strategy during its "defining period," including managing the massive reserves backing its core stablecoin USDT and driving a series of deals involving areas such as football clubs and humanoid robots. Heathcote previously worked at Cantor Fitzgerald's BGC Group, playing a key role in establishing Tether's relationship with the investment bank. Cantor is an investor in Tether and manages its U.S. Treasury portfolio.

Trump will host a luncheon for Trump token holders at Mar-a-Lago on April 25.

According to the TrumpMeme website, an exclusive crypto and business conference will be held on April 25th at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, with US President Donald Trump as the keynote speaker at the luncheon. The event is open to Trump token holders, with the top 297 participants ranked by holdings eligible to attend. The top 29 VIPs will also be invited to a VIP reception with Trump. Eligibility is determined by token holdings as of the snapshot date of April 10th, and participants must maintain at least that holding level thereafter. All participants will undergo a security background check.

JPMorgan Chase: Bitcoin and gold ETF fund flows diverged significantly after the outbreak of the Iran war.

According to The Block, JPMorgan analysts stated that since the outbreak of the Iran nuclear deal on February 27th, there has been a significant divergence in fund flows between Bitcoin and gold ETFs. The largest gold ETF, GLD, saw an outflow of approximately 2.7%, while the largest spot Bitcoin ETF, IBIT, recorded an inflow of approximately 1.5%. Since last October, there has been a rotation from Bitcoin to gold, particularly among retail investors, but IBIT's cumulative total inflows since 2024 are still approximately twice that of GLD. Regarding institutional holdings, short interest has increased on IBIT while decreasing on GLD, indicating that institutions such as hedge funds are reducing their Bitcoin exposure and favoring gold. IBIT's put/call open interest ratio has consistently been higher than GLD's since last November, showing increased demand from institutional investors to hedge against Bitcoin's downside risk.

Coinbase adds Billions (BILL) to its listing roadmap

According to an official announcement, Coinbase has added Billions (BILL) to its listing roadmap. The listing of this asset still depends on whether market-making support and technical infrastructure are in place. The specific listing time will be announced separately once the relevant conditions are met.

Backpack will be performing at TGE on March 23.

According to official news, Backpack announced that it will conduct TGE on March 23. Previously, Backpack announced its token economics: 25% of TGE will be released, with 24% allocated to token holders.

Palmprint authentication company VeryAI has raised $10 million in seed funding, led by Polychain Capital.

According to Axios, palmprint authentication startup VeryAI has raised $10 million in seed funding, led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Berggruen Institute, Anagram, and several crypto angel investors. VeryAI provides a palmprint scanning SDK based on a mobile phone camera, which partners can integrate into existing applications to combat bot accounts and multi-factor authentication fatigue. Its system analyzes palmprint texture and prompts users to make random gestures to prevent screenshots, screen recordings, and AI forgery. The company claims a false recognition rate of approximately one in ten million for single-hand scanning, higher than Apple's official Face ID rate.

Lido integrates Earn products and launches its first stablecoin vault, EarnUSD.

According to The Block, Lido has consolidated its Earn product line into two major vaults: EarnETH and EarnUSD. EarnUSD is its first stablecoin vault, supporting USDT and USDC access to the Ethereum USD strategy. Lido claims that the product line has attracted nearly $250 million in deposits since its launch in September 2025, and the DAO will also invest $5 million in vault funds to support the new product.

The U.S. SEC chairman called for an innovation exemption mechanism for security tokenization.

SEC Chairman Paul S. Atkins stated at a meeting of the Investor Advisory Committee (IAC) that the committee will make recommendations on the tokenization of equity securities. He acknowledged that tokenization helps improve settlement efficiency, reduce settlement risk, and decrease unnecessary intermediaries. Atkins said he expects the SEC to soon consider an "innovation exemption" to allow trading of certain tokenized securities within a limited time and scope, providing a practical basis for developing a long-term regulatory framework. The SEC's Crypto Task Force has been gathering feedback from market participants over the past 13 months through roundtables and public consultations, and continues to solicit feedback on the design of the exemption.

Binance will launch EWYUSDT U-margined perpetual contracts tracking a South Korean stock market ETF.

Binance Futures will launch the EWYUSDT index perpetual contract on March 16, 2026 at 21:30 (UTC+8), supporting up to 10x leverage. The underlying index of the contract is the iShares MSCI South Korea ETF (ticker symbol: EWY), which tracks large and mid-cap South Korean stocks. It supports 24/7 trading and multi-asset mode, and can use assets such as BTC as margin.

Vitalik Buterin: Ethereum's core value is a "public bulletin board".

In a recent article, Vitalik Buterin stated that Ethereum's core purpose is not smart contracts or payments, but rather to act as a "public bulletin board," providing a publicly readable and writable data availability layer for cryptographic protocols such as voting, certificate revocation, and version control. He also stated that ETH can serve as an anti-Syracist payment tool, while smart contracts are a shared programming layer and a tool for executing deposits.

Unitas, a yield-based stablecoin protocol, has raised $13.33 million in seed funding.

Unitas Labs, a yield-generating stablecoin protocol, announced the completion of a $13.33 million seed funding round, with participation from Awaken Finance, Amber Group, BB Fund, Taisu Ventures, Bixin Ventures, and SevenX Ventures. Unitas stated that it will use the funds to build on-chain execution and strategy infrastructure for long-term capital, improve stable asset returns through transparent market-neutral strategies, and gradually expand to multiple on-chain collateralized assets such as BTC, tokenized commodities, and RWA under a unified custody, risk control, and monitoring framework, with a focus on strengthening compliant institutional access and DeFi ecosystem integration.

Iran's new Supreme Leader: All US military bases in the region should be closed immediately, as these bases will be attacked.

Iran's new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, stated: "All US military bases in the region should be closed immediately; these bases will be attacked. We will never ignore the crimes committed by the enemy at the Minabu school. We will continue to live in harmony with our neighbors, and our targets will be limited to military bases; we will continue to do so."

Iran's new Supreme Leader: The Strait of Hormuz must remain closed.

Iran's newly appointed Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, issued his first statement since taking office. He stated that the Strait of Hormuz must remain closed. He called for national unity and participation in the Quds Day activities. He emphasized that the presence of enemy sabotage forces must be taken into account during the Quds Day marches.

Tether participates in Ark Labs' $5.2 million seed round to advance Bitcoin stablecoins and programmable financial infrastructure.

According to The Block, Bitcoin Layer 2 infrastructure developer Ark Labs has completed a $5.2 million seed funding round. Investors include Tether, Ego Death Capital, Epoch VC, Lion26, Sats Ventures, Contribution Capital, and individual investors such as Anchorage Digital and former PayPal CFO Ralph Ho. The funds will be used to expand its Bitcoin-native L2 platform, Arkade, to integrate stablecoins and other digital assets, and to increase the team size from 10 to approximately 25 people, strengthening developer relationships, product development, and partner onboarding.

ORBS raises $125 million in new funding and completes its first $50 million investment in OpenAI.

Nasdaq-listed ORBS announced it has secured $125 million in new funding commitments, with Bitmine committing $75 million, and ARK Invest and Payward each committing $25 million. ORBS also disclosed that it has completed a $50 million Series A strategic investment in OpenAI and a $25 million investment in MrBeast and Beast Industries.

Binance Alpha will remove tokens such as MIRROR, SHARDS, and FST from its recommendation list.

Binance Alpha will remove the following tokens from its recommendation list starting at 20:00 on March 12th: MIRROR, SHARDS, FST, DGC, COA, ULTI, TGT, AGON, BNB Card, AFT, PFVS, SGC, RDO, ELDE, MILK, TAT, BOT, SSS, SUBHUB, PLANCK, and OOOO. After these tokens are removed from the recommendation list, users can still sell them through the Binance Wallet "Marketplace" or the Binance Alpha "Assets - Alpha" page.

SBF account speaks out: Gary Gensler not only "declared war" on the crypto industry, but also privately pushed to weaken the CFTC's authority.

An article posted on the X account of FTX founder SBF claims that former SEC Chairman Gary Gensler not only "declared war" on the crypto industry during his tenure, but also privately pushed in Washington with Senator Elizabeth Warren to weaken the CFTC's authority, concentrating more regulatory power in the SEC, and restricting the compliance of crypto businesses by requiring "licenses that do not actually exist." SBF points out that the new SEC Chairman appointed by Trump, Paul Atkins, is more inclined to require only existing licenses to avoid the crypto industry being caught in the power struggles among US federal regulatory agencies.

General Catalyst plans to raise approximately $10 billion to expand its financial services footprint.

According to Bloomberg, venture capital firm General Catalyst is in talks with investors for a new funding round, targeting approximately $10 billion. Sources say the funds will be allocated across multiple fund vehicles, including its growth fund and early-stage venture capital fund. Negotiations are still in the early stages, and the final fundraising target may be adjusted. The firm has recently transformed from a traditional venture capital firm into a broader financial services company.

Nvidia will invest $26 billion over five years to develop open weighted AI models.

According to WIRED, Nvidia disclosed in its latest financial filing that it will invest approximately $26 billion over the next five years to build open-weighted artificial intelligence models. Company executives confirmed in interviews that this plan will support the development of large, open-source models to complement its computing power and infrastructure business. Industry insiders believe this move will allow Nvidia to compete more directly with leading AI companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and DeepSeek at the model level.

Crypto accounting platform Cryptio has raised $45 million in Series B funding, led by BlackFin Capital Partners and Sentinel Global.

According to Fortune, digital asset accounting startup Crypto has completed a $45 million Series B funding round, led by BlackFin Capital Partners and Sentinel Global, with participation from 1kx, BlueYard Capital, and Ledger Cathay Capital. The company primarily provides large institutions with digital asset holdings, custody locations, crypto lending, and on-chain asset management software. The funding round was reportedly completed three weeks ago, and the valuation was not disclosed. Currently, the company has approximately 110 employees and serves over 450 clients, including stablecoin issuer Circle and BNP Paribas' blockchain subsidiary.

BlackRock transferred 566.88 BTC and 7552 ETH to Coinbase.

According to Onchain Lens, BlackRock transferred 566.88 BTC, worth approximately $39.64 million, and 7,552 ETH, worth approximately $15.52 million, to Coinbase.

Anthropic graces the cover of Time magazine for upholding military red lines: valued at $380 billion, it has been dubbed "the world's most disruptive company."

According to TIME, AI company Anthropic graced the cover of the magazine after refusing to accept "all legitimate uses" clauses during contract negotiations with the Pentagon. This explicitly opposed the use of Claude for fully autonomous lethal weapons and mass surveillance of U.S. citizens. Subsequently, the U.S. Department of Defense designated it as a national security risk in the supply chain and banned it from participating in military contracts. Simultaneously, Anthropic revised its "Responsible Expansion Policy" due to a race to develop more powerful models, removing its rigid commitment to suspend training if safety could not be proven, and only promising "on par with or higher" security investments than its competitors. The company has grown rapidly with products like Claude Code, reaching a valuation of approximately $380 billion, and has been used in mission planning and intelligence analysis in operations such as the capture of former Venezuelan President Maduro.