A Massive Transfer No One Stopped

Hi! In today’s edition:

• 💸 Lazarus cashes out

• 📉 Trump tariffs, market tremors

• 🔄 FTX, Alameda unstake a chunk of SOL

• ⚖️ SEC cans more crypto cases

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Lazarus Group Launders All Proceeds of Its Bybit Hack 

North Korean state-sponsored cybercrime group Lazarus has finished laundering the proceeds of its Bybit heist the week before last, funneling away ETH currently worth $1.3 billion, according to onchain activity traced by MetaMask’s head of security, Taylor Monahan. 

Monahan’s Dune dashboard shows that THORChain was the hacker’s protocol of choice, with 49% of transactions sent on its native DEX Asgardex and coin mixer eXch. 

When Bybit CEO Ben Zhou asked eXch to block the flow of funds, the platform publicly posted his email on Bitcoin forum Bitcoin Talk and denied his request. 

Another onchain analyst, who goes by the X pseudonym EmberCN, estimated that THORChain has made $5.5 million in handling fees for processing $5.9 billion of hackers’ ill-gotten gains. 

“Kim Jong Un sends his deepest gratitude to THORChain, Asgardex and eXch,” Monahan said on X. 

“Without their faux-cypherpunk grandstanding + blatant lies, this would have never been possible.”

Crypto Liquidations Top $1B as Bitcoin and Ethereum Slump

Bitcoin and ether reversed course after U.S. President Donald Trump confirmed that 25% tariffs on China and Mexico would go ahead on Tuesday. Bitcoin dropped 11.8% to an intraday low of $82,467, while ethereum sank 16% to as low as $2,004.

The selloff comes after both coins rallied only a day earlier following Trump’s announcement of a crypto strategic reserve. It was a similar story for major altcoins XRP and Solana, which saw dramatic double-digit percentage declines late on Monday.

The negative price action triggered liquidations for 310,378 traders, with total liquidations topping the $1 billion mark, according to data from analytics platform Coinglass. 

Bitcoin longs accounted for $331 million of liquidations, while $177 million was liquidated from ether long positions.

FTX and Alameda Wallets Unstake $431M SOL

Blockchain wallets belonging to FTX and Alameda Research unstaked and distributed 3.03 million SOL worth around $431 million to 37 wallets on Monday. 

Onchain wallet tracking firm Spot On Chain said that the transaction would be FTX and Alameda’s largest unstaking event since November 2023, and was likely part of a $1.5 billion tranche of SOL set to be unlocked in early March. 

They also said FTX and Alameda had unstaked and sold $986 million worth of SOL through Coinbase and Binance since last November. 

Monday’s transfers triggered speculation that FTX and Alameda are looking to liquidate yet another batch of SOL. At 4:45 a.m. ET on Tuesday, SOL was trading at just below $137, down some 14% over the previous 24 hours.

SEC Ends Kraken, Yuga Labs Lawsuits 

Crypto markets may have tumbled on Monday, but the industry revelled in yet another regulatory win that further signalled the end of the Gary Gensler-era U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission crusade against major players in the space.

American crypto exchange Kraken and NFT tech firm Yuga Labs said the SEC had closed investigations of their platforms.

“Today marks a pivotal moment for Kraken,” the exchange said in a statement, noting that the SEC had agreed to drop its lawsuit against the firm with no admission of wrongdoing, penalties or changes to its business. 

Yuga Labs said on X that the SEC’s tossing of its lawsuit over whether the firm’s NFTs and ApeCoin token violated federal securities laws after three years was a “huge win for NFTs and all creators.” 

The SEC has also filed joint motions to halt ongoing legal battles with Justin Sun and Tron, alongside Binance, and has entirely dropped cases against Gemini, MetaMask, OpenSea, Robinhood, Uniswap, and Coinbase.

Nevertheless, Coinbase doesn’t appear to have closure on that front, filing a request under the Freedom of Information Act to find out how many investigations the agency’s crypto enforcement unit had carried out over the years and how much they cost. 

Coinbase’s chief legal officer, Paul Grewal, said that the exchange would “do what it takes for as long as it takes” to find out.

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• 🔥 Crypto.com’s Cronos blockchain proposed reissuing 70 billion CRO tokens previously burned in 2021 to create a $5 billion “strategic reserve,” sparking a backlash from investors who fear dilution and see it as reversing the token’s deflationary gains.

• 🛠 MegaETH, an upcoming Ethereum layer 2 solution, will launch its public testnet on March 6, onboarding developers first before allowing users to join on March 10, as it prepares for a mainnet capable of handling up to 100,000 transactions per second.

• ⚽ Brazilian football icon Ronaldinho de Assis Moreira launched his STAR10 memecoin on BNB Chain, but a controversy erupted after security auditors flagged that developers initially had the power to burn users’ tokens, an issue later rectified by renouncing contract ownership.

• 🧑‍💻 The Ethereum Foundation is backing cryptography startup ZKNox, which is working on post-quantum security measures to protect Ethereum from potential future threats posed by quantum computing.

• 📊 Tether appointed Simon McWilliams, a finance executive with expertise in hedge funds, private equity, and digital assets, as its new CFO on Monday following a push for a full, independent audit after years of scrutiny of the stablecoin issuer’s reserves.

• 📜 U.S. Representatives Tom Emmer and Ritchie Torres formed a bipartisan “Congressional Crypto Caucus” to create a unified voting bloc in Congress focused on shaping digital asset regulations.

• 🎁 Zora, a non-custodial NFT minting protocol built on Ethereum, on Monday announced its own memecoin on the Base network, emphasizing that it is “for fun only,” with no governance rights, ahead of a planned spring airdrop.

• 📈 Market maker Flowdesk raised $102 million, backed by HV Capital and BlackRock-managed funds, to expand its digital asset trading business, scale its OTC derivatives and crypto credit desk, and double its workforce while targeting global expansion, including a new Middle East hub.

1. KISS of Death by Arthur Hayes, co-founder of BitMEX

2. DL News: Inside DeFi exchanges caught in North Korea’s $1.4bn laundering spree

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