Coinbase to Join S&P 500, Making Crypto History

Plus, đŸȘ™ Pump.fun shares 50% revenue, 🛑 Curve DNS attack puts funds at risk, ⚠ ZKsync’s socials hacked again, and more!

Author

Juan Aranovich
May 13, 2025

Hi! In today’s edition:

  • 🎉 Coinbase joins S&P 500

  • 🔒 Curve DNS hack endangers wallets

  • 💰 Pump.fun starts paying creators

  • đŸ§‘â€đŸ’» ZKsync’s X account hacked

By Tikta

Coinbase Global, the biggest cryptocurrency exchange in the U.S., is set to become the first crypto-native company to join the S&P 500 index. 

“This is a major milestone, not just for Coinbase, but also for the entire crypto industry,” Coinbase CFO Alesia Haas said on the exchange’s blog. “Joining this prestigious index reflects how far Coinbase and the industry have come and is a signal of where the world is heading.”

The firm's inclusion in the index will be effective on May 19, replacing Discover Financial Services, which is being acquired by Capital One Financial Corp.

Coinbase met the S&P 500’s requirements, including profitability during the most recent quarter and the previous year, a market capitalization above $18 billion, and being listed on a major U.S. stock exchange.

As an S&P 500 constituent company, Coinbase’s stock will be purchased by index funds and exchange-traded funds that track the index, likely increasing demand for its shares. 

Coinbase’s stock price surged almost 9% in after-hours trading following the news.

Solana-based memecoin launchpad Pump.fun has launched a new revenue-sharing program that allocates 50% of platform revenue from trading fees on its decentralized exchange, PumpSwap, directly to token creators.

Creators will receive 0.05% of the trading volume in SOL for every trade involving their token, and rewards will be paid instantly. If a coin reaches $10 million in trading volume, for instance, the creator will earn $5,000.

The move is expected to incentivize higher-quality token launches and intensify competition among memecoin platforms on Solana.

“Extremely bullish for memecoins. Flips the incentives for creators to not rug their memes, but rather actually try to get engagement and volume,” an X user going by the name Mike said. 

Pump.fun’s launch of the revenue-sharing program comes on the same day a report was released concluding that almost all the tokens on the memecoin launch platform are scams.

“A staggering 98.6% of tokens on Pump.fun collapse into worthless pump-and-dump schemes shortly after launch, highlighting the extreme risk traders face without proper monitoring,” the report by digital asset trade surveillance infrastructure firm Solidus said. 

Major decentralized finance protocol Curve Finance warned users on Monday against interacting with its domain name system (DNS), saying it appeared to have been hijacked.

The hijack redirected users from the legitimate Curve Finance website, curve.fi, to a malicious site controlled by attackers, potentially putting users’ funds at risk.

“While all smart contracts are safe, the domain name points to a malicious site which can drain your wallet,” the Curve team said on X. “We are investigating and working on recovering the access. No sign of a compromise on our side.”

The incident marks the second time Curve has been targeted by malicious actors in recent days. On May 5, Curve’s official X account was compromised, although no user funds were lost. 

The official X accounts of ZKsync, a prominent Ethereum layer 2 scaling solution, and its developer, Matter Labs, were compromised early on Tuesday.

The attackers used the breach to post false claims that ZKsync was under investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and that the Treasury Department might impose sanctions on the platform.

ZKsync’s native token, ZK, dropped 2% within an hour of the X breach, contributing to a 4.9% decline in the 24 hours to 1:45 a.m. ET on Tuesday. 

Roughly an hour after the breach occurred, ZKsync’s official account posted on X that its teams were back in control of both ZKsync and Matter Labs accounts. 

“We’re looking into how the accounts were hacked, and believe it was through compromised delegated accounts,” ZKsync said. “All delegated accounts and connected apps have been disconnected, and we’ve deleted any tweets from the hacker.”

  • đŸŽ–ïž After several large holders dumped their Trump memecoins following the token holdings-based selection process for a dinner hosted by the president, the token issuer introduced a wallet-linked loyalty program offering points, badges, and exclusive NFTs for those who retained their tokens until the May 22 event.

  • 🟠 Shares of Gryphon Digital Mining soared over 200% pre-market after the firm agreeing to merge with Trump-backed American Bitcoin, which will trade as ABTC on the Nasdaq with Hut 8 keeping majority ownership and operational control.

  • 👋 Rohun “Frank DeGods” Vora stepped down as head of DeGods and y00ts NFT projects after three years marked by controversies ranging from insider trading allegations to experimental policies such as taxing floor-price sales.

  • đŸš« A California judge has dismissed a $40,000 crypto fraud lawsuit against media personality Caitlyn Jenner over her memecoins, ruling that the UK-based plaintiff had failed to prove that the transactions had taken place under U.S. jurisdiction.

  • đŸ™ïž New York City Mayor Eric Adams doubled down on his ambition to make the city the world’s crypto leader on Monday by announcing its first official crypto summit for May 20, positioning it as a rival to Silicon Valley’s dominance in blockchain innovation.

  • 🏩 Anchorage Digital acquired stablecoin issuer Mountain Protocol as the latter winds down its yield-bearing USDM token, positioning Anchorage to expand institutional stablecoin services amid ongoing U.S. regulatory efforts.

  • ☁ Nirvana Labs raised an additional $6 million from Jump Crypto and others to expand its crypto-optimized cloud services aimed at reducing blockchain reliance on Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud, following 26x revenue growth since early 2024.

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