Crypto Eye for TradFi

Plus, ⬇️ Markets dip again, 🔥 Trump’s latest crypto move, 🤔 SBF’s pardon odds rise, and more!

Author

Juan Aranovich
March 10, 2025

Hi! In today’s edition:

  • 📢 Kraken, Gemini eye IPOs

  • ⚠️ Bitcoin sinks as markets retreat

  • 🏛️ Trump ends “Operation Choke Point 2.0”

  • 🎲 SBF’s pardon odds surge after jailhouse interview

  • 🔄 Binance democratizes token listings

  • 🤯 Crypto.com faces backlash over CRO re-minting

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By Tikta, Veronica Irwin, and Steven Ehrlich

Major U.S. crypto exchange Kraken is gearing up to go public in the first quarter of next year, according to a report by Bloomberg that cited sources with inside knowledge. 

Those sources also said that plans had not been finalized and would remain subject to change in the coming months. 

A Kraken spokesperson told Bloomberg that the firm intended to “pursue public markets as it makes sense for our clients, our partners and shareholders.”

The exchange, officially known as Payward Inc., doubled its revenue to $1.5 billion and reported adjusted earnings of $380 million last year.

Kraken’s reported decision comes amid a more favorable regulatory environment under the Trump administration, which has taken a pro-crypto stance, and a recent Securities and Exchange Commission decision to drop a lawsuit against the exchange.

Bloomberg also reported that crypto exchange Gemini has also confidentially filed for a U.S. IPO, hiring Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, following a decision by the Securities and Exchange Commission to drop an investigation and the firm’s $5 million settlement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Bitcoin dropped to an intra-day low of $80,052 late on Sunday, extending its negative price action over the weekend despite Friday’s news of a newly created U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.

The original digital asset is now down 25% from its all-time high above $109,000 earlier this year as 30-day annualized BTC volatility stands close to 59%, the highest level in the year to date. 

Bitcoin has shown relative resilience in its correction from cycle highs compared to other cryptocurrencies, such as ether and SOL, which have suffered nosedives of more than 50%, blockchain analytics firm Glassnode said in a newsletter last week.

At the inaugural White House Crypto Summit on Friday, President Donald Trump said he was “ending Operation Choke Point 2.0,” referring to an alleged broad effort by the Biden administration to debank cryptocurrency companies. 

Some industry insiders have gone so far as to argue that alleged coordination between federal bank regulators the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Reserve Board, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency violated federal law.

Shortly after the summit, the OCC issued updated guidance for financial institutions serving cryptocurrency companies. Banks are now free to accept as much in crypto deposits as they want. Are we headed for a 2008-style bust, or a boom time for crypto?

Utah's Senate passed a Blockchain and Digital Innovation Amendments bill on Friday, with a vote of 19-7-3. However, a key provision that would have made Utah the first U.S. state with its own Bitcoin reserve was removed from the bill.

The discarded provision would have authorized Utah’s treasurer to invest up to 5% of the state’s digital assets with a market cap above $500 billion in five state-controlled accounts. Only bitcoin currently meets that criterion.

“There was a lot of concern with those provisions and the early adoption of these types of policies,” Senator Kirk Cullimore said during Friday’s legislative session. “All of that has been stripped out of the bill.”

Traders on decentralized betting platform Polymarket are upping their bids on former FTX chief Sam Bankman-Fried receiving a presidential pardon from Donald Trump.

The odds of Bankman-Fried getting a pardon are now at 4% with $1.2 million in betting volume — a sizable increase since before the convicted fraudster’s prison interview with disgraced and dismissed former Fox host Tucker Carlson last week.

Who will Trump pardon in first 100 days?

Polymarket | This market will resolve to "Yes" if Sam Bankman-Fried, receives a presidential pardon, commutation, or reprieve from Donald Trump by April 29, ...

polymarket.com/event/trump-pardons?tid=1741594410843

“Since the illicit interview aired, the odds of an SBF pardon have nearly doubled,” Polymarket wrote on X.

Bankman-Fried was sent to solitary confinement at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center after the unauthorized interview was distributed.

According to a Google doc that prosecutors obtained from Bankman-Fried’s email account, an interview with Carlson and “coming out” as a Republican was part of a 19-point plan to revive his public image.

Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, on Friday announced a community co-governance structure that gives users a say on what tokens end up on the trading platform. 

Binance users can now vote for projects they want to see listed on the exchange. 

It is worth noting that Binance will first select projects from its “Alpha Observation Zone” to go into the voting pool. Those that receive the largest numbers of votes and pass due diligence will be added to the exchange. 

Users can also vote to delist projects placed in a “Monitoring Zone,” which includes assets lacking development updates, those with inactive communities, or those that are deemed to pose risks to investors.

Burned Tokens Are Gone Forever, Right? For 70 Billion CRO, Maybe Not

Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek was in Washington, D.C., on Friday to appear at President Donald Trump’s inaugural White House Crypto Summit. But while he was jetting off to the nation’s capital to help bring crypto to the mainstream, his stakeholders were feeling forgotten. 

On March 2, the same day that Trump announced plans for a national strategic crypto reserve, Cronos Labs, a subsidiary of Crypto.com and the main development team behind the Cronos blockchain, unveiled a governance proposal to reissue 70 billion CRO tokens, or 70% of the original supply, for its own “strategic reserve.” The re-minted tokens would restore the original supply of CRO back to its original 100 billion tokens. 

The rationale is that Cronos Labs wants a new treasury to promote adoption of CRO, with the prime method being not only the creation of the first CRO exchange-traded fund, but the first ETF ever launched by a token issuer.

It’s ambitious, sure, but will Cronos Labs’ pursuit of these goals come back to bite it?

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  • 🚨 Ethereum protocol Conic Finance has shut down after failing to resolve security vulnerabilities in a planned upgrade, marking the end of a DeFi project that never fully recovered from a pair of 2023 hacks that wiped out nearly all of its $156 million in deposits.

  • 🏛️ Michael Saylor presented an $81 trillion Bitcoin strategy at the White House on Friday, urging the U.S. government to acquire up to 25% of Bitcoin’s total supply as a national asset to strengthen the dollar, offset debt, and establish financial dominance, aligning with Donald Trump’s executive order to convert seized Bitcoin into a strategic reserve.

  • 🎭 NFT trading volume on Ethereum plunged to a 2025 low of $5.7 million after OpenSea temporarily removed its incentive program for bidding and listing, a stark decline from the $20-$30 million daily volume seen when rewards were active.

  • 🔑 Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen reportedly lost $150 million worth of XRP after hackers exploited his LastPass-stored private keys, with a court filing revealing that 283 million XRP were stolen in January last year, closely aligning with his admission of unauthorized account access.

  • 💬 White House AI and crypto “czar” David Sacks on Friday downplayed speculation over Trump’s mention of XRP, Solana, and Cardano in the context of a strategic reserve, explaining that the president had simply listed the top five cryptocurrencies by market cap, although his remarks triggered major price spikes before a pullback.

  • 🇪🇸 Spanish banking giant BBVA received regulatory approval to offer bitcoin and ethereum trading, marking the culmination of a years-long effort to integrate crypto services as the European Union’s MiCA framework takes full effect.

  • 🏡 The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is exploring the use of blockchains for grant tracking and payments, with officials suggesting it could be a test case for broader federal crypto adoption, although the agency denies having solid plans.

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