GeckoPulse: Another Major Milestone for Liquid Stakers

Liquid Staking Is Legal?

The SEC has recently announced that liquid staking operations do not include securities, as part of its latest crypto guidance.

The regulatory agency confirmed that entities engaged in liquid staking do not have to register under current securities laws.

Additionally, the sale and transfer of liquid staking receipt tokens are also exempt, unless the deposited assets are part of an investment contract.

With the SEC’s stance on liquid staking now clarified, this would mean that operators such as Lido, Marinade and Jito will not be subject under the legislation as securities.

Several ETF issuers including BlackRock are now looking to include staking as part of their spot ETH ETFs.

Since the announcement, liquid staking governance tokens saw a spike in trading volume, with some tokens such as MNDE, MILK, and RPL rising in price.

The King Fights Back

Solana memecoin launchpad Pump.fun has reclaimed the top spot over LetsBonk in 24 hour token launches. 

According to Dune Analytics, Pump.fun saw slightly more tokens deployed with over 13.7K launches compared to 13.4K coins created on LetsBonk.

Separately, Pump.fun has also released their own revenue dashboard, which tracks PUMP token buybacks.

With the recovery of activity on Pump.fun, the platform’s native PUMP token surged by 37.5% in the past week from $0.0025 to $0.0034.

Where Do We Go Next?

Despite the recent market dip, institutions are continuing to allocate, even as spot ETFs continue to record outflows.

While the price of BTC dipped under $114K yesterday, the world’s largest cryptocurrency has rebounded back to $114.6K as of this writing.

According to data from quantitative fund Capriole Investments, Bitcoin treasury firms added 630 BTC on Monday, worth approximately $71.8M.

On the other hand, spot Bitcoin ETFs saw over $323M in net outflows on the same day, based on data from Farside.

Similarly, the price of ETH fell by 12.8% in the past week to a monthly low of $3,380, but has quickly surged back to $3,660.

While most other altcoins have yet to begin their recovery, some have started to outperform the overall market.

The top gainers of the day include MYX, ILV, and PUMP, which has bounced by 45.7% in the past week.

CrediX Cracked

DeFi protocol CrediX has been hacked for $4.5M.

According to blockchain security firm Peckshield, the attacker was able to gain access to an admin account and proceeded to mint excess amounts of unbacked acUSDC stablecoins.

The stablecoins were then used to drain user assets from the platform.

Interestingly, the admin account in question had received its upgraded role just 6 days prior to the attack.

CertiK verified that the stolen funds have been transferred from the Sonic network to the Ethereum mainnet across several wallets, where it currently remains as of the time of writing.

CrediX has since taken down their website to prevent further deposits, and has reached an agreement with the hacker to fully return the stolen funds.

The team added that the assets will be airdropped to affected users in the next 2 days.

In Other News…

Exit Liquidity. An announcement unveiled that Galaxy’s recent sale of $9B of Bitcoin on behalf of a Satoshi-era whale was absorbed in part by both the Trump Media and Technology Group, and Michael Saylor’s Strategy. This news suggests a healthy market for Bitcoin with ample buyers and sellers.

TROLL Trader Fumbled $36M. TROLL, a Solana memecoin is up massively, reaching market capitalizations of over $158M.  Leland King Fawcette, a Solana memecoin developer, revealed that his original holdings of $1300 of TROLL would’ve been worth $36M today.

MEXC Expands into Indonesia. MEXC Ventures, the venture arm of the MEXC crypto exchange has invested in Indonesian crypto exchange Triv at a $200M valuation. MEXC’s exact investment amount into Triv is not disclosed.

China Warns Against WorldCoin. China’s Ministry of State Security warned that a crypto project which collects biometric data in the form of iris scans in exchange for crypto tokens is a potential national security threat. While the ministry did not outright name the threat, their description is likely referencing Sam Altman’s WorldCoin project.

PONKE Plushy. Solana memecoin PONKE has released its first adult plush toy that includes an embedded NFC chip that earns rewards for owners and to verify ownership.

Plug and Play Wallets. Coinbase’s developer platform has launched Embedded Wallets. This solution allows app developers to integrate self-custodial wallets into dApps with minimal coding.

Verb Rebrands to TON Strategy. Commerce firm Verb Technology successfully raised $558M through a private placement and will be pivoting into a TON crypto treasury firm. The VERB stock is up 140% on Monday.

A Bullish IPO. Crypto exchange Bullish has formally filed for an IPO in the US. Bullish plans to IPO under the ticker BLSH and aims to raise $629M in the public offer.

We Pay Rewards, Not Yield. Coinbase and PayPal doubled down on stablecoin rewards despite regulatory headwinds from the GENIUS Act. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong refutes the prohibition of stablecoin yields by saying that his firm is not an issuer and pays “rewards not interest yield”.

Base Resumes Service. The ETH L2 Base, has resumed block production after experiencing a temporary 30 minute network outage. The Base network is currently seeing a surge in activity, having recently surpassed Solana in daily token launches.

Linea Offers Native ETH Yields. Linea, the Consensys backed ETH L2 announced that ETH bridged to their network is automatically staked with Lido, potentially offering the yield to their users. Linea has also recently announced the tokenomics of their upcoming LINEA token.

Hyperliquid Reimburses $2M. Decentralized exchange Hyperliquid has reimbursed nearly $2M to users affected by an API outage last Tuesday. The outage was due to a traffic spike and not due to an exploit.