GeckoPulse: March 20 to March 27 Crypto News

This GeckoPulse episode covers March 3-5's top crypto news. Subscribe to our free daily newsletter to be the first to receive breaking updates!

Notable Coins of the Week

The White Whale (WHITEWHALE)

The WHITEWHALE token crashed over 50% this week, after its namesake KOL “The White Whale”, announced that he is stepping away from the crypto space.

WHITEWHALE is the token linked to the KOL “The White Whale” who rose to prominence during his dispute with crypto exchange MEXC. MEXC withheld $3.1M of his funds but apologized and returned it after public outcry. The incident saw White Whale’s following grow massively, where he eventually CTOed a Solana memecoin by his name. The WHITEWHALE token peaked at over $150M in market capitalization, but fell over 50% on March 27, after the step back announcement.

Despite the price action, White Whale appeared to have left the space in good faith, assuring WHITEWHALE holders that a continuation plan is in works. The project would be handed over to vincenzomaiett and White Whale’s $13M WHITEWHALE allocation would be permanently locked.

Siren (SIREN)

Siren is a BNB-chain AI memecoin launched on the BNB memecoin launchpad, FourMeme. SIREN had a historic rise, growing from $600M in market capitalization to over $2B within the week on the back of Binance listings. The token has since cooled off, with a sharp decline of over 55% on March 27. Due to SIREN’s extreme supply concentration, analysts said that the memecoin is linked to market manipulation behaviour.

Fluid (FLUID)

FLUID, the native token of crypto money lending protocol Fluid, declined over 25% this week, as it incurred $70M worth of bad debt due to Resolv’s USR exploit. The team shared that a compensation plan for all affected USR users would be announced shortly.

While this was a massive hit to the protocol, it also showcased Fluid’s impressive reserves as they were able to repay $70M worth of bad debt and presumably able to make their users whole. This is typically not the case as users often have no recourse if their funds are implicated in exploits.

DeFi News

Circle Unfreezes Wallets Amid Backlash. USDC issuer Circle has unfrozened one of 16 blacklisted USDC wallets following backlash from the famous crypto investigator, ZachXBT.

Resolv Labs Exploited. An attacker managed to illicitly mint 80M USR tokens, swapping it for over $23M in ETH. USR depegged from the attack, causing further losses. The future of Resolv Labs is now in question, historically, such attacks have resulted in a project’s shut down.

The End of Balancer Labs. Operating since DeFi summer 2020, the pioneering DeFi protocol Balancer announced its closure after failing to recover from its $116M exploit last November. Despite the somber announcement, co-founder Fernando Martinelli said that this was not a full wind down and that he will try to continue operating Balancer in a more lean fashion.

Token Generation Event (TGE) News

Backpack Launches. The Backpack crypto exchange has launched its native BP token and airdropped 25% of the token supply. The launch had mixed reactions with users on X lamenting their relatively small allocation despite holding the Mad Lads NFT since previous all-time-highs. 

Regulatory News

Clarity Act Sends CRCL Tumbling 20%. Publicly listed firm Circle, the issuer of USDC suffered greatly, tumbling down 20% in a single day after the latest version of the Clarity Act imposed restrictions on stablecoin rewards.

NFT/Gaming News

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Others

A New AI Ecosystem? While the crypto markets remained choppy, the AI sector is looking to make a comeback with Bittensor’s TAO leading the market, reaching new ATHs. TAO was recently under positive spotlight through the success of its many subnets including Templar (SNR) and more.