Decentral Block Post

Blockchain firm Ripple Labs’ case with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) may be officially wrapped up after more than four years, subject to court approval.

In a March 25 X post, Ripple Chief Legal Officer Stuart Alderoty wrote, in ”what should be my last update on SEC v. Ripple ever,” that Ripple will drop its cross-appeal against the SEC in the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. An August 2024 judgment from the US District Court for the Southern District of New York finding Ripple liable for $125 million will essentially stand, but the SEC will keep only $50 million of the amount in escrow. The remaining balance will be returned to Ripple.

“The agency will also ask the Court to lift the standard injunction that was imposed earlier at the SEC’s request,” wrote Alderoty. “All subject to Commission vote, drafting of final documents and usual court processes.”

Ripple chief legal officer statement on latest development with SEC case. Source: Stuart Alderoty

Alderoty’s announcement came less than a week after Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said the SEC would drop its appeal over the August 2024 judgment. At the time of publication, neither the SEC nor Ripple appeared to have made any filing in the Second Circuit since Jan. 31 or in SDNY since October.

Few things in crypto are as elusive and misunderstood as the concept of an “altcoin season.” Traditionally, this term referred to a brief window — usually 2–3 months — following a Bitcoin (BTC) price rally, where altcoins outperform BTC in cumulative returns. That pattern held in the 2015–2018 and 2019–2022 cycles, but the verdict is not yet in on whether the current bull market has had its altcoin season. 

The Blockchain Center defines an altcoin season as a period when 75% of the top 50 altcoins outperform Bitcoin over a rolling 90-day timeframe. Its Altseason Index registered upticks in March 2024 and again in January 2025 — but neither lasted long enough to qualify as a full-fledged altseason.

Altcoin season index. Source: Blockchain Center

Some analysts argue that memecoins drained liquidity from the broader altcoin market. Others blame the oversaturation of crypto investment products — particularly ETFs — which cater to institutions and spotlight only the largest altcoins. A third explanation calls for a deeper rethink of what altcoins actually are. Within this view, altcoins are perceived as a unified asset class but are a diverse collection of crypto assets with different functions, value structures, and growth potential.

Memecoins stole the spotlight

For the crypto analyst Miles Deutscher, the launch of Pump.fun is directly correlated to the destruction of the altcoin market vs BTC.

Paul Atkins, US President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), disclosed combined employment assets of at least $327 million with his wife ahead of a scheduled confirmation hearing with the US Senate Banking Committee.

Atkins and his wife, Sarah Humphreys, held up to a combined $327 million in assets, in part through their respective stakes in Atkins’ consulting firm Patomak Global Partners and Tamko Building Products, according to a financial disclosure report made public by the US Office of Government Ethics on March 25.

Humphreys and her family members reportedly control a 75% stake in Tamco, the roofing business founded by her grandfather.

Atkins personally disclosed up to $78.8 million in total employment assets of: up to $15,000 each; between $25,000,001 and $50 million in membership interest at Patomak; between $250,001 and $500,000 in call options at Securitize, a real-world asset tokenization platform; and between $50,001 and $100,000 at financial technology company Pontoro.

If confirmed, Atkins he would resign as CEO of Patomak and divest his membership interest, as well as divest his stock options at Securitize. Atkins served as a commissioner at the agency from 2002 to 2008.

Cboe BZX Exchange, a US securities exchange, has requested permission to list a proposed Fidelity exchange-traded fund (ETF) holding Solana (SOL), according to March 25 filings. 

The request now sits with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which must approve the filing before trading of the Fidelity Solana Fund can commence on the exchange.

This is the latest in a spate of filings with the federal agency by exchanges and fund sponsors seeking to launch ETFs holding SOL and other cryptocurrencies. 

On March 12, Cboe filed to list another spot SOL ETF sponsored by asset manager Franklin Templeton.

Source: James Seyfart/Bloomberg Intelligence

Brazil’s data protection agency has upheld its decision to restrict cryptocurrency compensation tied to the World ID project, citing user privacy concerns. 

The National Data Protection Authority (ANDP) rejected a petition by World ID developer Tools For Humanity to review its ban on offering financial compensation to users who provide biometric data through iris scans, the agency said in a March 25 announcement.  

ANDP will “maintain the suspension of the granting of financial compensation, in the form of cryptocurrency (Worldcoin - WLD) or in any other format, for any World ID created by collecting iris scans of personal data subjects in Brazil,” a translated version of the announcement reads. 

The company faces a daily fine of 50,000 Brazilian reais ($8,800) if it resumes data collection activities. 

Cointelegraph reached out to Tools for Humanity but had not received a response at the time of publication.

Bitcoin (BTC) price opened the week with strength, rallying to a daily high at $88,804, which was met by praise from analysts who have identified the $90,000 to $92,000 zone as the key price level to hit in the short term. 

The market found strength on March 24 after US President Donald Trump suggested that his April 2 “tariff number” announcement could be softer than expected after cars and microchips were removed from the list. 

According to Ben Yorke, the vice president of ecosystem at WOO, “The White House’s decision to walk back the threat of broad tariffs and to deploy a more targeted approach suggests Trump is wary of an economic backlash.”

Proof of the market’s positive response to the tariff news can be seen in the increase in Bitcoin futures open interest, where the general assumption is that traders used leverage to open new margin-long positions. 

BTC/USDT 1-hour chart. Source: MacroCRG / X 

Opinion by: Michael Amar, co-founder of Chain of Events and general partner at v3nture

Once upon a time, in 1848, a man could walk into the wilderness on the brink of poverty and emerge, caked in mud, dust and days-old sweat, a multimillionaire. The discovery of gold in California in the mid-19th century ignited a fuse, causing explosive ripples that transformed the American economy.

In 2025, a relatively new resource, less shiny but no less brilliant and scarce, looks set to reshape the global economy and spark another race for accumulation. Only this time, there won’t be pickaxes and pans. There will be ASICs, algorithms and distributed ledger technology. 

Of course, this refers to Bitcoin (BTC), also known as digital gold.

Just as the gold rush spurred on banking, financial systems, lending, trading and changes to monetary policy, history is repeating itself with Bitcoin, digital payments, asset tokenization and crypto-politicians. Laws, regulations and culture changed to accommodate gold. They’re now doing the same for Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies at large.

Bitcoin (BTC) passed $88,000 after the March 25 Wall Street open as risk assets stayed highly sensitive to US trade tariffs.

BTC/USD 1-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

BTC price gains anticipate classic April comeback

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD tightly clinging to the daily open.

US stocks opened modestly higher, building on a comeback that provided traders some long-awaited cause for optimism.

A key ingredient in stemming the risk-asset rout were cues from the US government and President Donald Trump over their planned round of trade tariffs set to begin on April 2. 

Since US President Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, Bitcoin (BTC) has swung from a record high of $109,000 to below $78,000 as major tariff announcements from the US and retaliatory moves from trade partners shaved off chunks of cryptocurrency market value and rattled global markets.

“The back-and-forth on tariffs, with Trump sometimes tough and sometimes accommodating, has left markets in a limbo state, where few people are willing to be decidedly bullish but just as few are willing to part with their assets, fearing to be left on the side-lines at the next rally,” Justin d’Anethan, head of sales at Liquify, told Cointelegraph.

By mid-March, investors began regaining confidence as White House messaging pointed to a more measured approach. But mixed signals remain, and with a second wave of “reciprocal tariffs” looming on April 2 — dubbed Liberation Day — market jitters haven’t fully subsided.

Trump’s trade war saga has rattled global markets but evolved to a softer stance by late March.

Colombian tariff standoff and DeepSeek disruption shakes Bitcoin

Bitcoin hovered above $100,000 until Jan. 26, when Trump threatened 25% tariffs on all Colombian imports after Colombian President Gustavo Petro refused to accept US military aircraft carrying deported migrants. Petro accused Trump of mistreating immigrants and retaliated with tariffs of his own.

US derivatives exchange operator CME Group is piloting solutions for tokenized assets using Google Cloud Universal Ledger (GCUL), a new distributed ledger that was designed for traditional financial institutions.

CME has begun integrating GCUL to improve capital market efficiency and wholesale payments, the company announced on March 25.

CME Group Chairman and CEO Terry Duffy said GCUL could “deliver significant efficiencies for collateral, margin, settlement and fee payments as the world moves toward 24/7 trading.”

The announcement did not provide details about which assets would be tokenized. CME Group and Google Cloud will begin testing the technology with market participants in 2026.

Source: CME Group

About $13 million worth of cryptocurrency has been drained from decentralized lending protocol Abracadabra.Money following an exploit targeting pools using GMX tokens.

In a March 25 X post, crypto cybersecurity firm PeckShield reported that contracts related to GMX and Abracadabra.Money had been compromised, resulting in the loss of about 6,260 Ether (ETH), worth around $13 million.

The news follows Abracadabra.Money losing $6.49 million after its smart contracts were compromised in late January 2024. At the time, this also led to the protocol’s Magic Internet Money (MIM) stablecoin losing its peg to the US dollar.

Related: Pump.fun’s new DEX reaches $1B volume a week after launch

GMX denies contract vulnerability

Despite initial reports, a pseudonymous GMX communications contributor claimed on X that “GMX contracts are not affected.” According to the user, GMX is involved because MIM’s pools are based on GMX v2 pools.

US President Donald Trump’s trade war with China and efforts to ramp up on-shore Bitcoin mining will be a boon for US mining rig manufacturers, which currently only hold a small sliver of market share compared to their major Chinese counterparts. 

The United States accounts for over 40% of the Bitcoin network’s global hashrate but still leans heavily on China-made mining rigs. China-based Bitmain reportedly holds as much as a 90% market share in the Bitcoin mining manufacturing market. 

“Trump’s continued focus to support the US BTC mining industry highlights the urgent need to address US reliance on foreign technology,” Auradine’s chief strategy officer, Sanjay Gupta, told Cointelegraph in a recent interview. 

US Bitcoin firms hit a major supply problem last year, with thousands of Bitcoin (BTC) miners held at ports of entry by the US Customs and Border Protection. 

One of the firms affected believed it was due to a mistaken belief that the chips were illegally imported Chinese radio frequency devices. It took months before they started being released. 

BlackRock’s tokenized money market fund has expanded to the Solana blockchain as its market capitalization approaches the $2 billion mark.

On March 25, Carlos Domingo, the founder and CEO of real-world asset (RWA) tokenization platform Securitize, welcomed the Solana network to the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL). This marked the tokenized money market fund’s expansion to another blockchain network. 

BlackRock launched BUIDL in March 2024 in partnership with Securitize. In a Fortune report, Securitize chief operating officer Michael Sonnenshein said the fund aims to make offchain assets “unboring.” 

The executive said they are advancing some of the deficiencies of money markets in their traditional formats. 

BlackRock’s BUIDL at $1.7 billion market cap

RWA data platform rwa.xyz shows that BlackRock and Securitize’s BUIDL leads the Tokenized United States Treasurys in market capitalization. The platform’s data shows that the fund has a market capitalization of $1.7 billion and a nearly 34% market share. 

Cryptocurrency-friendly trading platform eToro has filed for an initial public offering (IPO) in the United States following several previous attempts.

The company said in a March 24 announcement that it had submitted a registration statement on Form F-1 with the US Securities and Exchange Commission related to the IPO of its Class A common shares.

EToro has applied to list its Class A common shares on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker symbol “ETOR,” according to the announcement, which stated:

eToro public IPO announcement. Source: eToro

The public filing comes over two months after eToro made confidential filings to the SEC in a move toward a potential IPO in New York, the Financial Times reported on Jan. 16.

Ether’s (ETH) price printed a bear flag on the daily chart, a technical chart formation associated with strong downward momentum. Could this bearish setup and decreasing transaction fees signal the start of the second leg of ETH’s drop toward $1,200?

Ethereum’s network activity slumps

The market drawdown, fueled by US President Donald Trump’s tariff threats, saw Ether’s price drop by nearly 50% from a high of $3,432 on Jan. 31 to a 16-month low of $1,750 on March 11.

While ETH has rebounded 18% since, it failed to produce a decisive break above $2,000 for a second time in less than 10 days.

This weakness is reflected in onchain activity, with Ethereum’s daily transaction count dropping to levels last seen in October 2024, before Donald Trump’s presidential election victory.

Ethereum daily transaction count. Source: CryptoQuant

Traditional and cryptocurrency investors eagerly await Friday’s Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) release in the US, which may provide some relief to inflation-related concerns and increase investor appetite for risk assets including Bitcoin.

The US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) will release on March 28 the next PCE report, which measures the inflation of prices US consumers are paying for goods and services.

The PCE inflation print may become the “next key catalyst” for Bitcoin (BTC) and other risk assets, according to QCP Group, a Singapore-based digital asset firm.

QCP wrote on Telegram:

Risk assets staged a significant recovery after “Trump signaled twice on Monday that trading partners might secure exemptions or reductions, offering a reprieve that helped soothe market jitters,” QCP added.

Real-world asset (RWA) tokenization platform DigitShares is bringing tokenized real estate trading to Polygon with the launch of RealEstate.Exchange, also known as REX.

According to a March 25 announcement, REX is designed to offer retail investors a compliant venue for fractional property investments in a secondary market, potentially addressing the industry’s existing liquidity constraints. As Cointelegraph explained, secondary RWA trading platforms provide liquid off-ramps for investors looking to cash out of their holdings. 

The REX platform will launch with two luxury property listings in Miami, Florida, including The Legacy Hotel & Residences, a 529-unit tower managed by real estate investment platform FraXion, and a 38-unit residential complex managed by Trade Estate.

A street view of The Legacy Hotel & Residences in Miami, Florida. Source: Google Maps

DigiShares CEO Claus Skaaning told Cointelegraph that REX intends to support “various property types, including residential, commercial and luxury real estate.” In addition to the two Miami properties, REX has “5-6 additional properties in the pipeline,” said Skaaning.

Memecoin launchpad Pump.fun’s new decentralized exchange (DEX), PumpSwap, surpassed a cumulative trading volume of $1 billion a week after its launch, according to blockchain analytics platform Dune.

On March 19, Pump.fun launched its Solana DEX to create a “frictionless environment” for memecoin trading. Previously, memecoins launched on Pump.fun needed to migrate into the Solana DEX Raydium after bootstrapping liquidity, despite which the trading platform became the most popular DEX in Solana. 

Still, the Pump.fun team said these migrations slowed token momentum and introduced “needless complexity” for new users. With the new DEX, the project said migrations happen instantly and are free. 

A Dune Analytics dashboard by onchain analyst Adam_Tehc showed that PumpSwap had an all-time trading volume of $1.1 billion in its first seven days. 

PumpSwap DEX lifetime trading volume reaches. Source: Dune Analytics

XRP (XRP) price has recovered by almost 7% in the last 10 days, led by a crypto market rebound and the end of Ripple’s long-running legal battle with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

However, several key support levels are at risk of being tested as onchain data suggests lackluster buying activity.

XRP/USD daily chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

XRP futures markets lean bearish

XRP price is currently trading 30% below its multi-year high of $3.40. When prices were at a similar level in November 2024, high spot market bids quickly pushed the price past the $3 mark.

However, XRP‘s spot and perpetual markets were subdued over the past two weeks.