TL;DR

• US economic recession? A downward growth trend may indicate the recession narrative may continue to unfold.
• FOMC meeting is likely to see interest rate on hold, but will be eagerly looking for clues for the next move.
• Bitcoin lacks the catalyst to rise in the mid-term.
• Hyperliquid lost 4m due to the risk control system.
• WLFI concludes 2rd public token sale, accumulating $550M and planning future offerings.
• SIMD-228 fails to Reduce Inflation on Solana, While SIMD-123 Successfully passes with Onchain revenue sharing for stakers.
• Coinbase Ventures Leads Echo Initiative to Support Crowd-Funded Web3 Projects on Bases.
• CeFi projects were largest share of funding last week.

Macro Overview

US economic recession? A downward growth trend may indicate the recession narrative may continue to unfold.

While economic predictions like Atlanta GDPNow pointed to a 2.4% annualized contraction, the weakness of the US economy may be overstated, and the current data is indicating a more moderate slowdown. The current demand weakness mainly comes from federal budget cutting and tariff-related uncertainties.

The Jan real personal consumption expenditures (PCE) fell by 0.4% MoM, which is the lowest level from 2021. The growth of personal income is also seeing a decline, which could hint that the US consumer spending may weaken in the future. Private fixed investment growth remained positive in 24Q4, but its pace has slowed to the lowest level since the pandemic. It is worth noticing that the recession risk could be non-linear, and core economical figures could turn within months without prior warning, so even though the US economy is not in recession at this moment the recession narrative will not fade away soon.

The FOMC meeting decision is due on this Wednesday and the market consensus is that there will be no rate cut this time. The meeting will also publish the newest dot plot, which records each Fed official’s projection for the future interest rate. While there have been signals for a weaker economy, the resilient job market and fear for inflation trajectory given nowadays tariff conflicts will likely keep a high bar for the Fed to cut interest rates.

The dollar index slightly stabilized around the $103 — $104 level, as the market consolidated its positions. However, the outlook remains weak as the economic data suggests a slowing growth under current government’s administration.

The overall asset level has been wandering around the line in the past few weeks, and last week it slightly went up by ~$3bn to $6.760tn.

Gold price popped above $3,000 for the first time in history last Friday, led by the rally for seeking safe-haven assets to cover the uncertainty of economic conditions and tariff war. The price dropped to $2,984.73 when the market closed.

Crypto Markets Overview

1. Main Assets

BTC is still in a downward trend, having formed a double top last year. Lacking strong upward momentum, it is more inclined to decline or trade sideways as the market reassesses its fair value. On Monday, BTC stood at $83,000, while ETH was priced at $1,900. BTC rose 1% week-over-week, whereas ETH dropped 8%. Last week, the crypto market remained sluggish, with discussions primarily revolving around BSC MEME tokens and whales shorting BTC.

2. Total Market Cap

The total cryptocurrency market capitalization stood at $2.68 trillion as of Monday. Excluding BTC and ETH, the total market cap of altcoins was $800 billion, showing almost no change compared to the previous week.

3. Stablecoins and Net Inflows

The stablecoin market capitalization grew by $2 billion last week, with USDT and USDC increasing by $600 million each, while USDS continued to grow by $200 million.

On the ETF side, BTC saw an outflow of $830 million. Notably, ETH experienced a significant outflow of 99,300 ETH, maintaining a trend of large withdrawals.

4. Top 30 Crypto Assets Performance

Last week, the cryptocurrency market remained sluggish, with mixed price movements. TON surged by 27.7% as activity within its ecosystem, including projects like Catizen, picked up. BNB gained 11% as multiple meme tokens launched on its network, receiving support and purchases from CZ.

Meanwhile, Hyperliquid faced scrutiny after a whale exploited a vulnerability in the exchange, profiting approximately $2 million, raising concerns about the risk management capabilities of decentralized exchanges.

The Key Crypto Highlights

1.WLFI concludes 2rd public token sale, accumulating $550M and planning future offerings

World Liberty Financial (WLFI), has concluded its latest token sale round, accumulating approximately $550M since its public launch. This brings WLFI’s total fundraising to $590M, including private rounds. The recent sale totally involved 25% of WLFI’s total supply of 100B tokens.
The project’s initial public sale (1st) in October offered 20B tokens (20% of the total supply) at $0.015 to whitelisted investors. After finishing the initial 20% sale in January, raising $300M, WLFI opened another (2rd) 5B tokens for sale at a higher price of $0.05, which concluded on Friday, adding $250M to the total. WLFI team indicated that 63% of the total supply would be offered to the public, suggesting potential future token sales.

2. SIMD-228 fails to reduce Inflation on Solana, While SIMD-123 Successfully passes with Onchain revenue sharing for stakers

Solana’s governance proposal SIMD-228, aimed at reducing inflation, failed to pass despite achieving a historic voter turnout of 74%. The proposal sought to replace the network’s fixed inflation schedule with a dynamic, market-driven system that adjusts SOL token issuance based on staking participation. Under the proposed model, Solana’s inflation rate would have dropped below 1% annually from the current fixed schedule of 4.6% annually at the current staking rate of approximately 65%, which decreases by 15% yearly until stabilizing at 1.5%.

Proponents argued that SIMD-228 would benefit long-term SOL holders by increasing scarcity and boosting the token’s value. However, opponents raised concerns about its potential negative impact on smaller stakers and validators, potentially reducing their profitability.

Meanwhile, another proposal, SIMD-123, successfully passed with nearly 75% approval. This proposal introduces an on-chain mechanism allowing validators to share revenue with stakers, replacing current off-chain solutions. This change is expected to enhance transparency by formalizing reward distribution on-chain.

3. Coinbase Ventures Leads Echo Initiative to Support Crowd-Funded Web3 Projects on Base

Coinbase Ventures has taken on the role of group lead for Echo, an on-chain investment platform. In this capacity, Coinbase Ventures will concentrate on funding projects developed on Base, the Layer 2 network incubated by Coinbase, through the Base Ecosystem Fund on Echo, as announced in a recent company release. Since its launch in September 2023, the Base Ecosystem Fund has supported over 40 projects, including notable names such as Aerodrome, Morpho, Blackbird, among others. Onchain investing opens up new opportunities for accredited and qualified investors to engage in ways that were previously inaccessible, while providing founders with access to a more diverse and dynamic capital base. Echo facilitates individual crypto traders to collaborate and invest collectively in web3 projects, with the group lead role granting exclusive investment deal access to a curated group of users.

Key Ventures Deals

1.RedotPay Raises $40M in Series A Funding to enhance crypto payment ecosystem

RedotPay, a leading crypto payment platform, has successfully closed a $40M Series A funding round led by Lightspeed, with participation from HSG, Galaxy Ventures, DST Global Partners, Accel, Vertex Ventures (a Temasek-backed VC), and other notable investors, following their initial commitment in December 2024. RedotPay’s mission is to create a borderless payment ecosystem that seamlessly integrates fiat and cryptocurrencies. By combining traditional digital payment technology with cryptocurrencies, the platform allows users to spend digital assets with the same ease and familiarity as conventional payment methods. Its intuitive design and focus on practical crypto applications have set it apart in the market. With this new funding, RedotPay aims to accelerate its product development, enhance its payment ecosystem for a smoother user experience, strengthen regulatory compliance frameworks, and expand its licensing footprint across multiple jurisdictions.

2. MGX Invests $2B in Binance, marking first institutional funding and focus on AI and Blockchains

Binance has secured a $2B investment from MGX, a technology-focused investment firm based in Abu Dhabi, which focused on supporting companies developing AI and other advanced technologies. Investment on Binance marks MGX’s first venture into the cryptocurrency and blockchain sector, as they also acquire a minority stake in Binance. This investment is significant as it represents Binance’s first institutional funding, highlighting a major milestone for the exchange. The partnership aims to drive innovation in artificial intelligence, blockchain technology, and financial systems. Notably, the transaction was conducted using stablecoin, showcasing a modern approach to financing. This investment underscores their commitment to leveraging blockchain’s transformative potential in digital finance. MGX also highlighted the growing need for secure, compliant, and scalable blockchain solutions as institutional adoption accelerates.

3. Rakurai Secures $3M Seed funding to enhance staking efficiency and transaction performance on Solana

Rakurai, a Solana-based staking protocol designed to deliver high yields and superior transaction performance, has successfully closed a $3M Seed funding round led by Anagram Ventures, with participation from notable investors including Colosseum, Slow Ventures, Robot Ventures, Crypto.com, P2P.org, GlobalStake, and Cyber Fund.
Rakurai addresses critical issues in Solana’s ecosystem, such as conflicting transactions and scheduler bottlenecks. By optimizing transaction scheduling and block creation, Rakurai aims to increase bandwidth and reduce latency, aligning with Solana’s broader network goals, which could be up to five times more efficient than existing Solana clients. Rakurai’s unique approach leverages proprietary scheduling and pipeline optimizations to maximize transaction throughput (TPS) and improve block rewards, benefiting users,dApps, and bots. The protocol’s high QoS (quality of service) transaction landing ensures on-chain efficiency for both retail and institutional participants. Since January, Rakurai has seen a 390% increase in its network stake, growing from ~17,960 $SOL to over 88,080 $SOL, making it one of Solana’s fastest-growing validators.

The number of deals closed in the previous week was 35, with Infra leading the way with 11 deals, representing 31% of the total number of deals. Meanwhile, Social had 1 (3%), Data had 8 (23%), , Gamefi had 3 (9%), DeFi had 12 (34%) deals

The total amount of disclosed funding raised in the previous week was $2.3B, 40% deals (14/35) in previous week didn’t public the raised amount. The top funding came from Infra sector with $2,1B. Most funded deals: Binance with $2B and Canaan $100M

Total weekly fundraising rose to $2.3B for the 3nd week of Mar-2025, an increase of +640% compared to the week prior. Weekly fundraising in the previous week was up +740% year over year for the same period.

About Gate Ventures

Gate Ventures, the venture capital arm of Gate.io, is focused on investments in decentralized infrastructure, middleware, and applications that will reshape the world in the Web 3.0 age. Working with industry leaders across the globe, Gate Ventures helps promising teams and startups that possess the ideas and capabilities needed to redefine social and financial interactions.

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