The US Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) dismissal of the four-year legal case against Ripple Labs is a "victory for the industry," said Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, marking a significant milestone in the ongoing regulatory battle between crypto and traditional finance.
Crypto investors rejoiced this week as the SEC dropped its legal action against Ripple, one of the most controversial lawsuits in the crypto space. The decision comes after years of litigation over an alleged $1.3-billion unregistered securities offering in 2020. Ripple's CEO described the move as "a victory for the industry and the beginning of a new chapter."
Another significant development in the regulatory space is the launch of Solana-based futures exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the US. The debut of these ETFs may signal the approval of spot Solana (SOL) ETFs, which could pave the way for institutional adoption and growth.
"The first SOL futures ETF will grow institutional adoption by offering a regulated investment vehicle, attracting billions in capital and reinforcing Solana's competitiveness against Ethereum," said Ryan Lee, chief analyst at Bitget Research. "Ethereum's entrenched ecosystem remains a formidable barrier."
In other news, Pump.fun has launched its own decentralized exchange (DEX) called PumpSwap, potentially displacing Raydium as the primary trading venue for Solana-based memecoins.
PumpSwap is designed to create a "frictionless environment for trading coins" and allows for instant migrations between tokens, eliminating complexity for new users. The move comes after Pump.fun's bonded tokens migrated to Raydium, which has been Solana's most popular DEX due to memecoins.
The crypto industry was also rocked by a historic cybertheft on February 21st, when Bybit lost over $1.4 billion in liquid-staked Ether (stETH), Mantle Staked ETH (mETH), and other digital assets. Blockchain investigators continue their efforts to freeze and recover the funds.
According to Ben Zhou, co-founder and CEO of crypto exchange Bybit, over 88% of the stolen $1.4 billion remains unfunded, mainly funneled through Bitcoin mixers and decentralized crosschain protocol THORChain.
The creator of the Libra token has launched another memecoin with some of the same concerning on-chain patterns that pointed to significant insider trading activity ahead of the coin's 99% collapse. Hayden Davis, co-creator of the Official Melania Meme (MELANIA) and Libra tokens, has launched a new Solana-based memecoin called WOLF.
The token reached a peak market capitalization of $42 million but lost over 99% of its value within two days. A blockchain analytics platform revealed transfers across 17 different addresses, stemming back to the address "OxcEAe," owned by Davis, which funded these wallets months before WOLF and LIBRA launched.
Most of the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization ended the week in the green. The BNB Chain-native Four (FORM) token rose over 110% as the week's biggest gainer, followed by PancakeSwap's CAKE (CAKE) token, up over 48% on the weekly chart.
Thanks for reading our summary of this week's most impactful DeFi developments. Join us next Friday for more stories, insights, and education regarding this dynamically advancing space.