SEC’s XRP reversal marks crypto industry victory ahead of SOL futures ETF launch: Finance Redefined
Crypto investors rejoiced this week after the US Securities and Exchange Commission dismissed one of the crypto industry’s most controversial lawsuits — one that resulted in an over four-year legal battle with Ripple Labs.
In another significant regulatory development, Solana-based futures exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have debuted in the US, a move that may signal the approval of spot Solana (SOL) ETFs as the “next logical step” for lawmakers.
SEC’s XRP reversal a “victory for the industry”: Ripple CEO
The SEC’s dismissal of its years-long lawsuit against Ripple Labs, the developer of the XRP Ledger blockchain network, is a “victory for the industry,” Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said at Blockworks’ 2025 Digital Asset Summit in New York.
On March 19, Garlinghouse revealed that the SEC would dismiss its legal action against Ripple, ending four years of litigation against the blockchain developer for an alleged $1.3-billion unregistered securities offering in 2020.
“It feels like a victory for the industry and the beginning of a new chapter,” Garlinghouse said on March 19 at the Summit, which Cointelegraph attended.
Ripple’s CEO said the SEC is dropping its case against the blockchain developer. Source: Brad Garlinghouse
Solana futures ETF to grow institutional adoption, despite limited inflows
The crypto industry is set to debut the first SOL futures ETF, a significant development that may pave the way for the first spot SOL ETF as the “next logical step” for crypto-based trading products, according to industry watchers.
Volatility Shares is launching two SOL futures ETFs, the Volatility Shares Solana ETF (SOLZ) and the Volatility Shares 2X Solana ETF (SOLT), on March 20.
Volatility Shares Solana ETF SEC filing. Source: SEC
The debut of the first SOL futures ETF may bring significant new institutional adoption for the SOL token, according to Ryan Lee, chief analyst at Bitget Research.
The analyst told Cointelegraph:
“The launch of the first Solana ETFs in the US could significantly boost Solana’s market position by increasing demand and liquidity for SOL, potentially narrowing the gap with Ethereum’s market cap.”
The Solana ETF will grow institutional adoption by “offering a regulated investment vehicle, attracting billions in capital and reinforcing Solana’s competitiveness against Ethereum,” said Lee, adding that “Ethereum’s entrenched ecosystem remains a formidable barrier.”
Pump.fun launches own DEX, drops Raydium
Pump.fun has launched its own decentralized exchange (DEX) called PumpSwap, potentially displacing Raydium as the primary trading venue for Solana-based memecoins.
Starting on March 20, memecoins that successfully bootstrap liquidity, or “bond,” on Pump.fun will migrate directly to PumpSwap, Pump.fun said in an X post.
Previously, bonded Pump.fun tokens migrated to Raydium, which emerged as Solana’s most popular DEX, largely thanks to memecoin trading activity.
According to Pump.fun, PumpSwap “functions similarly to Raydium V4 and Uniswap V2” and is designed “to create the most frictionless environment for trading coins.”
“Migrations were a major point of friction – they slow a coin’s momentum and introduce needless complexity for new users,” Pump.fun said.
“Now, migrations happen instantly and for free.”
Raydium’s trading volumes surged in 2024, largely due to memecoins. Source: DefiLlama
Bybit: 89% of stolen $1.4B crypto still traceable post-hack
The lion’s share of the hacked Bybit funds is still traceable after the historic cybertheft, with blockchain investigators continuing their efforts to freeze and recover the funds.
The crypto industry was rocked by the largest hack in history on Feb. 21 when Bybit lost over $1.4 billion in liquid-staked Ether (stETH), Mantle Staked ETH (mETH) and other digital assets.
Blockchain security firms, including Arkham Intelligence, have identified North Korea’s Lazarus Group as the likely culprit behind the Bybit exploit as the attackers continue swapping the funds in an effort to make them untraceable.
Despite the Lazarus Group’s efforts, over 88% of the stolen $1.4 billion remains traceable, according to Ben Zhou, co-founder and CEO of crypto exchange Bybit.
The CEO wrote in a March 20 X post:
“Total hacked funds of USD 1.4bn around 500k ETH. 88.87% remain traceable, 7.59% have gone dark, 3.54% have been frozen.”
“86.29% (440,091 ETH, ~$1.23B) have been converted into 12,836 BTC across 9,117 wallets (Average 1.41 BTC each),” said the CEO, adding that the funds were mainly funneled through Bitcoin (BTC) mixers, including Wasbi, CryptoMixer, Railgun and Tornado Cash.
Source: Ben Zhou
The CEO’s update comes nearly a month after the exchange was hacked. It took the Lazarus Group 10 days to move 100% of the stolen funds through the decentralized crosschain protocol THORChain, Cointelegraph reported on March 4.
Libra, Melania creator’s “Wolf of Wall Street” memecoin crashes 99%
The creator of the Libra token has launched another memecoin with some of the same concerning onchain 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 with an over 80% insider supply.
Davis launched the Wolf (WOLF) memecoin on March 8, banking on rumors of Jordan Belfort, known as the Wolf of Wall Street, launching his own token.
The token reached a peak $42 million market cap. However, 82% of WOLF’s supply was bundled under the same entity, according to a March 15 X post by Bubblemaps, which wrote:
“The bubble map revealed something strange — $WOLF had the same pattern as $HOOD, a token launched by Hayden Davis. Was he behind this one too?”
Source: Bubblemaps
The blockchain analytics platform revealed transfers across 17 different addresses, stemming back to the address “OxcEAe,” owned by Davis.
“He funded these wallets months before $LIBRA and $WOLF launched, moving money through 17 addresses and 2 chains,” Bubblemaps added.
Source: Bubblemaps
The Wolf memecoin lost over 99% of its value within two days, from the peak $42.9 million market capitalization on March 8 to just $570,000 by March 16, Dexscreener data shows.
DeFi market overview
According to Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView data, most of the 100 largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization ended the week in the green.
Of the top 100, 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.
Total value locked in DeFi. Source: DefiLlama
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.
Politics
Caerphilly by-election: Just like that! In Tommy Cooper’s birthplace, Farage nowhere to be seen as Reform loses
In a by-election in the birthplace of the comedian Tommy Cooper, it was Plaid Cymru that had the last laugh.
During the campaign, Nigel Farage and Reform UK’s candidate Llyr Powell had posed for photos in front of the statue of the legendary comic in Caerphilly.
But when the result was declared at 2.10am at the count in the town’s leisure centre, Mr Farage – who’d been campaigning for Mr Powell on polling day – was nowhere to be seen.
Nigel Farage and Reform’s Caerphilly candidate Llyr Powell stand in front of a Tommy Cooper statue. Pic: PA
In fact, the joke among Plaid supporters at the count was that Mr Farage was halfway down the M4 on his way back to London – long before the declaration.
It was one of those by-election counts when one party – in this case Reform UK – is expected to win as the polls close at 10pm, but within a few hours it becomes clear the other party looks like winning.
Caerphilly is the birthplace of the comedian Tommy Cooper. Pic: Fremantle Media/Shutterstock
After all, Reform UK threw everything at the campaign, Mr Farage had visited three times and a poll last week had suggested his party was ahead of Plaid Cymru by 42% to 38%.
Plaid’s by-election winner Lindsay Whittle, a cheerful extrovert dressed in a colourful crimson jacket, admitted in a Sky News interview that he’d fought parliamentary and Senedd elections in Caerphilly unsuccessfully 13 times previously.
Pic: PA
If at first you don’t succeed…
He was chipper from the moment he arrived at the count even before the polls closed, and was clearly pretty confident he was going to win.
Contrast his body language with the forlorn figure of Mr Powell, who without Mr Farage or Reform UK’s Zia Yusuf – who’d been at the count for an hour or so at the beginning but had left – appeared to arrive on his own and looked neglected by his party as well as dejected.
As runner up, poor Mr Powell had the opportunity to make a speech after the declaration but chose not to, though some of the other losing candidates did.
Reform’s Llyr Powell looked neglected and dejected. Pic: PA
This result is a huge boost for Plaid, however, as the party aims to seize control of the Senedd in elections next year. But it’s a big setback for Mr Farage’s hopes of making inroads in Wales.
But for Labour, whose vote crumbled like Caerphilly cheese, it’s a disaster and will send many Labour MPs into a panic about their chances of holding their seat at the next general election.
In the end, for all the talk of the result being close, it was a relatively comfortable win for Plaid, with a majority of nearly 4,000.
In his Sky News interview, Labour’s Huw Irranca-Davies, a former Westminster MP who’s now deputy first minister in Wales, blamed Reform for cranking up immigration as an issue in the campaign for Labour’s slump in support.
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How tactical voting helped Plaid Cymru
But this result shows that it isn’t only Reform that poses a threat to Labour, but also parties on the left such as the nationalists.
Caerphilly has sent Labour MPs to Westminster for more than a century and Labour Welsh assembly and Senedd members to Cardiff since devolution began in 1999.
This was a Labour stronghold as impregnable as Caerphilly’s mighty castle. Not any more though, it seems.
The result will serve as a warning that Labour’s dominance in the valleys and what might be described as “old industrial Wales” may be coming to an end.
And just like a Tommy Cooper magic trick that goes wrong, that could happen just like that.
Politics
Harriet Harman: Jess Phillips can repair relations with grooming gang survivors so inquiry can go ahead
Safeguarding minister Jess Phillips can repair relations with grooming gang survivors so the inquiry can go ahead, Harriet Harman has said.
A row over who chairs and oversees the long-awaited inquiry into grooming gangs has seen four of about 30 survivors on the panel quit and say they will only return if Ms Phillips resigns.
The women, who are overseeing the setting up of the inquiry, have accused her of wanting to expand the inquiry’s scope so it focuses on more than grooming gangs – something Ms Phillips denies.
Baroness Harman, a former Labour home secretary, told Beth Rigby on the Electoral Dysfunction podcast she thinks there has been miscommunication with some survivors which “can be solved if there is underlying trust and confidence”.
👉 Click here to listen to Electoral Dysfunction on your podcast app 👈
She said this situation has happened before, with the Grenfell fire inquiry when friends and family of those killed were not happy about the original chair or scope, but came around and were satisfied with the outcome.
It also happened, she said, when murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence’s parents did not trust then-home secretary Jack Straw to set up an inquiry into the handling of the police investigation.
“Actually, that trust was built, although at the outset of the [Lawrence] inquiry their lawyers stood up and asked for it to be adjourned and suspended indefinitely,” she said.
“And that happened before it actually got going and became a really important landmark inquiry.”
Five other survivors invited on to the child sexual exploitation inquiry panel have written to Sir Keir Starmer to say they will continue working with the investigation only if the safeguarding minister stays.
They say they believe Phillips has remained impartial and they want her to “remain in position for the duration of the process for consistency”.
Sir Keir has backed Ms Phillips to continue in her position.
Fiona Goddard is one of the four to leave the inquiry
Baroness Harman said Ms Phillips was “wrong to attack the people that are coming after her” after the minister gave a fiery rebuke in the Commons over criticism of the inquiry, including about its scope and about two potential chairs – an ex-senior police officer and a former social worker – who have both now withdrawn.
One of the survivors, Ellie Reynolds, said she felt an inquiry had become “less about the truth and more about a cover-up”.
Ms Phillips, who previously managed Women’s Aid refuges for domestic abuse victims, denied this and insisted the government was “committed to exposing the failures”.
Read more:
Why are abuse survivors losing faith in the grooming gangs inquiry?
Why Jim Gamble quit grooming gang inquiry
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PM backs Jess Phillips over grooming gangs
Baroness Harman said the minister’s “attack… made the situation far more difficult”.
But she added: “It must be exasperating for Jess Phillips to have her credibility, her commitment, her integrity questioned by people who’ve made no commitment to the struggles that she’s given her life’s work to.
“But although it must be exasperating, she can’t afford to be exasperated because this is about answering the questions that have been put.
“Because watching this is not just the 30 who are on the panel that have been chosen by the government to help with the inquiry, but it’s the thousands of other girls who’ve been abused and for whom this inquiry matters enormously.”
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