Crypto World
Inside the messy proxy fight at BTC treasury company Empery Digital (EMPD)
A public fight is unfolding at Empery Digital (EMPD), a bitcoin treasury company holding 3,723 BTC whose shares have slumped 45% in the past 12 months.
While it’s a small holding compared to firms like Michael Saylor’s Strategy, the boardroom drama with an activist investor brought this company into the spotlight.
In a Feb. 4 letter, investor Tice P. Brown, founder and managing partner of the Woodmont Partners family office, said he owns 9.8% of the firm, accused management of reckless behavior and poor governance, allowing employees to “day-trade tens, or hundreds of millions of dollars of bitcoin derivatives.” He called for the resignation of co-CEO Ryan Lane and the rest of the board, and demanded the sale of all its bitcoin, returning the cash to shareholders.
Empery’s management rejected Brown’s claims and offered a different account of recent events. The dispute now spans buyout talks, office meetings and the use of bitcoin derivatives at the company.
“Management attempted to reach an agreement with Mr. Brown as it believed such an agreement would be in the best interests of the Company and all its shareholders,” the company said in a post on its website. “It is disappointing Mr. Brown ended these conversations and issued his letter to advance his self-serving campaign.”
At the core is a simple question: Should Empery, which has a market capitalization of $140 million, keep building around its bitcoin holdings or sell them and wind down, especially when the bitcoin price has cratered from its all-time high and most treasury companies are hurting?
Options trading
Brown, who started building his stake in December and is now the third-largest shareholder, according to WallStreetZen data and SEC filings, argues for the latter.
Brown, who declined to comment for this story, said in his letter that liquidating all the bitcoin would close the gap between the company’s share price of around $3.96 and its net asset value of $4.72.
Empery, however, says that selling all bitcoin would destroy long-term potential and undermine its strategy.
That strategy involves using its holdings to support an options trading plan that involves selling out-of-the-money calls and puts, along with spreads, to collect premiums. It’s an approach employed by some other bitcoin treasury firms, including Metaplanet, the fourth-largest corporate holder of bitcoin, to generate income against their bitcoin holdings.
In plain terms, that means the company earns fees from other market participants who want exposure to bitcoin price moves. If bitcoin stays within certain price ranges, Empery keeps the premium. If it moves sharply, the company faces limits defined by the contracts.
It’s personal
The disagreement also turned personal.
Brown, a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, noted in recent filings that he has made “a few hundred million dollars of public and private investments” since 2014 through his family office and previously served as chairman of PharmChem, which was acquired last year at a premium to their open market price.
He described a January meeting at Empery’s Rockefeller Center office, where he said Lane had him removed by security. Empery says the meeting ended after Brown insisted the company liquidate immediately and refused to leave unless security escorted him out.
In a Feb. 23 letter, Brown says the company offered to buy his shares at a premium in exchange for a standstill agreement.
The company, in its post, says it did not initiate an offer to buy Brown’s shares. Instead, it claims Brown’s prime broker approached the firm to explore a potential deal. Empery confirmed discussions took place, but said the talks broke down over price.
A person familiar with the talks told CoinDesk Brown sought $7.50 per share, valuing the company at roughly $270 million vs its current market cap of $136 million.
A bid for the board
The proxy fight escalated further on Feb. 26 when Brown filed a formal notice nominating himself for election to Empery’s board of directors. In the filing, Brown disclosed his stake had grown to 10.3%, representing over 3.3 million shares.
He criticized the company’s “poison pill” and further referenced “management’s efforts to impose standstill agreements,” arguing they serve only to entrench incumbents rather than allow stockholders to effect change.
Touting his background as a Harvard Law graduate and former chairman of PharmChem, Brown stated that if elected, he would work to remove impediments to shareholder oversight and dramatically increase the capital returned to investors.
“The Company’s continued retention of bitcoin holds no ongoing business purpose, as dozens of cheaper ways to achieve bitcoin exposure exist,” Brown wrote in the filing.
Bitcoin treasury in limbo
CoinGecko data shows the company’s bitcoin was purchased at an average price of $122,283 each, costing a total of $455 million. The current value stands at $235.5 million, meaning a sale would result in a realized loss of nearly $220 million.
Still, the company signaled some flexibility. In its latest statement, Empery said it may use existing cash or reduce its bitcoin holdings to fund share repurchases or repay borrowings, something that other treasury companies have done. It stopped short of endorsing a full sale.
It also said recent buybacks had narrowed the gap between its share price and net asset value by roughly 40% in less than a month.
For now, neither side appears ready to back down. The dispute could shape not only Empery’s future, but also may foreshadow what awaits other smaller public companies with large bitcoin treasuries in a volatile market.
A new venture capital firm focused on prediction markets is launching with backing from Polymarket founder and CEO Shayne Coplan and Kalshi co-founder and CEO Tarek Mansour, Bloomberg reported.
The firm, called 5c(c) Capital (named after a section of the Commodity Exchange Act that governs prediction markets) may be the first venture fund built specifically to invest in companies shaped by that regulatory and market structure.
“We want to capitalize on the second-, third-, and fourth-order effects of what we built ourselves,” the founders wrote in a document viewed by Bloomberg.
The launch comes as prediction markets shift from a niche corner of finance into a more visible part of how people track events. Since the U.S. presidential election, trading volumes have climbed and new users have entered the space. Platforms such as Polymarket and Kalshi now host contracts tied to politics, economic data and cultural events, turning public opinion into tradable signals. Polymarket’s trades run on the blockchain. Many crypto-native companies, including Coinbase (COIN) and Kraken, as well as Robinhood (HOOD), have also entered the space in recent months.
That growth has created new business openings beyond the platforms themselves. Startups are beginning to build data tools, liquidity services and compliance systems that support these markets.
5c(c) Capital plans to raise up to $35 million and invest in about 20 portfolio companies over the next two years, according to the document. The strategy centers on early-stage bets tied to infrastructure and services around prediction markets rather than the exchanges alone.
Early backing includes more than twenty investors, among them a portfolio manager at Millennium Management, several crypto-focused venture firms and founders of other prediction market platforms such as PredictIt.
Polymarket declined to comment. Kalshi did not respond in time for publication.
Siren crypto (SIREN) just ripped 156% to a new all-time high of $3 driven by the exploding AI Agents narrative. But the rally is showing immediate signs of exhaustion.
A massive bearish divergence on the Money Flow Index (MFI) suggests the top is in, and a $22 million liquidation event has left leverage traders exposed to a sharp reversal.
The token outperformed Bitcoin by over 80% in the last 24 hours. Yet, the on-chain data presents a clear warning: volume is thinning on the way up. The breakdown is confirmed until price proves otherwise.
- Rally: SIREN hit an ATH of $3.00 after a 156% daily surge.
- Signal: MFI spiked to 82.96, a level that has triggered three prior corrections.
- Support: Bulls must hold the $2.07 level to prevent a drop to $1.50.
SIREN Price Analysis: Can SIREN Hold $2.07 Support After the ATH Breakout?
The chart structure is screaming caution despite the parabolic move. The Money Flow Index (MFI) is currently pegged at 82.96. Historically, this is the kill zone for SIREN rallies. Vertical lines on the daily chart mark February 7, February 27, and March 15—every time the MFI breached the 80 threshold, price collapsed shortly after.
The $3.00 high triggered a sharp rejection, validating the bearish thesis. The Chaikin Money Flow (CMF) printed a lower high of 0.14 while price made a higher high. This implies a (Price Correction) is imminent, as capital is leaving even as price pushes up.
Structure is fragile here. Traders are watching the $2.07 level closely. Lose that, and the 38.2% retracement level comes into play quickly.
A breakdown below $2.00 opens the path to $1.50. This aligns with risks seen elsewhere, such as recent whale shorting activity on Bitcoin, which often precedes altcoin weakness. The only path higher requires a daily close above $2.60 to invalidate the divergence. Until then, the bears are in control.
Discover: The best new crypto in the world
The post SIREN Crypto Risks ‘Structural Correction’ After 150% Surge to All-Time High appeared first on Cryptonews.
- Active XRP addresses dropped over 40% in four days.
- XRP price remains stuck between a tight trading range.
- Retail holders have grown, but overall network activity is slowing.
XRP has entered a tight and uncertain phase after a brief rally following an announcement by US President Donald Trump that the United States will pause strikes on energy and power installations in Iran after the expiry of the 48-hour ultimatum on opening the Strait of Hormuz.
BREAKING PRESIDENT TRUMP: 🇺🇸🇮🇷 We had very good and productive conversations regarding a complete and total resolution of hostilities in the Middle East.
Military strikes postponed for 5 days. pic.twitter.com/wiZh9F1H5p
— Donald J Trump Posts TruthSocial (@TruthTrumpPost) March 23, 2026
The momentum that initially lifted prices following Trump’s announcement now appears to be fading as the market struggles to find direction.
At the time of writing, XRP is trading around $1.43.
The price has moved within a narrow range between $1.36 and $1.46, reflecting hesitation among traders after a week where XRP slipped by about 5%, extending its broader downward trend over the past year.
While the recent rally gave traders hope, the follow-through has been weak.
XRP Ledger activity drops sharply
One of the most notable developments is the sharp decline in XRP Ledger (XRPL) network activity.
Notably, XRP’s active addresses have fallen by more than 40% within just a few days, according to the data obtained from CryptoQuant.
This drop signals a slowdown in user engagement, which often reflects reduced demand in the short term.
Fewer active participants usually translate to less transaction volume and weaker momentum.
This decline contrasts with the earlier optimism that surrounded XRP’s growing number of wallet holders.
While more people may be holding XRP, fewer are actively using it.
This gap between ownership and activity suggests that investors are choosing to wait rather than act.
Such behaviour is common during uncertain market conditions.
Retail growth continues despite the slowdown
Even as activity drops, the number of smaller XRP holders continues to grow steadily.
This trend points to increasing retail interest in the asset.
A rising base of small holders often signals long-term confidence, even if short-term sentiment is mixed.
It also suggests that XRP is becoming more widely distributed rather than concentrated in a few large hands.
However, growing ownership alone does not guarantee price growth.
Without strong network activity to support it, price movements can remain limited.
This is the situation XRP appears to be facing now.
XRP price outlook
XRP’s current price movements reflect a market caught between opposing forces.
On one hand, there is optimism driven by broader adoption and past rally attempts.
On the other hand, there is clear evidence of weakening participation and fading momentum.
The asset remains well below its previous peak, showing that recovery is still incomplete.
Short-term price action suggests consolidation rather than a decisive move in either direction, with the immediate support level at near $1.33 holding for now.
At the same time, resistance around $1.54 to $1.60 continues to limit upward movement, creating a narrow trading range that traders are watching closely.
The financial regulator’s plan to reinterpret how federal securities laws apply to crypto assets is ”pending review” by the White House’s Office of Management and Budget.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has forwarded its proposal to have most crypto assets not treated as securities under federal law to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget.
According to information available through the US General Services Administration, on Friday the SEC sent two proposed rules to the White House for review, including its interpretative notice from last week regarding which digital assets the agency could consider a security under federal law.
As of Monday, government records showed the proposal as “pending review” by the White House, potentially changing how the SEC handles regulation and enforcement of digital assets.
In a notice issued by the SEC last week, Chair Paul Atkins said that the agency would not consider four types of digital assets as securities under its purview: digital commodities, digital tools, digital collectibles — including non-fungible tokens — and stablecoins. The interpretation said that it would provide the agency with a “coherent token taxonomy” for the four types of assets and address how a “non-security crypto asset” may or may not be considered an investment contract.
The SEC rule, if finalized, would provide a bridge to crypto regulation until Congress were to pass a market structure bill to clarify comprehensive regulations of digital assets. The interpretation of federal securities laws followed the signing of a memorandum of understanding with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) — the other federal financial regulator expected to regulate digital assets under the proposed market structure bill — earlier this month.
Related: CFTC staff clarify expectations on using crypto as collateral
White House reportedly reached “agreement in principle” on crypto bill
Politico reported on Friday that representatives from the White House and Congressional lawmakers reached a deal on stablecoin yield that could advance the market structure bill in the Senate Banking Committee. The panel indefinitely postponed its markup of the bill, called the CLARITY Act, in January following Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong saying the exchange could not support the legislation as written.
As of Monday, the banking committee had not publicly announced a new date for the bill’s markup. Senate Majority Leader John Thune reportedly said in March that the chamber intended to prioritize a vote on the SAVE America Act — legislation that would require voters to provide proof of US citizenship in person to register — before bills with bipartisan support, such as CLARITY.
Magazine: Are DeFi devs liable for the illegal activity of others on their platforms?
Polygon‑incubated Katana has acquired veteran DEX IDEX to launch Katana Perps, folding a decade of exchange tech into its DeFi stack as it races Hyperliquid and dYdX for onchain derivatives volume.
Summary
- Polygon‑incubated DeFi chain Katana has acquired veteran DEX IDEX to power Katana Perps, a new perpetual futures platform that natively integrates spot and derivatives trading.
- CEO Matthew Fisher says the goal is to “own more of the trading stack and the revenue that comes with it” as onchain derivatives volumes and always‑on markets surge.
- Market makers including GSR, Selini Capital, and Auros are seeding liquidity, positioning Katana as a full‑stack DeFi chain spanning spot, lending, launches, and perps.
Katana, a DeFi‑focused Ethereum scaling chain incubated by Polygon Labs and trading firm GSR, has acquired decentralized exchange IDEX, using its infrastructure to launch Katana Perps, a perpetual futures venue built directly into the Katana app. The deal, announced on March 23, 2026, brings nearly a decade of exchange technology from the 2017‑founded DEX into Katana’s stack, with IDEX now “relaunching as Katana Perps” and serving as the native derivatives engine for the chain. “The goal is to own more of the trading stack and the revenue that comes with it,” Katana CEO Matthew Fisher said, calling the acquisition the “first major step” of his tenure as he formalizes the strategy he has led since joining the project.
Fisher argued that as crypto trading migrates to always‑on venues, infrastructure that blends CEX‑like performance with onchain settlement will define winners. “We’re building for 24/7 markets where price discovery happens onchain, not during bank hours,” he said, pointing to U.S. regulators’ recent signals about a path for crypto perpetual futures as an inflection point for the sector. Under the new setup, IDEX’s order book and AMM architecture becomes the backbone for Katana Perps, which routes spot liquidity, perps, and order flow through a single interface rather than siloing derivatives as a separate product.
Katana’s broader DeFi stack now spans four pillars: Sushi for spot trading, Morpho for lending, Kensei for token launches, and Katana Perps for leveraged derivatives, all coordinated by the KAT and vKAT token model. Over time, vKAT holders will be able to direct incentives toward perps markets and earn a share of fees, folding derivatives revenue into the same flywheel that powers spot and lending on the chain. At launch, Katana Perps is supported by major market makers GSR, Selini Capital, and Auros, which Fisher said were drawn by IDEX’s “nearly a decade” of live infrastructure and the chain’s performance‑oriented design.
Founded in 2017, IDEX was “the first decentralized exchange to combine a high‑performance matching engine with onchain settlement” and, through 2019, “consistently ranked first by trading volume and transaction count among all DEX protocols,” Katana noted. Bringing that stack in‑house lets Katana offer a more CEX‑like experience — deep API support, higher throughput, and tighter spreads — while keeping custody and settlement onchain.
The acquisition lands as perpetuals DEXes are seeing rising volumes and attracting more professional flow, with venues like Hyperliquid, dYdX, and GMX competing to lock in whales and market makers. Recent crypto.news coverage has highlighted how new onchain products — from Hyperliquid’s HIP‑4 proposal for outcome markets to high‑stakes perps traders posting multi‑million‑dollar PnL — are pulling structurally sticky liquidity into derivatives rails. In that context, Katana’s decision to acquire rather than simply integrate a third‑party DEX is a clear statement: the chain wants to control its own economic engines instead of renting them.
As Fisher put it, “Owning perps is not just owning a product, it’s owning the heartbeat of your chain,” a line that neatly captures where the DeFi race is headed.
Deloitte Canada and Stablecorp are collaborating to develop stablecoin infrastructure for Canadian financial institutions, as federal regulators move closer to establishing rules for fiat-backed digital assets.
In a Monday announcement, the professional services firm said it plans to integrate Stablecorp’s Canadian dollar-pegged stablecoin, QCAD, into payment and settlement workflows for institutional clients.
Stablecorp is a Toronto-based fintech company and the issuer of QCAD, a fiat-backed stablecoin designed to maintain a one-to-one value with the Canadian dollar.
Soumak Chatterjee, a partner in Deloitte Canada’s financial services division, said the initiative is aimed at helping banks and other institutions prepare for the adoption of stablecoins once a regulatory regime is established.
The companies said potential use cases include enabling around-the-clock payments, improving settlement efficiency compared to traditional banking systems and using blockchain-based recordkeeping for transaction transparency. They also pointed to the possibility of new financial products built on tokenized infrastructure.
No bank partners or rollout timeline were provided.
Related: Canada’s budget promises laws to regulate stablecoins, following US lead
Canada moves toward stablecoin rules as global regulatory race intensifies
The development comes as the Canadian government advances a federal framework for stablecoins under Bill C-15, a budget implementation bill introduced last November that includes a proposed federal framework to regulate fiat-backed stablecoins.
While Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has previously expressed skepticism about crypto, he has lately acknowledged that the technologies underpinning digital assets could “improve financial stability; support more innovative, efficient and reliable payment services as well as have wider applications.”
The Bank of Canada has also called for clearer rules governing stablecoins, arguing that regulatory certainty is needed to modernize the country’s payment systems. The central bank has said any framework should ensure stablecoins are fully backed by high-quality liquid assets and redeemable at par, while warning that delays in regulation could leave Canada lagging behind other jurisdictions.
The push comes as stablecoin regulation in the United States has gained traction, culminating in the passage of the GENIUS Act for payment stablecoins last summer.
Currently, the market for Canadian dollar-denominated stablecoins remains limited, particularly compared to the dominant US dollar segment, where Tether’s USDt (USDT) and Circle’s USDC (USDC) account for the vast majority of global stablecoin supply and usage.
The Bank of Canada shelved plans for a central bank digital currency in September 2024 after more than seven years of research, including a public consultation process that drew nearly 90,000 public responses.
Related: Crypto part of Canada’s ‘core’ financial system, but risk concerns remain
MoonPay has released an open-source wallet standard designed to let AI agents hold funds and execute transactions across blockchains, addressing a key gap in how autonomous software interacts with crypto systems.
According to Monday’s announcement, the standard introduces a shared way for AI agents to access and use wallets across tools and blockchains, replacing fragmented setups where each system manages its own keys and balances. It allows agents to operate from a single pool of funds rather than across multiple disconnected accounts.
“AI agents can employ standard building blocks, such as APIs, to communicate with other agents and humans, receive and send money, and access and interact with the internet,” according to researchers at MIT Sloan.
MoonPay said recent efforts to enable machine-driven payments focus on transaction rails but do not address how wallets and keys are managed.
The new system stores private keys in an encrypted local vault and signs transactions in an isolated process, keeping keys out of the AI agent’s runtime. It also includes policy controls that let users set spending limits and restrictions before transactions are approved.
The standard is open source and modular, with components covering storage, signing, policy controls and chain support, and is available through developer platforms including GitHub, npm and PyPI.
Founded in 2019, MoonPay is a financial technology company that provides infrastructure for businesses and consumers to move funds between fiat and digital assets, offering services such as on- and off-ramps, trading and crypto payments across global markets.
The company said more than a dozen companies contributed to the new specification, including PayPal, OKX and Circle, alongside several blockchain foundations and infrastructure providers.
Related: MoonPay launches enterprise stablecoin suite with M0, taps ex-Paxos leaders
Companies expand tools for AI-driven crypto transactions
Crypto companies are increasingly building infrastructure to support AI agents as economic actors.
In a separate announcement on Monday, BitGo, a digital asset custody and infrastructure company, said it had launched a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that allows AI-driven tools to access its developer platform using natural language, enabling agents to navigate wallet functions, transaction flows and staking systems.
The integration connects BitGo’s infrastructure to AI-native development environments, allowing tools such as ChatGPT and code editors to retrieve documentation, API references and product information directly within workflows.
The move reflects a broader push to integrate crypto services into AI systems, as companies experiment with ways for software to interact with financial infrastructure without relying on traditional user interfaces.
Other efforts have focused on enabling machine-driven payments, including Coinbase’s x402 protocol, which enables stablecoin transfers over HTTP for APIs, apps and AI agents, as well as tools launched last week by Visa and Stripe-backed Tempo that allow AI systems to initiate payments and execute transactions programmatically.
Magazine: Are DeFi devs liable for the illegal activity of others on their platforms?
Aave V4 has successfully completed the Aave Request for Comments stage, with the protocol’s team now preparing for final AIP deployment and mainnet launch.
Aave V4 has passed the ARFC (Aave Request for Comments) stage, according to an announcement from Aave founder Stani Kulechov on March 23. The protocol is now moving toward final AIP (Aave Improvement Proposal) deployment and a controlled mainnet launch with a focus on security, Kulechov said.
The ARFC stage represents a preliminary governance phase where protocol proposals are discussed before formal on-chain voting. Aave’s development team has been working to bring V4 to mainnet, with the next steps involving final AIP deployment followed by the launch itself.
Sources: Stani Kulechov (X/Twitter)
This article was generated automatically by The Defiant’s AI news system from publicly available sources.
The Resolv hack wasn’t a surprise. The same structural flaw has drained hundreds of millions from Morpho, Euler, and Fluid over the past year and the industry kept building on top of it anyway.
On a quiet Sunday morning, someone turned $100,000 into $25 million in about seventeen minutes.
The target was Resolv, a yield-bearing stablecoin protocol. By the time Resolv paused its contracts, its dollar-pegged stablecoin USR had crashed to pennies. It remains deeply depegged, trading around $0.25 as of this writing, down more than 70% on the week.
The blast radius extended well beyond Resolv. Fluid/Instadapp absorbed more than $10 million in bad debt and had outflows of over $300 million in a single day, the worst outflow in its history. Fifteen Morpho vaults were hit. Euler, Venus, Lista DAO, and Inverse Finance all moved to pause USR-related markets.
The mechanism that caused the initial hack to spread its damage – pricing a depegged stablecoin at $1 in a lending market– is not new. It happened at least four times in the past fourteen months.
How the Hack Worked
USR’s minting followed a two-step off-chain process: a user deposited USDC via the `requestSwap’ function, and a privileged off-chain signing key, the `SERVICE_ROLE’, finalized the amount of USR to issue via `completeSwap’. The contract enforced a minimum output but had no maximum. Whatever the key holder signed, the contract honored.
The attacker gained access to that key through Resolv’s AWS Key Management Service. They submitted two USDC deposits, totaling roughly $100,000–$200,000, and used the compromised key to authorize 80 million USR in return. Etherscan shows two transactions worth 50 million USR and 30 million USR, minted in minutes.
“The Resolv USR exploit wasn’t a bug — it was a feature working exactly as designed. And that’s the problem,” said on-chain analyst Vadim (@zacodil).
The SERVICE_ROLE was a regular externally owned address, not a multisig. The admin key had multisig protection, but the mint key didn’t.
“Resolv was audited 18 times,” Vadim said. “One finding was literally called ‘Missing upper [limit]’”
The attacker exited methodically, converting minted USR into wstUSR (the staked wrapped version) to slow the market impact, then rotating through Curve, Uniswap, and KyberSwap into ETH. The attacker’s wallet holds approximately 11,400 ETH (~$24M). Resolv’s collateral pool, the ETH and BTC backing the system, survived intact even as the stablecoin crashed.
How the Contagion Spread
The Resolv hack is two incidents stacked on top of each other. The first is the mint exploit. The second is a cascading lending market failure.
When USR and wstUSR collapsed, every lending market that had accepted them as collateral faced the same problem: their oracle was still pricing wstUSR near $1.
Omer Goldberg, founder of risk analytics firm Chaos Labs, documented the mechanism. His key finding was that “The oracle is hardcoded and thus never repriced. wstUSR was marked at $1.13 while trading at ~$0.63 on secondary markets.”
Traders bought cheap wstUSR on the open market and posted it as collateral at the oracle’s $1.13 valuation on Morpho or Fluid, then borrowed USDC against it and walked away.
At Fluid, the team secured short-term loans to cover 100% of the bad debt and committed to making every user whole. At Morpho, co-founder Paul Frambot said ~15 vaults had significant exposure, all in high-risk, long-tail collateral strategies.
Prominent curator Gauntlet said that “A few high-yield vaults had limited exposure.”
But D2 Finance challenged that framing directly, posting onchain data showing Gauntlet’s flagship “USDC Core vault” had $4.95M allocated to the wstUSR/USDC market. Goldberg later said Gauntlet vaults accounted for 98% of lender liquidity in that market.
“I think the curator industry is poorly designed because there’s not actual curation happening,” said Marc Zeller on X.
Resolv, Gauntlet, Morpho and Fluid did not respond to The Defiant’s requests for comments by press time.
A Recurring Failure
This is not a novel attack. In January 2025, Usual Protocol’s USD0++ was hardcoded at $1 on Morpho vaults by curator MEV Capital. Usual abruptly changed its redemption floor to $0.87 without warning, leaving lenders stuck in the MEV Caital vault as utilization spiked to 100%.
In November 2025, Stream Finance’s xUSD collapsed after curators had routed USDC deposits into leverage loops backed by the synthetic stablecoin, leaving an estimated $285M–$700M at risk across Morpho, Euler, and Silo when its oracle refused to update. Moonwell suffered back-to-back oracle failures in October and November 2025, generating more than $5 million in combined bad debt.
What It Means for the Curator Model
Morpho’s architecture outsources all risk decisions to third-party “curators” who build vaults, choose collateral, set loan-to-value ratios, and select oracles. The theory is that specialist firms have deeper expertise, competition drives better risk management, and the protocol enforces rules.
But curators earn fees on yield generated, which creates an incentive to accept riskier, higher-yield collateral, like yield-bearing stablecoins. The downside is that when those stablecoins depeg, the losses fall on depositors, not on the curator. In the Resolv case, some curators had automated bots still refilling affected vaults hours after the exploit started, deepening losses.
The reason to hardcode oracles for yield-bearing stablecoins is to prevent short-term volatility from triggering unnecessary liquidations. But that protection only works as long as the stablecoin remains stable.
Chainalysis said in a post-mortem that real-time chain detection is needed.
“The on-chain smart contract worked perfectly. The broader system design and off-chain infrastructure apparently did not,” the analytics firm said.
Bitcoin (BTC) spot volumes on Binance have dropped to their lowest level since September 2023, indicating that the current intraday price rise may not be backed by strong demand.
The rally above $71,700 on Monday appears to be driven mainly by news headlines and liquidations in the Bitcoin futures markets.
Binance volumes and exchange flows signal the demand gap for BTC
Crypto analyst Darkfost said that March is on track to record the lowest Binance spot volume since Q3 2023, at roughly $52 billion, compared to the $88 billion recorded in September 2023. The activity levels align with the prior bear market conditions, pointing to the reduced participation.
The exchange flow data shows a similar slowdown. Crypto analyst Arab Chain reported $6.38 billion in seven-day cumulative flows on Binance and $5.14 billion on Coinbase. The Binance flows have dropped to the lowest level since 2024, indicating reduced deposit activity.
However, the lower inflows may also coincide with a reduced supply to sell, as fewer coins move onto the exchanges. The Coinbase flows remain relatively stable, reflecting the steadier participation from the long-term investors.
The large-holder activity added another layer. Market analyst Gaah identified a record surge in the whale inflow momentum, which tracks the rate of change in large transfers to the exchanges.
The current reading of 74.3 surpasses all prior cycle peaks over the past 11 years, with a higher level last recorded at 124.6 in 2015.
The elevated inflow velocity signals an aggressive capital rotation and hedging, increasing BTC’s sensitivity to short-term volatility over the next few weeks.
Related: Bitcoin rebounds to $71K as oil drops after Trump signals pause on Iran strikes
Bitcoin liquidation activity shows traders lack conviction
The BTC rally followed reports that President Trump had deferred the planned US strikes on Iran’s energy infrastructure for five days after citing progress in the diplomatic discussions, a claim later rejected by Iran’s foreign ministry, which denied that any talks had taken place.
BTC still pushed to a weekly high of $71,789 on Binance during the US market session, driven by the above external catalyst rather than by spot demand or futures positioning, leading the move.
Data shows the rally coincided with a reduction in leverage. The aggregated open interest declined by about 9,700 BTC, marking a 4% drop over 13 hours.
The open interest tracks the total number of active futures contracts, and the decline during a price increase signals that the positions were being closed rather than new ones being opened.
This type of move typically occurs when short positions are forced out of the market, reducing the total exposure while pushing the price higher. Binance recorded over $44 million in short liquidations within one hour, the largest since the one-hour long liquidations of $53 million on Feb. 6.
The Coinbase premium (in percentage terms) remained negative during the move, indicating limited spot demand from US participants.
The falling open interest, high liquidations, and weak premiums suggest the move higher was driven by positions being closed rather than new money entering the market, with most of the activity clustered around the $71,000–$72,000 range.
Related: Gold slides as traders eye sub-$50K BTC: Five things to know in Bitcoin this week
This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision. While we strive to provide accurate and timely information, Cointelegraph does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of any information in this article. This article may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Cointelegraph will not be liable for any loss or damage arising from your reliance on this information.
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