PLUS: XRP Zooms on SEC News

March 19, 2025

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Welcome to The Node! This is Ben Schiller to take you through the latest crypto news. 

 

In today's news from CoinDesk reporters:
Fed Holds Rates Steady, Cuts Growth Outlook, Raises Inflation Forecast
XRP Zooms 10% as Garlinghouse Says SEC Is Dropping Case Against Ripple
First Solana Futures ETF To Hit Markets This Week
Dubai Starts Real Estate Tokenization Pilot, Forecasts $16B Market by 2033

 

Opinion: The Bybit hack showed that human failings, not technical glitches, are the most important factors in such incidents, says INSEAD's Ben Charoenwong.👇

 

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Fed Holds Rates, Pushing Bitcoin Higher

  • The Fed left rates steady, as expected, but sharply cut its growth outlook while upping its inflation forecast.
  • The central bank cited increased uncertainty about the economic outlook.
  • The Fed also said it will slow the pace of balance sheet runoff — quantitative tightening — beginning April 1.
 

XRP Zooms

  • XRP surged 10% as Ripple CEO announced the SEC is set to drop its appeal against Ripple.
  • CEO Brad Garlinghouse hailed this as a 'resounding victory' for Ripple and crypto.
  • The legal battle, ongoing since 2020, is reportedly nearing its end.
 

Solana ETFs Soon

  • Volatility Shares LLC is launching two exchange-traded funds (ETFs) tracking Solana futures, with SOLZ offering standard exposure and SOLT providing leveraged exposure.
  • The ETFs, the first to track Solana futures, come as issuers await SEC decisions on spot Solana ETFs, which analysts see as having a 75% chance of approval by year-end.
  • A spot Solana ETF approval may hinge on an established futures market, aligning with the SEC’s criteria for spot crypto ETFs.
 

Dubai Starts Real Estate Tokenization

  • Volatility Shares LLC is launching two exchange-traded funds (ETFs) tracking Solana futures, with SOLZ offering standard exposure and SOLT providing leveraged exposure.
  • The ETFs, the first to track Solana futures, come as issuers await SEC decisions on spot Solana ETFs, which analysts see as having a 75% chance of approval by year-end.
  • A spot Solana ETF approval may hinge on an established futures market, aligning with the SEC’s criteria for spot crypto ETFs.
 

Opinion: Bybit Hack Showed Human Errors

By INSEAD Associate Professor Ben Charoenwong

The recent security breach for around $1.5 billion at Bybit, the world's second-largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, sent ripples through the digital asset community. With $20 billion in customer assets under custody, Bybit faced a significant challenge when an attacker exploited security controls during a routine transfer from an offline "cold" wallet to a "warm" wallet used for daily trading.

 

Initial reports suggest the vulnerability involved a home-grown Web3 implementation using Gnosis Safe — a multi-signature wallet that uses off-chain scaling techniques, contains a centralized upgradable architecture, and a user interface for signing. Malicious code deployed using the upgradable architecture made what looked like a routine transfer actually an altered contract. The incident triggered around 350,000 withdrawal requests as users rushed to secure their funds.

 

While considerable in absolute terms, this breach — estimated at less than 0.01% of the total cryptocurrency market capitalization — demonstrates how what once would have been an existential crisis has become a manageable operational incident. Bybit's prompt assurance that all unrecovered funds will be covered through its reserves or partner loans further exemplifies its maturation.

 

Since the inception of cryptocurrencies, human error — not technical flaws in blockchain protocols — has consistently been the primary vulnerability. Our research examining over a decade of major cryptocurrency breaches shows that human factors have always dominated. In 2024 alone, approximately $2.2 billion was stolen.

 

What's striking is that these breaches continue to occur for similar reasons: organizations fail to secure systems because they won't explicitly acknowledge responsibility for them, or rely on custom-built solutions that preserve the illusion that their requirements are uniquely different from established security frameworks. This pattern of reinventing security approaches rather than adapting proven methodologies perpetuates vulnerabilities.

 

While blockchain and cryptographic technologies have proven cryptographically robust, the weakest link in security is not the technology but the human element interfacing with it. This pattern has remained remarkably consistent from cryptocurrency's earliest days to today's sophisticated institutional environments, and echoes cybersecurity concerns in other — more traditional — domains.

 

These human errors include mismanagement of private keys, where losing, mishandling, or exposing private keys compromises security. Social engineering attacks remain a major threat as hackers manipulate victims into divulging sensitive data through phishing, impersonation, and deception.

Read the full piece here.

 

Links, Links, Links

 

How Wall Street Thinks About Crypto's Future – Bloomberg

Trump’s World Liberty Financial crypto project says it sold $550 million in tokens – CNBC

Trump’s Crypto Plan Is Neither Strategic Nor a Reserve – Barron's

 

Eggthereum

 

 

 
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