Solana staking protocol Fragmetric completes $7 million seed round

March 12 — Per an official announcement from Hyperliquid, the trading volume of Real World Assets (RWAs) on the platform has set consecutive new records over the past two weeks. Open interest for RWAs has topped $1.3 billion, while a single weekend day saw trading volume surpass $1.4 billion. While traditional markets are closed, Hyperliquid has emerged as a 24/7 price discovery venue for key assets like crude oil, metals, and indices. DefiLlama data shows the platform’s 24-hour trading volume hit $6.48 billion in the latest period, with open interest at roughly $6.41 billion.

March 12th — OKX Ventures shared data on social media showing that escalating geopolitical tensions in the Middle East have fueled a surge in on-chain crude oil trading activity. On the Hyperliquid platform, the 24-hour trading volume of the CL-USDC perpetual contract (which tracks WTI crude oil prices) skyrocketed from a pre-conflict daily average of $21 million to between $1.2 billion and $1.99 billion. At its peak, this crude oil trading volume even outpaced Ethereum (ETH), making it the second-largest asset by volume on the network. Trading volume on centralized exchanges (CEXs) also jumped sharply. Per data from Gate.io, the 24-hour volume of its Brent crude oil (XBR) contract surged 951%, while WTI crude oil (XTI) contract volume rose nearly 397%. Capital inflows and open interest (OI) metrics indicate a massive influx of both institutional and retail funds into the market. Crude oil OI on Hyperliquid currently remains stable between $183 million and $290 million — a sig

South Korea’s National Tax Service (NTS) announced Thursday it is launching a tracking system for cryptocurrency investment returns, aiming to support the government’s expansionary fiscal policy and boost revenue ahead of a planned virtual asset tax set to take effect in January next year. The agency has tendered the “Integrated Virtual Asset Transaction Analysis System” on the Public Procurement Service’s (PPS) e-procurement platform, with a budget of 3 billion Korean won (roughly $2.02 million). The winning bidder will be selected and contracted this month, with system design kicking off in April, multiple rounds of testing, a trial run in November, and full launch expected by year-end. Starting in 2027, the system will collect individual virtual asset transaction data to curb tax evasion—using systematic management and analysis of large-scale transaction information, including identifying hidden income via audits. Notably, the NTS will integrate AI and machine learning t

**March 12 (Straits Times) — Three men conspired to steal more than $6.9 million (roughly $8.8 million Singapore dollars) in cryptocurrency from the wallet of SafeX, a crypto exchange platform.** One of the suspects, Zhang Xinghua, laundered a portion of the illicit proceeds using a cryptocurrency mixer. Prosecutors noted that without timely police intervention, Zhang would have received over $886,000 in crypto. On March 11, the 38-year-old Chinese national pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit computer misuse and one count of benefiting from criminal activity. He was sentenced to two years in prison. In February of this year, Zhang—through his wife—returned 0.890262 Bitcoin (valued at over $95,000) to the wallet address provided by DLT, the operator of SafeX. To date, the Singapore Police Force has seized or frozen approximately $2.1 million worth of cryptocurrency. Additionally, roughly $4.8 million in crypto remains unrecoverable: it is stored in private

March 12 — Per HyperInsight Monitoring, HYPE’s price continued climbing this morning, breaking above $37. The largest HYPE long position holder—a whale suspected of having insider information on HYPE’s listing—is again approaching its liquidation threshold. Its current holdings total $51.5 million, with an average entry price of $38.67. Unrealized losses have narrowed to $2 million (-19%), while its liquidation price stands at $27.55. Funding rate settlement losses to date total $1.65 million. With the position nearing breakeven, the address withdrew ~$4.5 million in deposited margin this morning. This move passively lifted its liquidation price from a lower level to $27.5. For long positions, withdrawing margin either signals an active push to raise the liquidation threshold or confidence that HYPE won’t drop below $28. The whale has held the position for nearly five months: On Oct. 23 last year—on the eve of HYPE’s Robinhood listing—it ramped up its long position significant

On March 12th, Coinglass data shows Bitcoin’s volatility has narrowed over the past two days. Currently, funding rates across major centralized (CEX) and decentralized (DEX) exchanges reflect overall bearish market sentiment—Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other top tokens all have negative rates (see attached chart). **BlockBeats Note**: Funding rates are fees set by crypto exchanges to keep contract prices aligned with underlying asset prices, typically for perpetual contracts. They facilitate fund exchanges between long and short traders; the trading platform does not collect this fee. The mechanism adjusts the cost or profit of traders holding contracts to ensure contract prices stay close to underlying asset values. A 0.01% funding rate is the baseline: - Rates above 0.01% signal general bullish sentiment. - Rates below 0.005% indicate overall bearishness.