Solana staking protocol Fragmetric completes $7 million seed round

March 4 — Stablecoin infrastructure firm Cyclops has closed an $8 million funding round, with backers including Castle Island Ventures, F-Prime, and Shift4 Payments. The company’s valuation was not disclosed. Cyclops focuses on building a foundational layer to speed up stablecoin adoption. Co-CEO Alex Wilson said: “Our vision is to become the go-to platform for payment companies when developing various stablecoin solutions.”

March 4th – The ADP National Employment Report released Wednesday showed U.S. private-sector job gains beat expectations in February, though January’s data was sharply downwardly revised. Private payrolls rose by 63,000 last month, while January’s figure was cut from a previously reported 22,000 increase to 11,000. The data suggests the labor market has stabilized despite uncertainty tied to last year’s import tariffs. Labor market stability and persistent high inflation are seen as factors pushing the Federal Reserve to hold interest rates steady this month. Additionally, the U.S.-Iran aerial clash and Tehran’s retaliatory measures have driven up oil and gas prices, prompting traders to downgrade their expectations for rate cuts this year amid concerns the conflict could stoke inflation. The probability of a June rate cut has fallen sharply. The Fed held its benchmark overnight rate in the 3.50%-3.75% range in January. (FXStreet)

On March 4, monitoring by The Data Nerd indicates BlackRock withdrew 3,809 BTC (roughly $260 million) from Coinbase over the past 24 hours, while meanwhile receiving 19,637 ETH (about $39.74 million).

March 4: A newly created crypto wallet withdrew 500 XAUT from exchange Bybit, with the transaction valued at roughly $2.57 million, per Onchain Lens monitoring data.

March 4 — Backpack has launched on-chain IPO access, letting users directly secure IPO shares via its platform. The service is powered by infrastructure partner Superstate and operates on the Solana network. In an official statement, the platform noted users will hold direct ownership of actual stock shares. Waitlist sign-ups are currently open.

On March 4, the U.S. February ADP Nonfarm Employment Change came in at 63K, beating expectations of 50K and the prior reading of 22K. (FXStreet)