Optimism has announced that it will cease support for op-geth and op-program on May 31st.

March 5 — Hong Kong police have cracked a money laundering case involving shell accounts and crypto exchange outlets, per a Hong Kong 01 report. Two mainland Chinese individuals (one man, one woman) traveled to Hong Kong to open shell accounts, which were used to receive proceeds linked to 34 separate fraud cases across 43 local bank accounts. They then bought cryptocurrency at virtual asset exchange shops to launder roughly HK$17.3 million in criminal proceeds. A fund flow analysis revealed the criminal group used local bank accounts for crypto transactions, laundering up to HK$230 million in illicit funds. Hong Kong police charged the pair with three and 10 counts of money laundering, respectively. After reviewing the case, the court approved heavier sentences, handing down prison terms of 28 months and 43 months to the two.

March 5 – Per data from Coinbob Popular Address Monitor, the largest long whale (address 0x629) holding the cash:EWY (iShares Korea ETF synthetic asset) on Hyperliquid has reportedly flipped from a loss to profit, with unrealized gains swelling to $310,000 (115%). The whale currently holds a 20x leveraged long position valued at $6.42 million, with an average entry price of $126. The position was opened at 11 PM ET on March 3. Data from the EWY/USDC trading pair on Hyperliquid shows the asset rebounded after touching $122 yesterday afternoon, hitting a morning high of $140. It is currently trading at $134, marking a 6% intraday gain.

On March 5, LM Funding America (Nasdaq: LMFA) released its February 2026 Production and Operations Update. In February, the company mined 8.7 BTC and sold 18.1 BTC, lowering total holdings to 354.7 BTC—valued at roughly $23.8 million. Separately, LM Funding America has renegotiated to extend the maturity of its $11 million Galaxy Digital loan to April 24, 2026.

On March 5, on-chain analyst Ai Auntie (@ai9684xtpa) noted that a whale wallet (0xC45...D42DD) withdrew 3,000 ETH from Binance on February 24 at an average cost of $1,852.67. As ETH later surged to a recent high of roughly $2,183, the whale deposited the ETH back to the exchange. A potential sale would net the whale an estimated $990,000 in profit.

On March 5, Elon Musk retweeted, suggesting the rumored internal test screenshot of X Money is authentic. The screenshot shows X Money offers up to a 6% annualized return on deposits, plus a debit card with attached rebates. Separately, Eric Trump—son of former President Donald Trump—criticized the U.S. banking industry (including JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo) this morning. He noted the industry’s political lobbying efforts aim to block Americans from accessing higher returns, while working to stifle stablecoins to preserve their monopoly. Amid ongoing legislative proceedings for the *Cryptocurrency Market Structure Clarity Act* (CLARITY Act), a new round of debate has erupted over stablecoin yields.

On March 5th, per Coinbob Popular Address Monitoring (link: https://t.me/Coinbob_track_CN), trader "Buddy" Huang Licheng executed a position roll operation on his ETH long position, pushing the total position size to $14.4 million. After the roll, the average entry price of his ETH long position rose from $2,023 to $2,066. The position currently holds an unrealized profit of ~$350,000, with a 60% return rate and a liquidation price of $2,035. Additionally, the address has set a take-profit order ranging from $2,130 to $2,202 to partially close 10% of the position. In this 20th round of longing, his $250,000 initial principal has grown to $860,000 within two days, while the liquidation price was adjusted from the entry price of $1,949 to $2,066. The trader previously profited from trading blue-chip NFTs but has faced massive drawdowns since becoming active in October last year, with account funds shrinking significantly from over $100 million.