Crypto

SEC sues crypto-friendly bank, saying it failed to spot $9B in suspicious FTX transfers

The SEC’s going into the holiday week with its regulatory guns blazing. 

The agency sued Silvergate Bank parent Silvergate Capital Corporation on Monday, accusing the crypto-friendly bank of failing to spot nearly $9 billion in suspicious FTX transactions. FTX, the crypto exchange that filed for bankruptcy in 2022, was one of Silvergate’s largest customers. 

At the heart of the SEC’s lawsuit is the bank’s anti-money laundering policies. The SEC said that Silvergate falsely assured investors it had a robust AML program. Silvergate, which officially shuttered last year, saw significant losses after the collapse of FTX. 

The SEC said Silvergate agreed to pay a $50 million civil penalty. 

In addition to the SEC suit, on Monday Silvergate Capital Corporation was hit with $63 million in fines by the Federal Reserve Board and the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation. The Fed said Silvergate failed in its compliance with AML laws.

$63M in fines
$50M civil penalty

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Ethereum hits highest price in over a month as BlackRock joins the fray of ethereum staking ETFs

Ethereum climbed to its highest level in over a month on Friday, briefly touching $2,200. The price swing comes amid a new change among ETFs focused on the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. 

Yesterday, ETHB — BlackRock’s iShares Staked Ethereum Trust ETF — started trading on the Nasdaq, making the investment vehicle the first from the financial titan to include staking, the process of locking up tokens to help secure the network’s consensus mechanism in exchange for rewards. 

The nascent staking ETF has nearly $150 million in net assets, drawing in $43.5 million in inflows on its first day, data from SoSoValue shows. “Pretty good start for any ETF,” Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart wrote in a social media post.

While ETHB is BlackRock’s first ethereum staking ETF, it’s not the first to market. The Grayscale Ethereum Staking Mini ETF launched in 2024, while the Rex-Osprey ETH Staking ETF rolled out last year

Ethereum ETFs have seen nearly $157.7 million of inflows in March, on track to record their first monthly inflow since October. 

Meanwhile, the Ethereum Foundation published its mandate, “a document that serves as part constitution, part manifesto, and part guide for the Ethereum Foundation,” on Friday. 

“Our Mandate to EF states what must be cherished to protect the ultimate reason for Ethereum’s existence: user self-sovereignty,” the Ethereum Foundation board wrote. “To be a part of EF, our own teams must remember that Ethereum must, above all, remain censorship resistant, open source, private, and secure (CROPS).”

The mandate is a new chapter in how the organization views its position in the world, according to ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin. “We must see ourselves not just as the Ethereum community, but also as maintainers of the Ethereum tool within what you might call the CROPS community,” Buterin said. “This means open-mindedness to new conceptions of what things in the world are our natural allies.”

crypto

Trump meme coin skyrockets following new gala luncheon invitation for largest holders

President Trump’s meme coin has risen 54.6% in the last 24 hours to trade at a more than one-month high. The token’s price performance is outpacing an overall rise throughout the wider crypto industry, boosting its total market capitalization 4.3%.

What’s driving it? Something we’ve seen before: on Thursday, GetTrumpMemes announced that the top 297 holders of $TRUMP will have the opportunity to attend a gala luncheon next month at Mar-a-Lago, where the president will be a keynote speaker.

Last year a similar competition was announced, and the top $TRUMP whales attended a dinner with him at the Trump National Golf Club in Washington, DC, drawing supporters, critics, and protestors to the event.

Despite the recent spike, the cryptocurrency is down 94.2% from its all-time high of $73.43, set the day before Trump’s inauguration last year, when it topped a $70 billion valuation.

$1B

Meme coin factory Pump.fun has surpassed $1 billion in revenue, making it the first protocol built on the solana blockchain to reach the milestone. 

The platform launched two years ago and has gained immense popularity in part for jump-starting viral cryptocurrencies such as fartcoin, pnut, and Moo Deng.

The solana-based token launchpad has seen around $98 million in revenue so far this year and is on pace to generate $476 million in annualized revenue, a drawdown from 2025’s figure of nearly $651 million, data from DefiLlama shows. 

Pump.fun’s revenue in the last 24 hours, 7 days, and 30 days places the platform among the top earners in the entire crypto ecosystem, trailing only perpetuals venue Hyperliquid as well as stablecoin issuers Tether and Circle

The platform uses the vast majority of its revenue to buy back its native token, PUMP, a program aimed at reducing the circulating supply of the token and absorbing sell pressure. Over $323.5 million worth of PUMP has been purchased since the start of the program, offsetting 28.8% of the cryptocurrency’s circulating supply. 

Currently, the price of PUMP is down 77% from its all-time high set in September 2025, per CoinGecko. 

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