Echoes From the Deep

About Echoes From the Deep

Welcome to The Current your daily dive into the fascinating world of crypto, delivered straight to your ears in just five minutes. Designed for busy enthusiasts and crypto-curious minds alike, each episode distills the day's most critical updates, intriguing insights, and notable trends into an engaging, concise format. Whether it's breaking news, emerging innovations, market movements, or key narratives shaping the crypto universe, Echoes from the Deep keeps you informed and entertained without ever overstaying its welcome. Start your day with clarity and stay ahead of the wave—because when you listen to the echoes, you’re always one step ahead. leviathannews.substack.com (https://leviathannews.substack.com/s/current?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

A Leviathan News podcast

Category

news · news

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

7 Apr 2025

Latest episode

30 Apr 2025

Latest episodes

11 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   30 Apr 2025

   How Dolomite Quietly Built DeFi’s Most Underrated Lending Empire... And Just Launched Its Token

   We welcome Cory Kaplan to discuss Dolomite's recent token launch and their journey over the past seven years. 0:00 Introduction and Sponsor Acknowledgment 00:56 Interview with Cory Kaplan: Token Launch Success 02:37 Dolomite's Unique Approach and Innovations 03:50 Integration with GMX and Community Growth 06:33 Expansion to Bear Chain and Future Plans 11:56 Challenges and Achievements in the DeFi Space 16:18 Dolomite's Tokenomics and Market Position 21:45 Regulatory Landscape and Future of DeFi 35:51 Conclusion and Final Thoughts Get full access to Leviathan News - The Tentacle at leviathannews.substack.com/subscribe (https://leviathannews.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

2. 

   28 Apr 2025

   How Trump Rebuilt Crypto's Future in 100 days [Listen]

   Read the full story in our blog. Get full access to Leviathan News - The Tentacle at leviathannews.substack.com/subscribe (https://leviathannews.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

3. 

   22 Apr 2025

   📉ETH bottom is in... now what?

   I’ve been doomscrolling too much and I had to delete X from my phone today. After months of nasty ETH hate on the timeline, we’ve reached a point where the haters are just grave dancing and losing the plot. ETH is down 54% from ATHs this year alone in 2025. SOL is down 23%, BTC is down 3.78%. And freaking XRP is up 3.78%. It’s just sad at this point the loss of investor confidence in the most promising asset to change the world at scale other than Bitcoin. Good intentions don’t often translate to high value. I’ve felt a vibe shift in the last couple of weeks: 1.) All of the goodwill given to the L2s (Base, Arbitrum, etc) is now gone. While these networks are Ethereum “aligned” the introduction of blob pricing has led to a massive reduction in fees captured by the L1. No one wants ETH to become Cosmos, which has a rich, diverse set of networks, but the L1 captures little value. David Hoffman from Bankless posted this great photo showing that while L2s are “aligned” with Ethereum, the strength of that relationship is greatly diminished versus other forthcoming technologies like Based and native rollups. The vibe shift with the L2s will be the biggest change needed to return value to ETH. We can’t abscond our users and TVL to Base, a corporate Fed-chain currently sitting at Stage 0(!) (https://l2beat.com/scaling/summary). I didn’t sign up for this. 2.) High prices made us forget why we were here in the first place, which is to create a permissionless, open source, trustless consensus layer that will power the future of Finance (and maybe some other verticals). As of writing, the only proven use cases for crypto so far is Bitcoin (as a ‘savings’ vehicle, ETH + it variants and stablecoins). When I first came into crypto, it was to support grey market activities which were disfavored by the incumbent banking system. Guns, drugs, sex work, and Wikileaks were the original appeal crypto cast over me. It was a purely counter-cultural preference for independent systems that could stand strong against censorship and repression. Those days are gone. Now all the new blood in crypto is simply devising ways to max extract from their communities. Either its smart money VCs and other instituional capital allocators driving pre-seed/seed valuations higher to the point where retail no longer has an edge simply becomes exit liquidity. Or in the memecoin trenches fighting against the multitude of scammers, rug pulls, and other nasty PVP combat that only a small few profit from. I don’t actually know if this can be fixed tbh. But we do need to return to the roots and stay in wartime mode even with regulatory pressures easing. 3.) We bullied the EF enough to implement substantial changes. Aya Miyaguchi resigned as Executive Director to President, leading to the appointment of Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz Stańczak as co-Executive Directors. Vitalik is now focused on long term research like exploring RISC-V architecture for the Ethereum Virtual Machine. The EF as a whole is now focused on L1 scalibility rather than offshoring to L2s. 4.) Specifically for ETHBTC lets do some back of the napkin math. If you assume the worst-case scenario for Ethereum and the best-case scenario for Bitcoin, ETHBTC bottoms out ugly. Let’s say ETH drops to $1,250 and BTC rallies to $120,000. That gives you a ratio of just 0.0104. Disgusting. But that’s ONLY another 40% decline from these levels. But if ETH claws its way back to something more reasonable, like its 180-day EMA at $2,782, and BTC hits $120K, you get ETHBTC = 0.0232. Still weak, but not catastrophic. Push ETH to its 365-day EMA around $2,886, and ETHBTC edges up to 0.0241. If BTC doesn’t blast off and instead holds around $95,000, ETHBTC improves: * 0.0293 at the 180-day EMA * 0.0304 at the 365-day EMA So depending on where ETH finds its footing, ETHBTC can recover somewhat. But the only way we get that recovery is if people start believing again. Right now, it’s clear the bid has vanished. ETH has lost the attention, the momentum, and the narrative. And until that comes back, this ratio won’t either. Asymmytry renames their stablecoins Wdyt? Easier to understand? Leave a comment below. Railgun launches Mech accounts with Gnosis Guild Railgun is teaming up with Gnosis Guild to integrate Mechs. Basically, NFTs that can own smart contract accounts. This lets RAILGUN’s 0zk addresses do more complex DeFi things like lending, borrowing, or multi-sig signing while keeping everything private with zero-knowledge proofs. It’s a practical step toward making Ethereum useful again for stuff like staking on Lido or swapping on CoWSwap without everyone knowing your business. The way it works is straightforward. 0zk addresses prove ownership of a Mech account, unshield tokens to interact with a contract, then reshield everything so it stays private, even for things like unstaking that take multiple steps. This integration aims to expand RAILGUN’s reach into broader DeFi applications, such as liquid staking on Lido or intent swaps on CoWSwap, enhancing privacy on Ethereum’s layer 1. The proposal is currently up for a vote among $RAIL stakers, and RAILGUN is hosting a Spaces event on April 23, 2025, to discuss the details with the community. Bitcoin Mission hacked for $1m Bitcoin Mission has been exploited due to a critical smart contract vulnerability, resulting in over $1 million in stolen assets by April 22, 2025. The issue stemmed from flawed logic in the overPaper function, where improper sender validation allowed malicious actors to bypass access controls and withdraw large sums of USDT. This bug wasn't tied to low-level technical failures, but rather to oversight in the contract’s business logic, a type of error frequently cited in OWASP smart contract security guidelines. The stolen funds were rapidly moved across chains, using laundering techniques similar to those deployed in past nation-state-backed attacks run by Lazurus. Get full access to Leviathan News - The Tentacle at leviathannews.substack.com/subscribe (https://leviathannews.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

4. 

   18 Apr 2025

   Base is for.... 💩coining

   Last night, Base dropped a token on Zora. Yes, that Base. The chain that said it would never have a token. The clean-cut, corporate-sanctioned L2 just went full degen—and we’re all losing our minds. In this episode, Simon breaks down: WTF is a “content coin” and why Jesse Pollak thinks they matter How memecoins turned speculation into art (and back again) Why Solana’s Pump.fun (http://Pump.fun) is eating DeFi’s lunch—and feeding SOL How Base is now deep in the same meme mines it once ignored The death of NFTs on Base (RIP Zora v1) Why this might all be about Zora’s upcoming TGE 👀 And the one legit bright spot on Base: Aerodrome locking another $400K in AERO We’re not saying Base betrayed us… but Coinbase shareholders probably loved this move. Listen now if you like: degenerate tokenomics, media theory, memecoin alpha, high-stakes hypocrisy, and mildly coherent rants about why this all matters. Get full access to Leviathan News - The Tentacle at leviathannews.substack.com/subscribe (https://leviathannews.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

5. 

   16 Apr 2025

   Bitcoin Life Insurance Is Here and It Actually Makes Sense

   Title:The Bitcoin Life Insurance That Lets You Borrow Without Paying TaxesGuest: Jason Leibowitz, Head of BD at MeanwhileHost: Simon McCulloch, Leviathan NewsDate: April 16, 2025 In this episode, we dive deep into one of the most innovative Bitcoin-native products on the market: Meanwhile, the world’s first fully licensed life insurance company denominated in Bitcoin. Jason Leibowitz, Meanwhile’s Head of Business Development, joins Leviathan News to explain how whole life insurance — a long-trusted legacy finance tool — has been rebuilt from the ground up for Bitcoin holders. We cover: How Meanwhile lets you pay premiums in BTC, receive a guaranteed BTC-denominated payout, and borrow against your policy tax-free Why this structure helps you avoid capital gains while maintaining exposure to upside The advantages of using life insurance as a wrapper for intergenerational wealth transfer Custody solutions, compliance, and how the product is regulated in Bermuda Real-world examples showing how Bitcoin users can unlock liquidity without ever selling their coins Who this product is for, from high-net-worth individuals to estate planners How to apply and get approved in under 48 hours This episode is essential listening for long-term Bitcoiners, crypto-native estate planners, and anyone interested in using traditional finance tools in smarter, tax-optimized ways. Get full access to Leviathan News - The Tentacle at leviathannews.substack.com/subscribe (https://leviathannews.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

6. 

   15 Apr 2025

   The $OM Meltdown

   Another blow up the size of Terra Luna took place over the weekend and barely anyone is talking about it. Over the weekend, the $OM token from Mantra, a project positioning itself at the center of real-world asset tokenization, collapsed more than 90% in under an hour. The price nuked from $6.21 to under 50 cents, wiping out nearly $6 billion in market cap. It’s the largest marketcap blow up in crypto since Terra Luna. Let’s walk through what we know. First, on-chain data shows that 17 wallets two of which are linked to Laser Digital, a strategic investor, deposited over 43 million $OM tokens to exchanges starting around April 7. That’s $227 million worth at the time, or 4.5% of supply. The bulk of those tokens hit OKX in the days leading up to the crash. Then, on Sunday, it all unraveled. Massive sell pressure hit the books. CEXs like Binance and Bybit started liquidating leveraged positions. Within minutes, a cascade of forced closures dragged the price down 90%. John Patrick Mullin, Mantra’s co-founder, claimed this was due to (https://x.com/jp_mullin888/status/1911559071263822020) "reckless forced closures" on exchanges, basically blaming centralized liquidation engines. But that doesn’t explain the timing of those wallet movements or why investor-linked accounts were suddenly dumping. Laser Digital came out denying (https://x.com/LaserDigital_/status/1911723834459177266) everything, saying they didn’t deposit or sell any tokens. But their tagged wallet addresses are all over the transaction logs. We weren’t surprised about the blow up. Mantra is not loved by CT insiders. It had a FDV of $9bn, off a TVL of just $13mn. Token unlocks were coming. And over 90% of supply was controlled by insiders and core investors. OM was also up 300x since last year. You can do the math. We also follow Crypto Condom (https://x.com/intern_cc/status/1911712008191218050) who has been harping on the TL for months about these fake FDV projects that have abused their supply dynamics to pump their tokens to astronomical valuations. Based on the chart its relatively easy to figure out what happened with OM. A fund or investor was using OM as collateral on exchange for trading operations. With the 300x rise in OM over the past year, a massive amount of credit had been unlocked for them. They then used this credit to trade, borrow captial and fund their own money making operations. Because the OM supply was so controlled amongst a few well known insiders and the team, it didn’t take much liquidity to juice the market cap and push OM to $9bn valuation. According to on-chain detective ZachXBT, the real culprits (https://x.com/zachxbt/status/1911784494152966303) may be two familiar names: Denko Mancheski, the founder of Reef Finance, and Fukogo Ryoshu. Zach says that through his own contacts, he learned that both had been borrowing aggressively using $OM as collateral in the days leading up to the crash. They were reportedly shopping around for massive loans, using their $OM holdings to back them. Then the price dipped. Their positions were liquidated. Market makers, likely aware of how overexposed these borrowers were, yanked their liquidity to protect their books. With no liquidity left to catch the falling knife, $OM crashed straight through the floor to 50 cents. Here’s a theory. The market makers knew about the size of the loan deals and the risk to their own operations. If they had left their liquidity up during the liquidation, they would have been the exit liquidity. So they stepped back. Prices fell until someone was willing to catch it. That someone was not the OM team, not the borrowers, and definitely not retail. This brings us to the real question. What did the Mantra team know? Were they aware that these two whales were borrowing at scale against $OM? Did they give it a green light because those inflated valuations propped up their market cap? These are not small-time traders. These were players who held enough OM to break the market, and break it they did. And now? It’s damage control. Everyone is scrambling to figure out who is actually at fault. The market is searching for someone to blame. But the truth is, it might be all of them. The borrowers. The liquidity providers. The team. The investors who looked the other way. One thing is clear, the illusion of OM’s valuation has shattered. Mantra may have had regulatory licenses and a $100 million RWA fund lined up, but that doesn’t mean much when confidence disappears in a single hour. The token is still trading under 60 cents. The team is still pointing fingers at centralized exchanges. The community is furious. And no one really believes that this was just a random liquidation event. The next question we should be asking is what other tokens share similar inflated FDVs? Condom has long thought ONDO is next. ONDO is currently trading at a $8.8bn valuation, with much of the supply held by insiders and team. With just over $1bn in TVL, they are earning around $50m a year in revenue to be generous. Condom and others are claiming that ONDO is using the proceeds (https://x.com/qthomp/status/1902049288214978662) of its token sales to fund TVL for its protocol. With inflated token prices, they then can unlock borrowing markets and access relatively cheap cost of capital. While the price of ONDO has stayed relatively flat since its launch, its seen massive token inflation taking its market cap from zero to a peak of $5bn in just over a year. Will ONDO be the next big short? Let us know in the comments. Speaking of Lending, the CEFI credit book has never really recovered after Genesis, BlockFi and Celsius collapsed. Alex Thorn went back through the bankruptcy docs for the now debunk lenders and pieced together a great chart of the total loan book since 2018. The most surprising chart is that DeFi lending now represents more than 50% of all outstanding loans in crypto. This is a huge win for our industry as Aave, Curve, and other lenders bring radical transaparency to their loan books. AAVE, CRV, FRAX, DOLO all beneficiaries. Speaking of CRV, its now above its 30 and 100 day EMA, signalling strength in these turbulent markets. With the stablecoin narrative taking over, a CRV resurgence might be on the cards for 2025. It’s now 100% off the lows from last year and is trending higher while the rest of the market is suffering. Get full access to Leviathan News - The Tentacle at leviathannews.substack.com/subscribe (https://leviathannews.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

7. 

   12 Apr 2025

   The $115M Question: Aave Commits to Buybacks, But at What Cost?

   Alright, we’ve got a lot to get into this week. Markets are catching their breath, but beneath the surface there’s a ton of movement: buybacks kicking off, new chains launching, traders rotating into testnets and real-world assets. It’s a week where alpha is fractal — some small things, some big moves, all worth tracking. There’s been a bunch of news in DeFi and crypto that we haven’t covered this week AAVE’s buybacks are live. Finally. The Aave DAO just approved (https://x.com/lemiscate/status/1908951950319567015) a $1m per week buyback using surplus revenue, aimed at reducing token supply and rewarding long-term stakers. It’s set to run for six months, and the first buys already hit. Buyback are one of the more contentious protocol operations in 2025, because we've seen from experience how teams can let their treasury be eaten away through dividends and other paid out expenses. It might be good for investors in the short term, but in the longer term, runway and dry powder for major capital expenses have shown to be critical for success. Blockworks Advisory made a good critique (https://x.com/BlockworksAdv/status/1901657015367389578) of Aave DAO's Aavenomics proposal, arguing that buybacks signal overconfidence in Aave's market dominance and may weaken its competitive position in the nascent DeFi lending sector. In their report they highlighted Raydium's failed buyback program, which repurchased $175M in tokens at a 47% loss, suggesting Aave should instead reinvest its $115M treasury into becoming a lender of last resort to strengthen its moat. They also noted that Aave's FDV/R ratio has risen to 54% since the proposal, indicating potential overvaluation risks, and warned that buybacks could make Aave "exit liquidity" for competitors, especially given the 8-month delay between proposal stages that telegraphed the repurchase plan. Interestingly, due to macro conditions, AAVE is trading at YTD lows of $134. On a longer timeframe, AAVE is trading only 150% above its recent ATH at $46. Since launch Aave has collected $1.2bn in revenue and over $250m in fees. However, the recent price declines can be attributed to decreasing TVL and lowered rate expectations due to Trump’s trade wars. We’re huge fans of Aave. They are the #1 DeFi protocol and have shown excellence and operational rigor for a half decade now. If AAVE is not a part of your long term DeFi portfolio, it should be the first project your research this year. Ostium Labs goes exponential One of our favorite up-and-coming protocols Ostium has been crushing it in the last month after the launch of their points system. The protocol saw a 600% spike in wallet activity and over $1 billion in trading volume on their Arbitrum-based perpetual futures DEX. The launch of a new points system, distributing 500k points weekly from a 10M pool to traders and liquidity providers, has been the core driver of the activity. Since mid March they've been averaging close to $100 million a day of daily volume, and they hit an all-time high in volume this past week with $144 million in one day. These two charts that were shared show a beautiful hockey stick of growth for the platform after launching back in October of last year. Wayfinder’s $PROMPT TGE dropped… and dipped. Wayfinder launched its $PROMPT token on April 9, 2025, after months of anticipation and a large-scale airdrop campaign. Leviathan hasn’t covered Wayfinder before unfortunately. They just popped up on our feeds. We have covered the parent team Parallel, who is building a sci-fi trading card game, and backed by the Echelon Prime Foundation. Wayfinder is going to be integrated into the game mechanics, with AI behavior modeling, and crypto incentives into a programmable agent economy. Wayfinder’s agents will be able to trade, vote, farm airdrops, manage on-chain accounts, and coordinate with each other. The project was inspired by a 2023 Stanford paper on simulating AI “towns,” allowing agents to “think,” “remember,” and take action inside permissionless environments. The $PROMPT token powers the ecosystem, used for agent execution, governance, and resource allocation within the protocol. Leading up to the token generation event, more than 23 million PRIME tokens were staked, which accounted for over half of the circulating supply. In return, stakers received a 40 percent yield in $PROMPT. The team allocated 40% of the total supply to the community, with 39% going to stakers and 1% to free signups. To incentivize adoption, Wayfinder offered an extra 5% bonus to users who claimed their tokens through an OKX Web3 wallet. Trading officially opened on OKX on April 10 with the PROMPT/USDT pair, providing immediate liquidity and access. The launch wasn’t without its issues. A MEV bot exploit targeted (https://x.com/0x_ultra/status/1910323014853611905) the airdrop claims and successfully frontran transactions, siphoning off over $200,000 worth of ETH from unsuspecting users. While the token’s price initially pulled back since its debut, its been ripping higher after the initial claim period. It’s currently trading at $0.37, a 3x from its listing price. GMX Whale liquidated for $13m Arbitrum based perpetual trading platform GMX achieved its highest 1-day fee gain after a massive whale was liquidated on AVAX for $13m worth of collateral. The trader had opened a massive long position last year and finally was liquidated this past week when Bitcoin prices dropped to $76k. The protocol will use 30% of the fees to buyback GMX and the remaining $10m will be shared with the lucky depositors in the GLP vault. Get full access to Leviathan News - The Tentacle at leviathannews.substack.com/subscribe (https://leviathannews.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

8. 

   10 Apr 2025

   📉Trump and Dump

   Volatility continues as markets are whipsawed on news of Trump's tariffs. Ok, lets talk about the last 96 hours, because its been wild in the market. While everyone has been talking about tariffs the real drama has been much, much deeper. So picture this: it’s 10:15 AM Eastern on April 7th (3 days ago). A rumor drops that Trump is pausing all tariffs for 90 days, except for China. We reported about this on Monday, how Deltaone reported the info, and then the White House later denied it. But in the moment, the S&P 500 rockets up over 400 points, reversing heavy losses from earlier in the day. If the news had been true, we’d be calling it the relief rally. But even as the equity markets were ripping, something way more ominous was unfolding. The 10-year Treasury yield spiked over 30 basis points in one of the sharpest intraday reversals in recent memory. Bonds and stocks typically trade inversely correlated. When stocks go up, bonds go down. So when both are going up, that’s not how they should behave when good news hits. TLT, the long-duration Treasury ETF, saw its *highest* trading volume ever, 25% above previous records. Traders were selling 10y’s and other long dated duration en masse. Rate cut expectations for May collapsed. We went from 85% odds of a cut… to 33%. In one session. And it wasn’t just US markets. Japan’s 20-year yield spiked, the Nikkei jumped 6%, DAT load volumes surged, even as consumer credit numbers in the U.S. came in shockingly low. The bond market broke. You need to understand that the bond market is a much bigger beast than US equity markets. Any breakdown in bonds causes widespread issues at financial institutions on a far greater scale. So when you have these wild swings in bonds, it doesn’t say “hooray, tariffs are paused.” It says “something is breaking.” We know now that the tariff rumor was most likely true at that time. For some reason the Trump admin didn’t want to announce it just then, but some staffers and other advisors must have known that Trump was planning a 90 day pause. Then comes April 9. First, Trump told his people on Truth Social that it was a “great time to buy.” Trump makes the actual announcement: most tariffs lowered to 10%, but China’s go up to 125%. Again, markets rip. The NASDAQ jumps almost 10%. Surprisingly, call volume (bullish bets) spiked an hour before Trump’s announcement. Was this insider trading or was it just the market sniffing out the future announcement. But here’s the issue, while Trump’s buddies were buying the dip, bonds are telling a different story. Yields went higher, gold jumps $100 in one day, junk bond yields hit 8.5%, a 52-week high. SOFR swap spreads collapse. Crude oil tanks. And again, TLT gets hammered. The MOVE index, which is the VIX aka fear index for bonds, jumped to 178, levels not seen since the Covid crash and before that the 2008 financial crisis. This is not a healthy market. Especially one in a “relief rally.” Knowing what we do now, did the Trump team float the 90 day pause rumor to give the Fed, Treasury, global central banks and hedge funds time to adjust their positions and avoid blowing up? When the actual announcement came out the bond market reacted poorly, even though stocks were ripping. The bond market always can sniff out danger first. So what do we watch for next? It’s though that Trump paused all of the tariffs due to Japan, the largest foreign holder of U.S. debt at $1.1 trillion , unexpectedly led the debt sell-off, not China, causing global market turmoil. Japan’s Nikkei fell 4% and Taiwan’s index dropped 5.8%. Japan was most likely selling treasuries to prop up their financial institutions from the massive volatility. If Trump keeps up this level of volatility in the markets for an extended period of time, someone somewhere is going to blow up in spectacular fashion. We're probably going to see news in the next few days about hedge funds which got caught off guard and are facing billions in losses. At some point, the financial player will become so big that the fed or other central banks will have to intervene to “save financial markets,” which is really just a bail out for overleveraged hedge funds and banks. And when that happens, the Fed will flood the market with liquidity, bond rates will drop, the USD will devalue. Guess what happens next… 🚀 (https://emojipedia.org/rocket) BTC SEC approves options trading on Spot ETH ETFs SEC gives crypto a win yesterday and will have huge implications for Ethereum. The SEC has officially approved a rule change allowing options to be listed and traded on the iShares Ethereum Trust, ticker ETHA. Back in July 2024, Nasdaq ISE proposed this rule change to list options on ETHA. It went through the usual SEC process, comment periods, data requests, back and forth, and by March 2025, ISE had filed an updated version with a ton of detailed analysis to back it up. That’s what the SEC just approved. The new options products will be physically settled, American-style options on the iShares Ethereum Trust. One big constraint for the ETH options will be position and exercise limits will be capped at 25,000 contracts per side. This is the lowest limit for any regulated US options product in the entire market. The SEC likely sees the risk posed by ETH as a highly volatile crypto asset and is worried about potential market manipulation. We would guess that the SEC is going to wait and see what happens with the options market as it trades over the next months. Options unlock a whole new dimension of market structure. TradFi players can now use these products to reduce volatility, hedge, get leveraged exposure and allow for greater institutional flows. And from a macro perspective, it brings Ethereum one step closer to becoming a core part of the traditional financial system. Big win, Big news. Bitcoin life insurance firm Meanwhile raises $40m Meanwhile, a life insurance company... denominated in bitcoin... just raised (https://x.com/meanwhilelife/status/1910324398936264897) $40 million in a Series A. Framework Ventures and Fulgur Ventures co-led the round, and one of the notable backers was Wences Casares, founder of Xapo Bank and Bitcoin OG. They’re building what they call a “BTC Whole Life” insurance product. The whole thing, premiums, payouts, and even policy-backed loans are denominated in BTC. That means if you’re buying into one of these policies, you’re betting that bitcoin will hold or gain value over your lifetime. And if you bet right, you’ll your eventual payout will grow with it. This is the second raise for Meanwhile, as they originally raised $19 back in 2023 to get regulatory approval from the Bermuda Monetary Authority. Open AI CEO Sam Altman took was one of the people who took part in that round. Now with this new $40 million Series A, they’re planning to scale operations and expand the product. They’re also eyeing a $100 million BTC-denominated private credit fund, designed to generate a 5% bitcoin yield by lending BTC out to institutional borrowers. So, why bitcoin life insurance? It’s all about preserving purchasing power in a world of currency debasement, according to Meanwhile CEO Zac Townsend. Bitcoin is argued as a potential hedge against fiat inflation, even in the U.S., where the dollar’s lost about 25% of its value over the past five years. Meanwhile’s life insurance product is a way to hold and grow BTC in a tax-advantaged, long-term structure. And unlike Saylor who is taking his Bitcoin to his grave (https://finance.yahoo.com/news/michael-saylor-may-burn-bitcoin-142500370.html), when and if you die, your policy gets paid out to your next of kin. Get full access to Leviathan News - The Tentacle at leviathannews.substack.com/subscribe (https://leviathannews.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

9. 

   9 Apr 2025

   Justin Sun Slams First Digital Trust Over $456M “Fraud”

   A massive scandal is brewing in stablecoins after crypto celebrity and TRON founder Justin Sun publicly called out Hong Kong-based First Digital Trust (FDT), accusing them of mismanaging nearly half a billion dollars in TrueUSD (TUSD) reserves. According to Sun, FDT allegedly funneled $456 million into an illiquid commodity fund without permission, leaving issuer Techteryx scrambling and sparking a full-blown crisis. The shockwaves hit hard—so hard, in fact, that FDT’s own stablecoin, FDUSD, depegged by 9% on April 2, triggering panic across the crypto community. Justin is rightfully pissed off. He gave $500m worth of TUSD to FDT, who then invested it into the illiquid Aria Commodity Finance Fund. This action, reportedly without Techteryx's permission, led to a significant shortfall in Techteryx’s balance sheet. On April 7, 2025, FDT fired back days later, claiming they were tasked with holding and managing assets according to Techteryx's instructions, not making investment decisions. They dropped a long X-thread with legal docs, insisting they’ve done nothing wrong and that Techteryx called the shots the whole time. FDT responded (https://x.com/FirstDigitalHQ/status/1909307463599620462) today clarifying that their role since 2021 has been strictly as a custodian. They emphasized that they were tasked with holding and managing assets according to Techteryx's instructions, not making investment decisions. What's the wild about the story is that investing collateral that's backing stable. Coins is so easy, you just put it into short term securities that generate 4% a year. For some reason, FTT thought they would be smart and placed these funds into a income fund generating 6 to 7% a year in order to capture an extra $15 million a year in profit. Now that Justin wants his money back, they're not able to return it because of rate volatility has caused the value of the investment to drop below the initial amount leading to their insolvency. This whole situation is a mess and a clear reason why we need strict rules on where stablecoin collateral can be invested, specifically just cash in short term securities. Chaos Labs’ deep-dive risk assessment on USD₮0 You need to check out the first truly natively cross-chain stablecoin backed 1:1 by USDT on Ethereum! This in-depth report (https://chaoslabs.xyz/posts/usdt0-risk-review) breaks down USD₮0’s mechanics, solvency and liquidity safeguards, LayerZero-powered OFT transfers, and why it may be one of the most secure and interoperable stablecoin designs yet. Whether you’re a DeFi builder, power user, or just stablecoin-curious, this is a must-read to understand the tech, risks, and upside of USD₮0. Arcadia Finance releases their airdrop checker Have you ever used Arcadia Finance? They just launched their airdrop checker to see how many tokens you’ll be recieving in their upcoming TGE on April 10, 2025. Acardia is a Base network DeFi protocol that uses AI-powered yield optimization and integrates with DEXs like Uniswap and Aerodrome, aiming to simplify complex liquidity strategies for users. Kraken x Mastercard Kraken users will soon be able to pay at over 150 million merchants using their exchange balances, thanks to Mastercard's global payment rails. This is an extension of Kraken Pay, which already lets users send funds across borders in over 300 currencies, both fiat and crypto. Now, Kraken plans to launch physical and digital debit cards, allowing for spending at any place Mastercard is accepted. 🧾 David Ripley (Kraken co-CEO) says: “Crypto is transforming payments — and we’re making it practical, fast, and real.”💼 Scott Abrahams (Mastercard) adds: “We’re unlocking real utility for digital assets.” What’s the secret to not losing money in 2025? Crime! BTC, ETH, XRP, and SOL are all down 20-50% this year. But one coin stands alone, keeping its value even in this crazy bear market. Monero (XMR) (https://x.com/WazzCrypto/status/1909705882348253534) The elder privacy coin is up 1% even as Trump is crushing the market. Just goes to show that actual utility keeps value no matter the conditions. Get full access to Leviathan News - The Tentacle at leviathannews.substack.com/subscribe (https://leviathannews.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

10. 

    8 Apr 2025

    Ripple Acquires Hidden Road for $1.25bn — $3T in Clearing Now Powered by RLUSD

    Can’t have the pump without the dump. This morning Trump sent markets upwards after tweeting that he’s “Waiting for their call” from China. This comes after China said they would retaliate with “countermeasures (https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/tariff-war-just-begun-beijings-new-tariff-target-list-leaked-bloggers)” in response to Trump’s 34% tariffs. "If the US escalates its tariff measures, China will resolutely take countermeasures to safeguard its own rights and interests. The US threat to escalate tariffs against China is a mistake on top of a mistake, which once again exposes the US's blackmailing nature. China will never accept this. If the US insists on going its own way, China will fight it to the end." - Chinese ministry spokesperson What’s wild about this whole situation is just how much markets are moving on unsubstantiated rumors. Yesterday, a rumor that Trump was going to pause tariffs for all countries but China went viral and drove the market up 4%, only to be hammered down again when the Trump White House public denied the rumors a few hours later. The market is looking for good news right now. The overall health of the economy is strong, but overvalued. A correction in asset price was bound to happen during Trump’s presidency. While Trump does have wide latitude to affect markets with his tariffs policy, its important to note that asset prices coming into his term were at extremely elevated levels, and were due for a reversion to historical norms. Bitcoin is up 2.6%, ETH 1.8%, XRP is up 5.5% today. Trump Shuts Down DOJ Crypto Enforcement Division We all know the Biden administration pursued unjust persecution of crypto companies over the last 4 years. Trump is now dismantling the DOJ National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team (NCET), a unit established in 2021 to lead investigations into major crypto-related crimes. It’s yet another division shut down that recklessly pursued crypto companies and funds for legitimate business activities. In a memo, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the move as part of the DOJ's alignment with President Trump’s January executive order aimed at creating “regulatory clarity” for digital assets. Blanche emphasized that the DOJ should not act as a digital assets regulator and directed prosecutors to focus on individuals who harm crypto investors, rather than targeting exchanges, mixers, or wallet providers. Trump is on a mission to open the doors to crypto business operations without fear of legal reprisal. He previously instructed the SEC and CFTC to ease oversight. XRP buys Prime Broker Hidden Road Big acquisition news today. Ripple Labs has acquired prime brokerage Hidden Road for $1.25bn. Hidden Road is a a prime broker clearing $3 trillion annually for 300+ top financial institutions. Prime brokers are financial institutions that offer services like securities lending (so clients can borrow stocks or bonds to short-sell), leveraged trade execution (lending money to amplify trades), and cash management (handling the client’s funds), clearing and settling trades, and often serve as custodians for the client’s assets, simplifying reporting and operations. Hidden Road will use Ripple’s stablecoin RLUSD as collateral for cross-asset trades, integrating it across its prime brokerage services. This deal follows Ripple’s 2023 acquisition of Metaco for $250 million. Felix launches on HyperEVM Felix, a Liquity v2 fork, has launched on HyperEVM with a $5m cap (which has already been maxed out.) Use your HYPE to mint feUSD as a collateralized loan. (https://usefelix.xyz/borrow) CAKE Tokenomics Get a New Recipe Pancakeswap, BNB’s main DEX, just revealed a new tokenomics that radically change its governance. The biggest change is that they are scrapping the veCAKE and Gauges voting system, unlocking all staked CAKE immediately (no penalties, no questions), and slashing daily emissions from 40k to 22.5k CAKE. In theory ve was supposed to work, but in practice it led to a bloated system that rewarded insiders and favored low-volume, low-impact pools. Voters voted for their own shitcoins while diverting funds away from high-volume pools, the ones that actually were driving usage, leading to them being under-rewarded. Now rewards will be directed based on real-time data to high-volume liquidity pools that actually benefit the overall health of the network and protocol. Additionally, Pancakeswap is cutting revenue sharing, instead using the collected 5% LP fees to burn CAKE, targeting a 20% reduction in supply over 5 years. Get full access to Leviathan News - The Tentacle at leviathannews.substack.com/subscribe (https://leviathannews.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

11. 

    7 Apr 2025

    Echoes From The Deep: Markets Tank, Crypto Bleeds - April 7, 2025

    Welcome to the first drop of Echoes From The Deep on Leviathan News. Today’s April 7, 2025, and the markets are a dumpster fire. Crypto’s getting hammered too. Here’s the rundown from today’s pod. Markets Are Screwed Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs kicked in Saturday. 10% on all imports, bigger slugs for China, Canada, and Mexico. S&P 500’s down 1.7% today after its worst day since 2020. Nasdaq’s in a bear market, off 20% from December. Asia’s toast. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng ate a 13% loss, worst since ‘97. Japan’s Nikkei shed 7.9%. Europe’s no picnic either. FTSE 100 down 6%, DAX tanked 10%. Recession odds are through the roof. JPMorgan’s calling 60%. Fed’s in an emergency huddle today, maybe cutting rates to stop the bleed. Trump says it’s “medicine.” Sure, if medicine’s a $10 trillion equity wipeout in a week. This isn’t just tariffs. It’s America’s gutted manufacturing catching up. Decades in the making. Wild times. Crypto’s in the Blender Weekend was a slaughterhouse. Bitcoin dumped from $82,000 to $73,000. Ethereum got smoked, $1,800 to $1,500. XRP’s at $1.60 after $2.13. Solana’s back under $100, first time since ‘24’s run. Alts? 80-90% losses if you’re holding bags. MakerDAO whales dodged a bullet. One with 67,000 ETH, $106M, got liquidated over the weekend. Another with 220,000 ETH, $340M, threw in 10,000 ETH and 3.54M DAI to push his liquidation price to $1,100. ETH’s at $1,500 now, so he’s breathing. Sub-$1,000 ETH calls are out there. Could get ugly. Wins and Scumbags Some good news. Cap Labs scored $8M in a seed round from Franklin Templeton, Triton, and more. Benjamin and the DeFi crew are killing it. Full interview’s up on Leviathan News, link below. Then there’s the dirt. “Derivatives Monke” lost $27M on Hyperliquid. This scammer allegedly stole $30M from investors, per ZachXBT, and blew it on GMX too. Woke up whining about crypto “losers” while his victims got zilch. Hope he rots in jail. Civil cases drag, and that cash is gone. Get In The Deep End That’s April 7. Markets imploding, crypto gut-punched, some heroes and a lot of zeros. Echoes From The Deep drops daily, 5-10 minutes of this madness. Subscribe at leviathannews.substack.com (https://leviathannews.substack.com/) to get it in your inbox Get full access to Leviathan News - The Tentacle at leviathannews.substack.com/subscribe (https://leviathannews.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

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