Gate Ventures Weekly Crypto Recap (Mar 3 , 2025)

TL;DR

• A “Mar-a-Lago Accord” was named as a summary of potential political and economical moves of President Donald Trump.
• This week’s incoming data includes the US labour market report on Friday and the ISM PMI.
• Ethereum will undergo the Prague upgrade in March, increasing the target blob capacity from 3 to 6.
• BTC spot ETF saw an outflow of over $2 billion last week.
• XRP, SOL, ADA, BTC, and ETH are listed as potential targets for strategic reserves under Trump’s crypto reserve plan.
• Base chain introduced Flashblock and Appchain framework. Metamask releases the 2025 roadmap, including support for Solana and Bitcoin. BIO launched BIO Agents, driving advancement in DeSci.
• This week, raised $566M (+254% from previous week), CeFi and DeFi projects were the largest share of funding.

Macro Overview

A “Mar-a-Lago Accord” was named as a summary of potential political and economical moves of President Donald Trump.

Although Trump himself has not declared a package solution for tariffs, interest rates, foreign trade, dollar and debt crisis yet, the market is betting on a similar structure to the Plaza Accord — — a “Mar-a-Lago Accord”, named after Trump’s private club in Florida. The market absorbs information from the publication of Stephen Miran, Trump’s nominee to lead the White House Council of Economic Advisers. The core idea of such an accord will be to restructure the US debt, weaken the dollar, and redesign the foreign trade system.

A radical approach will be to replace the current US treasury debts with 100-year, non-tradeable zero-coupon bonds. This will help drive down the interest payments, leading to less foreign interest in the dollar and releasing the pressure on the current debt condition. However, this approach could also undermine the stance of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, and bring more conflicts and uncertainties to the current world financial system.

Highlights for the US market this week will include the newest US labor market report this Friday, and the PMI data for both manufacturing and service sectors from the Institute of Supply Management. The labor market report, which will include non-farm payrolls, unemployment rate, and average hourly earnings, will further serve as an indicator for future policy changes, especially given that the Jan labor report went contradictory.

The dollar index showed a robust recovery last week, as the PCE data came in line with market expectation and a more certain tariff outlook. Investors are putting more hope into the Fed’s next step of rate cuts.

The total asset level dropped below $16bn last week to $6.766tn, marking a gradual adjustment after last week’s public release about halting QT. Still, the Fed needs to achieve its desired asset level before putting its hands on the halting issue.

Gold price recorded the worst performance in 3 months given a robust dollar, which is mostly led by US inflation data that came in line with market expectations. This indicates the market’s expectation that the Fed may take cautious actions for additional rate cuts.

Crypto Markets Overview

1. Main Assets

Last week, after experiencing significant fluctuations, BTC was at 93,000, down 3.2%, ETH was at 2,500, down 12%. Meanwhile, Solana was at 175, up by 5.6%. After tokens like SOL/XRP/ADA and BTC and ETH were listed as potential targets for U.S. national reserves, all tokens recovered their weekly losses early Monday morning. Most notably, over the weekend SOL was listed on CME with cash-settled SOL futures which might also increase the chances of spot ETF approval.

2. Total Market Cap

The total market capitalization of the cryptocurrency market stands at $3.05 trillion this Monday. Excluding Bitcoin and Ethereum, the market cap amounts to $912.7 billion, reflecting increases of nearly 0% and 4%. The rise of altcoins mainly comes from the growth of XRP, SOL, and ADA being listed as strategic reserves, with XRP increasing by 30%, Cardano by 25%, and Solana by 20%.

3. Net Inflows

As of Monday, the market value of stablecoins was $224.4 billion, a decrease of $1.4 billion compared to last Monday. The market values of USDT and USDC remained basically unchanged, while USDE saw an outflow of $4.28 billion last week.

Last week, approximately $2 billion flowed out of the BTC ETF, setting a record for weekly outflows. The ETH ETF saw an outflow of 86,500 Ether, second only to the first week’s outflow after listing. The outflow is expected to slow down this week.

4. Top 30 Crypto Assets Performance

ADA, SOL, and XRP surged significantly after unexpectedly being included in strategic reserves. HBAR gained market attention due to its music-related ecosystem projects and collaboration with a rapper, rising by 10%. BGB topped the list of decliners last week, accumulating a drop of 13.6%, while ETH is still down by 12.4%.

The ETH Prague upgrade is expected to take place in March; this update will introduce a flexible gas payment mechanism (benefiting Biconomy through account abstraction) and increase the target blob capacity from 3 to 6 (negative for AltDA).

The Key Crypto Highlights

1.Base Introduces Flashblocks and Appchains to revolutionize Layer2 Scalability

Base Layer 2 has introduced Flashblocks on its Sepolia testnet, reducing block times from 2s to 200 ms. This technology has developed with Base team and Flashbots aimed to enable faster transaction processing with early confirmations and revert protection. Flashblocks are expected to launch on the mainnet in Q2 2025, improving scalability and usability for Base’s ecosystem and also used by Uniswap for 0.25s block times on Unichain,

As part of Base’s new technologies announced at ETHDenver 2025, Base unveiled Appchains custom Layer3 chains for high-traffic apps with customizable gas tokens. The team also introduced Smart Wallet Sub Accounts, which allow users to manage multiple wallets from one interface. With these innovations built on the OP Stack, Base continues to solidify its position as the most widely used Layer 2, leveraging these advancements to further enhance its ecosystem for both developers and users

2.Metamask releases 2025 roadmap, included support Solana and Bitcoin

MetaMask is set to add support for Bitcoin and Solana this year to enhance the user experience. Users are able to buy, sell, swap, and interact without additional wallets or wrapped tokens. Solana integration on MetaMask is planned for May-2025 and full Bitcoin support is expected in Q3–2025.

Team also announced plans to overhaul its UI/UX, including features like gas-included swaps, which let users complete transactions without needing ETH in their accounts. Additionally, the wallet will introduce multiple Secret Recovery Phrases (SRPs) to manage separate wallets within a single app. To further plan, MetaMask will release a physical card, enabling users to make real-world crypto payments via Mastercard’s network. These updates will start from Mar-2025 aim to solidify MetaMask’s position as a leading crypto wallet

3. BIO introduced BioAgents driving advancement in biotech and DeSci

BioAgents are transforming decentralized science (DeSci) by creating a user-run fleet of AI agents designed to automate tasks. These agents handle tasks like analyzing scientific literature, designing experiments, managing multi-omics data, and generating IP claims, moving data through the entire R&D process efficiently. Unlike AlphaFold’s donation-based model, BioAgents incentivize contributions with BIO tokens, ensuring scalability and rewarding participation. CoreAgents complement this by automating BioDAO operations, including governance, community management, fundraising, and onboarding, enabling scientists to focus on research. Generally, BioAgents and CoreAgents streamline workflows, reduce bottlenecks, and accelerate innovation across an interconnected network of BioDAOs and BioTech in DeSci,

Key Ventures Deals

1.Raise raised 63M in 6th round to expand digital gift cards and stablecoin payment

Raise, a gift card platform has successfully raised $63M in a funding round and valuation is not lower than the $675M from its previous Series D, led by Haun Ventures, with participation from Paper Ventures, Selini Capital, GSR, and Raj Gokal (co-founder of Solana). This fundraising round brings Raise’s total capital raised to $210M, which includes a prior 5 previously announced rounds. The new system will utilize stablecoins for escrow and payments. Payments are only transferred to retailers via Alchemy token (ACH) or stablecoins when the cards are used. This ensures funds are always protected and minimizes fraud or losses during transactions. Currently, the project only issues digital gift cards and is collaborating with major brands, including Fortune 500 companies.
Raise’s model has drawn comparisons to Gifto (GFT), a blockchain-based gifting platform developed in 2017 that was once listed on Binance. However, the project was delisted at the end of 2024 due to declining trading volume, which was seen as a move to dump tokens and abandon the project by the Gifto team.

2. Ethena completed 3 rounds funding: 2 rounds for foundation, 1 round for USDe

Ethena Foundation has successfully raised $100M through a private token sale, with participation from investors such as Franklin Templeton, Polychain, Pantera, Dragonfly, and F-Prime. The raised funds will primarily support the development of a new blockchain for the Ethena network and its broader ecosystem. Along with the upcoming launch of its institutional product, iUSDe. Additionally, part of the proceeds was used to repurchase tokens from existing investors to reset the cap table cost basis. Ethena’s decentralized synthetic dollar, USDe, has grown to become the fourth-largest stablecoin with a circulating supply of $5.9B. The newly announced iUSDe aims to bridge Ethena’s staked USDe product (sUSDe) to traditional finance sectors, including asset managers, ETFs, and prime brokers. Following that token sale event, MEXC invested $16M in Ethena during its strategic round and an additional $20M in USDe.

3. Figure secured $200M to modernize loan and financial service on its Provenance Blockchain

Figure, project has been invested by a $200M investment from Sixth Street, is a technology platform transforming loan origination, equity management, private fund services, banking, and payments by leveraging blockchain to deliver speed, cost savings, and efficiency to both consumers and institutions. Founded in 2018, Figure powered by Provenance Blockchain, which powers all of its loans and has become the world’s largest originator of RWA. In 2024, Figure launched Figure Connect, a marketplace infrastructure that offers key advantages such as attractive warehouse lines for cash flow management, hedging tools to mitigate market risk, and modern systems that automate loan sales and deliveries, all built on a public blockchain. This innovation has driven significant adoption, with over 40% of Figure’s December 2024 volume transacted through Figure Connect since its launch in June 2024.

The number of deals closed in the previous week was 42, with Infra leading the way with 17 deals, representing 41% of the total number of deals. Meanwhile, Data had 13 (31%), Defi had 8 (19%), Social had 1 (2%), Gamefi had 3 (19%) deals

The total amount of disclosed funding raised in the previous week was $566M, 35% deals (15/42) in previous week didn’t public the raised amount. The top funding came from Infra sector with $304,9M. Most funded deals: Figure with $200M and Ethena $116M

Total weekly fundraising rose to $566M for the 1st week of Mar-2025, an increase of +254% compared to the week prior. Weekly fundraising in the previous week was up +71% year over year for the same period.