Morning Report | Strategy invested $1.57 billion last week to increase its holdings by 22,337 bitcoins; Abra plans to go public through a SPAC merger; Metaplanet aims to raise approximately $765 million to increase its bitcoin holdings

整理：ChainCatcher

Important News:

• Citi, PwC, and Solana jointly completed a trade finance tokenization proof of concept
• In 2025, the real trading volume of global stablecoins will account for less than 1%, with the vast majority being "wash trading"
• Metaplanet CEO: Plans to raise approximately $765 million to increase Bitcoin holdings
• Strategy spent $1.57 billion last week to acquire 22,337 Bitcoins
• Bitmine increased its holdings by 60,999 ETH last week and added $80 million investment in Eightco (ORBS)
• South Korea's FIU fines Bithumb $24.6 million and orders a 6-month partial business suspension
• Digital asset wealth management platform Abra plans to go public through a SPAC merger, valued at $750 million

What important events happened in the past 24 hours?

Japan's Financial Services Agency plans to impose severe penalties on unregistered crypto sales, with maximum prison terms proposed to increase to 10 years

According to ChainCatcher, the Nikkei reported that Japan's Financial Services Agency (FSA) intends to strengthen penalties and regulation against unregistered cryptocurrency operators. The plan proposes to move regulations related to crypto assets from the "Funds Settlement Act" to the "Financial Instruments and Exchange Act" to enhance investor protection. Criminal penalties for unregistered sales of crypto assets are proposed to increase from the current "up to 3 years in prison or fines of up to 3 million yen" to "up to 10 years in prison or fines of up to 10 million yen (or both)."

Additionally, the Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission will be authorized to conduct mandatory on-site inspections and evidence seizures for criminal investigations. The statutory name for registered operators is proposed to change from "crypto asset exchange operators" to "crypto asset trading operators." This move is in response to the increasing disputes related to highly speculative meme tokens.

T. Rowe Price submits second amendment for its actively managed cryptocurrency ETF
According to ChainCatcher, CoinDesk reported that T. Rowe Price has submitted a second amendment for its actively managed cryptocurrency ETF, which will track various assets including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Litecoin, and SHIB.
Digital asset wealth management platform Abra plans to go public through a SPAC merger, valued at $750 million
According to ChainCatcher, Abra Financial Holdings, Inc. announced today that it has reached a final merger agreement with special purpose acquisition company New Providence Acquisition Corp. III (Nasdaq: NPACU) to go public through a SPAC.

The new company is expected to be listed on Nasdaq under the ticker "ABRX." Key transaction terms include:

• Transaction valuation: Based on Abra's pre-money equity valuation of $750 million;
• Capital injection: The transaction is expected to bring up to $300 million in cash (held in a trust account, subject to shareholder redemptions);
• Shareholder structure: Existing Abra shareholders will transfer 100% of their equity to the merged company, including well-known institutions such as Adams Street, Blockchain Capital, RRE Ventures, and SBI.
• Market positioning: Serving the $100 trillion wealth management market, focusing on digital assets and tokenization.

Predicted market trading volume surges due to US-Iran conflict, US Senator proposes legislation to ban war betting

According to ChainCatcher, Cointelegraph reported that data shows that for the week ending March 9, Polymarket and Kalshi's nominal trading volumes reached historic highs of $2.49 billion and $2.85 billion, respectively. Dune data indicates that the continued growth in trading activity has pushed the total nominal trading volume across all prediction markets to $145 billion, with the number of unique users reaching 2.8 million.

Meanwhile, US Democratic Senator Adam Schiff has introduced the "DEATH BETS Act," aimed at amending the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) to explicitly prohibit federally regulated prediction markets from listing contracts related to war, terrorism, assassination, and personal death. Previously, six Polymarket traders raised concerns about insider trading after profiting $1 million from accurately betting on the US attack on Iran.

Tokenized securities infrastructure development company Ironlight Group completes $21 million Series A financing, with participation from Laidlaw Private Equity and others

According to ChainCatcher, PR Newswire reported that tokenized securities infrastructure development company Ironlight Group announced the completion of a $21 million Series A financing, with participation from Greg Braca, former president and CEO of TD Bank, Sei Development Foundation, and Laidlaw Private Equity.

The new funds will be used to expand the scale of Ironlight Markets' alternative trading system (ATS) and accelerate the construction of a market that unifies core capital market functions within the US regulatory framework, supporting tokenized securities in areas such as private equity, structured products, fixed income, private credit, and real estate.

Bitmine increased its holdings by 60,999 ETH last week and added $80 million investment in Eightco (ORBS)

According to ChainCatcher, PR Newswire reported that Bitmine announced today that its total crypto asset value, including cash and "moon landing plan" holdings, has reached $11.5 billion. As of 7:00 PM Eastern Time on March 15, 2026, the company's crypto holdings include 4,595,562 ETH, 196 Bitcoins (BTC), a $200 million investment in Beast Industries, an $83 million investment in Eightco Holdings (Nasdaq: ORBS), and a total of $1.2 billion in cash. Bitmine's ETH holdings account for 3.81% of the total ETH supply (120.7 million ETH).

In the past week, Bitmine also took two strategic actions. First, Bitmine increased its investment in the existing "moon landing plan" company Eightco (stock code: $ORBS) by an additional $80 million. ORBS acquired $50 million equity in OpenAI and $25 million equity in Beast Industries.

Lee stated, "ORBS is now the only publicly traded stock that allows investors direct access to OpenAI. The highly anticipated IPO of OpenAI will take place in 2026, and investors can now gain direct investment through ORBS."

Additionally, we see a significant synergy between World Chain (proof of humanity), leading AI platform (OpenAI), and global content creator Mr. Beast. Eightco has invited Cathie Wood's ARK to serve as a strategic advisor, further increasing ORBS's appeal.

Secondly, Bitmine purchased 5,000 ETH from the Ethereum Foundation to enable EF to fund its core operations. Lee stated, "Bitmine's acquisition of these ETH is to show our support for EF's goals and operations and to enable EF to raise funds without having to sell its ETH on the open market."

Lee pointed out, "In the past two weeks, Bitmine has slightly accelerated its pace of ETH purchases each week, as our fundamental judgment is that ETH is in the final stage of a 'mini crypto winter.' In the past week, we acquired 60,999 ETH, while the recent weekly average acquisition was between 45,000 and 50,000."

South Korea's FIU fines Bithumb $24.6 million and orders a 6-month partial business suspension

According to ChainCatcher, CoinDesk reported that South Korea's Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) fined cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb 36.8 billion won (approximately $24.6 million) for violating anti-money laundering regulations and ordered a 6-month partial business suspension.

According to the Financial Services Commission, this penalty is based on the Specific Financial Transaction Information Reporting and Utilization Act, stemming from approximately 6.65 million violations by Bithumb, of which about 3.55 million involved failure to perform customer identity verification (KYC) obligations, and about 3.04 million involved failing to effectively intercept restricted transactions.

Regulators also imposed penalties on responsible individuals: Bithumb's CEO received a warning, and the compliance report head was suspended for 6 months.

These violations stem from on-site inspections conducted by South Korean regulators on the five major exchanges: Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit, and Gopax, between 2024 and 2025.

Strategy spent $1.57 billion last week to acquire 22,337 Bitcoins

According to ChainCatcher, Michael Saylor disclosed on the X platform that Strategy purchased another 22,337 BTC last week, costing approximately $1.57 billion, with an average price of about $70,194 per coin.

As of March 15, 2026, Strategy holds a total of 761,068 BTC, with a total holding cost of approximately $57.61 billion and an average purchase price of about $75,696 per coin.

Meta plans to spend $27 billion to purchase AI infrastructure services from Nebius

According to ChainCatcher, Jin10 data reported that Meta will pay up to $27 billion over the next five years to acquire cutting-edge AI infrastructure provided by cloud service provider Nebius Group. The Dutch company Nebius stated in a statement released on Monday that it will provide Meta with $12 billion in dedicated computing power starting in early 2027.

Meta has also committed to purchasing up to $15 billion in additional computing power. This expenditure is one of the largest single contracts Meta has signed, highlighting its urgent need to expand computing power to support AI product development. Last year, it also signed a separate contract worth $3 billion with Nebius.

Metaplanet CEO: Plans to raise approximately $765 million to increase Bitcoin holdings
According to ChainCatcher, Metaplanet CEO Simon Gerovich stated that Metaplanet plans to raise approximately $765 million through various channels to increase its Bitcoin holdings to 210,000 coins. Specific fundraising paths include: raising approximately $255 million by issuing new shares to global institutional investors at a 2% premium, along with warrants with a 10% premium exercise price, which could yield an additional approximately $276 million upon exercise.

Additionally, Metaplanet has issued 100 million mobile exercise price warrants (MSW) with mNAV terms, with the exercise condition being that the stock price must be above 1.01 times mNAV, which is expected to raise an additional $234 million. Simon Gerovich stated that this mechanism aims to ensure that each newly issued share enhances the per-share Bitcoin holding and increases shareholder value.

In 2025, the real trading volume of global stablecoins will account for less than 1%, with the vast majority being "wash trading"

According to ChainCatcher, China Securities Journal reported that the global on-chain trading volume of stablecoins in 2025, after deduplication and adjustment for wash trading, is approximately $25 trillion, but the proportion of transactions with actual payment backgrounds is less than 1%, with the vast majority being "wash trading."

This statistic covers 36 mainstream stablecoins on 16 major public chains, including Ethereum, Tron, and Solana. Analysis shows that "wash trading" mainly consists of three categories: first, internal fund transfers within the same institution, i.e., internal transfers between different wallets or protocols under the same institution; second, on-chain protocol split transfers, where the same transaction is inflated due to multiple internal calls; third, stablecoins used as intermediary currencies for cryptocurrency exchanges, leading to the same funds being counted multiple times.

In terms of real payment scenarios, in 2025, 15 leading cryptocurrency payment institutions, including Coinbase, BVNK, Bitpay, and Binance Pay, processed stablecoin transactions totaling $132 billion, while international card organizations like Visa processed approximately $4.5 billion in stablecoin-related transactions. Even including the use of stablecoins in illegal activities such as money laundering, telecom fraud, and online gambling, the proportion of transactions with actual payment backgrounds remains less than 1%.

Citi, PwC, and Solana jointly completed a trade finance tokenization proof of concept

According to ChainCatcher, Citi, PwC, and Solana have jointly completed a trade finance tokenization proof of concept (PoC) — suppliers can issue tokenized payment vouchers to sell to banks at a discount, achieving instant settlement instead of waiting for months.

Traditional financial giants have sent another signal to explore real-world assets (RWA) on the Solana chain.

Sources: ByteDance suspends global launch plan for Seedance 2.0 due to copyright disputes

According to ChainCatcher, IT Home cited The Information reporting that two insiders stated that TikTok's Chinese parent company ByteDance has suspended its global launch plan for its latest video generation model Seedance 2.0 after a series of copyright disputes with several major Hollywood studios and streaming platforms.

It was reported that ByteDance originally planned to launch this new video model to global users in mid-March but has now suspended the related plan. The report added that ByteDance's legal team is investigating and resolving potential legal issues, and engineers are also increasing protective mechanisms to prevent the model from generating content that may lead to further intellectual property infringements.

White hat hacker discovers a vulnerability in Injective that endangers $500 million in assets, receiving only a $50,000 reward that has not yet been paid

According to ChainCatcher, white hat hacker f4lc0n disclosed on the X platform that he discovered a "critical" vulnerability in the Injective protocol that could lead to the direct withdrawal of over $500 million in on-chain assets, but the project team only offered him a $50,000 reward, far below the planned maximum of $500,000 for that level.

f4lc0n stated that the vulnerability allows any user to empty any on-chain account without special permissions. After submitting the report through Immunefi, the Injective team initiated a mainnet upgrade vote to fix the vulnerability the next day, but has been "unreachable" for the following three months.

Currently, f4lc0n has disputed the amount of the reward and stated that the $50,000 reward has not yet been paid. He announced that he would allocate 10% of future bug bounty income to continue publicly discussing this matter until Injective pays the standard compensation.

A suspected hacker address manipulated THE prices, triggering a cascading liquidation in Venus Protocol, profiting over $5.07 million

According to ChainCatcher, a wallet address that received 7,447 ETH (approximately $16.29 million) from Tornado Cash, "0x7a7," is suspected to be behind the cascading liquidation event of CAKE/THE on Venus Protocol.

The attacker borrowed $9.92 million in stablecoins using ETH as collateral, then hoarded THE and allegedly manipulated the price on centralized exchanges, subsequently depositing 36.1 million THE into Venus to borrow BTC, BNB, CAKE, and other assets.

About 40 minutes later, the price of THE collapsed, triggering a series of liquidations, resulting in $2.15 million in bad debts for Venus, with the attacker extracting approximately $5.07 million in assets, with real profits potentially higher — mainly from short positions on centralized exchanges during the crash.

Meme Popularity Rankings

According to meme token tracking and analysis platform GMGN, as of March 17, 09:00,

The top five popular tokens on ETH in the past 24 hours are: SHIB, LINK, PEPE, UNI, ONDO

The top five popular tokens on Solana in the past 24 hours are: Punch, WhiteWhale, UGOR, neet, Buttcoin

The top five popular tokens on Base in the past 24 hours are: PEPE, B3, SKYA, TOSHI, toby

What are some interesting articles worth reading in the past 24 hours?

For Web3, Cai Wensheng is determined to get his hands dirty this time

If there are any investors worth looking forward to in the current crypto industry, Cai Wensheng should be one.

Starting from the early domain business, to 58.com, Baofeng Video, Meitu Xiuxiu successively emerging, and then advocating Meitu to hoard coins, suffering losses of hundreds of millions and being criticized for speculating on coins, cashing out to buy buildings after stepping down as chairman, betting on Hong Kong Web3.

He is a person repeatedly misunderstood by the times, yet repeatedly validated by the times.

But this time, he decided to "get his hands dirty."

Becoming a hacker's ATM yet standing firm, the embarrassment reflected by Venus's theft

Hackers are the deadly enemies of any DeFi protocol; the vast majority of DeFi protocols collapse after facing million-dollar level attack losses. However, as the flagship lending protocol of BNB Chain and a project incubated internally by Binance, Venus Protocol is clearly a rare exception.

Venus was developed by the Swipe team acquired by Binance and launched shortly after the BNB Chain mainnet went live in 2020, quickly becoming the largest lending protocol in terms of locked assets and user scale on BNB Chain. According to RootData, Venus's token FDV is currently $94 million, and its TVL is $1.47 billion.

Recently, Venus has once again become a target for hacker attacks. According to the official team's review, the attacker began accumulating THE tokens slowly through normal deposit processes starting in June 2025, ultimately holding about 12.2 million THE, worth $2.4 million.

Michael Saylor's advice to young people: read more history and science fiction, use AI to accelerate personal growth
In an interview, MicroStrategy founder Michael Saylor characterized Bitcoin as digital capital and gold, proposing a three-tier investment framework, stating that its volatility continues to decline and long-term returns outperform traditional assets, while advising young people to read historical science fiction, make good use of AI, and focus on future technology fields.