Crypto Vesting

The serial entrepreneur who founded the Mt. Gox crypto exchange and co-founded Ripple has shared new details about his ambitious space station company Vast, which he hopes will help expand the human race into a multi-planetary species.

In a March 20 interview with Bloomberg, Jed McCaleb confirmed that Vast is on track to launch Haven-1 — a commercial space station still under construction — into orbit by May 2026.

If McCaleb’s startup succeeds, it will be better positioned to win a lucrative contract from the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration to replace the International Space Station. Contracts are expected to be handed out in mid-2026.

If Vast fails or loses the NASA contract to a competitor, McCaleb could see $1 billion wiped from his net worth and the commercial future of his space station firm would be in doubt, according to the

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Bitcoin (BTC) price rallied to an intraday high of $87,453 in the early hours of the NY trading session but quickly retraced its gains to $83,655 shortly after US President Donald Trump made a video appearance at the Digital Asset Summit in New York.

Prior to the video statement, rumors circulated on X, suggesting that President Trump would announce zero capital gains taxes on certain cryptocurrencies or issue a favorable statement about the US strategic Bitcoin reserve. 

To the disappointment of some traders, neither rumor proved to be true, and Trump simply doubled down on his promise not to sell Bitcoin that has been confiscated by the government, and he called for Congress to enact clear stablecoin legislation as soon as possible.

The most positive statement made by President Trump was his restated goal of making the US the leader in

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Marco Santori, former chief legal officer at crypto exchange Kraken, praised the political campaign donations made by industry firms during the 2024 election as “democracy at work.”

In an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph, the former Kraken executive argued that crypto voters tilted the election in favor of then-candidate Donald Trump and the Republican Party.

The executive also said that the donations from crypto firms, many of which are now having regulatory lawsuits dismissed, do not represent conflicts of interest. Santori told Cointelegraph:

“Detractors only call it a conflict of interest when it is a cause they do not believe in, otherwise, it’s just democracy at work. It is people advocating for their own benefits — people like you and me. That is what is happening, and that is what happened in the last election.”

“Look at what happened in November. Who can deny that crypto was responsible for 4%-5%

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The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) — the US’s primary clearinghouse for securities transactions — has committed to promoting Ethereum’s ERC-3643 standard for permissioned securities tokens, according to a March 20 announcement. 

DTCC is joining the ERC3643 Association, a nonprofit dedicated to catalyzing the standard’s adoption with the goal of “promoting and advancing the ERC3643 token standard,” it said.

The endorsement highlights how US regulators are embracing tokenization after President Donald Trump vowed to make America the “world’s crypto capital.” 

It also suggests that the Ethereum blockchain network may play an important role in the US’s permissioned security token ecosystem. 

“DTCC will help lead the future of tokenization and support institutional adoption at scale,” Dennis O’Connell, president of the ERC3643 Association, said in a statement.

ERC-3643 is a standard for permissioned Ethereum tokens. Source: ERC3643.org

Related: Tokenization can

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Bitcoin (BTC) volatility climbed to 3.6% on March 19 — the highest point since August 2024, according to data from CoinGlass.

The volatility reflects heightened market uncertainty amid structural unknowns in the US economy, according to Uldis Tearudklans, chief revenue officer at UK-based cryptocurrency exchange Paybis.

“The policy landscape is becoming more complex with the emergence of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency,” Tearudklans said. “While the initiative to reduce government spending has bipartisan backing, the broader economic effects — particularly on employment and consumer demand — remain difficult to quantify.”

The Department of Government Efficiency claims to have generated an estimated savings of $115 billion for the US government as of March 19. The alleged savings include workforce reductions, asset sales, grant cancellations, and regulatory savings.

Bitcoin volatility history from March 2013 to March 2025. Source:

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The US Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Corporation Finance has clarified its views on proof-of-work mining, arguing that such activities do not constitute “the offer and sale of securities” as outlined in the Securities Act of 1933, so long as they meet certain criteria.

In a March 20 statement, the SEC division addressed the “mining of crypto assets that are intrinsically linked to the programmatic functioning of a public, permissionless network” and determined that decentralized PoW networks should not be treated as securities.

Although the SEC’s statement did not name any specific blockchain, its views on certain PoW activities apply to permissionless networks where mining is used to participate in the consensus mechanism. The statement applies to solo miners and mining pools participating in such networks. 

The SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance gives its view on PoW “protocol mining activities.” Source: SEC

Although

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Pump.fun has launched its own decentralized exchange (DEX) called PumpSwap, potentially displacing Raydium as the primary trading venue for Solana (SOL) memecoins. 

Starting on March 20, memecoins that successfully bootstrap liquidity, or “bond,” on Pump.fun will migrate directly to PumpSwap, Pump.fun said in an X post. 

Previously, bonded Pump.fun tokens migrated to Raydium, which emerged as Solana’s most popular DEX largely thanks to memecoins trading activity. 

According to Pump.fun, PumpSwap “functions similarly to Raydium V4 & Uniswap V2” and is designed “to create the most frictionless environment for trading coins.”

“[M]igrations were a major point of friction – they slow a coin’s momentum and introduce needless complexity for new users,” Pump.fun said.

“[N]ow, migrations happen instantly and for free.”

Raydium’s trading volumes surged in 2024, largely due to memecoins. Source: DeFiLlama

Related: <a data-ct-non-breakable="null" href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/solana-shorts-spike-on-memecoin-scandals" rel="null" target="null" title="Solana shorts spike

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Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin discussed the future of the smart contract network at the Digital Asset Summit and said layer-2 (L2) scaling networks would continue to be central to the Ethereum ecosystem.

In an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph’s Turner Wright, Lubin said applications will require next-generation databases powered by high-throughput blockchain technologies. The Ethereum co-founder added:

“The Ethereum ecosystem is so big and so mature that it will be best for new kinds of databases — new kinds of layer 2 networks — to set up shop, as layer 2s of Ethereum. We have our own that has some great characteristics called Linea.”

“Another great application, or great layer 2, that’s emerging soon is called MegaETH,” Lubin continued.

The Ethereum co-founder ultimately concluded that newer layer-1 chains will have a tough time competing with the Ethereum network, which already features robust architecture and security guarantees.

Joe Lubin speaking at the Digital Asset Summit. Source: <a

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