Morning Report | USDC issuance increased by approximately 1.7 billion in one week; Aave will launch the Aave Shield feature; total circulation of Ethereum is approximately 121.53 million

整理：ChainCatcher

Important News:

• The main suspect in the money laundering case of cryptocurrency exchange BITGIN has been prosecuted in Taiwan, involving over 150 million New Taiwan dollars
• Argentinian President Milei may be involved in profiting 5 million dollars by promoting the LIBRA token
• Aave will launch the Aave Shield feature, which by default prevents swaps with price impacts exceeding 25%
• Data: The total circulation of Ethereum is approximately 121.53 million, an increase of over 1 million since the merge
• The 315 Gala exposed that AI large models are "poisoned," and "brainwashing" AI has become an industry chain
• USDC issuance increased by approximately 1.7 billion in one week, with reserve assets valued at approximately 78.9 billion dollars
• South Korea will review penalties against Bithumb, with fines possibly exceeding Upbit's 35.2 billion won penalty

What important events happened in the past 24 hours?

USDC issuance increased by approximately 1.7 billion in one week, with reserve assets valued at approximately 78.9 billion dollars

According to ChainCatcher, information from Circle's official website shows that in the week ending March 12 local time, approximately 5.2 billion USDC was issued, about 3.6 billion was redeemed, and the circulation increased by approximately 1.7 billion. As of March 13 local time, the circulation of USDC was approximately 78.7 billion, with reserve assets valued at approximately 78.9 billion dollars.

Aave releases post-analysis of the 50 million dollar loss incident from buying AAVE: the core reason is insufficient market liquidity, not slippage

According to ChainCatcher, Aave released a post-analysis of the swap incident: a user executed a token exchange operation through the CoW Swap router integrated into the Aave interface. The user attempted to exchange 50,432,688 aEthUSDT (valued at approximately 5,043.27 million dollars) for aEthAAVE. Due to the user's order being exceptionally large in a market with insufficient liquidity, the CoW Swap quote was extremely poor, and the user confirmed acceptance of that quote.

It should be noted that the Aave protocol itself was never at risk, as this exchange occurred outside the protocol through the aforementioned third-party swap protocol. Currently, the relevant user has not contacted the Aave team. The key to this incident lies in insufficient market liquidity, not slippage.

Insufficient liquidity refers to the inability to provide enough assets at a specific price to meet large orders in the market, leading to severe price deviations. The user's order far exceeded the market's available liquidity, and the CoW Swap quote was 99.9% lower than the expected market clearing price; the adverse outcome stemmed from the user's confirmation of the quote, not from price changes during execution.

The root cause of this incident was the routing of large trades in a market with insufficient liquidity, leading to extreme price shocks. The user executed the trade after confirming a clear warning on the interface. To prevent similar incidents, Aave Shield will be launched in the swap widget: by default, it will prevent swaps with price impacts exceeding 25%, and users must manually disable it to execute high-risk trades. The transaction generated approximately 110,368 dollars in fees, which will be refunded after user verification.

The 315 Gala exposed that AI large models are "poisoned," and "brainwashing" AI has become an industry chain

According to ChainCatcher, reports from CCTV News indicate that, according to industry insiders, reporters quickly found a business named GEO through multiple online platforms. Service providers engaged in this business on online platforms claim that users only need to pay the corresponding fees to have their products featured in major mainstream AI large models; allowing their product advertisements to become the "standard answers" provided by AI models.

The popularity of the GEO business has spawned many companies and platforms specializing in press release services. They have long undertaken various press release tasks to enable AI large models to reference and capture, becoming an important part of hunting AI large models and conducting data "poisoning."

Michael Saylor releases Bitcoin Tracker information again, possibly hinting at another BTC accumulation

According to ChainCatcher, Strategy founder Michael Saylor has released Bitcoin Tracker-related information again. He stated, "Stretch the orange dot."

Based on previous patterns, Strategy always discloses Bitcoin accumulation information the day after related news is released.

South Korea will review penalties against Bithumb, with fines possibly exceeding Upbit's 35.2 billion won penalty

According to ChainCatcher, South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb has been notified by the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) that it will face a partial business suspension for six months due to violations of the Anti-Money Laundering obligations under the Specific Financial Information Act, and a warning of accountability has been issued to the CEO.

South Korean financial authorities plan to hold an Anti-Money Laundering Sanctions Review Committee on March 16 to ultimately determine the severity of the penalties. The penalty is expected to exceed the previous penalty imposed on Upbit operator Dunamu, which was fined 35.2 billion won and faced a three-month partial business suspension for violations. Due to Bithumb's greater number of violations, the industry generally expects its fine to set a historical high. Bithumb responded that it is still in the pre-notification stage and will fully present improvement measures through subsequent formal procedures.

Data: The total circulation of Ethereum is approximately 121.53 million, an increase of over 1 million since the merge

According to ChainCatcher, statistics from ultrasound.money show that the circulation of Ethereum has increased by over 1 million since the merge, with a total circulation of approximately 121.53 million, and the annualized inflation rate since Ethereum's merge is approximately 0.24%.

Tether's high-frequency diversified investments have totaled 1.6 billion dollars in a few months

According to ChainCatcher, GSR content director Frank Chaparro posted on X that Tether has disclosed at least 1.6 billion dollars in investments over the past few months, including: right-wing social project Rumble: 785 million dollars; gold mining project Elemental Royalty: 250 million dollars; Italian football club Juventus FC: 150 million dollars; gold asset management Gold dot com: 150 million dollars; crypto asset management Anchorage Digital: 100 million dollars; Gold Royalty: over 90 million dollars; robotics project Generative Bionics: 82 million dollars; Bitcoin Lightning Network and stablecoin payment infrastructure company Speed1: 8 million dollars; digital asset infrastructure platform Parfin: amount undisclosed; agricultural company Adecoagro: amount undisclosed.

Argentinian President Milei may be involved in profiting 5 million dollars by promoting the LIBRA token

According to ChainCatcher, Argentinian media El Destape reported that forensic experts extracted an unpublished document from intermediary Mauricio Novelli's phone, detailing the payment agreement of the Libra token scam, totaling 5 million dollars, primarily pointing to Argentinian President Milei.

The document shows that the agreement consists of three payments: an initial payment of 1.5 million dollars in tokens or cash as an advance; a second payment of 1.5 million dollars, contingent on Milei announcing Hayden Davis (CEO of Kelsier Ventures) as his advisor on Twitter; and a final payment of 2 million dollars, contingent on Milei signing a contract regarding blockchain/AI government consulting in person with his sister Karina. The document was created on February 11, 2025, three days before Milei's related tweet and the launch of the Libra token.

Call records have also drawn attention. The forensic report shows that Milei had multiple calls with Novelli within minutes before and after the tweet was published, and his sister Karina was also in frequent contact; after the token price plummeted that night, Milei's advisor Santiago Caputo also joined the call circle late at night, with call records showing that all parties continued to coordinate to respond to the crisis.

Aave will launch the Aave Shield feature, which by default prevents swaps with price impacts exceeding 25%

According to ChainCatcher, Aave released a review of the swap incident stating that a user exchanged approximately 5.043 million dollars of aEth USDT for approximately 36,000 dollars of aEth AAVE through CoW Swap routing on the Aave frontend, with a price impact of about 99.9%.

Aave stated that the transaction occurred within a third-party swap protocol, and the core lending protocol was unaffected. The cause of the incident was that the user executed a large order in a market with extremely low liquidity and confirmed a high-risk quote. Aave stated that it will launch the Aave Shield feature, which by default prevents swaps with price impacts exceeding 25%.

Shandong female police officer cracks down on underground money laundering case involving virtual currency, identifying 12 suspects and 6 wallet addresses

According to ChainCatcher, the Jinan Daily reported that Li Weiwei, a female police officer from the Economic Investigation Unit of the Dezhou Public Security Bureau in Shandong Province, through tracking the flow of funds in a telecom fraud case, organized account circulation patterns and continuously optimized investigative methods.

After detailed analysis, Li Weiwei discovered a new type of criminal model combining "traditional underground money laundering and virtual currency," which is more concealed and harder to trace. After several days of continuous effort, she ultimately identified 12 main criminal suspects, over 100 funding accounts, and 6 virtual currency wallet addresses, and together with the special investigation team, created clear organizational structure and funding flow diagrams, legally freezing the assets involved, successfully solving Dezhou's first underground money laundering case involving virtual currency.

The main suspect in the money laundering case of cryptocurrency exchange BITGIN has been prosecuted in Taiwan, involving over 150 million New Taiwan dollars

According to ChainCatcher, prosecutors in Taiwan have indicted the now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange "BITGIN" and its executives Liu Yusen, CEO Zhang Hansheng, and COO Zhang Yuting, among 10 people, with the Zhang siblings potentially facing 12 years in prison.

Prosecutors accuse the company of collaborating with a fraud group, implementing fraud and money laundering by providing USDT and cooperating with "fake currency dealers" to exchange cash offline, involving 46 victims and defrauding over 150 million New Taiwan dollars, with related funds transferred through cryptocurrency wallets and overseas exchanges to conceal their origins.

The China Internet Finance Association issues a security risk warning for the OpenClaw application
According to ChainCatcher, Jinshi reported that the China Internet Finance Association warns that while the OpenClaw smart body can enhance work efficiency, its default high system permissions and weak security configurations can easily be exploited by attackers, becoming a breakthrough point for stealing sensitive data or illegally manipulating transactions, posing severe risk challenges to the industry.

The China Internet Finance Association recommends that financial consumers be extremely cautious when installing OpenClaw on terminals for online banking, securities trading, payments, and other personal financial services. If installation is necessary, it is advised not to grant operational permissions for financial service systems, to promptly follow up on OpenClaw vulnerability fixes, strictly control the installation of functional plugins, and not to input sensitive information such as ID numbers, bank card numbers, and payment passwords when not in use. Additionally, such applications continuously call large model interfaces during operation, which may incur high token costs, and users are advised to monitor closely.

Meme Popularity Rankings

According to the meme token tracking and analysis platform GMGN, as of March 16, 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: TRUST, Punch, neet, Buttcoin, WOJAK

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

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

In fact, ETH scaling is a major benefit for L2

On February 3, Vitalik Buterin posted on X, garnering over 6 million views. "The initial vision of L2 and its role in ETH no longer makes sense," he wrote, "we need a new path."

Stakeholders in competing blockchains quickly rendered this as a failure. Cryptocurrency news media called it a "major setback." The narrative that ultimately formed was that ETH finally admitted failure— the rollup-centric roadmap was unworkable, while the monolithic scaling solutions adopted by blockchains like Solana were proven correct.

This assertion is incorrect. If you make investment decisions based on this assertion, you will face the risk of being on the wrong side and missing out on the most significant infrastructure changes currently happening in the cryptocurrency space.

Why did the star Web3 project Across Protocol choose to abandon DAO?

The proposal for Across to privatize itself is a rare move, but it comes at a time when the industry is beginning to acknowledge that DAOs are a difficult organizational structure to operate.
Dissecting the public chain Pharos capital game: Is the 950 million dollar valuation supported by photovoltaic and other assets, a shell transaction under layers of betting?
After several months, the Layer 1 public chain track has recently seen financing at the 1 billion dollar level, with Pharos, claiming to be a high-performance parallel Layer 1 public chain, announcing a new round of capital cooperation upgrade with Hong Kong Stock Exchange-listed company Xiexin New Energy, which completed an investment subscription in Pharos at a valuation of 950 million dollars, amounting to 24.73 million dollars.

Xiexin New Energy is a well-known private photovoltaic power generation company in China, mainly engaged in the development, construction, operation, and management of solar power plants, which aligns very well with Pharos's focus on RWA development direction, making it appear to be a transaction of positive strategic significance for both parties.

However, this transaction has also raised many questions in the market. In the current bleak secondary market, can Layer 1 and RWA track projects really achieve a 1 billion dollar valuation in the primary market? Will listed companies easily invest in such high-risk assets?