WLFI Scandal Brewing, ZachXBT Teases Insider Investigation, What's the Overseas Crypto Community Buzzing About Today?

Publication Date: February 24, 2025
Author: BlockBeats Editorial Team

Over the past 24 hours, the crypto market has shown a clear trend of differentiation in multiple dimensions. The mainstream discussion has focused on the anticipation of insider trading investigations and trust controversies sparked by projects with political backgrounds; at the ecosystem level, the Solana ecosystem has seen project liquidations and public opinion pressure, the Perp DEX track has advanced new testing and funding expansion while also facing a reexamination of the "super app" narrative.

Section 1: Mainstream Topics

1. ZachXBT Teases Major Investigation Pointing to "One of the Most Profitable Businesses" in Crypto Industry

Renowned on-chain investigator ZachXBT announced on February 23 that he will release a major investigation on February 26, targeting "one of the most profitable businesses" in the crypto industry. He emphasized that the investigation involves multiple employees consistently abusing internal data for insider trading, constituting systematic and ongoing misconduct. While the specific target has not been disclosed, the three key words "involving multiple employees, long-term operation, and internal data abuse" have raised significant market alertness.

Speculation surrounding the target of the investigation quickly spread, with discussions mainly focusing on projects such as Polymarket, WLFI, Pump.fun, Bonk, and Hyperliquid. Among them, Polymarket is considered one of the most direct suspects due to its prediction market nature and employees' potential access to resolution or order flow data, especially considering ZachXBT's recent investigation into its "fake betting" incident. Meanwhile, WLFI is frequently mentioned due to its association with the Trump family and the coincidental timing of Eric Trump's deleted posts.

Community discussions heated up rapidly. Some users joked that "99% of crypto companies are currently conducting security self-audits," while others bluntly stated that "insider trading in Trump family projects is no longer a secret." Ironically, Polymarket even launched a prediction market about the "identity of ZachXBT's investigation target," with itself not included as an option, leading to a wave of ridicule. The related topic's retweets and replies reached tens of thousands, becoming one of the most discussed topics of the day.

2. Eric Trump Mass Deletes Posts, WLFI Claims Co-Founder Accounts Were Hacked

Recently, Eric Trump (son of Donald Trump) was found to have deleted a large number of tweets related to WLFI and its stablecoin, USD1, quickly attracting market attention and speculation. In response, the WLFI team stated that they experienced a "coordinated attack" that day, with several co-founders' accounts compromised, and the attackers hired KOLs to spread FUD while massively shorting $WLFI simultaneously.

WLFI emphasized that this incident only involved social media account access, and the smart contract and fund wallet were not affected. USD1 remained pegged 1:1 and quickly regained stability. The officials further clarified that the issue was limited to account breaches and did not pose any protocol or asset security risks.

However, the community sentiment did not settle. Numerous screenshots showed Eric Trump's post deletion history, with some users exclaiming, "This looks like Luna 2.0" and "The Trump family is cleaning up again." Questions dominated, with some asking, "If it was just an attack, why did Eric delete posts at the same time," while others directly pointed fingers at the upcoming ZachXBT investigation, speculating that the target might be WLFI.

Supporters believed that the rapid recovery of USD1 itself demonstrated the effectiveness of the mechanism, as the FUD did not prevail. Opponents continued to criticize the Trump family projects for long-standing manipulation and insider activities, from $TRUMP to $WLFI, always oriented towards "harvesting." Overall, public opinion was significantly negative and strongly linked to the ZachXBT investigation.

3. Anthropic Accuses Chinese AI Lab of Model Distillation, Security Stocks Plummet

Anthropic recently publicly accused Chinese AI labs such as DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, MiniMax, etc., of conducting "industrial-grade distillation" of the Claude model through about 24,000 fake accounts and over 16 million interactions, removing the original security mechanisms for training their own models. This accusation quickly attracted high attention from the global AI community and capital markets.

Almost simultaneously, Anthropic released Claude Code Security, an automated code vulnerability scanning tool. Subsequently, the U.S. digital security sector experienced severe volatility, with a total market cap evaporation of over $52.6 billion in two days. CrowdStrike's stock price fell by about 20%, evaporating $19.6 billion in market cap; Palo Alto fell by 8.9%, evaporating approximately $11.7 billion; Cloudflare fell by 18.5%, evaporating about $11.2 billion. IBM then fell by 13% in a single day as Claude can handle legacy code such as COBOL, evaporating approximately $30 billion in market cap.

Market discussions quickly escalated to the height of an "AI Cold War." Some views believed that Chinese open-source models were fundamentally distilled versions of Claude, while others responded with ironic humor, "You train models with the internet, we train models with your models." Meanwhile, many voices thought the market reaction was clearly excessive, pointing out that Claude Code Security was just a code scanning tool and could not replace a complete security product system, yet it triggered panic selling.

Some have also pointed out the irony of it all. Anthropic itself relies on massive data to train its models, yet while accusing others of "stealing intellectual property," it is currently negotiating with the Pentagon on military use restrictions. The intertwining of multiple narratives has caused this event to ferment simultaneously on the technological, capital, and geopolitical levels.

4. WLFI Maldives Project and "Gaza Stablecoin" Trigger New Controversy

Eric Trump, the son of Donald Trump, recently announced that the Trump Group will collaborate with WLFI to develop a tokenized luxury resort project in the Maldives, which plans to include about 100 beach and overwater villas, emphasizing a model that combines "physical assets with digital assets." This news quickly sparked discussions in the crypto community.

At the same time, Deltaone reported that Trump's so-called "peace commission" is exploring issuing a US dollar stablecoin for Gaza, aimed at post-war economic reconstruction and digitally restricting funds flow to Hamas. The plan is led by Israeli tech advisors and envisions collaboration with Gaza's new tech-bureaucratic government.

The overall market response has been mostly negative. Some view the Maldives project as another attempt by the Trump family in the RWA direction, but more discussions have tied it to WLFI's current post deletion and security dispute, questioning "another beautifully packaged harvesting narrative." As for the concept of the "Gaza Stablecoin," it has been heavily criticized as the "most outrageous crypto headline," with some bluntly stating that "using stablecoins to achieve peace is fundamentally about control, not peace."

In the current public opinion environment, these two pieces of news have not had a positive effect but have further reinforced the negative impression that the "Trump family sees crypto as an ATM."

5. Crypto.com Approved to Become a US National Crypto Trust Bank

Crypto.com recently received conditional approval from the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to become a national crypto trust bank, joining institutions such as Ripple, Circle, Paxos, Fidelity, and others. Previously, BitGo had already received full approval. It is also the first crypto exchange to receive this type of accreditation.

After obtaining this license, Crypto.com will be able to provide custody, settlement, and other banking-level services within a regulated framework, seen as an important step for the crypto industry to further integrate into the traditional financial system. The mainstream view is that this signifies the gradual opening of channels for institutional funds to enter the crypto market, which bodes well for stablecoins and compliant custody services in the long run.

However, some remain cautious. Some users have pointed out that "conditional approval" means they still need to meet strict requirements such as capital adequacy, anti-money laundering, and compliant operations, indicating that the actual implementation threshold is not low. Some have sarcastically questioned regulatory transparency and even linked it to the recent WLFI controversy.

Overall, the market sentiment of this message is mostly positive. However, under the pressure of high-intensity topics such as the ZachXBT survey, WLFI scandal, and AI Cold War, the discussion heat has been noticeably diverted.

II. Mainstream Ecosystem Dynamics

1. Solana

The Solana ecosystem has recently experienced a significant contraction. On February 23, Step Finance announced the full cessation of operations for Step Finance, SolanaFloor, and Remora Markets. Previously, the company suffered a hack at the end of January, followed by attempts at fundraising and seeking acquisition, but ultimately failed to reach a viable solution. The team stated that they would initiate a buyback for STEP holders based on a snapshot taken before the incident and provide a 1:1 redemption process for Remora's rToken holders.

Simultaneously, SolanaFloor's social accounts have stopped updating synchronously, with existing websites, videos, and newsletters all being permanently archived. The community widely expressed regret, calling it "the end of an era." Solana Sensei publicly expressed willingness to self-fund a team to take over and continue operating the SolanaFloor account. Projects like DeFi Dev Corp also posted expressing willingness to discuss acquisition or continuation plans, attempting to preserve the ecosystem's memory.

In terms of public opinion, in the Polymarket betting market on "ZachXBT about to expose insider trading targets," Meteora ranks first in probability, with the top three all being Solana ecosystem projects. This outcome further pushes Solana into the public spotlight, causing the ecosystem to receive even higher attention amid an already turbulent background.

2. Perp DEX

The perpetual contract project Perpl from the Monad ecosystem announced that it will launch its private beta tomorrow, with the community entering an advanced testing anticipation phase, leading to a significantly warmer discussion atmosphere.

Meanwhile, the Based platform announced the completion of a $11.5 million funding round, led by Pantera Capital, with Coinbase Ventures, Wintermute Ventures, and Karatage participating. The funding will be used to accelerate the development of an on-chain SuperApp integrating perpetual contracts, prediction markets, spot trading, and real-world consumption scenarios. The platform has been launched on mobile and web, with a total trading volume exceeding $39 billion.

3. Other

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev has announced the launch of the Robinhood Ventures platform, allowing retail investors to participate directly in private placements with no accreditation barrier and no high minimum investment requirement, attempting to initiate a new "venture capitalism for all" model.

The community's reaction has been clearly divided. Supporters believe this is a true democratization of the private placement market, breaking the traditional venture capital's early-stage project access monopoly. Critics, on the other hand, express concern that this could become a channel for VCs to offload liquidity risk onto retail investors, pushing a large number of projects lacking exit strategies to retail investors, stating that "the exclusive advantage of traditional venture capital is coming to an end, but the risk has not disappeared."

Overall, this move is seen as part of a financial structure reshaping, once again sparking discussions about private placement market transparency and risk allocation mechanisms.