ChainCatcher news, according to Blockworks, the developer of the crypto shooting game "Shrapnel," Neon Machine, is facing serious financial difficulties. So far, the company has spent nearly $86.9 million in operating funds, with projected revenue of $21.7 million for 2024, but high operating costs of about $33 million have prevented it from becoming profitable, resulting in a net loss of $11.4 million.Sources say that Neon Machine's monthly cash burn is as high as $2 million to $3.5 million, and it is currently in a state of cash depletion, with significant unpaid debts, owing millions of dollars to external suppliers. The company’s new round of financing, originally scheduled for early 2025, has also failed to materialize. Previously, the company completed a $20 million Series A funding round in October 2023, led by Polychain Capital.Moreover, the company's workforce has sharply decreased from nearly a hundred at its peak to just over a dozen, with very few people actually involved in the development of "Shrapnel." To extend its cash flow, the company has implemented at least three rounds of layoffs and has asked high-salaried employees to voluntarily take a pay cut of about 20%. The Seattle headquarters was also closed at the end of March.Despite this, the company still claims to be "in the strongest position ever" and plans to launch "Shrapnel" globally by the end of 2025. However, several insiders close to Neon Machine are skeptical about whether the game can be launched smoothly, stating that the project is not yet complete and funds have been exhausted.In addition, according to People's Daily - Jinbao News, Lingjing People's Game Laboratory held talks with the creative team of "Shrapnel" (tentative Chinese name: 弹片), reaching a preliminary cooperation intention on issues such as the minting and distribution of game digital assets in the Chinese market, compliance circulation, and market operation.

ChainCatcher news, TRON founder Justin Sun disclosed at a press conference that after providing financial assistance to the stablecoin TUSD under Techteryx, he discovered that financial institutions including Hong Kong trust company First Digital Trust Limited (FDT) and Legacy Trust Company Limited (Legacy Trust), as well as a private company in Dubai, illegally misappropriated $456 million of TUSD's fiat reserves.Justin Sun stated that Vincent Chok, CEO and Director of FDT and Legacy Trust, approved the illegal transfer of public assets, harming public interests and jeopardizing Hong Kong's reputation as a global financial center. Although Justin Sun himself provided sufficient liquidity for TUSD through his own assets, safeguarding the interests of all TUSD holders, the incident exposed serious loopholes in the trust industry. He called on Hong Kong regulators to severely punish the fraudsters and reform industry standards.

ChainCatcher news reports that on-chain detective ZachXBT revealed that during his assistance in freezing Bybit hacker funds, he became acutely aware of the serious issues regarding security vulnerabilities and hacker attacks in the crypto industry. He stated that multiple "decentralized" protocols have recently derived almost 100% of their monthly trading volume and fees from the North Korean hacker group DPRK, yet these projects refuse to take any responsibility.Moreover, centralized exchanges (CEX) are slow to respond, allowing hackers to launder money in just a few minutes, while some CEXs take hours to take action. ZachXBT also criticized the KYT (Know Your Transaction) system for its serious flaws, which are easy to circumvent, and noted that the KYC (Know Your Customer) mechanism poses more of a data leak risk for ordinary users due to account leaks and insider issues, while being nearly ineffective in preventing the flow of illegal funds.He pointed out that North Korean hackers DPRK recently successfully laundered $1.4 billion, fully exposing the compliance and security system vulnerabilities within the industry, and expressed concern that only government-mandated regulations could lead to improvements in the industry.

ChainCatcher news, according to Jinshi reports, the European Central Bank's payment system experienced a major failure last Thursday, and the chaos that ensued during the 10 hours it took to identify and resolve the issue led to disruptions in welfare payments for over 15,000 Greeks, a large number of wages and pensions in Austria, and several financial transactions. The situation could have potentially worsened.If the situation had occurred or continued into the next day, i.e., at the end of February, it would have been a payday for many public sector employees, pensioners, and welfare recipients, and this chaos could have impacted millions of people and businesses, putting a strain on the banking system. According to officials from the Eurozone central bank, the core of the escalating turmoil was a hardware failure, but technicians took hours to identify the problem after initially misdiagnosing a database issue.Markus Ferber, a member of the European Parliament and a member of the committee overseeing the European Central Bank, stated, "A hardware failure is forgivable, but it is inexcusable if there is no backup that can be immediately activated when problems arise." An official from the European Central Bank indicated that the affected hardware did indeed have multiple backups, and the bank is analyzing why they did not activate.

ChainCatcher message, trader Eugene Ng Ah Sio posted: "I was heavily long before Trump made the announcement, but I have now closed most of my long positions. When BTC was at $80,000 and SOL at $130, the risk-reward ratio was extremely favorable for longs, but now I believe it is relatively neutral.Currently, late-entry shorts and longs will be harvested, and only disciplined traders can remain profitable.I have not yet determined whether this is a bullish reclaim of the range or a bearish downside retest; I will let the price action tell me, especially after March 7. There is a nearby time point that actually makes decision-making relatively simple—follow the market's strength or weakness after March 7. Therefore, before that, I will maintain a lighter overall risk exposure.Personally, I do not believe Trump can include SOL / ADA / XRP in the strategic reserves and get it passed in Congress, but he has indeed shown the ability to get what he wants, so we shall see."

ChainCatcher news, according to X user @R10coin_, "Ronaldinho is collaborating with a team in China (Shenzhen) to issue tokens and defraud investors.In May 2024, @R10coin_ officially began discussions with Ronaldinho regarding the issuance of cryptocurrency. After more than six months of detailed negotiations, in January 2025, @R10coin_ formally signed a cooperation agreement with Mr. Ronaldinho. The total contract amount is 6 million USD, of which 3 million USD has been paid as a deposit after the contract was signed.Without communicating with @R10coin_ and without their consent, Ronaldinho signed another cooperation agreement worth 10 million USD with another company and received a 5 million USD deposit, subsequently starting to promote and warm up for that company's tokens.Investigations revealed that the company is located in Shenzhen, China, and its actions are extremely malicious. The company frequently releases worthless "meme" coins for false advertising, launching more than ten fraudulent virtual currency projects each month. They use exaggerated marketing tactics to quickly attract investor funds, employing a "quick harvest" model to rapidly pump and dump, harvesting investor funds within just one hour before fleeing with the money.Ronaldinho sold his X account for 5 million USD to a company in Shenzhen, China, to promote a cryptocurrency.As a victim, @R10coin_ hereby solemnly reminds all investors not to participate in any projects of this company.@R10coin_ publicly condemns the fraudulent actions of Ronaldinho and his partners and will disclose the contract signed with Ronaldinho as well as some promotional materials to prove his breach of contract and the original intention of @R10coin_'s cooperation."Note: Currently, Ronaldinho's X account has not responded to the above information.

ChainCatcher news, according to data from Bloomberg Intelligence, among ETF issuers' exposure to the technology sector, VanEck, Invesco, and Fidelity have significantly higher exposure than the average, at 39%, 38%, and 36%, respectively.In contrast, value-oriented ETF issuers such as FlexShares, DFA, and Avantis have noticeably lower exposure to the technology sector, with FlexShares at only 6%. This data suggests that if the market experiences a rotation in the technology sector, the aforementioned high-exposure ETF issuers may face significant impacts.

ChainCatcher news, Cobo co-founder and CEO Shen Yu posted on platform X, stating that the Bybit $1.5 billion security incident and multiple cases of Safe owner tampering have exposed three major pain points in current blockchain security:Front-end/plugins are easily tampered with, and users cannot verify signed data;The environment of multi-signature key holders lacks independence and has no mandatory review mechanism;Hardware wallet transaction parsing capabilities are weak, essentially in a blind signing state;

ChainCatcher news, DefiTuna founder Dhirk announced via X platform that he has refunded $30,000 and severed ties with investor Kelsier due to Kelsier's alleged involvement in market manipulation.Dhirk stated: "Everyone internally knows there is a huge network of influencers who, with the support of Ben's leadership team, have made millions from the Meteora community."According to SolanaFloor, the DefiTuna founder claimed that Kelsier was involved in a well-orchestrated scheme to extract large amounts of funds from the meme coin launchpad platform M3M3. M3M3 was initially packaged as an independent platform but was actually controlled by Meteora co-founder Ben; projects launching on M3M3 were required to allocate token shares to Kelsier's team; DefiTuna co-founder Vlad was passively involved, mistakenly believing the collaboration was legitimate. It is estimated that the Kelsier team has harvested over $200 million in user funds through projects like AIAI, MATES, ENRON, MELANIA, and LIBRA.

ChainCatcher news, according to Bitcoin News, there are rumors that Elon Musk will spend $40 million to air five 30-second ads during the Super Bowl, focusing on the government waste issues revealed by DOGE.

ChainCatcher message, Slow Mist Technology's Chief Information Security Officer 23pds disclosed on social media that the popular trading tool Debot has a security risk of exposing private keys in plaintext within data packets. It is recommended that the Debot development team enhance the product's security level to protect user asset safety.

ChainCatcher news, according to Bitcoin.com, multiple insiders from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in the United States have exposed a series of misconducts by the agency in Operation Chokepoint 2.0 (a crackdown on the crypto industry).According to the revelations, the FDIC employed various means to evade the disclosure requirements of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), including marking documents as attorney-client privileged, conducting incomplete searches within regional systems, and hiding documents generated on collaborative platforms like Microsoft Teams. Insiders claim that about 150 key documents were not submitted.At the same time, the FDIC has also been accused of conducting social media investigations on several well-known figures in the industry, including Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal, WSPN CEO Austin Campbell, Custodia Bank founder Caitlin Long, Castle Island Ventures founder Nic Carter, and Unchained podcast regulatory reporter Veronica Irwin. Insiders stated that they were personally assigned to investigate whether these individuals posed a threat to the FDIC.

ChainCatcher news, Katie Stockton, the founder of Fairlead Strategists, pointed out that Bitcoin may experience bearish momentum in the short term, with expectations of a drop to around $84,500 in the coming weeks, representing a decline of about 10%.If the downward trend continues, the next support level could be at $73,800, indicating a potential drop of 22%. Bitcoin fell below the 50-day moving average last week, confirming mid-term overbought and sell signals, supporting a price correction in the first quarter of 2025.Stockton stated that the negative momentum based on the daily MACD and the 20-day moving average clearly indicates a bearish bias in the short term. However, she remains optimistic about Bitcoin's long-term prospects, noting that the monthly stochastic indicator and MACD continue to support its long-term upward trend. She believes that the correction will present an opportunity to increase Bitcoin investments.

ChainCatcher news, according to NBC News, tech billionaire Musk is facing scrutiny from American conservatives after several prominent right-wing accounts that criticized Musk's views on immigration reported that they were subsequently unable to use the premium features of Musk's social media platform "X."A survey showed that at least 14 conservative accounts indicated late Thursday or Friday that X had revoked their "blue V verification," stripping them of access to various premium features, including monetization through subscriptions and ad revenue sharing. Some accounts claimed that the number of affected accounts was far greater than these.Some conservatives stated that they believe X's actions represent Musk's betrayal, as he is "secretly banning" his conservative critics. Musk acquired Twitter, now known as "X," in 2022 partly because he believed Twitter was unfairly restricting conservative speech. Since then, Musk has referred to himself as an "advocate for free speech."

ChainCatcher message, according to the SoSoValue macro sector display, on December 18th, at the interest rate meeting, the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates by 25 basis points as expected, bringing the target range for the federal funds rate down to 4.25%-4.50%. For the rate cut pace next year, the Federal Reserve adjusted its expectations from "four rate cuts" to "two" through the latest dot plot. In addition, the Federal Reserve raised its expectations for future core PCE inflation and GDP growth, which is consistent with Powell's remarks, all conveying a more "hawkish" signal than the market expected. Data shows that the market risk sentiment VIX index rose to its highest point since early August (when the Bank of Japan raised interest rates).SoSoValue analysts stated that the FOMC proposed an unexpectedly aggressive rate cut plan, coupled with Powell's "hawkish" remarks, led to a shift in market sentiment towards panic, with U.S. Treasuries even overreacting. The U.S. stock market subsequently corrected, while the dollar strengthened. Overall, all risk assets reacted strongly to the FOMC's latest signals. Based on macro data, we believe that the fundamentals of the U.S. economy remain unchanged, the dollar remains strong, and consensus-driven assets such as cryptocurrencies continue to be a destination for capital inflows. Each market correction driven by sentiment in the game is a good entry point, and we recommend maintaining risk exposure at this time.

ChainCatcher news, Grayscale announced that it will open the Horizen Trust (HZEN) investment channel to eligible investors. The fund allows investors to gain exposure to ZEN tokens in the form of securities.As of December 16, the trust's market price per share is $6.40, with approximately $8.7 million in assets under management.