Here’s what happened in crypto today

Today in crypto, Binance froze a market maker’s proceeds after detecting that it sold 66 million MOVE tokens and provided “little” in buy orders, Trump Media is teaming up with Crypto.com to launch a series of “Made In America” crypto and stock exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and decentralized finance (DeFi) lender Nostra paused borrowing on two liquid staking tokens after a critical price feed issue on Starknet.

Movement Network to buy back tokens with $38 million recovered from rogue market maker

The organization behind the Movement Network said it will use $38 million recovered from a market maker to buy back MOVE tokens over the next three months.

On March 24, the Movement Network Foundation said it recovered about $38 million in assets from a market maker tasked with providing liquidity on buy and sell orders for the Movement (MOVE) token on Binance. 

Binance offboarded the market maker due to “market irregularities.” The exchange sanctioned the market maker, freezing its proceeds and forbidding it from further market-making activities.  

Market makers provide liquidity to crypto tokens to attract traders and stabilize their prices. These entities are tasked with providing liquidity on both buy and sell orders to ensure the smooth operation of crypto exchanges. 

According to Binance, the market maker sold 66 million MOVE tokens after the token was listed, while placing “little” in buy orders. These trades netted the market maker $38 million in Tether (USDT) from their trades. 

Binance said it froze the profits and informed the Movement Network Foundation of the incident.

Trump Media looks to partner with Crypto.com to launch ETFs

Trump Media has signed a non-binding agreement with Crypto.com to launch a series of exchange-traded funds in the US.

Trump Technology Group Corp (TMTG) — the operator of the social media platform Truth Social and fintech brand Truth.Fi — is also part of the agreement, which is subject to regulatory approval, according to a March 24 statement from Trump Media.

The parties plan to launch the ETFs later this year through Crypto.com’s broker-dealer, Foris Capital US LLC. The ETFs will consist of digital assets and securities with a “Made in America” focus.

The parties involved expect the ETFs to be widely available internationally, including in the US, Europe and Asia across existing brokerage platforms.

”Once launched, these ETFs will be available on the Crypto.com App for our more than 140 million users around the world,” Crypto.com co-founder and CEO Kris Marszalek said.

DeFi lender Nostra pauses borrowing after price feed error

Nostra, a lending protocol on Starknet, has paused borrowing for two liquid staking tokens after identifying a “critical issue” with its price feeds, the decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol said.

On March 24, errors in Nostra’s price feed inflated the reported prices of xSTRK and sSTRK — two liquid staking derivatives of Starknet’s native STRK token — to approximately three times the tokens’ actual value, Nostra said in a post on the X platform.

According to Nostra, “[s]uch an inflated price feed could have caused unnecessary liquidations of otherwise safe positions, resulting in users with healthy positions getting liquidated.” 

In response, the DeFi protocol has disabled any further borrowing against xSTRK and sSTRK collateral deposits, Nostra said. 

Nostra has also recommended that users with existing xSTRK and sSTRK deposits withdraw the collateral immediately. 

“Since we don’t have a secondary (fallback) oracle to support these assets, as none are available, we are unable to fully prevent similar events from occurring in the future,” Nostra added.

“Our priority has always been and continues to be to keep existing user funds safe and with no fallback oracle, the risks outweigh the benefits,” it said.