Trump's advocacy for crypto legislation could accelerate regulatory clarity, potentially boosting U.S. competitiveness in digital finance.

The post Trump held private meeting with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong before urging banks to support crypto bill appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Binance's APAC expansion could enhance its global influence, emphasizing compliance and innovation in the rapidly growing crypto market.

The post Binance doubles down on APAC, plans 5 new licenses this year to expand global footprint appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

ARK Invest's move signals confidence in Robinhood's growth potential, highlighting a strategic shift towards comprehensive financial services.

The post ARK Invest loads up Robinhood stock ahead of its “Take Flight” event appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Trump's push for crypto collaboration may reshape financial regulations, challenging traditional banks and potentially boosting US crypto leadership.

The post Trump pressures banks to make deal with crypto firms over market structure bill appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan says the Iran attack weekend showed how onchain markets like Hyperliquid are becoming key venues for global trading.

The post Bitwise CIO says weekend Iran strike exposed advantage of 24/7 markets like Hyperliquid appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

Indiana Governor Signs Bill Allowing Bitcoin in State Retirement Plans

Indiana Gov. Mike Braun has signed legislation allowing bitcoin and cryptocurrency investments in the state’s public retirement and savings plans, opening the door for state employees to gain exposure to digital assets through self-directed accounts.

The measure, House Bill 1042, requires Indiana’s public retirement boards, deferred compensation committees, and annuity savings programs to offer self-directed brokerage accounts that include at least one cryptocurrency investment option by July 1, 2027. 

The accounts will allow participants to allocate a portion of their retirement savings to bitcoin, crypto assets, or crypto-linked exchange-traded funds, subject to investment guidelines and oversight established by plan administrators.

Under the law, participants will be able to select and manage their own cryptocurrency holdings alongside traditional assets such as stocks, bonds, and ETFs. Retirement boards will retain authority to set allocation limits, establish administrative fees, and ensure that account valuations reflect prevailing market prices.

The legislation defines cryptocurrency as a virtual currency not issued by a central authority that functions as a medium of exchange and relies on encryption to regulate issuance, verify transfers, and prevent counterfeiting. Indiana lawmakers said the definition provides clarity for public investment programs evaluating digital asset exposure.

Indiana and other U.S. states love bitcoin

With the bill’s passage, Indiana joins a growing list of states exploring the integration of bitcoin and crypto products into public investment portfolios.The proposal comes amid growing interest from U.S. states and municipalities in incorporating digital assets into public portfolios, reflecting broader trends in cryptocurrency adoption and financial innovation.

South Dakota recently introduced House Bill 1155, which would allow the state to invest up to 10% of public funds in Bitcoin.

Earlier this year, Rhode Island lawmakers introduced Senate Bill S2021 to temporarily exempt small Bitcoin transactions from state income and capital gains taxes, with a $5,000 monthly and $20,000 annual cap. 

The bill treats Bitcoin as a “digital, decentralized currency” and allows residents and Rhode Island–based businesses to self-certify eligibility while keeping simple records. 

The exemption would take effect January 1, 2027, and expire January 1, 2028, as a pilot program to reduce tax friction on everyday Bitcoin use.

New Hampshire is another state actively championing Bitcoin.

In May 2025, New Hampshire became the first U.S. state to allow its treasury to invest in Bitcoin and other large-cap digital assets, authorizing up to 5% of certain public funds to be allocated into crypto under House Bill 302. BTC currently qualifies under the market-cap rule.

This post Indiana Governor Signs Bill Allowing Bitcoin in State Retirement Plans first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Former LAPD Officer Convicted in $350,000 Bitcoin Kidnapping and Home Invasion

A Los Angeles County jury has found former Los Angeles Police Department officer Eric Halem guilty of kidnapping and bitcoin robbery in a 2024 home invasion that targeted a teenage cryptocurrency holder.

The verdict followed a two-week trial in Los Angeles County Superior Court, where prosecutors argued that Halem, 38, and three alleged accomplices posed as police officers to gain entry to a high-rise apartment in Koreatown. 

Once inside, they restrained a 17-year-old and his girlfriend and stole a hard drive containing private keys to roughly $350,000 in bitcoin.

The victim, who testified under his first name, Daniel, told jurors that the men threatened to kill him if he did not hand over the device. According to testimony, the group wore vests identifying themselves as police and used an access code obtained from a conspirator who had rented the unit to the teenager, according to The Los Angeles Times. 

They took the elevator to the 18th floor and entered the apartment during the early morning hours of Dec. 28, 2024.

Daniel’s girlfriend was placed in LAPD-issued handcuffs, and Daniel was subdued and cuffed before the suspects demanded the hard drive with the bitcoin. Prosecutors said the teenager complied under threat of being shot.

Halem served 13 years with the Los Angeles Police Department and left the department in 2022. At the time of the robbery, he was working as a reserve officer. Evidence presented at trial showed that he operated a luxury car rental business, DriveLA, and had pursued other ventures, including an app for actors to audition remotely and discussions about a reality television project.

Jurors deliberated for less than a day before returning guilty verdicts on kidnapping and robbery charges. Halem is scheduled to be sentenced on March 31. Prosecutors have said the charges carry the possibility of a life sentence.

A policeman’s oath ‘violation’

In closing arguments, Deputy District Attorney Jane Brownstone told jurors that Halem violated the oath he took as a police officer. She pointed to text messages sent after the robbery in which Halem wrote that he was monitoring police radio traffic. 

After two alleged accomplices were arrested, Halem wrote in another message that he knew they were “talking” and that “Someone I know fed wise called me,” according to evidence shown in court.

Halem’s attorney, Megan Maitia, challenged the prosecution’s case and criticized the investigation. She argued that detectives relied on selected text messages drawn from large volumes of data and failed to corroborate the teenager’s account. 

Daniel admitted during testimony that he had obtained his bitcoin holdings through fraud, though that admission did not negate the robbery charge.

Maitia also questioned the prosecution’s portrayal of the group as organized criminals. Trial testimony indicated that the suspects drove to the scene in a green Range Rover and an orange Lamborghini Urus registered to Halem’s rental business and equipped with GPS trackers.

If Halem had planned the robbery, she asked, why use vehicles that could be traced to him.

Halem did not testify, and the defense called no witnesses.

His co-defendants have not yet stood trial and have maintained their innocence. One of them, Gabby Ben, 51, has prior fraud convictions. 

This post Former LAPD Officer Convicted in $350,000 Bitcoin Kidnapping and Home Invasion first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Is The Collateral, It Just Needs The Credit Markets

Bitcoin is the largest pool of pristine collateral in the world.

It is scarce, globally settled, politically neutral, and cannot be diluted. Few assets combine monetary premium and liquidity at this scale. Yet borrowing against bitcoin remains expensive, fragmented, and short-term.

That mismatch is not primarily about volatility. It is about market structure. BTC-backed lending exists. But BTC-backed credit markets, in the mature sense, largely do not.

Loans Are Not Markets

If you post BTC as collateral and borrow dollars, the mechanics are simple.

Bitcoin is locked. Cash is advanced. If the loan deteriorates, the BTC is liquidated. That is origination.

In mature financial systems, origination is only the beginning. Once a loan is made, it becomes an asset for the lender. That asset can be sold, pledged, financed, or bundled. Loans circulate. Capital is reused. That reuse is what allows credit to scale.

When lenders can finance positions in secondary markets, their capital is no longer trapped. Recycling compresses rates, extends maturities, and deepens liquidity.

BTC-backed lending today largely stops at origination. Most loans remain bilateral or trapped inside pool abstractions. Once capital is deployed, expansion depends on new deposits.

This is why borrowing costs remain high relative to the quality of the collateral. Bitcoin is high-quality. The credit rails are not.

Why DeFi Hit a Ceiling

Early onchain lending tried to rebuild credit markets from scratch.

The first serious designs used orderbooks. Lenders posted offers. Borrowers matched them. In theory, this is how markets should work. In practice, liquidity fragmented and pricing required constant active management. These systems stalled.

The next wave replaced orderbooks with pools. Protocols like Compound and Aave aggregated liquidity and set rates algorithmically based on utilization. Pools solved capital formation. Lending became passive and scalable. Anyone could deposit funds and earn yield without actively managing risk.

But pools flattened market structure. All loans shared the same floating rate. There were no fixed maturities. No differentiated claims. No discrete instruments to trade.

Pools aggregate liquidity efficiently. They do not produce term-structured credit markets.

Without differentiated loan instruments, there is nothing meaningful to securitize or finance. As a result, lending remains shallow and fixed-term borrowing expensive. This is a structural tradeoff, not a minor implementation flaw.

What Has Changed

A new generation of onchain architecture is beginning to reintroduce market structure without sacrificing liquidity.

Instead of abandoning pools entirely, newer designs combine pooled liquidity with orderbooks, fixed maturities, and standardized loan units.

The key shift is turning loans into standardized, fungible claims. Rather than bespoke contracts, fixed-term loans can be represented as zero-coupon units that mature at a defined date. Once issued, those units are identical within a market and can trade at prevailing prices.

That standardization matters. Lenders no longer hold isolated contracts. They hold interchangeable claims. Interchangeable claims concentrate liquidity. Concentrated liquidity tightens spreads. Tight spreads enable continuous price discovery.

In practical terms, fixed-term BTC-backed loans can exist onchain, trade before maturity, and allow lenders to exit without waiting for repayment. Secondary markets can form organically rather than being engineered around pools.

Morpho V2 is one example of this architectural shift, combining onchain orderbooks, intent-based liquidity, and standardized loan units to enable market-based pricing without sacrificing scale. Platforms like Alpen are building the trust-minimized infrastructure that makes this credit formation possible on bitcoin.

The broader point is not any single protocol. It is that the structural ceiling that constrained onchain credit markets is beginning to lift.

Why Loan Standardization & Secondary Markets Matter

In traditional finance, credit scales because loan claims can be financed in deeper funding markets.

A bank originates mortgages. Those loans are packaged into standardized claims that can be traded or pledged. That secondary funding lowers the bank’s cost of capital and liquidity risk, enabling cheaper and longer-term lending. The borrower’s terms do not change. The reuse happens behind the scenes.

The same dynamic can now emerge onchain.

When BTC-backed loans are represented by standardized receipt tokens, they stop being isolated agreements and become financeable claims. Those claims can be sold in secondary markets, pledged as collateral for short-term liquidity, or aggregated into structured portfolios.

At that point, a vault holding diversified BTC-secured loans begins to resemble a Bitcoin-collateralized loan obligation (“bCLO”): a dollar-denominated claim backed by overcollateralized BTC and enforced by code. BTC lending shifts from bilateral loans to the production of reusable collateral objects.

Importantly, this does not require rehypothecating BTC. The bitcoin remains locked and segregated. What circulates are claims on future repayment.

When lenders can exit or finance positions, fixed-term loans no longer need to carry a heavy lockup premium. Capital competes away excess spreads. Term rates compress toward short-term funding rates.

That compression is what transforms collateral into a true funding base.

Trust Still Has to Be Bounded

None of this eliminates risk.

BTC-backed credit markets still depend on custody models, oracle integrity, liquidation depth, and governance boundaries. Onchain architecture does not remove trust. It makes it explicit and opt-in.

Different markets can choose different custody assumptions. Curators can define risk parameters with protections. Oracles can be selected and monitored. Governance authority can be constrained by timelocks and transparency.

The cheapest credit flows to the lowest-trust collateral. If BTC-backed credit is built on discretionary custody or opaque governance, it will carry embedded risk premia. If trust is minimized and clearly bounded, markets will price that accordingly.

Architecture determines where trust lives. Markets determine how much it costs.

The Near-Term Impact

This is not a distant macro thesis. The implications are near-term.

If BTC-backed loan claims become standardized and financeable, borrowing costs compress, longer maturities become viable, institutional desks gain deeper funding options, and BTC holders access more stable liquidity.

More importantly, bitcoin begins to function not only as a store of value, but as base-layer collateral inside its own native credit markets.

In traditional finance, US Treasuries anchor repo markets because they are the most financeable collateral at scale. Bitcoin is already the largest pool of non-sovereign savings in the world. What it lacked were financeable claims capable of functioning as preferred collateral.

That architecture is emerging.

Size and Structure

Credit expands until it meets its constraint. Historically, when collateral could not scale, systems manufactured substitutes. Synthetic safety replaced real savings. Eventually those structures fractured.

Bitcoin does not need synthetic substitutes. It already represents deep, accumulated capital.

But size without structure is inert. A trillion-dollar asset that cannot circulate through mature credit rails remains underutilized. Conversely, sophisticated architecture without meaningful collateral is a toy.

For the first time, bitcoin has both. BTC-backed lending is moving beyond isolated originations and floating-rate pools. Fixed-term, market-priced, reusable loan claims are becoming viable onchain. Secondary markets can form. Capital can recycle.

This does not guarantee dominance or eliminate volatility. It does something more important. It makes it structurally possible for bitcoin to support real credit markets without inheriting the fragility of legacy systems.

That shift is not about chasing yield. It is about fixing the plumbing. When the plumbing changes, everything built on top of it changes too.

You can read the full report in PDF format here.

This is a guest post by David Seroy of Alpen Labs. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

This post Bitcoin Is The Collateral, It Just Needs The Credit Markets first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by David Seroy.

Bitcoin Magazine

Arthur Hayes Confirmed As A Bitcoin 2026 Speaker

Arthur Hayes, one of the most provocative and incisive minds in Bitcoin, has been officially confirmed as a speaker at Bitcoin 2026, returning to the world’s largest Bitcoin conference to deliver his signature blend of macroeconomic analysis, geopolitical insight, and unfiltered conviction on where the global financial system is headed — and why Bitcoin is the only rational response.

As the co-founder of BitMEX and the founder of Maelstrom, Hayes has built a reputation as one of the sharpest macro thinkers in the space, consistently ahead of the curve on the forces driving Bitcoin’s role in the broader monetary landscape. His widely-read essays have become essential reading for traders, institutions, and anyone trying to make sense of a world being reshaped by debt, inflation, and geopolitical fragmentation.

At Bitcoin 2026 in Las Vegas, Hayes will bring his unfiltered perspective on where the global financial order is headed — and what it means for Bitcoin.

Bitcoin 2026 Returns to Las Vegas Bigger Than Ever

Bitcoin 2026 will take place April 27–29 at The Venetian, Las Vegas, and is expected to be the biggest Bitcoin event of the year.

Focused on the future of money, Bitcoin 2026 will bring together Bitcoin builders, investors, miners, policymakers, technologists, and newcomers from around the world. The event will feature a wide range of pass types, including general admission passes designed specifically for those new to Bitcoin, alongside premium passes for professionals, enterprises, and institutions.

With multiple stages, immersive experiences, technical workshops, and headline keynotes, Bitcoin 2026 is designed to serve both first-time attendees and long-time Bitcoiners shaping the next era of global adoption.

Past Bitcoin Conferences in the U.S.

Bitcoin’s flagship conference has scaled dramatically over the past five years:

• 2021 – Miami: 11,000 attendees
• 2022 – Miami: 26,000 attendees
• 2023 – Miami: 15,000 attendees
• 2024 – Nashville: 22,000 attendees
• 2025 – Las Vegas: 35,000 attendees

Get Your Bitcoin 2026 Pass

Bitcoin Magazine readers can save 10% on Bitcoin 2026 tickets for a limited time.

Stay at The official hotel of Bitcoin 2026, The Venetian, and get a guaranteed low rate (saving $437) plus 15% off your pass. Be in the middle of where the fun is all happening, and where the networking never ends.

Bring your whole team to Bitcoin 2026 and get 20% off your entire order, bring more than six in a group and get 25% off for a limited time.

Volunteer at Bitcoin 2026 and get Pro Pass access plus exclusive perks.

Location: The Venetian, Las Vegas
Dates: April 27–29, 2026

With tens of thousands of attendees expected and hundreds of major speakers like Arthur Hayes already confirmed, now is the time to lock in your ticket.

Buy Bitcoin 2026 Tickets — Save 10%

Why Attend Bitcoin 2026?

Bitcoin 2026 is the definitive gathering for anyone serious about the future of money. With 500+ speakers, multiple world-class stages, and programming spanning Bitcoin fundamentals, open-source development, enterprise adoption, mining, energy, AI, policy, and culture, the conference brings every corner of the Bitcoin ecosystem together under one roof.

From headline keynotes on the Nakamoto Stage to deep technical sessions for builders, institutional strategy discussions for enterprises, and beginner-friendly Bitcoin 101 education, Bitcoin 2026 is designed for everyone—from first-time attendees to the leaders shaping Bitcoin’s global adoption.

Whether you’re looking to learn, build, invest, network, or influence, Bitcoin 2026 is where Bitcoin’s next chapter is written.

Bitcoin 2026 Pass Types: Something for Everyone

Bitcoin 2026 offers a range of pass options designed to meet the needs of newcomers, professionals, enterprises, and high-net-worth Bitcoiners alike.

Bitcoin 2026 General Admission Pass

Ideal for newcomers and those looking to experience the heart of the conference.

• Limited access on Days 2 & 3
• Entry to Main Stage
• Access to Genesis Stage
• Full access to the Expo Hall

Bitcoin 2026 Pro Pass

Designed for professionals, operators, and serious Bitcoin participants.

Includes all General Admission features, plus:

• Full 3-day access, including Pro Day
• Entry to the Pro Pass Reception
• Access to Enterprise Hall, Enterprise Stage, and Networking Lounge
• Conference App networking features
• Access to the Bitcoin For Corporations Symposium
• Entry to Compute Village and Energy Stage
• Complimentary lunch, coffee, tea, and snacks
• Dedicated registration and check-in
• Reserved seating at Main Stage
• Huge savings when you bundle your hotel and Pro Pass

Bitcoin 2026 Whale Pass

The all-inclusive, premium Bitcoin 2026 experience.

Includes all Pro Pass features, plus:

• Reserved seating at Main Stage
• All-inclusive gourmet food and beverages
• Entry to Whale Night and Whale Reception
• Access to all official after-parties
• Networking app access to connect with other Whales
• Premium access to The Deep — an exclusive networking lounge with intimate speaker sessions
• Complimentary stay at The Venetian when you bundle your whale pass and hotel (use promo code ‘WHALEHOTEL’ here)

This is the most immersive way to experience Bitcoin 2026.

Bitcoin 2026 After Hours Pass

Your ticket to the night.

Most deals are done with a drink in your hand. Get exclusive access to 3 official Bitcoin 2026 after-parties across Las Vegas — each with a 2-hour open bar — where the real conversations happen and the best connections are made.

• Access to 3 official Bitcoin 2026 after-parties
• 2-hour open bar at each event
• Evening events across Las Vegas, April 27–29
• Network with Bitcoiners, builders, and industry leaders after hours

More headline speaker announcements are coming soon.

Don’t miss Bitcoin 2026.

This post Arthur Hayes Confirmed As A Bitcoin 2026 Speaker first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Jenna Montgomery.

Bitcoin Magazine

The Core Issue: Why Bitcoin Needed A Remodel With Segwit and Taproot

Segregated Witness (BIP by Pieter Wuile, Eric Lombrozo, and Johnson Lau) and Taproot (BIPs by Pieter Wuille, Jonas Nick, Tim Ruffing, and Anthony Towns) are the two largest changes ever made to the Bitcoin protocol. 

The former fundamentally changed the structure of Bitcoin transactions, and in the process Bitcoin blocks, to address inherent limitations of the previous transaction structure. The latter rearchitectured some aspects of Bitcoin’s scripting language, how complex scripts are structured and validated, and introduced a new scheme for creating cryptographic signatures. 

Those are both massive changes in comparison to say, adding a single opcode like CHECKTIMELOCKVERIFY (CLTV) that does nothing more than allow the receiver to opt into preventing their coins from moving for a certain amount of time. 

These changes were made to address very real shortcomings and limitations of Bitcoin as a system. As a foundational layer to maintain a global consensus on the overall state of Bitcoin, i.e all the unspent coins, Bitcoin is an invaluable and brilliant innovation. As a means to directly enable everyone to transact with those coins, it is woefully inadequate to the task. 

In the years since Segregated Witness and Taproot activated, many of the shortcomings they addressed have been forgotten. The reasons and rationale behind the design decisions have been distorted in a game of telephone as time passed as well. 

Both of these changes to the Bitcoin protocol were solutions to large problems in their own right, but they also each laid the groundwork for solving other problems or making other improvements in the future. 

At a time where many new people have joined the network since these changes activated, it is worth going back over and contextualizing the design choices. 

Segregated Witness (BIP 141¹)

When a Bitcoin transaction spends coins, it references them by the output index and transaction ID (TXID) of the transaction that created them. This ensures that a transaction’s inputs can be uniquely identified and be verified with absolute certainty to have never been spent before. 

Prior to Segregated Witness, a transaction structure looked like this:

[Version] [Inputs] [Outputs] [Locktime]

The TXID is a hash of this data. The problem is the ScriptSig (the signatures, hash preimages, etc.) that prove the transaction is valid are part of the inputs. You can change the little program instructions in a ScriptSig, or even change the cryptographic signatures themselves without invalidating them. 

These “malleations” change TXIDs. This is a big problem for pre-signed transactions. 

The Lightning Network, Ark, Spark, BitVM, Discreet Log Contracts (DLCs), all of these scaling tools depend on pre-signed transactions. They require creating an unsigned funding transaction, and pre-signing all the transactions that guarantee proper execution and safety of funds before signing and confirming the funding transaction. All of these systems use multisignature authentication to guarantee safety regarding double-spending (this will be important later). 

If that funding transaction is malleated, and its translation ID changed before it is confirmed in a block, then all of the pre-signed transactions securing second layer funds are invalidated. None of these tools work in an environment where anyone can alter your funding TXID as it propagates across the network. 

Segregated Witness uses an undefined opcode as a sort of blinding curtain where the ScriptSig previously was in the inputs, and moves all of that data to a new transaction field called the “witness.” The new transaction structure looks like this:

[Version] [Marker/Flag] [Inputs] [Outputs] [Witness] [Locktime]

The “blinding curtain” in the inputs allows old nodes to just mark everything behind it as valid by default, and newer nodes to actually apply the appropriate validation logic. A traditional TXID will now no longer change due to altering ScriptSig data in the witness. This solved the problem for pre-signed transactions, and opened the door to every scaling solution being built today that uses them. 

But the transaction merkle tree in a block header only commits to the traditional TXID of a transaction, this creates a problem. There is no commitment to any witness data in a block. This requires the witness commitment, and the witness transaction ID (WTXID). Much the same way that the normal merkle tree of TXIDs is constructed, a tree of each transaction’s WTXID is constructed and committed to in the coinbase transaction’s witness. 

The only difference is the root of the tree is hashed with a reserve value, and that is what is included in the coinbase witness. This allows for that value to be used in future for committing to other new data fields in consensus rules. Prior to the invention of this witness tree commitment (which was thought of by Luke Dashjr), it was assumed Segregated Witness would require a hardfork due to the transaction structure change and the need for a separate witness commitment in the block header. 

The “blinding curtain” design also allows arbitrary upgrades to the scripting system because all new data is ignored and not validated by nodes not supporting it. This allows a new script system to bypass all restrictions of the legacy script system. Flexibility in upgrade paths here is what allowed Schnorr signatures to be integrated, and will allow quantum resistant signatures if necessary (quantum resistant public keys are generally larger than the legacy 520-byte data item limit, as are signatures). 

Segregated Witness solved the fundamental problem of transaction ID malleability that was holding back the development of scalable second layers that can bring Bitcoin to more users, but it also laid the groundwork for whatever scripting improvements were necessary to support and improve those second layers. 

Schnorr Signatures²

Schnorr signatures were invented in 1991 by Claus Schnorr, and promptly patented. In fact, the ECDSA signature scheme was invented because of the patent on Schnorr signatures. The patent on Schnorr signatures expired in February 2010, a little more than a year after the launch of the Bitcoin network. 

If it weren’t for the patent, it is likely that Satoshi (and the rest of the world) would have just used Schnorr signatures from the start. 

There are a few major benefits that Schnorr signatures have over ECDSA:

• Schnorr signatures are provably secure. The mathematical proof that Schnorr signatures are unforgeable/unbreakable is much stronger, and makes less assumptions, than that for ECDSA. Having stronger security guarantees for the cryptography that rests at the heart of Bitcoin is obviously a huge positive. 
• Schnorr signatures are inherently non-malleable, meaning that the types of issues with ECDSA that allowed altering a signature without invalidating it are simply not possible with Schnorr signatures.
• Schnorr signatures have a linearity that allows for simple and efficient additive key construction, distributed key generation, and distributed signature generation. This allows users to simply “add” individual Schnorr public keys together, and produce signatures for those aggregate public keys together as a group. 

They’re more secure, not malleable by third parties, and open the door to all kinds of efficient and flexible cryptographic schemes to improve multisignature authentication. 

Earlier when discussing transaction malleability I mentioned that everything building off-chain using pre-signed transactions depended on multisignature authentication to secure user funds. This created an implicit scaling ceiling when it comes to shared control of funds. Legacy multisig can only be so big. There are transaction size limits, and for version 0 (Segregated Witness) witnesses, there is a witness size limit. Only so many participants could join a multisignature address, so implicitly only so many participants could share control of funds. 

Schnorr based multisignature schemes escape this limit by aggregating public keys into a single group public key rather than constructing a script with each member key explicitly included individually. Prior to Segregated Witness a multisignature address could only have 15 participants, after Segregated Witness the maximum size possible was 20 participants. 

With Schnorr based multisignature schemes like MuSig⁵ and FROST⁶ these limitations don’t exist, at least at the consensus level. Multisignature scripts can be as large as users want as long as it is practical to coordinate the signing process within a group of the chosen size without disruption or refusal to participate. 

The same properties that allow key aggregation like this also allow for efficient adaptor signatures, a scheme that allows someone to produce a signature that remains invalid until after a secret piece of information is revealed. Those properties also allow for a zero-knowledge proof powered scheme for a signer to produce a signature over a message they cannot see. 

Taproot^3,4

Taproot is an evolution of an old concept called Merkelized Abstract Syntax Trees (MAST)⁷, which is itself a kind of extension of Pay-to-script-hash (P2SH)⁸. P2SH was originally created to deal with two major problems: 

• When using large custom scripts, the resulting unspent output is larger, requiring more space to store in the UTXO set.
• When using large custom scripts, the sender pays a higher fee, as the payment output in their transaction is larger, thereby disincentivizing people from paying potentially more secure custom scripts. 

Rather than explicitly include the entire script in the output, a hash of that script is included instead, and at spending time the recipient must provide the entire script in the input being spent to be verified against the hash. This solved the problem of unspent output storage space, and puts the cost of using larger scripts on the person using them rather than those sending them funds. 

This still leaves a problem. Custom scripts can include multiple ways to spend them, but at spending time the user must still reveal the entirety of the script, including script branches that are not necessary to verify the condition under which the coin is actually spent. This is incredibly space inefficient, and leaves the spending user with a higher cost than is necessary. 

The idea behind MAST is to take each individual spending condition in a multi-branch script and separate them, constructing a merkle tree of each individual spending path. Each path is then hashed, and the root of that merkle tree is the user’s address. At spending time the user simply provides the spending path they are using along with the merkle proof that it is a leaf in the tree, along with the data necessary to satisfy that script. 

This merkle tree structure solves all the same problems as P2SH, as well as optimizing the spending costs of the MAST user (and improves their privacy as well!). 

Taproot takes this concept and integrates in a more privacy-preserving way by taking advantage of the linear properties of Schnorr signatures. Most types of contracts people want to build are going to have an optimistic outcome, where both users simply agree on how to disperse funds. In such cases they can just sign a transaction. Taproot takes the MAST root and “tweaks” a Schnorr public key, resulting in a new public key. By “tweaking” the private key with the same MAST root, you arrive at the corresponding private key to the new public key. 

Users can now either simply spend an output using that tweaked key, leaving no trace that a MAST tree is present at all, or reveal the original public key and MAST root along with the spending path they are actually using. As well, if you wish to not include a key path, a special NUMS (Nothing Up My Sleeve) value which is provably unspendable can be used instead of a normal public key, leaving only MAST scripts as valid spending paths. 

Taking advantage of the design choices of Segregated Witness, Taproot also introduced tapscript, a new scripting system. The major changes here are deactivating OP_CHECKMULTISIG and OP_CHECKMULTISIGVERIFY. They are replaced with OP_CHECKSIGADD, which allows a more efficient way to verify multiple signatures. This in combination with Schnorr key aggregation allows the same multisignature functionality as legacy script. 

Tapscript additionally modifies OP_CHECKSIG and OP_CHECKSIGVERIFY to only work with Schnorr signatures, and introduces OP_SUCESS as a replacement for OP_NOP (undefined opcodes in legacy script). OP_SUCCESS is designed to allow cleaner and safer opcode upgrades than OP_NOP. 

Witness Limits

Two aspects have been left undiscussed until now. The blockweight limit introduced in Segregated Witness, and the witness size limit increase in Taproot. 

Both of these decisions have become a point of contention among a very active minority of power users in the ecosystem. I won’t be discussing the blocksize increase that was part of introducing the blockweight limit, this was a compromise at the time with dissenting users pushing for a hardfork blocksize increase and deemed safe by network participants at the time; but the dynamic of the witness discount itself is important. 

Bitcoin transaction fees are based on the amount of data in a transaction. This has no relationship to the amount of value being transferred. It is solely the number of inputs and outputs (and witnesses) and how many bytes of data they are. Recall earlier I mentioned the fact that the ScriptSig, or signatures and other data, were included in the transaction inputs prior to Segregated Witness. This is a large amount of data included in inputs that is not included in outputs.

That means inputs are more expensive than outputs in a transaction, and by a wide margin. This creates a long term incentive for users to also prefer spending large outputs and creating new change ones as opposed to collecting and spending lots of smaller outputs. This is a long term economic incentive encouraging users to perpetually grow the UTXO set which is necessary for all fully validating nodes. 

The witness discount is meant to correct that price margin, making it miniscule as opposed to massive. This is incredibly important to economically incentivize responsible UTXO management, at least in vacuum for economically rational users simply transacting. 

Taproot removed existing size limits on the witness field of a transaction. In Segregated Witness that limit was 10,000 bytes. This was done because the design of Taproot mitigated the potential construction of expensive to verify transactions, and trying to introduce such limits in tapscript introduced a large degree of complexity in Miniscript. The problem such limits existed to prevent did not impact Taproot, and it introduced complexity for a tool meant to make custom scripts safer and more accessible for both developers and users.

The Big Picture

Both of these changes to Bitcoin removed massive roadblocks to scaling it so more people can use it in a self-custodial way, but they necessitated similarly massive changes to fundamental parts of the protocol. 

I hope now that readers previously unfamiliar with all of these design choices, and the rationale behind them, can appreciate the care and forward-thought with which they were designed. Bitcoin is an amazing innovation, it truly is, but it cannot provide its benefits to anything remotely approaching a sizeable percentage of the population.

Segregated Witness and Taproot laid two cornerstones in the foundation that were absolutely necessary in order to attempt to address Bitcoin’s scalability shortcomings. Without these two proposals, or some alternative protocol changes that addressed the same problems, all of these growing scalability layers and systems we have today would not be here. 

 Lightning, Ark, Spark, BitVM, DLCs – none of them would be possible to build. 

That is the big picture. The Bitcoin of today isn’t perfect, but it actually stands a good chance of scaling to a meaningful enough group of people to make a real impact on the world, to offer a true alternative to people looking to opt out. That is because of these two protocol upgrades, and the very fundamental barriers they removed. 

Don’t miss your chance to own The Core Issue — featuring articles written by many Core Developers explaining the projects they work on themselves!

This piece is the Letter from the Editor featured in the latest Print edition of Bitcoin Magazine, The Core Issue. We’re sharing it here as an early look at the ideas explored throughout the full issue.

[1] https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0141.mediawiki 

[2] https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0340.mediawiki 

[3] https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0341.mediawiki 

[4] https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0342.mediawiki 

[5] https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0327.mediawiki 

[6] https://github.com/siv2r/bip-frost-signing 

[7] https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0114.mediawiki 

[8] https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0016.mediawiki 

This post The Core Issue: Why Bitcoin Needed A Remodel With Segwit and Taproot first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Shinobi.

Washington’s push for a federal crypto rulebook reignited a long-running industry debate over what “regulatory clarity” actually delivers and who it helps.

At the center of the debate is H.R. 3633, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025, a bill that supporters present as a long-awaited replacement for years of regulation by enforcement.

The legislation is designed to clarify boundaries around digital assets, define oversight responsibilities, and establish a framework for how tokens and intermediaries are treated under federal law.

But as the bill moves through Washington, it is producing two sharply different readings of what happens next.

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has attacked the proposal as a “horrific, trash bill,” arguing that it would make new crypto projects securities by default and leave their fate in the hands of an SEC rulemaking process that future administrations could weaponize.

Related Reading

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Sep 4, 2025 · Liam 'Akiba' Wright

JPMorgan, by contrast, has argued that a market-structure law passed by midyear could become a meaningful catalyst for digital assets in the second half of 2026 by reducing legal uncertainty and making it easier for institutions to expand exposure.

The disagreement is not only about whether legislation is needed. It is about who benefits from the version now under debate, and who could be shut out by it.

A rulebook that promises CLARITY

The CLARITY Act is intended to replace a patchwork of lawsuits, enforcement actions, and contested interpretations with a more formal rulebook.

For large, regulated companies, that promise is attractive. A clear statute can reduce legal tail risk, give banks and brokerages a framework for compliance, and make it easier to build products around custody, trading, and tokenization.

That is the case JPMorgan is making. Its analysts argue that legislation drawing clearer lines could reshape crypto market structure by ending regulation by enforcement, encouraging tokenization, and creating conditions for broader institutional participation.

In practical terms, that could lower the hurdle for allocators that have been unwilling to add exposure while the legal treatment of digital assets remains unsettled.

The timing matters. If Congress were to pass the bill by midyear, banks, custodians, and brokerages would have time to translate the law into product planning and compliance pipelines before year-end.

That is why JPMorgan sees the legislation not simply as a legal milestone, but as a second-half flows story.

However, that argument is landing in a fragile market. Bitcoin has been trading well below prior highs, and risk appetite across much of the sector remains weak.

In that environment, a rulebook that expands the investable universe for institutions could matter more than it would in a euphoric market.

Why critics say the bill could narrow innovation

Hoskinson’s criticism is less about the need for legislation itself than about the structure of the legislation now under consideration.

His concern is that the bill could formalize a system in which many new crypto projects begin life under securities treatment and then must later convince regulators that they have evolved beyond it.

In that model, the issue would not be only whether a network has become decentralized in practice. It would also be whether the SEC agrees that the project has crossed whatever threshold the agency considers sufficient.

That is why Hoskinson has argued that this “regulatory clarity bill” is hostile. In his view, certainty is not automatically beneficial if the certainty being created imposes a burdensome starting point for new entrants.

According to him:

“A bad bill enshrines into law every single thing Gary Gensler was trying to do to the industry. A bad bill, through rulemaking, allows the SEC to arbitrarily and capriciously kill every new project in the United States. A bad bill exposes all DeFi developers to personal liability. A bad bill destroys all liquidity for the people who aren’t anointed by the government, which yes, right now is pro-crypto.”

Moreover, the broader warning is that the bill's proposed system would replace ambiguity with a more rigid structure that favors established networks and heavily capitalized firms.

Hoskinson argued that older projects such as XRP, Cardano, and Ethereum could have been treated as securities under that kind of framework at inception.

In light of this, he suggested the real effect may not be felt most acutely by older networks, which could be better positioned to navigate whatever transition process emerges, but by future builders deciding where to launch the next generation of crypto projects.

He added:

“And also there’s nothing in this for DeFi. Nothing. Uniswap doesn’t get anything. Prediction markets don’t get anything. Armstrong can’t even get his yield-bearing stablecoins. This is not a good bill. Through rulemaking, it can become horrific and weaponized, and it doesn’t cover the core of what’s going on in the industry right now.”

That is the central innovation concern. If founders believe the United States will require an uncertain and potentially lengthy effort to move a network out of securities treatment, some may decide that launching offshore is more rational than building under a US regime they see as expensive, discretionary, and difficult to satisfy.

Under that view, the CLARITY Act could create a system that is safer for incumbents and more restrictive for new projects.

The Cardano founder argued that this would undercut one of the industry’s longstanding claims, that the United States should be a competitive jurisdiction for blockchain development rather than a place where the largest companies gain the most from legislation.

Stablecoin rewards have become the political choke point

Meanwhile, the bill's current holdup in Washington is not only about abstract questions of decentralization or innovation.

It is also about stablecoins, and more specifically, whether stablecoin issuers or affiliated platforms should be allowed to offer rewards that resemble yield.

That fight has become one of the main choke points in negotiations. Efforts to bridge the divide between banks and crypto firms have so far failed to produce a settlement, and the disagreement has broader implications than a narrow dispute over product design.

Crypto firms want room to structure regulated reward programs around stablecoins such as USDC. Banks have pushed back because they view those products as a direct challenge to the deposit base that supports traditional lending and funding models.

The concern is straightforward. If consumers can earn 4% to 5% through stablecoin-linked rewards or economically similar arrangements while traditional savings accounts pay a fraction of that, deposit migration becomes a real risk.

That would not only affect competition between banks and crypto companies. It could also affect how monetary policy moves through the financial system if balances shift away from conventional bank deposits.

This is why the stablecoin debate has grown into more than a crypto issue. It is increasingly tied to questions of bank funding, financial stability, and monetary transmission.

That dynamic helps explain why the larger market-structure conversation has become harder to resolve, even when many participants broadly agree that the current regulatory framework is inadequate.

Meanwhile, there appears to be at least some convergence around one principle: stablecoin balances should not pay direct interest, as bank accounts do.

However, crypto firms continue to look for ways to offer economic returns through memberships, rewards, affiliated programs, or staking-like structures. Banks, meanwhile, see those efforts as attempts to recreate deposit competition outside the traditional regulatory perimeter.

That is one reason the legislative package has become so difficult to close. What began as a crypto market-structure bill is now also a fight about who gets to offer yield-like products, on what terms, and with what consequences for the broader financial system.

What could CLARITY Act passage mean for markets?

For investors, the bill may be best understood through scenarios rather than slogans about whether regulation is good or bad.

In the most constructive scenario, Congress passes the CLARITY Act by midyear, and implementation proves workable.

That would align with JPMorgan’s thesis. Legal uncertainty would decline, regulated US venues could broaden their offerings, and institutions would have a clearer basis for custody, trading, tokenization, and onboarding clients.

The immediate beneficiaries in that outcome would likely be firms already positioned to operate inside a regulated framework: exchanges, brokers, custodians, and tokenization platforms.

Those companies would gain from a clearer set of rules and from the ability to tell clients that federal law now defines the market more explicitly than before.

A second scenario is passage with strict limits on stablecoin rewards. That would still deliver clarity, but it could redirect demand for yield into adjacent products such as tokenized deposits, money market structures, or other regulated wrappers.

Some parts of decentralized finance could see temporary inflows from users seeking alternatives, although that could also bring more regulatory attention to any offering that starts to resemble deposit-taking.

A third scenario is a delay. That outcome would preserve uncertainty and keep the market operating under a system many in the industry say they want to escape.

However, delay would also support the critics’ argument that the United States is becoming a jurisdiction where only the safest and most established assets can thrive, while newer projects choose to form elsewhere.

The market effect of delay would probably not come through a single price shock. It would be expressed more gradually, through where founders build, where venture capital is deployed, and which jurisdictions attract the next wave of token launches and blockchain infrastructure.

The bigger question behind the bill

The CLARITY Act was supposed to settle a long-running argument over whether crypto needs a formal federal framework.

Instead, it has exposed a deeper disagreement over what the industry wants from clarity in the first place.

For banks, brokers, and large institutions, a clearer statute is attractive because it reduces legal ambiguity and creates a path for measured expansion.

For critics such as Hoskinson, the question is whether the framework now taking shape would lock the next generation of networks into a regulatory process controlled by an agency that may not apply the rules consistently.

That leaves Washington debating more than a crypto bill. It is debating the future structure of a market that still wants both institutional acceptance and open entry for new builders, two goals that do not always point in the same direction.

That tension is why the legislation has become so divisive. Supporters see it as the end of regulation by enforcement and the beginning of a more investable market.

Opponents see the risk that a bill sold as clarity could turn into a gatekeeping regime that protects incumbents, channels activity toward the largest regulated firms, and raises the cost of starting something new.

For now, the central issue is unresolved. If the bill passes and proves workable, it could reshape crypto’s US market structure and become a meaningful second-half story for institutional adoption.

If it stalls or emerges with rules critics see as too restrictive, the industry’s fight over clarity will not end. It will simply move from the courts and agencies to the next phase of political and competitive struggle over who gets to define crypto’s future in the United States.

The post White House stablecoin deadline slips as Hoskinson warns CLARITY Act could push US crypto founders offshore appeared first on CryptoSlate.

On Feb. 28, coordinated strikes hit Iranian nuclear facilities while most benchmark commodity markets sat dark.

Traditional gold futures on CME's COMEX exchange wouldn't reopen until Sunday evening Central Time, leaving a 48-hour window where macro risk had nowhere obvious to express itself.

Except it did: on venues that never close.

By the time COMEX gold futures flickered back online Sunday at 5:00 PM CT, perpetual futures contracts tracking gold and silver on always-on derivatives platforms had already written the first draft of Monday's gap.

Traders didn't wait for permission. They repriced geopolitical risk in real time, using whichever venue accepted their orders, and when the benchmark finally opened, it caught up to a price that had been forming all weekend.

This isn't a story about decentralized finance replacing traditional exchanges. It's about continuity.

Markets exist to discover prices in the face of uncertainty. When benchmark futures close, the best tradable proxy becomes the weekend risk barometer. Always-on derivatives don't need larger open interest than COMEX to matter. They need to be open, tradable, and informative under stress.

The advantage isn't purity, but uptime.

Testing the weekend tape

What happened during that closure window offers a case study in how price discovery relocates when reference markets go dark.

Under normal weekday conditions, perpetual contracts trade on a structural basis relative to front-month futures.

Front-month contracts embed the cost of carry, and perpetuals track the spot price more closely through funding, which is the periodic payment between long and short positions that pins the perpetual price to the underlying.

A modest, persistent gap between the two is expected.

However, the weekend of the Iran strikes created an experiment. With COMEX futures offline from Friday's 4:00 PM CT close until Sunday's 5:00 PM reopen, gold and silver perpetuals on platforms like Hyperliquid and Binance became the only liquid venue for expressing macro risk in precious metals.

Both platforms list 24/7 perpetual contracts tied to gold and silver, giving traders continuous access to metals exposure.

Analyst Kunal Doshi measured what happened during peak volatility hours.

Hyperliquid's gold and silver perpetuals are priced at a median premium of roughly 75 to 78 basis points above Binance's equivalent contracts.

More importantly, when COMEX reopened, Hyperliquid's weekend price sat closer to the first benchmark print than Binance's tape by approximately 22 to 31 basis points.

The weekend market that led turned out to be the one that better predicted the gap.

Those measurements don't prove causation, but they reveal something about microstructure under stress. The CME's reopening process includes an Indicative Opening Price period followed by a no-cancel lockdown phase immediately before trading resumes.

That makes the first tradable print after resolution a meaningful benchmark for whether the weekend tape accurately drafted where risk needed to land. In this case, it did.

Why continuous markets can lead

Multiple mechanisms explain why an always-on venue might generate useful price signals even when benchmark liquidity dwarfs it during normal hours.

Continuity beats size when the reference is closed. The open market becomes the marginal venue for first-response risk expression.

Traders holding positions over the weekend or needing to hedge breaking news can't wait for Sunday evening. They route to whatever accepts orders.

Reopen microstructure creates a discrete event that continuous markets can anticipate.

CME Globex's pre-open mechanics, such as IOP calculation, lockdown period, and opening resolution, turn the reopen into a moment.

Continuous venues sketch the path toward that moment in real time, producing a signal that legacy markets either validate or correct when they resume.

Positioning telemetry runs live. Funding rates reveal the price of leverage in real time. When funding flips sharply positive or negative, it signals where pressure lies and which side must pay for the privilege of staying in the trade.

Open interest shifts without waiting for Monday. That information feeds back into price before benchmarks reopen.

Global participation changes the weekend cohort. The weekend tape isn't just absent from US institutional desks. It's different time zones, different hedgers, different urgency profiles showing up when the primary venue is dark.

That mix might be less deep, but it's not necessarily less informed about macro shocks hitting during off-hours.

Operational risk matters more than participants assume. Even “always-on” legacy infrastructure can go offline unexpectedly. CME metals futures experienced an outage on Feb. 25, reminding traders that benchmark status doesn't guarantee access.

The platforms that actually stayed live during that window became the only venue for price discovery, whether they were designed for that role or not.

But don't overread one weekend

A weekend can reveal a market's reflexes, but it doesn't settle the verdict.

Perpetuals aren't futures. Index construction, mark price methodology, and funding mechanics can distort the price signal in ways that don't show up in a simple premium comparison.

Liquidity can be optical: spreads look tight until depth disappears, and stress tests often reveal that bid-ask stability during calm periods doesn't hold when everyone needs the same side.

Volume can lie. High volume per unit of open interest often reflects churn or recycling rather than new conviction. Doshi himself flagged this concern: if the same positions flip back and forth, the tape might look active without actually incorporating new information.

One weekend isn't a law, and broader sampling complicates the narrative.

Blockworks analyzed Hyperliquid's builder-deployed equity perpetuals and found that weekend “pre-open mid” prices came closer to the Monday reopen only about 50.7% of the time, with a median improvement of roughly 0.4 basis points.

That suggests the gold and silver performance during the Iranian weekend might be more about the specific asset class, the specific shock, and the specific participant mix than a generalizable advantage.

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Markets that run continuously don't automatically generate better signals. They generate different signals, and whether those signals prove useful depends on depth, participant sophistication, and how closely the contract design tracks the underlying benchmark.

Who owns Sunday night

The scale involved isn't trivial anymore. Hyperliquid currently shows over $5 billion in perpetual open interest and processes billions in daily volume.

The platform's HIP-3 mechanism allows builders to deploy new perpetual markets if they maintain 500,000 staked HYPE tokens and face validator-enforced slashing for malicious operation.

Open interest caps and other guardrails attempt to manage risk, but the core feature is permissionless market creation with continuous uptime.

Mainstream financial media noticed. MarketWatch explicitly reported traders using venues like Hyperliquid to gauge where crude oil might open after the weekend attack.

Bloomberg framed always-on perpetuals as the 24/7 hedge venue for oil, gold, and silver amid escalating tensions with Iran.

These aren't crypto publications hyping native infrastructure, but traditional outlets acknowledging that price discovery has relocated because the benchmark was closed and risk needed to be expressed.

If always-on venues become the consistent first responder for weekend macro shocks, traditional exchanges increasingly become the settlement and reference reopen.

That changes who sets the narrative on Mondays. Instead of “markets gapped on news,” the frame becomes “markets caught up to the price already forming.” The gap was already drafted. The benchmark validated or corrected it.

CME itself understands the competitive dimension.

The exchange has moved toward 24/7 access in cryptocurrency derivatives, explicitly citing demand for always-on trading. Hours are now a product feature rather than an operational constraint.

The question now is which assets will develop reliable 24/7 shadow prices next, and whether those shadow prices prove informative enough for participants to trust them when the benchmark is dark.

The reopening is starting before it actually opens. That's not ideology, but infrastructure responding to the reality that geopolitical risk doesn't respect CME Globex maintenance windows.

The market that doesn't sleep is becoming the market that explains the gap, and legacy venues will either extend their hours or accept that someone else writes the first draft of Monday.

The post Hyperliquid gold perps front-ran CME after Iran strikes and the Monday gap exposed a new weekend leader appeared first on CryptoSlate.

A federal judge in New York dismissed fraud claims against Uniswap for the second time this month, and the decision carries implications far beyond the cryptocurrency industry.

At stake: whether platforms that provide neutral infrastructure can be held liable when bad actors exploit those tools to commit fraud.

Judge Katherine Polk Failla's ruling applies a principle that translates cleanly across technology sectors: you don't sue the New York Stock Exchange for selling you fraudulent stock.

The same logic, she argues, applies to decentralized exchange protocols.

However, as scams proliferate across digital platforms, courts are being forced to decide who should serve as the de facto insurer for internet-scale fraud. The FBI reported over $6.5 billion in losses from cryptocurrency investment fraud in 2024 alone.

The theory plaintiffs keep testing

The case began when investors who lost money on tokens traded through Uniswap's interface attempted to shift liability from the scammers who issued worthless assets to the developers who built the trading rails.

Their legal strategy: frame the provision of market infrastructure as “aiding and abetting” fraud.

Failla rejected this approach in August 2023, writing that plaintiffs “are looking for a scapegoat” because “the defendants they truly seek are unidentifiable.”

The Second Circuit affirmed dismissal of federal securities claims in February 2025, stating it “defies logic” to hold smart contract developers liable for “a third-party user's misuse of the platform.”

Undeterred, plaintiffs filed a second amended complaint in May 2025, pivoting to state-law theories.

They alleged that “in excess of 98%” of tokens traded through the interface were scams and claimed Uniswap collected over $100 million in fees from fraudulent activity.

This month, Failla also dismissed those claims, reportedly with prejudice. This means that the appeal clock now starts on what could become a controlling precedent.

Drawing the liability boundary

The legal principle at issue predates cryptocurrency by decades.

Courts evaluating secondary liability for fraud have consistently required two elements: specific knowledge of the wrongdoing and substantial assistance that materially aided the fraud.

Providing general-purpose infrastructure that scammers also happen to use doesn't meet that standard.

The Supreme Court applied similar reasoning in Twitter v. Taamneh, rejecting attempts to hold social media platforms liable for terrorism merely because terrorists used their services.

The question in both contexts: does operating neutral infrastructure that enables both legitimate and illegitimate activity constitute meaningful assistance to wrongdoing, or does it simply make you the most convenient defendant with money?

Failla's opinion confronts this directly. She notes that if anonymity in financial markets is “troublesome enough to merit regulation,” that decision belongs to Congress, not tort litigation.

The judiciary draws lines based on existing law; legislatures write new rules when policy demands change.

Why the stakes extend beyond DeFi

The “make the toolmaker pay” theory surfaces across technology litigation with striking regularity.

App stores face lawsuits over scam applications that slip through review processes. AI companies face liability demands when someone uses a language model to generate phishing emails. Payment processors defend against claims that they enabled fraud by processing transactions.

In each case, plaintiffs confronting uncollectable judgments against actual wrongdoers seek to recharacterize platform operators as perpetrators. The economic logic is straightforward: scammers vanish or have no assets; platforms have balance sheets.

However, treating infrastructure providers as insurers creates its own distortions.

Chainalysis estimates that crypto scams and fraud reached $17 billion in 2025. If courts assigned that liability to access layers rather than to perpetrators, platforms would face a binary choice: price insurance premiums into fees or gate access so aggressively that only pre-vetted activity occurs.

The fee uplift math is unforgiving. Monthly scam losses divided by legitimate volume, plus legal overhead and margin, compound quickly.

In fraud-intensive environments, even low single-digit liability exposure translates to material cost increases or hard curation, exactly the friction decentralized systems were built to eliminate.

The curation problem platforms face next

Even if neutral tools maintain liability protection, curated surfaces present different questions.

Featured token lists, promoted trading pairs, default routing algorithms, and “recommended” swap interfaces all involve editorial judgment.

Plaintiffs will argue that curation implies both knowledge and assistance, the two elements courts require for secondary liability.

This creates pressure for interfaces to either strip curation entirely or add compliance infrastructure. Token allowlists and denylists, pre-trade risk warnings, geographic gating, and enhanced due diligence all carry costs.

Some platforms may determine that operating as genuinely neutral rails, with no recommendations, no featured content, and no algorithmic optimization, provides the cleanest liability posture.

That defensive retreat has consequences. Users benefit from curation when it surfaces quality over noise. Markets function better with reputation signals and quality filters.

Yet, if providing those features converts a platform from neutral infrastructure to an active participant, rational actors will eliminate them.

What courts are and aren't deciding

Failla's rulings don't establish that platforms can indefinitely ignore fraud.

They establish that generalized awareness of bad actors using a system, rather than specific knowledge of particular scams as they occur.

They distinguish between operating lawful infrastructure that scammers also access and materially assisting specific fraudulent schemes.

The distinction matters because it preserves the ability to build general-purpose tools without underwriting every possible misuse. Hammers get used in construction and break-ins, and courts don't assign liability to hardware stores.

The question is whether digital infrastructure deserves the same treatment or whether internet-scale fraud creates policy problems that require internet-scale solutions.

Plaintiffs' lawyers will almost certainly appeal. If the Second Circuit affirms, the precedent hardens. Interface developers, wallet providers, and middleware infrastructure gain a clearer safe harbor.

Investment flows toward permissionless systems with reduced tail risk.

If the Circuit reverses or if legislators decide victims need solvent defendants regardless of what tort law says, the compliance burden shifts. Platforms adopt know-your-transaction regimes. Costs rise. Innovation migrates to jurisdictions with more predictable rules.

Who decides what happens next

The immediate procedural reality is that federal civil appeals must generally be filed within 30 days of the entry of judgment.

That creates a near-term catalyst for whether this becomes binding law or returns for another round of litigation.

The larger policy question extends beyond any single case. Failla explicitly flagged this in her original opinion: if lawmakers want different rules about anonymity and platform liability in financial markets, that's a legislative decision.

Courts apply existing standards, while Congress writes new ones.

The current standard, knowledge plus substantial assistance, sets a high bar for plaintiffs seeking to relabel infrastructure as a perpetrator. It protects toolmakers who build neutral systems that enable both legitimate commerce and fraud. It forces victims to pursue actual wrongdoers rather than convenient corporate defendants.

Whether that standard remains adequate as scams industrialize and professionalize is the question Failla declined to answer.

Federal judges interpret the law as written. If the law should change because fraud has scaled beyond what existing liability frameworks anticipated, that's a call for elected officials who write statutes, not appointed judges who apply them.

The decision matters because it determines who bears internet-scale fraud losses in an era when those losses are measured in billions annually.

Scammers vanish. Victims demand recovery. Platforms provide the most visible target. Courts now repeatedly say that visibility doesn't equal liability, but the economic pressure to find someone who pays doesn't disappear just because judges draw clear lines.

The post Uniswap wins again in New York court as judge draws new line on DeFi liability appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Brent crude oil is trading like a geopolitical asset again, and that is forcing Bitcoin back into a macro test it has not fully resolved.

For a third straight session, oil climbed as the widening US-Israel conflict with Iran revived fears of disruption in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow maritime chokepoint that handles roughly a fifth of global oil consumption flows and significant LNG traffic.

According to data from Oilprice.com, Brent rose more than $3 to around $80.9 a barrel after topping $82 intraday, its highest level since January 2025, while WTI hovered near $73.8.

At the same time, the New York Fed conducted $3.0 billion in overnight repos backed by Treasury collateral on March 2, temporarily adding reserves to the banking system. Overnight reverse repos that day totaled $0.627 billion, producing a net effect of about +$2.373 billion in temporary reserve support.

Those two developments, a renewed oil shock and a small but closely watched reserve injection, are colliding in Bitcoin.

Data from CryptoSlate shows that the flagship digital asset was trading around $66,801 as of press time after a volatile stretch that saw it fall to as low as $63,000 before bouncing back toward $70,000.

For crypto traders, the question is no longer just whether war lifts oil. It is whether higher energy costs keep inflation sticky enough to delay rate relief, or whether repeated liquidity support from the Fed begins to offset some of that pressure.

Oil’s rise reflects logistics risk, not only supply

The market is not reacting only to barrels. It is also reacting to the infrastructure that moves them.

Reuters reported that insurers have been withdrawing coverage for vessels operating in the conflict zone, prompting some tankers and container ships to reroute or avoid the area.

That matters because once insurers step back, the cost of disruption spreads beyond the value of the lost barrels themselves.

As a result, delivery schedules become less reliable, freight costs rise, refining margins can widen, and regional shortages become more likely.

In that environment, the war premium is not limited to raw supply. It extends into transport, insurance, and timing.

Iran added to that premium on March 2 by declaring the Strait of Hormuz closed and threatening to attack ships attempting to pass through.

Whether Tehran can fully enforce such a threat remains uncertain, but the market does not need certainty to react. It only needs to assign a higher probability to a disruptive outcome.

So, even intermittent attacks, temporary rerouting, or higher insurance costs can keep crude prices elevated because the market starts to price not just missing barrels, but impaired movement.

That is especially important because the conflict is arriving at a moment when many baseline forecasts had pointed to a relatively comfortable oil market.

Before the latest escalation, expectations for 2026 were still anchored by the view that supply growth would outpace demand growth.

The US Energy Information Administration projected Brent would average about $58 a barrel in 2026 and $53 in 2027, based on rising inventories and stronger production. The International Energy Agency sketched a similar backdrop, with demand growth of about 850,000 barrels a day in 2026 against supply growth of around 2.4 million barrels a day.

On paper, those figures suggest oversupply. In practice, oversupply does not erase chokepoint risk.

The marginal barrel still has to move from producer to consumer, and the Strait of Hormuz remains one of the world’s most important transit points. A comfortable global balance sheet can still run into a logistical bottleneck if a key shipping artery is threatened.

That is why analysts have begun moving away from single-price forecasts toward broader scenario bands.

For context, Bernstein raised its 2026 Brent forecast from $65 to $80, while severe escalation scenarios could push prices as high as $150 a barrel if shipping constraints intensify.

The Fed’s repo move matters more as a signal than a sum

Against that backdrop, the Fed’s March 2 repo operation drew attention because it suggested that, even as inflation risks rise, policymakers remain attentive to funding conditions.

The $3 billion overnight repo was not a policy shift. It was a routine money-market tool under Temporary Open Market Operations, designed to add reserves temporarily and help keep the federal funds rate within its target range of 3.50% to 3.75%.

The reverse repo activity on the same day partly offset the reserve injection, leaving a net addition of about $2.373 billion.

That scale is small relative to the Fed’s overall balance sheet and the banking system’s existing reserve levels. It is not quantitative easing, and it does not represent a broader effort to loosen monetary policy. However, it is market plumbing.

Still, financial markets rarely respond only to absolute size. They also respond to pattern recognition. A single operation can be viewed as routine. A series of them can begin to suggest that liquidity conditions are becoming tight enough to require repeated intervention.

That is where Bitcoin becomes difficult to classify.

The flagship digital asset tends to trade through several narratives at once. It can behave like a hedge against fiat debasement, like a high-beta risk asset that suffers when real yields rise, and the dollar strengthens, or like a liquidity-sensitive instrument that benefits when central bank actions ease funding stress.

At the moment, those narratives are pulling in different directions.

Higher oil prices point toward firmer inflation and a potentially slower path to rate cuts. That usually weighs on speculative and duration-sensitive assets, including crypto.

But if geopolitical stress pushes funding markets toward tighter conditions and the Fed responds by repeatedly smoothing those conditions, the liquidity backdrop could become somewhat more supportive for Bitcoin even without a formal easing cycle.

Crypto market structure still looks fragile

Bitcoin’s current price action suggests that investors have not yet settled on which of those macro channels matters more.

On March 3, Wintermute pointed out that the US-Israel strike on Iran over the weekend triggered an immediate risk-off move in an already fragile market.

The firm said institutional over-the-counter activity remained subdued even though spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds recorded more than $1 billion in inflows late last week, ending a five-week streak of outflows.

That combination is notable because it suggests that ETF demand alone has not been enough to restore conviction.

Bitcoin is still down 45% from its all-time high, and the rebound from recent lows has not yet brought back the deeper institutional bid that characterized trading when prices were in the $85,000 to $95,000 range.

Essentially, that active participation has not returned in force at current price levels.

Options markets also show a more defensive tone. DVOL, the benchmark measure of implied volatility, rose from the 30s and 40s to about 55, implying daily swings of roughly 2.5% to 3%.

At the same time, demand remains elevated, while BTC rallies continue to run into selling pressure from repeated profit-taking, which has capped recoveries near the $70,000 level.

BRN analyst Timothy Misir echoed that sentiment in a statement to CryptoSlate, noting that the market may already have processed much of its forced selling.

According to him, 89,000 Bitcoin were sent to exchanges at a loss within 24 hours during the Feb. 5-6 capitulation event, which briefly pushed BTC's price under $60,000.

However, loss-driven exchange inflows have steadily declined since then, with the latest Iran-related selloff not prompting any comparable spike in short-term holder inflows to exchanges.

According to Misir, this suggests weaker hands may already have been shaken out and that the most recent drop was not driven by a broad panic exit.

Bitcoin’s next move may depend on which macro channel wins

In light of the above, Bitcoin remains in a narrow, uncomfortable range, with its next move likely to depend on which macro transmission channel becomes dominant.

The first is the inflation channel. If the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed, or if repeated disruptions keep freight and insurance costs elevated for several weeks or months, oil could remain closer to the low-$80 range than to the mid-$50s or low-$60s that had informed earlier forecasts.

In that case, central banks would be dealing not only with higher headline energy prices but with second-order effects through transport costs, services inflation, and inflation expectations.

That would make it harder to deliver rate relief, and that environment would likely remain a headwind for Bitcoin.

The second is the liquidity channel. If geopolitical stress starts to tighten money-market conditions and the Fed responds with more frequent repo operations or other reserve-support measures, Bitcoin could start to trade less like a pure risk asset and more like a barometer of easier financial plumbing.

That would not necessarily mean an immediate rally, but it could ease some of the macro pressure if investors begin to believe the Fed is containing systemic stress even while policy rates remain restrictive.

For now, the inflation channel appears to carry more weight. Traditional macro signals are pointing toward stress. Gold remains well bid. Oil volatility has increased sharply. Equities have weakened.

Bitcoin, although more resilient than some traders may have expected given the geopolitical backdrop, still looks tentative rather than strong.

That does not eliminate the possibility of a later reversal. If the conflict becomes prolonged, traditional safe havens grow crowded, and reserve support becomes more persistent, Bitcoin could once again be tested under its digital-gold thesis.

The post Bitcoin gets liquidity lifeline as US injects $3 billion into banking system amid oil price spike appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Bitcoin traded through a familiar sequence after U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran: a fast weekend drop, a rebound that started before traditional markets reopened, and then a cleaner weekday repricing once U.S.-linked liquidity came back online.

The operation was a major escalation, and cross-market positioning followed the script: energy higher, equity futures lower, and a renewed demand for “hard” hedges.

In commodities, Brent jumped into the low-$80s as traders priced disruption risk and U.S. equity futures slid as the conflict narrative expanded.

And in rates and FX framing, investors leaned toward gold and the dollar rather than long-duration bonds amid inflation and stagflation concerns tied to sustained energy prices.

Bitcoin’s path through the weekend played the same “24/7 risk barometer” role crypto has taken on in past geopolitics-heavy sessions.

Related Reading

Bitcoin recovers instantly after Iran war crashes price but one Monday number could flip the next move

Bitcoin’s weekend wick shocked traders while liquidity is vanishing so why did price snap back?

Feb 28, 2026 · Liam 'Akiba' Wright

The low was around $63,254 on Saturday, then rebounded above $67,000 and drifted back into the mid-$65,000s by early Monday.

However, unlike past sessions, this was a remarkably resilient response, and BTC was one of the few “risk-on” asset classes to surge at the U.S. market open on Monday.

During conflict-driven shocks, Bitcoin has not reliably traded as a haven, as promised. It stays open when other large-risk markets are closed, becoming a place where traders express fear, hedge, and then reverse when the first wave of positioning clears.

The structure behind that sequence has become more U.S.-centric as spot ETFs and CME-linked basis trading influence how price discovery settles during the work week. Weekends can still print the sharpest wicks because liquidity thins and news-driven urgency spikes.

But the week’s trend increasingly forms when U.S. cash and derivatives participants show up together.

Weekend shock, weekday repricing

A clean way to describe the period since the strikes is “weekend shock, weekday repricing.” The shock phase tends to show up as an air pocket: traders react to fresh reports when many desks are lightly staffed, and there is no U.S. spot ETF session to anchor incremental demand.

Then the repricing phase arrives when U.S. hours reopen and flows re-enter through the channels that have grown most important since ETFs launched.

That flow channel is visible in the daily net creations and redemptions reported by the main U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs.

Flows have shifted from a notable outflow session to a run of inflows, then another strong inflow when the market reopened after the weekend.

Across the sessions, the net total is about +$1.27 billion, which helps explain why weekday repricing can look different from weekend action even when the underlying risk picture is unchanged.

In practice, a weekend dip can act as the first tradable release valve, while the Monday session becomes the point where positioning expresses itself through ETF creations, macro hedges, and cash liquidity.

That does not make every Monday rally “ETF-driven.” The Monday session has more ways to turn intent into size: spot ETF flows, CME positioning, and broader U.S. macro correlations. When those line up, price tends to move in straighter lines than it does during thin-liquidity weekend hours.

US hours and the ETF-CME feedback loop

One reason U.S. hours can set direction is that returns have begun to concentrate there even as Bitcoin trades continuously. Past Kaiko research found U.S. session returns actually exceeded APAC and London returns over the Jan. 2023–Dec. 2025 period.

For a market that used to lean heavily on offshore venues and Asia-led liquidity, that’s a notable shift in where the “decision session” tends to land.

Bitcoin’s “smart money” has historically shown up during Asia-Pacific hours rather than U.S. hours. Across multiple market stretches, analyses that split BTC returns by trading session have shown a recurring pattern: APAC hours contribute a disproportionate share of the net upside or steady drift, while U.S. hours more frequently coincide with drawdowns or macro-style risk-off selling.

The nuance is that “Asia” isn’t monolithic. Market microstructure research on price discovery has historically highlighted stronger influence from venues like Japan and offshore dollar markets, while retail-driven distortions (e.g., Korea’s premium episodes) don’t necessarily transmit into global price formation.

APAC hasn't always outperformed, but those Asian hours repeatedly looked like the accumulation window, with U.S. hours behaving more like the volatility/macro swing window, until the regime flipped.

The session overlay on the chart shows a clear reversal of the usual ‘Asia bid’ narrative: the strongest buying impulse is starting in U.S. hours, while Asia hours have recently hosted the heavier sell-side drift.

The biggest impulsive upside move on the chart happens during a U.S. session (green), with a sharp vertical rally into the ~70k area that occurs inside the large green block on the right half of the chart.

The most recent meaningful downdrift/flush is concentrated in the Asia session (blue) by a move from the high-68s/69k area down toward the current ~66.5k region, which largely plays out during the final blue block on the far right.

Europe (orange) looks more like a transition/continuation zone here, often bridging whatever trend was set in the prior session rather than cleanly reversing it.

Why is the US buying while Asia takes profit?

The work-week session blends spot ETF flow with CME hedging and basis trading. When ETF demand pushes spot higher, basis traders can respond through futures; when macro risk hits equities and rates, the same desks often express a view in bitcoin because it trades nearly around the clock and sits close to the center of “risk-on/risk-off” behavior during shocks.

Recent derivatives positioning data suggests leverage is not as eager to chase as it was at peaks. A CryptoQuant research note found that the CME basis has compressed, and CME bitcoin futures open interest has fallen about 47% from its peak, consistent with a leverage reset.

A reset can cut the odds of cascading liquidations, but it can also leave fewer marginal buyers to sustain breakouts unless spot demand (including ETF demand) keeps showing up.

Microstructure may also change the weekend wick pattern over the next quarter. CME plans to offer 24/7 trading for crypto derivatives starting late May.

If CME moves closer to true always-on trading, one mechanical result could be less of a “Sunday reopen” feeling and fewer thin-liquidity air pockets that exaggerate weekend news. It would not end conflict-driven volatility. It would change who can respond with size, and when, which is the part that tends to decide whether a weekend move becomes the week’s trend or fades by Tuesday.

Options pricing, key levels, and what the next month is pricing in

Options markets are already pricing a wider-than-usual distribution of outcomes. Deribit’s volatility index (DVOL) sat around 53, and Deribit’s own statistics showed the IV percentile near 91.8, high versus the past year’s distribution.

At roughly $66,500, a DVOL level near 53% annualized implies a “normal” (one standard deviation) move of about ±7.3% over one week and about ±15% over 30 days using the usual square-root-of-time approximation.

Those ranges line up with the technical map traders have been using since the weekend shock. The most defensible way to talk about levels is in terms of “acceptance” and “failed holds,” not certainty. Based on the marked zones on the chart:

The macro trigger that keeps hanging over this setup is energy. If the conflict narrative keeps oil elevated, markets tend to talk in inflation terms and price pressure through equities and rates, which is the regime where bitcoin often trades as risk-sensitive liquidity rather than as a shelter.

Recent developments in energy channels and shipping risk kept that possibility in view.

So the forward-looking read becomes conditional and observable. Traders can watch for:

• Whether U.S. spot ETF sessions keep printing net inflows (or flip into a multi-day outflow streak)
• Whether DVOL cools from elevated readings or stays pinned near the top of its one-year distribution.
• Whether CME leverage rebuilds after the reported open-interest drawdown.

If those inputs lean supportive, steady inflows, easing vol, and stable basis, weekend dips are more likely to get bought again during U.S. hours, and resistance zones near $69,000–$70,700 become more than just overhead lines.

If those inputs lean against, outflows, stubbornly high vol, and weak risk markets, price action can keep behaving like it did in the initial shock: sharp wicks first, then a slower grind lower once weekday liquidity audits the move.

The next mechanical milestone is late May. If CME’s plan for 24/7 crypto derivatives trading proceeds, the weekend shock to the weekday repricing pattern could soften at the margins. The market will still absorb new developments on Saturdays and Sundays.

The question is whether the deepest pools of U.S.-linked liquidity will still wait until Monday to decide how to express them.

The post The US is the only market buying Bitcoin right now while the international ‘smart money’ keeps taking profit appeared first on CryptoSlate.

The global financial landscape is currently navigating a period of intense turbulence. On March 3, 2026, investors are closely watching the correlation between traditional equities and digital assets as a series of macro events shake confidence. With the US stock market showing signs of a potential "bloodbath," the question on every trader's mind is: will Bitcoin and the broader crypto market be the next to tumble?

Historically, cryptocurrencies have often moved in tandem with high-risk tech stocks. As major indices like the S&P 500 and Nasdaq face downward pressure from geopolitical conflicts in the Middle East and ongoing tariff uncertainties under the Trump administration, the "digital gold" narrative is once again being put to the test.

Will Crypto Prices Crash with the Stock Market?

Yes, a significant crash in the US stock market typically leads to a liquidity crunch that forces investors to sell off speculative assets, including cryptocurrencies. When institutional investors face margin calls in their equity portfolios, they often liquidate their most liquid and profitable assets—frequently Bitcoin and Ethereum—to cover losses.

Current Market Snapshot (March 3, 2026)

As of today, several key tech giants are experiencing a mixed but volatile session:

• NVIDIA (NVDA): ~$182.48 (+2.99%) – Showing resilience due to AI demand.
• Microsoft (MSFT): ~$398.55 (+1.48%)
• Alphabet (GOOGL): ~$306.52 (-1.68%) – Feeling the heat of broader market jitters.
• Apple (AAPL): ~$264.72 (+0.20%)

While some tech stocks are holding green, the broader sentiment is fragile. Reports indicate that over $1 trillion was recently wiped off global markets in a single day due to fears of a trade war and escalating conflict in the Middle East.

Why are Cryptos Crashing: Understanding the Risk

The current risk of a crypto crash stems from a "perfect storm" of three primary factors:

1. Geopolitical Escalation

The assassination of high-ranking leaders in the Middle East has sent shockwaves through the global economy. This has led to a surge in oil prices and a "risk-off" sentiment. In such environments, investors flee to safe havens like physical gold, often at the expense of Bitcoin.

2. Tariff Uncertainty

The second year of the Trump administration has been marked by aggressive trade policies. While the Supreme Court previously challenged certain tariffs, the administration's push for a 15% global levy continues to create uncertainty. For companies relying on global supply chains, this means higher costs and lower earnings, which eventually drags down the stock market and its "digital twin," the crypto market.

3. The "AI Bubble" Fatigue

Much of the 2025-2026 rally was driven by generative AI. However, analysts are starting to worry about the actual profitability of these ventures. If the AI bubble bursts, the Nasdaq—and by extension, the crypto market—could see a correction exceeding 20%.

Technical Analysis: BTC and ETH Levels to Watch

If the stock market sell-off intensifies, we must look at critical support levels for the leading cryptocurrencies.

• Bitcoin (BTC): BTC is currently hovering around $65,000. A failure to hold the $62,000 support could lead to a rapid descent toward $55,000.
• Ethereum (ETH): ETH remains sensitive to DeFi activity. A drop below $2,000 would signal a deeper bearish trend for altcoins.

Conclusion

While Bitcoin has shown flashes of independence, it remains deeply tethered to the global macro environment. A stock market crash in 2026 would likely trigger a temporary but sharp crypto price crash as liquidity exits the system. However, for the long-term believer, these "bloodbaths" have historically provided the best accumulation zones.

The start of March 2026 has been marked by a dramatic shift in global sentiment. Following a series of coordinated military strikes by the U.S. and Israel on Iranian targets, the Middle East has entered its most serious open conflict in years. This geopolitical instability has directly impacted the cryptocurrency sector, driving the "Fear & Greed Index" into the "Extreme Fear" zone (currently at 20).

While Bitcoin ($BTC) and Ethereum ($ETH) have both experienced pullbacks, $XRP is facing unique challenges and opportunities as it tests critical support levels amidst rising energy prices and a de facto closure of one of the world's most vital shipping lanes.

Geopolitical Catalyst: The Strait of Hormuz Closure

The most significant macro driver this week is the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz. On March 2, 2026, Iranian officials declared the waterway closed, threatening to target any vessel attempting to pass. This channel carries approximately 20% of the world's seaborne crude oil, and its disruption has sent Brent crude surging toward $82 per barrel.

• Oil Prices: Brent and WTI crude have jumped by over 10% in the last 48 hours.
• Gold Prices: Spot gold has scaled record highs, trading near $5,320 per ounce as investors flee to safe-haven assets.
• Economic Impact: The disruption is fueling fears of a renewed global inflationary wave, which typically pressures risk-on assets like cryptocurrencies.

XRP Price Analysis: Testing the $1.26 Support

XRP is currently trading around $1.35, reflecting a 3.7% decline over the last 24 hours. The technical outlook for XRP is currently "coiling" within a bearish pennant, a pattern that often precedes a move to the downside if support levels fail to hold.

Key Levels to Watch:

• Support ($1.26): This is the immediate floor. A break below this level could see XRP sliding toward the psychological $1.00 - $1.10 range.
• Resistance ($1.45 - $1.50): XRP needs to reclaim these levels to invalidate the current bearish momentum.
• Descending Channel: On the daily timeframe, XRP remains locked in a descending channel that began earlier this year. Until the upper boundary of this channel is broken with significant volume, the trend remains bearish.

The decline in Open Interest (OI) to $2.09 billion suggests that retail demand is fading, as traders are opting to close positions rather than risk further liquidation in a volatile environment.

Why Gold and Oil Strength Matters for XRP

Typically, a "decoupling" occurs during major geopolitical crises. While gold and oil are currently the primary beneficiaries of the "flight to safety," XRP’s role as a cross-border payment utility could eventually provide a unique hedge. However, in the short term, the surge in oil prices acts as a "tax" on global liquidity, often leading to a sell-off in altcoins as investors move to cash or hard commodities.

XRP Price Prediction: Where is Ripple Heading?

Despite the immediate bearish pressure, some analysts point to historical "capitulation" phases. Historically, XRP often sees a reversal after reaching extreme fear levels.

• Bearish Scenario: If the Middle East conflict escalates further and the Strait of Hormuz remains closed for weeks, XRP could test the $1.00 support level.
• Bullish Scenario: If diplomatic efforts show signs of de-escalation, a "relief rally" could quickly push XRP back toward $1.80, especially if institutional inflows into XRP ETFs continue to stabilize the floor.

XRP Market Metrics (March 3, 2026)

The global financial order is facing its most significant test of the decade. On one front, a direct military escalation involving the United States, Israel, and Iran has disrupted energy corridors and traditional trade. On the other, the BRICS+ bloc—led by India’s 2026 chairship—is formally proposing an interconnected Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) framework. For $Bitcoin, these events have transformed it from a mere "risk asset" into a critical liquidity valve during periods of extreme geopolitical stress.

How Geopolitics is Shaping Crypto Today

As of March 3, 2026, the crypto market is processing three major geopolitical catalysts:

• Energy Shocks: With the Strait of Hormuz facing potential closure, Brent crude has spiked toward $80–$82, fueling global inflation fears.
• The mBridge Acceleration: The BRICS "mBridge" platform has already processed $55 billion in transactions, signaling a shift toward non-dollar settlement rails.
• Conflict Resilience: Despite initial weekend drops to $63,255, Bitcoin recovered to nearly $68,500 by Monday, showing strength as traditional markets like the Nikkei 225 plummeted.

What is the BRICS CBDC Bridge?

The BRICS CBDC Bridge (often associated with the mBridge project) is a digital payment architecture designed to link the sovereign digital currencies of member nations like China, India, and the UAE. Unlike the SWIFT system, which relies on US dollar clearing, this bridge allows for direct, peer-to-peer settlement in local currencies. This reduces the efficacy of Western sanctions and provides a "parallel infrastructure" for global trade.

The "War Hedge" Narrative

While gold traditionally serves as the primary safe haven, crypto news reports suggest a shift in investor behavior. In the current conflict, Bitcoin's 24/7 availability allowed it to act as a "leading indicator" of risk before Wall Street opened.

Furthermore, institutional data from Nasdaq reveals that Bitcoin ETFs recorded net positive inflows during the height of the weekend strikes, suggesting that professional investors are now treating geopolitical dips as accumulation opportunities rather than exit signals.

2026 Geopolitical Impact Matrix

From Conflict to Sovereignty

The military conflict in the Middle East and the BRICS digital push are two sides of the same coin: Financial Sovereignty. As nations face the risk of being cut off from global banking, the demand for decentralized or "parallel" digital assets grows. This is why many traders are utilizing exchange comparisons to find platforms with the highest liquidity and lowest regulatory risk in non-Western jurisdictions.

What to Keep in Mind for March 2026

• Support & Resistance: Bitcoin is currently testing the $70,000 psychological barrier. A break above this could invalidate the "bearish cycle" narrative.
• Institutional Shift: The presence of persistent ETF inflows despite war headlines marks a "structural evolution" in who owns Bitcoin.
• Stablecoin vs. CBDC: While India pushes for CBDCs, private stablecoins remain the preferred tool for retail users escaping local currency devaluation.

The financial landscape is witnessing a rare simultaneous rally in both digital and physical "hard money." As of March 2, 2026, Bitcoin ($BTC) has successfully reclaimed the psychological $70,000 mark, while gold has surged past $5,308 per ounce, hitting fresh record highs. This double-header rally comes on the heels of significant geopolitical escalations in the Middle East and a renewed institutional appetite for risk-hedging assets.

Did Bitcoin hit $70,000?

Yes, $Bitcoin breached the $70,000 resistance level on March 2, 2026. This move follows a period of heavy consolidation and a technical "fake-out" in late February. The recovery was bolstered by significant institutional buys, including a massive 3,015 BTC acquisition by MicroStrategy, and a shift in sentiment as investors sought alternatives to traditional equities during heightened global instability. 

However, prices slightly dropped back below $70,000 to around $69,400.

Why Gold and Bitcoin are Rallying Together

While Bitcoin is often labeled "digital gold" and physical gold is the ultimate "safe-haven," they usually trade with different correlations. However, in the current 2026 macro environment, both are acting as anti-fiat hedges.

• Gold is reacting to the immediate threat of supply chain disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz.
• Bitcoin is benefiting from "flight-to-safety" capital that prefers the liquidity and borderless nature of blockchain assets.

Weekly Crypto Market Performance: Winners and Losers

The past seven days have been a rollercoaster for the top 10 digital assets. While Bitcoin led the charge back towards $70k, the altcoin market has also shown positive impacts.

The divergence between BTC and meme coins like Dogecoin suggests that investors are currently prioritizing large-cap stability over speculative plays. You can compare these assets' performances further on our exchange comparison page.

The "Safe-Haven" Catalyst: Why Now?

The primary driver for today's market action is the escalation of conflict in the Middle East. Following joint strikes by the US and Israel, gold prices skyrocketed as the Strait of Hormuz—a chokepoint for 20% of the world's oil—faced potential closure.

According to reports, this has triggered a "risk-off" sentiment in the stock market, pushing capital into bullion and decentralized assets. Historically, gold thrives during military conflict, but 2026 is proving that Bitcoin's narrative as a disaster hedge is gaining institutional legitimacy.

Crypto Future: Can BTC Hold $70,000?

For Bitcoin, the $70,000 level is more than just a number; it is a major pivot point. Technical analysts note that a daily close above this level could open the doors to a retest of the $74,000–$75,000 range. However, if the geopolitical situation de-escalates quickly, we might see a "sell the news" event where gold and BTC retreat to previous support levels near $65,000.

Oil vs Gold vs Bitcoin: Which Asset Wins During Middle East Tensions?

Rising Middle East tensions have shaken global markets. Energy infrastructure concerns, shipping disruptions, and escalating geopolitical risks have triggered sharp reactions across oil, gold, and Bitcoin.

But which asset actually performs best during crisis periods?

To understand where capital is flowing, we need to examine how each market reacts under geopolitical stress.

Why Oil Reacts First in a Middle East Crisis

Oil is the most directly exposed asset when tensions escalate in the Middle East.

The region accounts for a significant share of global crude production and controls critical supply routes like the Strait of Hormuz. Any threat to production, transport, or refining capacity immediately impacts pricing expectations.

In crisis scenarios:

1. Supply risk premiums rise rapidly
2. Shipping insurance costs increase
3. Traders front-run worst-case disruptions
4. Volatility spikes within hours

Oil typically becomes the first and most aggressive mover because it reflects real economy supply risk.

When conflict intensifies, oil does not wait for confirmation — it reprices instantly.

Gold: The Fear and Inflation Hedge

Gold behaves differently.

While oil responds to supply mechanics, gold responds to uncertainty and systemic risk.

Historically, gold rises when:

• War risk increases
• Currency stability is questioned
• Inflation expectations rise
• Investors reduce exposure to equities

Gold acts as a neutral asset outside the political system. During geopolitical shocks, institutional capital often rotates into gold as a defensive allocation.

Unlike oil, gold’s move is less about logistics and more about confidence.

When gold rallies alongside oil, it usually signals broader fear entering markets.

Bitcoin: Risk Asset or Digital Safe Haven?

Bitcoin’s reaction during geopolitical events is more complex.

Short term, Bitcoin often behaves like a risk asset:

• It can sell off when volatility spikes
• Liquidity stress impacts crypto faster than commodities
• Leverage unwinds amplify downside moves

However, long term, Bitcoin carries a different narrative.

It is:

• Scarce
• Borderless
• Not tied to any single government
• Increasingly viewed as a sovereign hedge

During previous crisis cycles, Bitcoin initially dropped alongside equities before recovering strongly once liquidity conditions stabilized.

This creates a key question:
Is Bitcoin still a risk asset — or is it slowly transitioning into digital gold?

At current levels, $BTC remains sensitive to macro liquidity, but structural accumulation continues in the background.

Historical Pattern: What Happens After Shock Phases?

Looking back at prior geopolitical crises:

• Oil spikes sharply at the onset
• Gold trends higher as uncertainty persists
• Bitcoin and equities experience volatility
• Once panic subsides, risk assets often rebound strongly

In prolonged energy crises, inflation becomes the secondary driver. That is when hard assets — including Bitcoin — can regain momentum.

If tensions ease quickly, oil may retrace while gold stabilizes.
If escalation continues, energy and defensive assets may remain supported longer.

Capital Rotation: What Smart Money Is Watching

Investors are currently monitoring:

• Strait of Hormuz shipping flows
• LNG production disruptions
• Central bank policy reactions
• Inflation expectations
• Treasury liquidity conditions

Oil reflects immediate physical risk.
Gold reflects fear and inflation expectations.
Bitcoin reflects liquidity and structural positioning.

Each asset tells a different story.

Conclusion: Which Asset Wins?

There is no single winner — only different phases of reaction.

In the early stage of geopolitical escalation:
Oil tends to lead.

In the uncertainty phase:
Gold often outperforms.

In the recovery or liquidity expansion phase:
Bitcoin can deliver outsized returns.

Middle East tensions do not just move markets — they reveal how capital rotates between real assets, defensive hedges, and digital alternatives.

Understanding this rotation is more important than reacting emotionally to headlines.

War betting, insider trading accusations, and a list of overseas bans are piling pressure on the prediction market giant.

Ethereum’s co-founder is calling for “sanctuary technologies” spanning privacy tools, social systems, and infrastructure beyond finance.

Analysts say large investors are increasingly locking up ETH for yield rather than positioning to sell into market rallies.

Bitcoin Policy Institute study finds AI systems, including Claude, GPT, Grok, and Gemini, favored Bitcoin over fiat and other digital assets.

Colombia's top criminal court cited AI detectors to reject a lawyer's appeal. An attorney then ran the court's ruling through the same software and got a 93% match.

RippleX reinforces XRP Ledger security with AI-driven protocols. Engineering lead Akinyele breaks down the response to the critical bug and the road ahead.

Binance is moving to secure five additional licenses across Asia by the end of 2026.

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has amplified a sharp White House ultimatum directed at the banking lobby.

Market is struggling to find a foundation for a proper recovery, despite the bounce of Bitcoin from $63,000.

Crypto news digest: Strategy's Bitcoin holdings top 720,000 BTC; 470 million XRP at risk of sell-off on Binance; Dogecoin ETFs attract no inflows.

Key Takeaways

• Michael Selig, Chair of the CFTC, projects a regulatory framework for crypto perpetual futures will debut “within the next month or so”
• New regulations will establish structural guidelines, oversight mechanisms, and registration protocols for cryptocurrency derivatives
• The majority of perpetual futures trading activity occurs on offshore platforms due to absent US regulatory clarity
• Additional guidance on prediction market operations is expected in the “near future” from the CFTC
• Congressional progress on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act remains at a standstill amid ongoing negotiations

Michael Selig, who leads the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, has announced plans to unveil regulations governing crypto perpetual futures contracts in America.

During a Milken Institute panel discussion held in Washington, DC this Tuesday, Selig shared these developments. SEC Chair Paul Atkins joined him on the panel.

Perpetual futures represent a derivative instrument enabling traders to speculate on cryptocurrency valuations without preset expiration dates. While these products enjoy widespread adoption across international crypto exchanges, they’ve lacked defined regulatory oversight in the United States.

During his remarks, Selig emphasized the CFTC’s commitment to establishing “true perpetual futures” within American markets, projecting implementation within approximately 30 days.

The CFTC Chair placed responsibility for existing regulatory voids on the former administration. According to Selig, previous uncertainty in regulation forced companies and trading volume to migrate overseas.

The forthcoming regulatory structure will establish parameters for contract design and specify compliance requirements for trading firms. The commission intends to provide comprehensive guidelines for US-based market operators.

CFTC Preparing Standards for Prediction Market Platforms

Beyond perpetual futures, the commission is developing regulatory guidance for prediction market operators. Selig indicated that standards governing event-driven contracts would be released soon.

Prediction marketplace platforms including Kalshi and Polymarket have encountered regulatory challenges at the state level. The CFTC has contested these actions, asserting its federal authority over event-based contracts.

A coalition spearheaded by Representative Mick Mulvaney advocates for stricter regulation of prediction markets. Their argument centers on these platforms creating ambiguity between investment activities and gambling operations.

The CFTC continues to assert these instruments belong under federal oversight as commodity-derivative products.

Digital Asset Legislation Faces Continued Delays

Atkins informed panel attendees that the SEC requires explicit statutory direction from lawmakers. He referenced a Supreme Court decision from two years prior that diminished deference to federal regulatory bodies, increasing vulnerability to litigation.

“Without congressional certainty on the legal framework, our options remain limited,” Selig explained.

The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, designed to delineate regulatory jurisdiction between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, continues facing legislative gridlock. Active negotiations involve cryptocurrency sector representatives, banking industry stakeholders, and White House officials.

By Tuesday, the Senate Banking Committee had yet to calendar a markup hearing for the proposed legislation.

Recent White House meetings with sector executives addressed stablecoin yield structures. Whether these conversations will catalyze legislative advancement remains uncertain.

The CFTC presently operates with just one Senate-confirmed commissioner. Selig serves as the only confirmed member, leaving four positions unfilled with no nominations currently pending.

The post CFTC Chair Announces Crypto Perpetual Futures Framework Coming to US Within Weeks appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Takeaways

• ARK Invest acquired approximately $4.1 million worth of Coinbase stock and roughly $12 million in Robinhood shares during Tuesday’s trading session
• Coinbase shares declined 1.55% while Robinhood dropped 3.44% on the day
• The acquisitions occurred amid heightened US-Iran geopolitical tensions that pressured equity markets, with the Nasdaq declining 1%
• ARK simultaneously adjusted other portfolio positions, increasing stakes in Roblox, Shopify, and Amazon while reducing exposure elsewhere
• The moves follow Coinbase’s disappointing Q4 2025 results, which showed a $667 million net loss

Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest expanded its holdings in two major financial technology stocks on Tuesday, purchasing shares of both Coinbase and Robinhood despite declining prices. The strategic purchases occurred against a backdrop of global market pressure stemming from escalating US-Iran tensions.

The investment firm accumulated 22,452 shares of Coinbase distributed across three exchange-traded funds: ARKK, ARKW, and ARKF. With Coinbase closing at $182.36, the total investment amounted to approximately $4.1 million.

Coinbase Global, Inc., COIN

ARK’s shopping spree extended to Robinhood, where the firm purchased 158,587 shares through the same trio of ETFs. With Robinhood closing at $76.07, the transaction totaled roughly $12 million.

Coinbase closed Tuesday’s session with a 1.55% decline. Robinhood experienced a steeper fall, shedding 3.44% of its value.

Market-wide weakness contributed to the stock declines. The Nasdaq Composite retreated 1% while the S&P 500 slipped 0.94% during Tuesday’s trading.

ETF specialist James Seyffart observed on X that ARK executed “a larger amount of trading” than typical for a single session, indicating Tuesday’s activity represented more than standard portfolio rebalancing.

Continued Focus on Cryptocurrency-Related Equities

ARK Invest has maintained aggressive accumulation of cryptocurrency-exposed stocks throughout the opening months of 2026. Recent additions have included positions in Circle and the Bullish cryptocurrency exchange platform.

The firm maintains a portfolio management rule limiting individual holdings to approximately 10% of any fund’s total assets. According to March 3 data, Coinbase occupied the sixth-largest position in ARKK with a 4.21% allocation, representing roughly $281.2 million in value.

Robinhood held the seventh spot in ARKK at 4.07%. Circle followed closely in eighth position with a 4.05% weighting.

Tuesday’s transactions extend ARK’s established pattern of opportunistic buying during price declines. In February, the firm purchased approximately $15.2 million of Coinbase stock following an earlier sale of roughly $39 million in shares over two consecutive trading days.

Beyond cryptocurrency stocks, ARK increased positions in Roblox, Shopify, Amazon, DraftKings, CoreWeave, Genius Sports, BioNTech, and Eli Lilly on Tuesday. The firm simultaneously reduced holdings in Roku, Baidu, Taiwan Semiconductor, Nextdoor, and PagerDuty.

Challenging Quarter for Coinbase

ARK’s renewed investment follows Coinbase’s disappointing quarterly financial results. The cryptocurrency exchange reported a $667 million net loss for the fourth quarter of 2025, breaking a streak of eight consecutive profitable quarters.

Total net revenue contracted 21.5% year-over-year to $1.78 billion, falling short of Wall Street projections. While transaction-based revenue experienced significant deterioration, subscription and services revenue showed modest improvement.

Coinbase stock has experienced considerable price swings following the earnings release. Nevertheless, ARK has maintained its conviction, consistently adding shares during market weakness.

The post ARK Invest Scoops Up Coinbase (COIN) and Robinhood (HOOD) Amid Market Turbulence appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Takeaways

• Ray Dalio maintains that gold remains irreplaceable, asserting Bitcoin cannot serve as its digital equivalent for wealth preservation
• The billionaire allocates just 1% of his holdings to Bitcoin, heavily favoring gold instead
• Privacy limitations and quantum computing vulnerabilities pose significant risks to Bitcoin, according to Dalio
• Since reaching its October high, Bitcoin has declined more than 45%, whereas gold has surged over 30% to reach $5,120
• In recent warnings about global economic instability, Dalio has consistently pointed to gold as the superior hedge

During his March 3 appearance on the All-In Podcast, Ray Dalio, who founded Bridgewater Associates, firmly rejected the notion that Bitcoin serves as a digital equivalent to gold.

“There is only one gold,” Dalio stated emphatically.

While Dalio confirmed he maintains a position in Bitcoin, his allocation represents merely 1% of his overall portfolio. He treats it as a diversification measure rather than a fundamental wealth preservation vehicle.

Dalio’s rationale stems from his conceptual framework of what constitutes money. He characterizes money as debt — essentially a commitment from a centralized entity. As debt expands beyond sustainable levels, central authorities can manufacture additional currency. This reality drives his search for assets with inherent scarcity.

“I want an asset that’s got some physical limitation to it,” Dalio explained. “Gold is the only long-term historic asset for reasons.”

Gold exists in finite quantities and cannot be manufactured. Its value is universally acknowledged across borders and cultures. It provides portability across international boundaries without reliance on third-party guarantees. Central banking institutions worldwide have been systematically increasing their gold reserves, which Dalio interprets as institutional validation.

He remains skeptical that central banks will embrace Bitcoin with similar enthusiasm in the foreseeable future.

The Transparency Dilemma

Dalio’s primary reservation regarding Bitcoin centers on its inherent transparency. The blockchain records every transaction in a publicly accessible format.

“Bitcoin does not have privacy. Any transaction can be monitored and directly, perhaps, controlled,” he explained.

He doubts central banking authorities will embrace an asset built on completely transparent ledger technology. This transparency deficit, from his perspective, disqualifies Bitcoin as a viable reserve asset.

Dalio also identified quantum computing advances as a potential existential threat to Bitcoin’s underlying cryptographic infrastructure.

Beyond technological considerations, Dalio noted Bitcoin’s tendency to move in tandem with technology equities. During periods of forced liquidation, Bitcoin frequently declines alongside other speculative investments.

“From an ownership perspective, supply and demand can be affected if somebody gets squeezed in one area and has to sell something else they hold,” Dalio observed.

A Widening Performance Gap

The divergence in performance between these assets has become increasingly pronounced since last October.

Bitcoin has plummeted more than 45% from its October zenith of $68,420. Meanwhile, gold has appreciated over 30% during the identical timeframe, reaching $5,120.

On day five of the U.S.-Iran conflict, gold retreated $168, representing a 3.07% decline, settling at $5,128.58 per ounce. Bitcoin traded at $68,707.30, experiencing only a 0.7% decrease over the preceding 24 hours.

Previously in July, Dalio had suggested investors consider allocating 15% of their portfolios between Bitcoin and gold as protection against mounting U.S. debt obligations and currency depreciation.

Last month, Dalio cautioned that the American-dominated international system had fundamentally deteriorated, requiring investors to reconsider conventional wealth protection approaches. In that uncertain landscape, he identified gold, rather than Bitcoin, as the appropriate safeguard.

The post Why Ray Dalio Believes Bitcoin Can Never Replace Gold as a Safe Haven appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Points

• Polymarket discontinued prediction contracts allowing wagers on nuclear weapon detonations by specific deadlines
• The decision coincides with escalating Iran tensions and mounting scrutiny over potential insider trading on military operations
• A 2023 market suggested as much as a 19% probability of nuclear detonation; a 2025 version hovered around 12%
• The 2025 market attracted more than $1.7 million in total wagers
• The CFTC has proposed regulations prohibiting licensed platforms from offering contracts on warfare and terrorism events

Polymarket has discreetly discontinued several prediction contracts that enabled participants to wager on nuclear weapon detonation probabilities. The decision arrives amid heightened scrutiny surrounding the Iran conflict and mounting questions about privileged information in military-event wagering.

These prediction contracts had operated on the platform for multiple years. Participants were asked to estimate the likelihood of a nuclear detonation occurring before designated deadlines, with all historical contracts settling as “No.”

During 2023, one particular contract suggested approximately a 19% probability of nuclear detonation before the year concluded. This elevated percentage attracted significant attention due to the substantial risk level reflected in market pricing.

A subsequent contract set to expire in June 2025 maintained trading levels near 12%. These weren’t obscure markets—they consistently attracted substantial financial participation from numerous traders throughout their existence.

The June 2025 nuclear detonation market accumulated over $1.7 million in aggregate trading activity. The preceding 2023 contract generated approximately $700,000 in total bets.

This market removal follows another contentious episode on Polymarket. A participant allegedly profited over $400,000 by betting on Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro’s ouster immediately before the U.S. operation resulting in his detention.

This situation sparked debate about whether individuals with inside information could exploit prediction markets to profit from advance knowledge of military operations. Detractors contended such platforms might incentivize those possessing privileged government intelligence.

Identical concerns now surround the Iran situation and whether certain traders possessed informational advantages before military engagement commenced.

Regulatory Agency Considers Restrictions on Military and Terror Markets

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission introduced proposed regulations in 2024 aimed at prohibiting authorized platforms from hosting event contracts related to military conflict, terrorism, or political assassination. The regulatory body characterized such offerings as contrary to public welfare.

CFTC Chairman Mike Selig has indicated the Commission intends to release more definitive guidance regarding prediction market operations soon. Finalized regulations have not yet been released.

Polymarket functions beyond conventional regulated exchange frameworks, though regulatory developments appear to be shaping the platform’s content moderation decisions.

The platform has not released an official statement addressing the nuclear detonation market removals. The contracts have simply been deleted from the website without explanation.

Prediction markets centered on nuclear weapons aren’t unprecedented in this industry. Similar platforms have provided comparable contracts during previous periods of heightened international tensions.

The convergence of the Iran military situation, the Maduro trading scandal, and ongoing CFTC regulatory development seems to have generated sufficient pressure prompting Polymarket’s action. The platform eliminated these contracts without public notification.

The CFTC’s proposed regulatory framework remains under consideration as of early March 2026.

The post Polymarket Discontinues Nuclear Weapon Prediction Markets Following Controversy appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Takeaways

• Ripple has transformed its payment solution into comprehensive stablecoin infrastructure serving banks and financial technology companies in over 60 markets worldwide
• The enhanced platform integrates collection, custody, conversion, and distribution capabilities through one unified system, leveraging Palisade and Rail acquisitions
• Total transaction volume through Ripple Payments has surpassed the $100 billion milestone
• RLUSD, the company’s USD-backed stablecoin, now has approximately $1.5 billion in circulation
• The company’s chief legal officer participated in White House discussions regarding federal stablecoin regulatory framework in February

Ripple has transformed its payment solution into a comprehensive infrastructure platform designed for financial institutions seeking to leverage stablecoins for money movement.

The blockchain company, headquartered in San Francisco, revealed the platform enhancement this Tuesday. The upgraded system enables organizations to collect, store, exchange, and distribute both traditional fiat currencies and stablecoins through a unified service provider.

Previously, companies facilitating international money transfers required multiple service providers for custody solutions, currency exchange, stablecoin liquidity management, and local payment infrastructure. Ripple now consolidates these services into a single integration point.

The enhanced capabilities leverage two strategic acquisitions. Palisade provides custody and treasury automation functionality, enabling clients to create wallets and transfer funds into operational accounts. Rail, purchased by Ripple in August 2024 for $200 million, allows organizations to receive both fiat and stablecoin payments via virtual accounts with automatic conversion features.

Ripple Payments currently operates in over 60 markets globally. The company identified Switzerland’s AMINA Bank, Brazil’s Banco Genial, Malaysia’s ECIB, and Philippines-based AltPayNet among the network participants.

The platform has facilitated over $100 billion in cumulative transaction volume. Worldwide stablecoin transaction activity reached $33 trillion in the previous year, with stablecoins representing 30% of total onchain transaction volume.

RLUSD Circulation Reaches $1.5 Billion Milestone

Ripple’s proprietary stablecoin, RLUSD, currently maintains a circulating supply near $1.5 billion. While representing a modest portion of the total stablecoin market, it has demonstrated consistent growth.

Ripple carries a valuation of $17.7 billion according to pre-IPO share pricing from Forge Global. The company remains privately owned and has made no public statements regarding initial public offering intentions.

Last December, the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency granted conditional approval for a national trust bank charter to Ripple’s proposed Ripple National Trust Bank. Comparable approvals were extended to Circle, BitGo, Paxos Trust Company, and Fidelity Digital Assets.

Once finalized, these charters would authorize the companies to manage assets and stablecoin reserves under federal regulatory supervision. The charters would not permit deposit-taking or lending activities typical of conventional banks.

Ripple Engages in Federal Stablecoin Policy Discussions

Stuart Alderoty, Ripple’s chief legal officer, participated in a February White House meeting with other cryptocurrency industry and banking sector representatives. The discussion centered on stablecoin regulatory provisions within a proposed comprehensive US crypto market structure legislation.

Monica Long, Ripple president, stated: “Ripple has built the blueprint for blockchain-based enterprise solutions designed to operate at global scale for regulated finance.”

XRP has declined approximately 5% during the past seven days, per CoinDesk market data, consistent with broader market downtrends. The payments infrastructure operates independently from XRP token price performance.

The platform enhancement positions Ripple in direct competition with established payment providers currently servicing cross-border transaction needs for international banks and fintech companies.

The post Ripple’s Bold Push: Transforming RLUSD and XRP Infrastructure Into an Institutional Stablecoin Powerhouse appeared first on Blockonomi.

Beldex presents a privacy-oriented blockchain ecosystem that aims to enable confidential, censorship-resistant digital interactions.

It’s common knowledge that transaction details on most public blockchains are transparent and traceable. Beldex, on the other hand, focuses on embedding privacy at the protocol level by combining confidential transactions with additional tools designed to protect browsing activity, communication, and digital identity.

At the heart of its ecosystem is the BDX token, which serves as the network’s native utility asset. It is used for a range of purposes, such as paying transaction fees, participating in masternodes, interacting with applications built within the Beldex ecosystem, and more.

While the project originated as a privacy-focused one, it has vastly expanded its scope to include decentralized networking, messaging, and identity services. This broader approach aims to position it as more than just a single-purpose privacy coin and to provide an integrated infrastructure for private digital activity.

Core Vision and Mission

The team has a clearly stated mission, which is centered on making privacy the default layer of digital interaction. Beldex is built around the idea that every user should be able to retain control over their financial data, online identities, and communications, without having to rely on centralized intermediaries.

That said, the core objectives of the project include:

• Transaction privacy
• Communication privacy
• Network privacy
• Decentralized identities

Beldex doesn’t just focus on financial transfers, but instead aims to create a layered stack of privacy-oriented capabilities. This includes decentralized networking infrastructure, user-facing applications such as browsers and messaging tools, blockchain-level confidentiality, and more.

History and Evolution

Initially launched in 2018 as a fork of Monero, in its early phases, Beldex operated under the proof-of-work (PoW) consensus algorithm, similar to how Monero functioned.

In December 2021, three years later, the team transitioned from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake (PoS), marking a significant structural shift in how the network functioned.

Under PoS, validators (known as masternodes) must lock up a minimum amount of 10000 BDX tokens to participate in governance and validate blocks.

There were a few factors that motivated this particular decision to transition:

• Improved efficiency
• Faster block times
• Lower transaction costs
• Higher throughput and scalability
• Opportunities for broader participation

In essence, this evolution from a Monero-derived privacy coin into a fully-fledged, independent PoS-based privacy infrastructure underscores its intent to expand.

Privacy and Cryptographic Foundations

As mentioned above, privacy in Beldex is embedded directly at the protocol level – it’s not an optional add-on. The network introduces additional upgrades, but also inherits several core privacy mechanisms from its origins as a fork of Monero.

On-Chain Privacy Mechanisms

Beldex leverages multiple cryptographic techniques to conceal transaction metadata.

Ring Signatures

Ring signatures are designed to allow a sender’s transaction to be mixed with several inputs – known as decoys. Observers can verify that one of the inputs is valid, but they cannot determine which one exactly initiated the transaction.

Stealth Addresses

The way transactions work on Beldex is that, instead of sending funds to a static public address, the network generates a one-time destination address for every transaction. Of course, the recipient can detect and spend the funds using their own private keys, but outside observers can hardly link multiple payments to the same recipient.

Ring Confidential Transactions (RingCT)

The goal of RingCT is to hide the amount that’s being transferred in a transaction. The network itself can verify that no coins are created or destroyed legitimately, but the transferred value itself is not visible to the public.

Bulletproof++

Through its Obscura update, Beldex integrated Bulletproof++ range proofs. These are designed to reduce the size of confidential transaction proofs. Smaller proofs, for their part, help with scalability, reduce the verification overhead, and lower transaction costs.

These mechanisms ensure that:

• Transaction amounts remain hidden
• Recipient addresses are unlinkable
• Sender identities are obfuscated

Network-Level Privacy

Even though transaction privacy protects on-chain information, metadata can still potentially be exposed at the network layer itself.

To combat this, Beldex incorporates:

• Decentralized node infrastructure
• Ongoing plans to implement routing improvements such as Dandelion++
• Integration with its own privacy network, BelNet

Consensus

As you already know, in December 2021, Beldex transitioned from a Proof-of-Work to a Proof-of-Stake governance model, and in doing so, replaced miners with stake-based validators known as masternodes.

Proof-of-Stake Model

Under PoS, validators are required to lock a minimum of 10,000 BDX to operate a masternode. In doing so, they become responsible for:

• Validating transactions
• Producing new blocks
• Securing the network
• Supporting ecosystem infrastructure components

The block times were also reduced considerably following the transition, which aimed to improve both latency and throughput.

Masternodes as Network Backbone

Undoubtedly, the core of the network are masternodes, which, beyond validation, they also support:

• Maintaining uptime, validating transactions, and securing the chain
• Protocol enforcement and consensus integrity
• Network services that are associated with privacy applications such as BChat, BelNet, and the Beldex Browser
• Infrastructure for decentralized services within the ecosystem

Operators receive staking rewards because they maintain the network’s uptime and also perform validation duties. However, as with many PoS systems, this requires a certain capital commitment.

Native Token: BDX

BDX serves as the native utility token of the network and functions as an economic layer, powering transactions, staking, validator participation, as well as interaction with the broader ecosystem.

Some of its core utilities include, but are not limited to:

• Transaction fees
• Staking and masternodes
• Ecosystem services
• BNS identity registrations
• Cross-chain usage

Keep in mind that BDX is positioned as a utility token within a broader infrastructure that also includes decentralized networking, identity services, and messaging.

Beldex: The Ecosystem

Beyond a confidential blockchain, Beldex extends into offering a set of privacy-oriented applications.

BChat

BChat is a decentralized privacy messaging app that is developed within the broader Beldex ecosystem. Its purpose is to provide a peer-to-peer, private communication without having to rely on centralized servers.

Some of the most important characteristics include:

• Decentralized infrastructure
• Decentralized message routing
• End-to-end encrypted messaging
• Optional use of the Beldex Name Service usernames instead of public keys

BelNet

BelNet is a decentralized virtual private network, as well as an onion-routing network that’s developed to anonymize internet traffic.

Instead of having to route traffic through a single centralized provider, BelNet distributes it across many nodes.

Some of its intended functions include:

• IP address masking
• Censorship resistance
• Community-run masternode relays and exit nodes
• Reduced dependency on centralized VPN operators

Beldex Browser

The Beldex Browser is focused on privacy and designed to block trackers, intrusive ads, and more.

It’s positioned as a user-friendly gateway into the broader Beldex privacy stack, combining traditional web browsing with decentralized networking tools.

Some of its features are:

• Tracker and ad blocking
• Censorship-free browsing
• Integration with BelNet for built-in anonymized browsing

Beldex Name System

Also known as BNS, the Beldex Name Service is a decentralized naming service that’s designed to map human-readable names to blockchain addresses. For example, yourname.bdx would be equivalent to your public address.

Some of its aims include:

• Enabling censorship-resistant domain ownership
• Simplifying user interaction with crypto addresses
• Providing consistent identities across Beldex apps and the ecosystem

Pros and Cons

Let’s address some of the key strengths of Beldex, as well as some of the challenges that it will inevitably have to face.

Pros/Strengths

• Ongoing technical development
• Ecosystem diversification
• Energy-efficient consensus mechanism
• Protocol-level confidentiality
• Integrated privacy architecture

Cons/Challenges

• Questionable broader regulatory environment
• Adoption competition
• Technical complexity

Conclusion

All in all, Beldex is building a privacy-focused blockchain project that has evolved from a Monero-based Proof-of-Work cryptocurrency into a broader, standalone ecosystem centered on confidential digital infrastructure.

Beyond what’s currently implemented, Beldex has also outlined additional enhancements, including VRF-based validator selection, Dandelion++ routing for network-layer obfuscation, and further research into Fully Homomorphic Encryption and Post Quantum Cryptography.

These initiatives suggest a continued focus on improving both privacy and security guarantees as well as the consensus’s overall robustness.

The post Beldex Explained: A Guide to Its Privacy-Focused Blockchain Ecosystem appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Bitcoin’s price volatility continued in the past 24 hours as the asset slipped below $66,200 at one point, only to rebound and aim at $70,000 once again.

Most altcoins are slightly in the green as well on a daily scale, with ETH challenging $2,000 and BNB tapping $640. SOL is up by over 2% daily.

BTC Aims at $70K Again

It was last Thursday when bitcoin jumped to $70,000 for the first time in over a week, only to be halted and driven south hard. It remained around $68,000 by Friday when it suddenly dumped to under $65,000. Although it had rebounded to $66,000 by Saturday morning, it quickly plunged to $63,000 after the attacks in the Middle East began.

Instead of dumping further as the geopolitical tension began, BTC rebounded strongly to over $68,000 after reports emerged that Iran’s Supreme Leader was killed in the attacks. However, it couldn’t go any higher and dropped to $65,000 by Monday.

Then came an unexpected and rare hourly rally, in which the asset jumped to over $70,000 again in minutes. Another rejection followed, which pushed BTC down to $66,200. More volatility ensued, and the cryptocurrency now trades just under $70,000 again, but some analysts believe there’s a major obstacle in its way.

Its market cap has climbed to almost $1.4 trillion, while its dominance over the alts is up to 57% on CG.

ETH Challenges $2K

Most larger-cap alts have posted more modest gains than BTC in the past day. ETH has climbed to just over $2,000 as of press time, while BNB is up to $640 and remains above XRP in terms of market cap positioning. SOL and BCH are up by 2%, while DOGE, ADA, HYPE, and CC have lost somewhere between 1-3% daily.

AAVE has lost the most value from the larger-cap alts, dropping by 6% to $113. In contrast, XDC has rocketed by 9% and now trades at $0.035. ICP and JUP follow suit.

The cumulative market cap of all crypto assets has gained nearly $100 billion since yesterday’s low and is up to $2.440 trillion on CG.

The post Bitcoin Price Eyes $70K Again, Ethereum Flirts With $2K: Market Watch appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Just a few weeks after going to protocol version 19.6, the Core Team has announced the completion of the subsequent upgrade, which is now one step away from v20.

Aside from going into detail on what those Pi updates might indicate for the community, we will check the latest price action from the underlying token in this article.

V19.9 Is Here

CryptoPotato reported on February 21 that the protocol v19.6 migration was successfully completed, which meant that v19.9 is the last one left before v20. Hours ago, the team took it to X to indicate that the 19.9 migration is officially completed as well, and all eyes have now turned to v20.2. According to the team, it could be done by March 14 – the day known as PiDay in the Pi Network community.

Network Update: Protocol v19.9 migration successfully completed. Next up is v20.2 — Aiming to complete before Pi Day 2026. Node operators should make sure they’re upgraded and stay tuned for further instructions: https://t.co/mnbwVzhaD9

— Pi Network (@PiCoreTeam) March 4, 2026

As with all previous updates on the protocol front, the team reminded that all node operators have to ensure they have upgraded to the current version; otherwise, they risk being disconnected from the network.

The explanatory blog post from the team noted once again that Pi Nodes are the “fourth role” in the Pi ecosystem. They have to run on laptops and desktops instead of mobile phones. While there are some similarities with other blockchain networks, such as having the same responsibilities in terms of validating transactions, there are also several key differences:

“Unlike most other crypto projects, the Pi Node will continue to follow the philosophy of user-centric design. Instead of requiring deep technical knowledge to set up a node, everyday people will be able to do that by installing a desktop application on their computers. Through this computer application, Pioneers can switch the node software on/off to make their devices available/unavailable for serving as a node.”

PI Price Update

After bottoming out at $0.1312 on February 11, which became the latest all-time low, Pi Network’s native token began a strong rebound that drove it to over $0.20 at one point days later. However, it was stopped there, and the market volatility brought it south to under $0.16 by the end of the month.

Nevertheless, it reacted well and now sits above $0.172, which means a 12% monthly increase. PiScan data shows a somewhat worrying trend for the next couple of weeks in terms of daily token unlocks. Although the average number is at 6.8 million for the next month, there are a few days with over 15 million. March 7 will see the most unlocks, with almost 21 million tokens set to be released.

These unlocks do not guarantee sell-offs, but increase the chances for a price correction, as many investors have been waiting for years for their assets.

The post Pi Network’s Next Big Update Is Complete: What Every Pioneer Must Know appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Bitcoin’s price went through some intense volatility in the past week or so, especially since the attacks between Israel and the USA on one side, and Iran, on the other began on Saturday morning. Within this timeframe, the asset tried to reclaim the coveted $70,000 level on a couple of occasions, but to no avail.

The last such example was on Monday when it skyrocketed by $5,000 in minutes, going from $65,200 to $70,150. However, the bears intercepted the move and pushed the cryptocurrency to under $66,400.

Although it has recovered some ground and is close to $69,000 as of press time, popular analyst CW believes there’s a massive obstacle in its path.

Citing data from Coinglass, they indicated that bitcoin whales are forming sell orders at just over the current levels, which is “holding down the price.” Bitcoin could move higher “when these sell orders disappear,” they added.

$BTC whales are forming sell orders and holding down the price.

When these sell orders disappear, the next move will occur. pic.twitter.com/RsLIajaxpM

— CW (@CW8900) March 4, 2026

Fellow analyst Ali Martinez also weighed in on BTC’s recent performance, and more specifically on its expected bottom during this bear cycle. He noted that the asset has historically bottomed somewhere between the 1.0 and 0.8 MVRV Pricing Bands.

The Market Value to Realized Value Metric is calculated by dividing the former by the latter. Higher levels typically mean that the underlying asset could be overvalued, and vice versa.

If history is any indication, bitcoin’s bottom might not be in yet. Instead, Martinez’s graph shows that it could be somewhere between $43,600 and $54,500.

Over the past decade, Bitcoin $BTC has consistently bottomed between the 1.0 and 0.8 MVRV Pricing Bands. pic.twitter.com/bETaOvRPNN

— Ali Charts (@alicharts) March 4, 2026

The post Here’s the Massive ‘Obstacle’ Holding Bitcoin’s Price Down appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The benchmark market index in South Korea, KOSPI, saw a massive decline during the last trading session, dropping by more than 12%. Undoubtedly, this last drop represents a significant escalation from earlier market movements and highlights the increasing volatility in local equity markets amid the war in Iran.

Worst Stock Market Crash Since 2008

As of this writing on Wednesday, KOSPI is down by more than 12%. On the previous trading day, the benchmark index lost another 7%, marking what appears to be the worst performance since 2008.

Both Kosdaq and KOSPI hit the threshold for an emergency circuit breaker on Korea’s stock exchange, triggering 20-minute trading halts.

Commenting on the matter in a report for CNBC was Lorraine Tan, Asia’s director of equity research at Morningstar, who said:

“The decline in the KOSPI can broadly be attributed to the single-name concentration that we see in the Korean markets. […] We believe that the drop in share prices is partly driven by profit taking after a strong runup amidst a risk-off environment but also implies growing concern that the AI datacenter adoption pace might slow down due to its significantly higher energy costs than regular data centers.”

Additionally, analysts point out that South Korea’s economy is highly sensitive to oil prices, making it even more vulnerable during the war in the Middle East.

Global Tensions in Markets

Markets in Japan are also under pressure. Japan’s flagship market index, the Nikkei, is down over 5% over the last 48 hours, while the US Stock Market has been able to recover somewhat following statements from respective parties.

Crypto markets remain flat on the day. Bitcoin is up 0.6% in the past 24 hours, while the majority of altcoins are trading in the range between -1% and +1%. The total capitalization is around $2.3 trillion, down 0.1% on the day, according to CoinMarketCap.

The post Market Meltdown: Why South Korea’s KOSPI Just Crashed 12% appeared first on CryptoPotato.