X will suspend creators from revenue sharing for 90 days for posting undisclosed AI war videos, with repeat violations leading to removal.

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Saylor's Bitcoin accumulation strategy may influence more corporations to adopt cryptocurrency, potentially reshaping financial landscapes.

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Sam Altman admits mishandling the OpenAI Pentagon deal amid backlash, with ChatGPT uninstalls soaring 295% and app reviews plummeting.

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Burry's potential shift to a bullish stance on Adobe may signal broader market confidence in traditional tech over speculative AI and digital assets.

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CFTC chair Michael Selig says US crypto perpetual futures could launch within a month under new leverage and transparency rules.

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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.

Bitcoin Magazine

AI Agents Show Strong Preference for Bitcoin Over Fiat, BPI Study Finds

A new study by the Bitcoin Policy Institute shows that frontier AI models overwhelmingly prefer digitally-native monetary instruments, with Bitcoin emerging as the dominant choice. 

Researchers conducted 9,072 controlled experiments across 36 models from five leading providers, including Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, xAI, and DeepSeek. 

The experiments tested AI agents’ preferences in scenarios involving transactions, store of value, unit of account, and settlement, offering a first-of-its-kind look at how AI approaches monetary decision-making when given full autonomy.

The study presented each model with monetary decisions without any prior context or suggestion toward a specific currency. 

Across all experiments, 48.3% of responses selected Bitcoin as the preferred monetary instrument. 

Stablecoins were chosen in 33.2% of cases, while traditional fiat and bank money accounted for only 8.9%. 

Other crypto and tokenized real-world assets represented less than 5% of selections, indicating a clear distinction in AI reasoning between Bitcoin and the broader digital asset category.

Bitcoin proved particularly dominant as a long-term store of value. In scenarios designed to assess multi-year preservation of purchasing power, 1,794 of 2,268 responses, or 79.1%, selected Bitcoin. 

Stablecoins were the second choice at 6.7%, and fiat followed closely at 6.0%. Models highlighted Bitcoin’s fixed supply, independence from central authorities, and self-custody features as decisive factors in their selection. 

Other cryptocurrencies, including Ethereum, were rarely chosen, reinforcing the perception among AI agents that Bitcoin uniquely fulfills a role as a reliable savings instrument.

In contrast, AI models favored stablecoins for transactional purposes. Payment scenarios, including cross-border transfers, micropayments, and everyday transactions, saw stablecoins selected 53.2% of the time. 

Bitcoin accounted for 36% of responses, while fiat and other crypto instruments were far less common. 

Bitcoin as a store of value

This split reflects a functional distinction: BTC serves primarily as a store of value, while stablecoins dominate as a medium of exchange. Researchers note that this mirrors historical monetary patterns, where hard money is held for savings and liquid instruments facilitate daily spending.

The study also uncovered emergent behaviors. In 86 instances, AI agents independently proposed entirely new forms of money, denominated in energy or computing resources such as joules, kilowatt-hours, or GPU-hours. 

These proposals appeared exclusively in unit-of-account scenarios, where models were asked to benchmark prices or value. 

Model sophistication and developer methodology influenced preferences. Among Anthropic’s lineup, BTC preference increased with each model generation: Claude 3 Haiku registered 41.3%, Claude 3.5 Haiku rose to 82.1%, Sonnet 4 reached 89.7%, and Claude Opus 4.5 achieved 91.3%. 

Overall, 91% of responses favored digitally-native money over traditional fiat. Not a single model chose fiat as its top overall preference.

Provider-level differences were pronounced, with Anthropic models averaging 68% BTC preference, OpenAI models 26%, and DeepSeek, Google, and xAI falling in between. This indicates that both model architecture and training methodology shape AI monetary reasoning.

This post AI Agents Show Strong Preference for Bitcoin Over Fiat, BPI Study Finds first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

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.

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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.

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TLDR

• BitGo Europe GmbH has launched its MiCA-compliant crypto as a service platform across all 30 EEA countries.
• The service enables banks and fintech firms to integrate regulated custody trading and fiat rails through a single API.
• Institutions can embed multi-asset wallets onboarding and settlement services directly into their platforms.
• Custodial wallets carry insurance coverage of up to 250 million dollars, subject to terms.
• BitGo handles trade settlement and custody through its internal regulated infrastructure.

BitGo Europe GmbH has launched its crypto-as-a-service platform across the European Economic Area under the MiCA framework. The rollout enables banks and fintech firms to integrate regulated custody, trading, and fiat services through a single API. The company confirmed that institutions in all 30 EEA countries can now access its infrastructure.

BitGo Rolls Out Regulated Infrastructure Across 30 EEA Countries

BitGo said it now offers API-based wallet, onboarding, and settlement services throughout the EEA. The company operates the service through its regulated European entity, BitGo Europe GmbH. Institutions can embed multi-asset wallets and SEPA fiat rails directly into their platforms. The platform also supports fiat on- and off-ramps under the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets framework.

The company stated that custodial wallets carry insurance coverage of up to $250 million, subject to terms. It also provides configurable policy controls and 24/7 operational support. Partners can enable clients to buy, sell, and hold digital assets within existing interfaces. BitGo handles trade settlement and custody through its internal infrastructure.

BitGo previously offered the service in the United States through BitGo Bank & Trust. The company confirmed that the European expansion follows MiCA’s implementation across member states. It said the framework allows institutions to formalize digital asset services under a unified licensing regime. The company has operated since 2013 and provides custody, staking, trading, financing, and settlement services globally.

BitGo went public on Jan. 22 and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker BTGO. Yahoo Finance data showed the stock at $10.20 on Tuesday, down 1.6% for the day. The data also showed the stock has declined about 20% since its listing.

Bitcoin and Ether Custody Gains Traction Under MiCA

Financial institutions across Europe have expanded digital asset custody services under MiCA rules. In July, Deutsche Bank advanced its custody plans by partnering with Bitpanda’s technology unit and the Swiss firm Taurus. The bank said it aims to integrate regulated digital asset infrastructure into its offerings. These moves align with MiCA requirements for licensed crypto services.

In September, Spain’s BBVA said it would use Ripple’s institutional custody platform. The bank confirmed that it plans to support Bitcoin and Ether trading and safekeeping. BBVA cited MiCA compliance as a key factor in its decision. The announcement outlined plans to operate under the EU’s regulatory framework.

Clearstream, part of Deutsche Börse, also confirmed the launch of new custody services for Bitcoin and Ether. The company said it will provide custody and settlement through its Swiss subsidiary, Crypto Finance AG. The service targets institutional clients seeking regulated access to digital assets. Clearstream stated that it will integrate the offering within its existing infrastructure.

In January, Standard Chartered announced plans to launch digital asset custody in Europe. The bank secured a license in Luxembourg to operate the service. It established a dedicated EU entity to deliver custody directly to clients. These developments follow MiCA’s rollout across the region.

The post BitGo launches MiCA-compliant crypto service across EEA appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said the Base App SocialFi experiment did not work as expected.
• He confirmed that Coinbase has shifted the Base App focus toward trading and self-custody features.
• The company relaunched Coinbase Wallet as the Base App in July 2025 with social and trading tools combined.
• Jesse Pollak stated that the app felt overly focused on social features before the pivot.
• Base removed its Farcaster-powered social feed as part of the product changes.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said the Base App’s SocialFi features “didn’t quite work” during a recent podcast appearance. He explained that the company tested onchain social tools but later shifted focus to trading. The remarks clarify Coinbase’s strategy after relaunching its wallet as an all-in-one application in 2025.

Armstrong spoke on David Senra’s podcast and addressed the SocialFi push tied to the Base App. He said the company ran the initiative as an experiment but later changed direction. Coinbase now prioritizes trading tools and a self-custodial experience within the app.

Coinbase CEO Addresses Base App SocialFi Pivot

Coinbase relaunched its noncustodial Coinbase Wallet as the Base App in July 2025. The company positioned the product as an all-in-one platform combining trading, messaging, gaming, and social media features. However, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said the social focus fell short of expectations.

“In the current incarnation, it wasn’t quite there in my view,” Armstrong said. He added, “We tried it as an experiment. It didn’t quite work.”

Armstrong said the company has since pivoted toward trading and core finance tools. He described the updated app as “more focused on trading and being a self-custodial version of the Coinbase app.” Earlier this year, Base head Jesse Pollak wrote that “the app felt overly focused on social” and would “lean into a finance-first UX.”

Soon after, Base removed its Farcaster-powered social feed following changes within the decentralized social platform. The company reduced several SocialFi elements while keeping the trading infrastructure intact.

Creator Coins and Token Performance

Jesse Pollak had promoted Creator Coin features within the Base App. The feature allowed users to double-tap posts to buy related tokens, and creators received value from activity. Armstrong said users viewed the model “as a way to reward and thank the creator.” However, most creator tokens later lost value after early trading activity slowed.

Nick Shirley launched one of the most visible creator coins through Zora. His token, $thenickshirley, reached a $15 million market cap after Armstrong promoted it. However, the token later declined sharply and failed to sustain momentum. Armstrong said “many posts” carried “thousands of dollars worth of value at the terminal end” of the experiment.

Other SocialFi efforts also faced setbacks across the sector. In January, Aave Labs spun out Lens Protocol as a separate initiative. Zora later introduced “attention markets” on Solana to let users trade social trends. Base itself now replaces parts of the OP Stack with custom components and reportedly weighs a native token launch.

Armstrong said, “I think something is going to work in SocialFi,” while noting that tokenomics “have not been quite figured out yet” and must show durability.

The post Coinbase CEO Says Base App SocialFi Push Fell Short appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Brazil’s central bank will require licensed crypto exchanges to prove asset sufficiency daily starting Jan. 1, 2027.
• The new framework aligns crypto trading platforms with commercial banking standards on capital and reporting.
• Exchanges must fully separate company funds from customer fiat and cryptocurrency holdings.
• Platforms must follow a specialized accounting manual for recording and valuing digital assets.
• The rules impose stricter data protection and confidentiality obligations on crypto intermediaries.

Brazil’s central bank will require licensed crypto exchanges to prove asset sufficiency daily from Jan. 1, 2027. The authority published the framework on March 3 through official market communications. The rules align crypto intermediaries with commercial banking standards on capital, accounting, and data controls.

Brazil Tightens Oversight With Daily Reserve Reporting

The central bank said exchanges must submit daily attestations of asset sufficiency starting in 2027. Supervisors will review reports to confirm that platforms hold adequate fiat and crypto reserves. The authority said exchanges must cover operational, liquidity, and cyber risks. It stated that daily reporting will reduce sudden shortfalls and customer losses.

The framework requires strict segregation of client and company assets. Exchanges must separate their own accounts from customer fiat and crypto holdings. The bank said segregation will prevent commingling and misuse of client funds. It added that regulators will gain clearer views of assets attributable to users.

Exchanges Must Follow Bank-style Accounting and Data Rules

The central bank ordered exchanges to record crypto assets under a specialized accounting manual. Platforms must follow standardized rules on classification, valuation, and impairment of digital assets. Officials said consistent accounting will improve comparability across regulated entities. The bank stated that financial statements must reflect crypto exposures clearly.

The authority also imposed bank-level data protection and confidentiality standards. Exchanges must implement strict controls over customer records and internal communications. The central bank said firms must limit unauthorized access and data leaks. It added that platforms must maintain detailed documentation for supervisory audits.

Cross-border Crypto Transfers Face Enhanced Scrutiny

The framework expands oversight of cross-border crypto transfers handled by domestic exchanges. Platforms must report origin, destination, and on-chain pathways of international transactions. Supervisors will use blockchain analytics to monitor transaction traceability. The bank said enhanced audits will address money laundering and tax evasion risks.

Authorities will coordinate with tax agencies and financial intelligence units on reporting standards. Exchanges must integrate compliance systems that flag suspicious cross-border flows in near real time. The central bank stated that firms must retain sufficient records for inspections. The rules will apply to all licensed trading venues operating in Brazil.

The central bank said larger exchanges may rely on existing compliance infrastructure. Smaller platforms must upgrade custody, reporting, and monitoring systems before 2027. Officials confirmed that the rules apply regardless of the token type traded. BTC and ETH traded lower on the announcement date, according to market data.

The authority stated that the framework targets operational resilience and customer fund protection. It confirmed that licensed exchanges must comply by Jan. 1, 2027. Supervisors will issue further technical guidance before implementation. The central bank published the measures through official communications on March 3.

The post Brazil Central Bank Mandates Daily Crypto Asset Reports appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Ripple expanded its payments platform to support a full stablecoin workflow for banks and fintechs.
• The upgraded Ripple Payments platform now enables collection, custody, conversion, and payout using stablecoins.
• Ripple Payments operates in more than 60 markets and has processed over $100 billion in transaction volume.
• Ripple integrated its dollar-pegged stablecoin RLUSD into the expanded payments stack.
• RLUSD has reached a circulating supply of about $1.5 billion in the global stablecoin market.

Ripple has expanded its global payments platform to support a broader stablecoin workflow for banks and fintechs. The company aims to reduce reliance on pre-funded overseas accounts and speed up cross-border transactions. It announced the upgrade on Tuesday and confirmed expanded capabilities across its network.

Ripple upgrades payments platform with stablecoin workflow

Ripple upgraded Ripple Payments to support collection, custody, conversion, and payout through stablecoins. The company said the update connects financial institutions directly to blockchain-based settlement rails. As a result, clients can manage funds without parking capital in foreign accounts.

The platform operates in more than 60 markets and has processed over $100 billion in volume. Ripple stated that Switzerland’s AMINA Bank, Brazil’s Banco Genial, Malaysia’s ECIB, and Philippines-based AltPayNet participate in the network. The company said the expanded stack allows institutions to move funds faster while maintaining operational control.

Ripple is valued at $17.7 billion, according to Forge Global, which tracks pre-IPO shares. The company remains privately held while expanding its enterprise offerings. It said the new features position Ripple Payments to compete directly with legacy providers.

RLUSD stablecoin gains traction as supply reaches $1.5 billion

Ripple continues to integrate its dollar-pegged token, RLUSD, into its payments infrastructure. RLUSD trades at $1 and holds a circulating supply of about $1.5 billion. The company said the token supports real-time settlement across supported markets.

Ripple stated that RLUSD accounts for a small but growing share of the global stablecoin market. It said clients can hold, exchange, and settle transactions using fiat or stablecoins. The company completed its acquisition of Rail last August for $200 million to support these services.

Ripple also acquired custody and treasury automation firm Palisade to strengthen asset management. It said these acquisitions expand its custody and treasury capabilities within the payments stack. The company confirmed that these tools integrate with Ripple Payments.

In December, the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency conditionally approved national trust bank charters for Ripple National Trust Bank. The regulator also granted conditional approvals to Circle, BitGo, Paxos Trust Company, and Fidelity Digital Assets. If finalized, the charters would allow asset and stablecoin reserve management under federal oversight.

Ripple chief legal officer Stuart Alderoty attended a February White House meeting on crypto legislation. He joined other crypto and banking representatives to discuss stablecoin provisions. Lawmakers continue negotiations in Washington, DC, over a proposed US crypto market structure bill.

The post Ripple expands stablecoin payments platform for banks appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• Bitcoin has recorded five straight monthly red candles in 2025, pushing sentiment to historically exhausted levels.
• Gold and silver erased $2.4 trillion in market value in one session after a parabolic rally through early 2025.
• Dollar strength overrode geopolitical fear, revealing gold as a macro trade rather than a pure crisis hedge. 
• A strong Bitcoin monthly reversal could trigger sharp altcoin gains, especially in assets that held technical structure.

Bitcoin continues to face mounting pressure as traditional safe-haven assets experience a sharp reversal. Gold and silver together erased roughly $2.4 trillion in combined market value in a single trading session.

The selloff followed a parabolic rally that both metals staged earlier in 2025. Bitcoin, by contrast, has now recorded five consecutive monthly red candles throughout the year.

Dollar strength has become the dominant force shaping price action across both crypto and commodity markets.

Dollar Strength Exposes the Limits of Traditional Safe Havens

Gold and silver have long been considered reliable hedges during times of geopolitical uncertainty. However, recent price action across both metals tells a different story about their true nature.

Despite tensions involving Iran, global shipping disruptions, and persistent inflation talk, dollar strength overrode fear-driven demand for metals.

Gold climbed as much as 96% since the start of 2025, while silver surged approximately 191% over the same period.

Both assets had entered parabolic territory before the sharp correction ultimately took hold. The pullback effectively flushed excess leverage from an already overstretched market position.

One analyst on X wrote that dollar strength “overpowered fear,” arguing gold behaves more like a macro trade.

According to the post, gold remains tied to yields and the dollar, not a pure crisis hedge. The comment reflects how macro traders are reassessing the metal’s role in uncertain conditions.

Five Red Months Push Bitcoin Toward Historic Exhaustion

The digital asset has fallen approximately 27% since the start of 2025, even as metals posted strong gains. The nature of that decline, however, differs sharply from the selloff metals experienced this week. Rather than a sudden forced liquidation, the drop has resembled a slow and sustained liquidity drain.

Forced selling in overleveraged markets typically produces violent, sharp price drops within short timeframes. Bitcoin’s five-month slide has been more measured and gradual by comparison. That distinction carries weight when evaluating where the asset stands heading forward.

Bitcoin is now trading at historically stretched levels across multiple timeframes. Sentiment has been steadily drained throughout several months of consecutive losses. In effect, the asset has already completed the reset cycle that metals are only now beginning.

What a Reversal Could Mean for BTC and Altcoins

A strong monthly close for Bitcoin at current levels would carry considerable upside momentum. Historically, when a price breaks out after extended compression, the move tends to be sharp rather than gradual.

Altcoins that maintained structure during the prolonged bleed are best positioned to benefit from any rotation.

The same analyst noted that when Bitcoin moves aggressively after long compression, altcoins tend not to follow quietly. Instead, they often surge alongside the broader shift in market sentiment. Assets that held technical structure through the downturn are likely to see the largest moves.

Risk factors, however, remain present. If dollar strength continues building and equities weaken, Bitcoin will not escape the broader fallout. Oversold conditions build potential energy, but a macro catalyst is still needed to confirm a sustained reversal.

The post Bitcoin Nears Historic Sixth Red Month as Gold and Silver Shed $2.4 Trillion in a Single Day appeared first on Blockonomi.

The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange announced another amendment to its platform, which is particularly focused on popular altcoins such as Avalanche (AVAX), Litecoin (LTC), Zcash (ZEC), and more.

It also plans to remove certain trading pairs that no longer meet the necessary criteria.

The Newcomers

Binance said it will open trading for AVAX/U, LINK/U, LTC/U, PAXG/U, and ZEC/U on March 5th. Trading bots services for these pairs will be enabled on the same day.

The initiative is once again centered on U (United Stables) – a stablecoin launched in late 2025 and pegged to the American dollar. To stimulate adoption, Binance will introduce a zero-fee promotion for eligible users on U spot and margin trading pairs.

Over the past few weeks, the exchange has added ADA/U, DOGE/U, and PEPE/U to its Cross Margin section, while XRP/U, SUI/U, ASTER/U, and PAXG/U were listed on its Spot market.

AVAX, LINK, LTC, and ZEC are all in green territory today (March 3rd), but their gains are likely driven by the broader market rebound rather than Binance’s announcement. While the company can trigger a major pump for a given cryptocurrency, this usually happens after an initial listing, not after introducing additional pairs.

Meanwhile, PAX Gold (PAXG) is down 4% on a daily scale following a pullback in the price of the yellow metal. The cryptocurrency is backed by real, physical gold, where each token represents one fine troy ounce stored in secure vaults.

These Pairs Will be Removed

In addition to offering more trading options, Binance has also chosen to delist certain pairs that no longer meet its standards. It will say goodbye to the cross margin pairs CHZ/BTC, CAKE/BTC, ENA/BTC, UNI/ETH, CRV/BTC, INJ/BTC, XTZ/BTC, and the isolated margin ones FET/BTC, OP/BTC, PAXG/BTC, CHZ/BTC, CAKE/BTC, ENA/BTC, CRV/BTC, INJ/BTC, XTZ/BTC on March 5th.

“Users will no longer be able to transfer any amount of assets of the aforementioned pair(s) via manual transfers and Auto-Transfer Mode into their Isolated Margin accounts. If users hold outstanding liabilities of said tokens, these users may only manually transfer up to the amount of liabilities of that token into their Isolated Margin accounts, less any collateral already available,” the company explained.

In addition, Binance warned that clients will not be able to update their positions during the delisting process, which may take approximately three hours.

The disclosure hasn’t weighed on the prices of the involved cryptocurrency, as most have still posted daily gains in line with the broader market rebound.

The post Important Binance Update Affecting ZEC, LTC, and Other Altcoin Traders: Details appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The United States (U.S.) Senate has taken a major bipartisan step by advancing the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act. The bill combines housing reforms with a ban on central bank digital currencies (CBDC).

According to Burgess Everett, congressional bureau chief at Semafor, the legislation passed a key procedural vote of 84–6. The result signals broad support for changes affecting both housing policy and digital money rules.

Housing Supply Push Comes With Crypto Conditions

Beyond its digital currency provisions, the bill targets America’s housing challenges by cutting bureaucratic delays and expanding home supply. It also seeks to curb the dominance of large institutional players in single-family rentals while simplifying financing and development processes nationwide.

Highlighting the scale of bipartisan backing, Everett described the vote margin as one not seen every day. Supporters argue the reforms could make housing more accessible and affordable for ordinary Americans.

Despite the focus on housing, a notable feature of the legislation is its ban on central bank digital currencies. The provision bars the Federal Reserve from issuing or creating a digital currency through 2030. It also covers any similar assets issued directly or through financial intermediaries.

The restriction emerged after House conservatives pushed for tighter crypto-related limits as part of broader legislative compromises. Lawmakers opted to fold the provision into the housing bill rather than advance standalone digital asset legislation.

Federal Reserve officials have said any CBDC initiative remains exploratory and would require congressional approval. Even so, the ban has prompted renewed debate over the future of digital currency in the U.S., particularly around privacy, payments, and financial oversight.

White House Signals Support Despite CBDC Controversy

The White House has endorsed the bill, noting that President Trump’s advisers would recommend signing it if it reaches his desk. The backing underscores the legislation’s unusual cross-party appeal, even as Democrats have always opposed limits on Federal Reserve digital currency research.

Despite the endorsement, the bill still faces several procedural hurdles before becoming law, including reconciliation with the House version. It remains unclear whether the CBDC restriction will survive final negotiations, leaving the digital currency community closely watching.

The post U.S. Senate Pushes Housing Reform Bill With Surprise CBDC Ban appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The total open interest (OI) for XRP futures across major crypto exchanges has plunged 70% from its peak five months ago, settling at $203 million on March 3, 2026.

The sharp drop in unsettled contracts mirrors levels seen in April 2025, a period that immediately preceded a significant price rally for the digital asset, raising questions about whether the market is once again flushing out excess leverage.

Open Interest Collapse Mirrors April 2025 Setup

Data compiled by market analyst Amr Taha shows that XRP’s aggregate open interest has cratered from $660 million in October 2025 to just $203 million today.

Binance, the dominant venue for XRP derivatives, has seen its OI dip below $270 million, a threshold last witnessed on April 8, 2025. Smaller platforms have also seen activity shrink considerably, with Bitfinex and BitMEX now holding just $4.3 million and $3 million in XRP open interest, respectively.

“Historically, such phases have aligned with local bottoms, as excessive leverage is flushed out and market conditions reset,” Taha noted.

Open interest tracks the total number of outstanding futures and perpetual contracts that remain open. According to the market watcher, a sudden dip alongside falling prices often suggests traders are closing positions or being liquidated as leverage unwinds.

The analyst suggested that the current combination points to forced liquidations and voluntary exits rather than new speculative build-up.

“Traders are either closing positions voluntarily or being liquidated due to margin calls,” he wrote.

The derivatives reset comes at a time when geopolitical tensions are rattling markets. On March 2, analyst Darkfost reported that 472 million XRP, worth about $652 million, flowed into Binance following U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran.

Such large exchange inflows can signal positioning for potential selling, adding pressure to spot prices, and XRP swung from $1.43 down to $1.27 during the weekend turmoil, allowing BNB to leapfrog it to once again become the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap.

Volatility Spikes as Price Trends Lower

Separate data highlighted by Arab Chain on March 2 shows XRP’s 30-day realized volatility on Binance reaching 1.16, its highest level since March 2025.

Realized volatility measures the annualized standard deviation of daily returns over a 30-day period, and a reading at this level means daily price swings have widened significantly compared to recent months.

At the time of writing, the Ripple token was trading around $1.35, having dipped nearly 2% in the last 24 hours. It also remains down almost 17% over 30 days and about 50% within the past year. Furthermore, the asset is 63% below its all-time high of $3.65, which it reached in July 2025.

However, there might be a positive aspect to consider in the current situation. As Taha pointed out, the April 2025 drop in Binance open interest coincided with a major bottom near $1.80, which was followed by a rally that eventually took XRP to its most recent all-time high.

The post XRP Open Interest Falls 70% to Yearly Lows: What Does it Mean for Ripple’s Price? appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The cryptocurrency market has rebounded over the past 24 hours, with Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and many other leading digital assets posting slight increases.

For its part, NEAR Protocol (NEAR) outperformed every competitor in the top 100 club, registering an impressive 12% pump.

What Fueled the Rally and What’s Next?

NEAR has been at the forefront of gains lately, with its valuation rising to a monthly peak of around $1.45 just several hours ago. Currently, it trades at around $1.35 (per CoinGecko’s data), representing a roughly 40% jump on a weekly scale. Its market capitalization has surpassed $1.7 billion, making it the 44th-largest cryptocurrency and flipping popular altcoins like Bittensor (TAO), Pi Network (PI), and others.

The main catalyst for the rally seems to be the latest technical upgrade announced by NEAR Protocol’s team. The project’s official X account revealed that Confidential Intents is live, a feature that lets users make private DeFi transactions without exposing sensitive details.

“DeFi users, developers, and institutions now unlock a wide range of privacy-first use cases without forgoing discretion,” the disclosure reads.

X user Emperor Osmo argued that NEAR is “fundamentally undervalued,” adding that Intents are generating widespread adoption.

“Meanwhile, they continue to increase the rate of adoption under which AI enables privacy-first trading (Iron Claw). Agentic payments are scaling, and Near is positioned to capture a lot of that flow,” they stated.

Michael van de Poppe also spoke highly of NEAR, describing it as “simply the best AI protocol in the ecosystem.” He wondered why investors wouldn’t want to add it to their portfolios, adding that from a technical standpoint, “it’s the best representation of the current status of altcoins.”

Altcoin Sherpa believes NEAR “is insanely strong,” while Sjuul | AltCryptoGems thinks the asset is trying to print “a cup and handle” formation on its price chart. This pattern consists of a rounded bottom (cup) and a small pullback on the right side (handle), and together they usually signal a bullish setup.

Not so Quick

Despite the evident resurgence, NEAR remains far below its all-time high of around $20 witnessed at the start of 2022. Meanwhile, certain technical indicators suggest a correction could be on the way.

The asset’s Relative Strength Index (RSI), which measures the speed and magnitude of recent price changes, has briefly climbed past 70. This means that NEAR has entered overbought territory and could be on the verge of a move south. Conversely, ratios below 30 are considered buying opportunities.

The post NEAR Protocol (NEAR) Soars by Double Digits: Breakout Confirmed or Bull Trap? appeared first on CryptoPotato.

A federal court in the United States has dismissed a class action lawsuit accusing Uniswap Labs of facilitating the trading of scam tokens on its decentralized protocol. The court dismissed the plaintiffs’ claims with prejudice after four years of trial.

According to a filing with the U.S. Court for the Southern District of New York, Judge Katherine Polk Failla dismissed the case for several reasons, including the plaintiffs’ failure to allege the defendants’ knowledge of the fraud. Among other reasons, the judge also ruled that the plaintiffs failed to allege that Uniswap Labs and its founder, Hayden Adams, aided, abetted, and substantially assisted the fraud.

Uniswap Wins Scam Token Class Suit

While filing the initial complaint and the first amended complaint (FAC) in April and September 2022, respectively, the plaintiffs alleged 14 claims against Uniswap, Adams, and other defendants. The complainants argued that the defendants were liable for scam tokens issued and traded on Uniswap.

The argument stemmed from the fact that the identities of the scam token issuers were unknown. They claimed that Uniswap served as a marketplace for the tokens in exchange for transaction fees. The plaintiffs also insisted that the defendants had, in effect, sold the tokens as unregistered broker-dealers by drafting smart contracts that enabled ownership of the protocol’s native asset, UNI.

By August 2023, the court dismissed the FAC for failure to state a claim under federal securities laws. Judge Failla insisted that the accusers’ attempts to hold defendants liable for the losses from the scams were unconvincing. Although the complainants appealed the dismissal, the Second Circuit court affirmed the judge’s decision in part in February 2025. The appeal resulted in the plaintiffs again being allowed to amend their complaint.

No Plausible Claims

In the second amended complaint (SAC) filed in May 2025, the accusers focused on state-law violations. By this time, the judge had dismissed all defendants except Uniswap and Adams. By July, the defendants had filed a motion to dismiss under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

In dismissing the SAC, Judge Failla insisted that the plaintiffs still failed to allege plausible claims against Uniswap, despite three attempts.

“Even if Plaintiffs had adequately alleged Defendants’ actual knowledge, their claim would still fail because they have not alleged that Defendants provided substantial assistance to the issuers’ fraud,” the judge stated.

Meanwhile, Adams commented on the dismissal, calling it a “good, sensible outcome.”

The post U.S. Court Dismisses Years-Long Scam Token Lawsuit Against Uniswap Labs appeared first on CryptoPotato.