Large ETH transfers by prominent figures like Wilcke can influence market sentiment, potentially impacting Ethereum's price volatility.

The post Ethereum co-founder Jeffrey Wilcke sends $157M in ETH to Kraken after months of wallet silence appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Excluding stablecoins from corporate crypto investments in South Korea may limit market growth and innovation, affecting global crypto dynamics.

The post South Korea moves to exclude USDT, USDC from corporate crypto investment rules appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Escalating tensions and military actions risk destabilizing the Middle East, impacting global oil markets and regional power dynamics.

The post Trump declares Iran “surrendered” to Middle East neighbors, threatens further strikes appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Kalshi and Polymarket discuss new funding rounds that could value each prediction market platform near $20 billion.

The post Kalshi and Polymarket weigh funding rounds at $20B valuations appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Susquehanna backed crypto trading firm BlockFills seeks restructuring after losses, frozen withdrawals, and a lawsuit from a customer.

The post Crypto trading firm BlockFills explores restructuring amid losses and customer lawsuit appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

Utexo Raises $7.5M to Launch Bitcoin-Native USDT Settlement Infrastructure

Utexo, a startup building Bitcoin-native stablecoin settlement infrastructure, announced a $7.5 million seed round co-led by Tether, Big Brain Holdings, and Portal Ventures. 

The round also included participation from Franklin Templeton, Maven11 Capital, Fulgur Ventures, Alchemy VC, Ethereal Ventures, Auros Ventures, Arcanum Capital, Paper Ventures, Axia8, FlowTraders, Plan B, Gate Ventures, Sats Ventures, and strategic angels including operators from Ledger, Hyperion, BTC Turk, Echo, Legion, and SOLV.

The company was founded to address a longstanding gap in the cryptocurrency ecosystem: enabling USDT to settle natively on Bitcoin with robust, production-ready payment rails. Tether’s 

CEO, Paolo Ardoino, said that Bitcoin has been central to the stablecoin issuer’s long-term vision for USDT. “Market cycles come and go, but the need for open and resilient settlement infrastructure remains constant,” Ardoino said. 

He added that Utexo provides a layer that makes Bitcoin-native USDT settlement viable at scale, strengthening Bitcoin’s role as a global settlement rail for real-world dollar transactions.

Historically, the Lightning Network and RGB protocols have offered technical capabilities for Bitcoin-based payments, but their complexity limited adoption in production environments. Utexo abstracts these complexities behind a single API layer, allowing payment operators to route USDT settlement over Bitcoin-native rails without modifying custody, compliance workflows, or user experiences.

Chris Hutchinson, co-founder of Utexo, explained the system’s value proposition: “We built Utexo so that USDT could move on Bitcoin the way money is supposed to move: instantly, privately, with no surprises on costs. Our partners integrate our API once and can route USDT on the most resilient open network ever built, with full control over cost structure.” 

Viktor Ihnatiuk, co-founder, added that the infrastructure allows wallets to offer free USDT transactions while boosting adoption of Bitcoin-native stablecoins.

The infrastructure supports atomic settlement, privacy-preserving execution, and predictable fees for every transaction, independent of network congestion. 

Settlement occurs in USDT and is anchored to Bitcoin’s security model, completing in under one second. Utexo encrypts all on-chain transactions, preventing disclosure of counterparties and wallet addresses, distinguishing it from public transaction graphs on other networks.

Tether and Bitcoin 

By providing a reliable, predictable settlement layer, the company enables Bitcoin to serve as a viable rail for dollar-denominated payments, advancing Tether’s vision of native USDT on Bitcoin.

In February, Tether open-sourced MiningOS (MOS), a modular operating system for managing and automating bitcoin mining operations, unveiled at the 2026 Plan ₿ Forum in San Salvador. 

The system provides unified control over hardware, energy, and site infrastructure using a peer-to-peer architecture, reducing reliance on proprietary or centralized software.

Targeted at exchanges, wallets, payment service providers, high-frequency trading firms, and platforms handling large volumes of USDT, Utexo focuses on routing existing stablecoin flows over Bitcoin rather than launching speculative L2 solutions. 

This post Utexo Raises $7.5M to Launch Bitcoin-Native USDT Settlement Infrastructure first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Kazakhstan’s Central Bank to Channel $350 Million of Reserves into Crypto and Bitcoin  Investments

The National Bank of Kazakhstan plans to allocate up to $350 million from the country’s gold and foreign exchange reserves toward investments tied to digital assets, marking one of the most significant steps by a central bank to gain exposure to the crypto sector.

Governor Timur Suleimenov said the initiative will focus on companies and financial instruments connected to cryptocurrency markets rather than direct purchases of assets like Bitcoin. The investments are expected to include shares of technology firms involved in digital asset infrastructure as well as index funds whose performance tracks crypto-related markets.

The allocation represents a small portion of Kazakhstan’s overall reserves. 

As of February, the country held roughly $69.4 billion in gold and foreign exchange reserves, according to data from the central bank.

Deputy chair Aliya Moldabekova said the investment program is scheduled to begin in April and May as the bank finalizes a list of eligible companies and financial instruments.

“We are not talking about any large investment in cryptocurrencies,” Moldabekova said, noting that officials are concentrating on firms involved in digital asset infrastructure and related technologies.

Kazakhstan already plays a prominent role in the global crypto ecosystem. Following China’s sweeping ban on crypto mining in 2021, many mining operations relocated to the Central Asian country due to its energy resources and permissive regulatory environment. 

As a result, Kazakhstan emerged as one of the world’s leading centers for industrial-scale bitcoin mining.

Bitcoin-fiat facing services

Financial institutions in Kazakhstan are also experimenting with consumer-facing crypto services. Suleimenov said two banks have already launched crypto-fiat payment cards that allow users to transact between traditional currencies and digital assets. Two additional banks are preparing to introduce similar products.

These initiatives are currently operating in a regulatory sandbox while authorities finalize broader legislation governing digital financial assets.

The central bank is also pushing to create a licensing framework for cryptocurrency exchanges operating in the country. Under the proposal, exchanges would be required to comply with anti-money laundering rules, tax regulations and other financial oversight measures.

Officials say the broader regulatory push aims to integrate digital asset services into Kazakhstan’s financial system while maintaining oversight of the sector.

Suleimenov has framed the effort as part of a broader transformation of financial markets driven by technology. According to the governor, innovations such as tokenized assets, digital bonds and crypto-linked payment rails are creating entirely new categories of financial instruments.

“In essence, a completely new sector of the financial market is emerging,” he said.

The central bank believes digital financial assets could expand access to funding for businesses and investors. For example, real estate developers could tokenize property holdings and sell fractional ownership through digital tokens, offering an alternative to traditional bank financing.

This post Kazakhstan’s Central Bank to Channel $350 Million of Reserves into Crypto and Bitcoin  Investments first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Russia Considers Simplified Licensing Path for Bank-Run Crypto Exchanges

Russia’s central bank is weighing a plan that would allow banks and brokerage firms to operate cryptocurrency exchanges through a simplified licensing pathway tied to their existing financial permits, according to remarks from Governor Elvira Nabiullina.

Under the proposal, financial institutions could obtain authorization to run crypto trading platforms through a “notification process,” rather than applying for a new standalone license. 

The approach would allow firms that already hold banking or brokerage licenses to expand into digital asset services using their current regulatory status.

Back in January, Anatoly Aksakov, head of the State Duma Committee on the Financial Market, made comments that Russia was preparing to introduce its first comprehensive regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, with lawmakers aiming to finalize the draft for a parliamentary vote by the end of June.

Nabiullina presented the idea during a meeting between the central bank and Russian lending institutions, according to reports from the Interfax news agency.

The governor framed the proposal as an effort to integrate cryptocurrency activity into Russia’s existing financial infrastructure. 

She argued that banks already maintain compliance systems designed to meet anti–money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism requirements, which could provide a foundation for supervising digital asset markets.

“We have proposed allowing banks and brokers to obtain crypto exchange licenses through a notification process and to act as intermediaries based on their current banking licenses,” Nabiullina said, adding that the sector’s existing compliance frameworks could help protect customers entering the crypto market.

The central bank also outlined limits designed to manage financial risk during the early stages of integration. 

Under the proposal, banks’ exposure to cryptocurrency activities would be capped at 1% of their capital.

Nabiullina said regulators plan to monitor how institutions operate within that threshold before considering any expansion.

“Let’s start by seeing how banks operate within the one percent cap, and then see whether we need to move forward,” she said.

The licensing proposal forms part of a broader effort by the Central Bank of Russia and the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation to establish a clearer legal framework for digital assets in the country.

In late 2025, the central bank submitted a regulatory concept to the Russian government that would formally recognize cryptocurrencies and stablecoins as currency assets that can be bought and sold through regulated intermediaries. The framework would allow trading through exchanges, brokers and trustees operating under existing financial licenses.

Crypto for domestic payments 

At the same time, the proposal maintains a strict ban on the use of cryptocurrencies for domestic payments, a position the central bank has held for years. Digital assets would function as investment instruments rather than alternatives to the national currency.

Draft legislation reflecting the concept is expected to reach the State Duma during the spring legislative session. Deputy Finance Minister Ivan Chebeskov has indicated that lawmakers could review the bill as early as March, with the main regulatory framework scheduled to take effect on July 1, 2026.

The proposed rules would also introduce a tiered system governing who can access crypto markets.

Qualified investors would face no limits on purchases. Non-qualified investors would be restricted to buying up to 300,000 rubles, or roughly $3,800, in crypto assets each year through a single intermediary.

Russia updated the definition of “qualified investor” last year. Individuals may now qualify based on several criteria, including a master’s degree in finance, annual income of at least 20 million rubles, or meeting property ownership thresholds set by regulators.

Those wealth requirements are scheduled to rise in 2026, when the property threshold increases from 12 million rubles to 24 million rubles.

This post Russia Considers Simplified Licensing Path for Bank-Run Crypto Exchanges first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Strike Secures New York BitLicense, Opening Bitcoin Financial Services to State Residents

Strike, a Bitcoin financial services firm founded by Jack Mallers, has received both a BitLicense and a money transmitter license from the New York State Department of Financial Services, allowing the company to operate in one of the most tightly regulated digital asset markets in the United States.

The approval allows Strike to offer its Bitcoin brokerage, payments, and custody services to individuals and businesses across New York.

The state’s regulatory framework requires firms to meet standards for capital reserves, cybersecurity, and operational transparency.

New York’s BitLicense regime has long served as a gatekeeper for digital asset companies seeking access to the state’s financial markets. Several crypto firms have opted not to pursue the license because of the compliance requirements and ongoing regulatory oversight.

Mallers described the license as a major step in the company’s effort to build a Bitcoin-focused financial platform.

“Receiving our BitLicense is a defining milestone for Strike,” Mallers said in a statement. “Strike is building the leading Bitcoin financial institution. With our BitLicense, we can now bring that mission to New York, the global center of finance.”

Strike’s bitcoin services

With the approval, New York users will gain access to Strike’s suite of Bitcoin services. The platform allows customers to buy and sell bitcoin through linked bank accounts, debit cards, or wire transfers. 

Users can also directly deposit their paychecks and convert a portion, or all, of their wages into bitcoin.

The platform includes automated trading tools such as recurring purchases and price-triggered orders. Recurring buys allow customers to schedule bitcoin purchases on a set interval, while target orders execute trades when bitcoin reaches a specific price.

Strike also allows users to pay bills from a bitcoin balance, including utility payments, credit card balances, and mortgage bills. The feature reflects the company’s effort to position bitcoin as a tool for daily financial activity rather than only as an investment asset.

According to the company, customer bitcoin and cash balances are held one-to-one and are not lent or used for company operations. Strike said users can withdraw bitcoin to personal wallets at no cost, with the firm covering on-chain transaction fees.

The license also places Strike under the supervision of the New York State Department of Financial Services, which requires periodic audits, cybersecurity reviews, and capital reserve compliance.

Strike’s expansion into New York comes as the company outlines broader growth plans for its platform. In late 2025, Mallers said the firm intends to add bitcoin-backed lending, which would allow customers to borrow fiat currency while holding their bitcoin.

This post Strike Secures New York BitLicense, Opening Bitcoin Financial Services to State Residents first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

The Core Issue: Consensus Cleanup

Protocol developers often come across as more pessimistic about Bitcoin’s future than most Bitcoiners. Daily exposure to Bitcoin’s imperfections certainly shapes a sober perspective, and it’s important to reflect on what Bitcoin has achieved. Anyone in the world, no matter their race, age, gender, nationality, or any other arbitrary criterion, is able to store and transfer value on a neutral monetary network more robust now than ever. That said, Bitcoin does have issues that many Bitcoiners are not aware of, but could threaten its long-term prospects if not addressed properly. The vulnerabilities fixed by the Consensus Cleanup are one such example.

The Consensus Cleanup (BIP 54¹) is a soft fork proposal aimed at patching multiple long-standing vulnerabilities within the Bitcoin consensus protocol. As a soft fork proposal, it is separate in nature to most other Bitcoin Core efforts featured in this edition. Although the proposal has historically been championed by individuals associated with the Bitcoin Core project, it really belongs to the broader category of Bitcoin protocol development.

We will walk through each of the proposal’s four items, describing the impact of the issue addressed and the remediation applied. We’ll discuss how the proposed mitigations evolved to address feedback as well as newfound vulnerabilities. We’ll finish with a brief overview of the current status of the soft fork proposal.

A vulnerability in Bitcoin’s Proof of Work

The Bitcoin network adjusts mining difficulty to maintain an average block rate of one per 10 minutes. An “off by one” bug (a common programming mistake) in its implementation opens up an attack called the Timewarp attack, whereby a majority of miners can artificially speed up the rate of block production by manipulating the difficulty downward.

This attack fortunately requires a 51%+ threshold of miners, but artificially speeding up the block rate is a critical issue. It means that full nodes are not in control of resource usage anymore, and that an attacker can considerably accelerate the bitcoin subsidy emission schedule.

Even though it requires a “51% miner”, it is a significant departure from the standard Bitcoin threat model. A 51% attack traditionally enables a miner to prevent the confirmation of a transaction for as long as they maintain their advantage. But the presence of this bug grants them the power to cripple the network within just 38 days by rapidly reducing the network difficulty.

Instead of taking down the network, it is more probable that an attacker would exploit this bug to a smaller extent. Current miners could coordinate to quadruple the block rate (to 2.5 minute blocks) while keeping the Bitcoin network in a seemingly functioning state, effectively quadrupling the available block space and stealing block subsidies from future miners. Short-sighted users may be incentivized to support this attack, as more available block space would mean -ceteris paribus- lower fees for onchain transactions. This would of course come at the expense of full-node runners and undermine the network’s long term stability.

The Timewarp attack exploits the fact that difficulty adjustment periods do not overlap, allowing block timestamps to be set so that a new period appears to start before the previous one has finished. Because making them overlap would be a hard fork, the next best mitigation is to link the timestamps of blocks at the boundaries of difficulty adjustment periods. The BIP 54 specifications mandate that the first block of a period cannot have a timestamp earlier than the previous period’s last block by more than two hours.

In addition, the BIP 54 specifications mandate that a difficulty adjustment period must always take a positive amount of time. That is, for a given difficulty adjustment period, the last block may never have a timestamp earlier than the first block’s. Surprised this isn’t already the case? We were surprised it was at all necessary. Turns out this is a simple fix for a clever attack, related to Timewarp, that pseudonymous developer Zawy and Mark “Murch” Erhardt came up with when reviewing the Consensus Cleanup proposal.

Blocks that take hours to validate

Any miner can exploit certain expensive validation operations to create blocks that take a long time to verify. Whereas a normal Bitcoin block takes in the order of a hundred milliseconds to validate, validation times for these “attack blocks” range from more than ten minutes on a high-end computer to up to ten hours on a Raspberry Pi (a popular full-node hardware choice).

An externally-motivated attacker may leverage this to disrupt the entire network, while in a more economically rational variant of the attack, a miner can delay its competition just long enough to increase its profits without creating widespread network disruption.

Historical attempts to mitigate this issue have been tumultuous, because it requires imposing restrictions on Bitcoin’s scripting capabilities. Such restrictions have the potential of being confiscatory, which is paramount to avoid in any serious soft fork design.

Matt Corallo’s original 2019 Great Consensus Cleanup proposed to solve these long block validation times by invalidating a couple of obscure operations in non-Segwit (“legacy”) Script. Some raised concerns that although transactions using those operations had not been relayed nor mined by default by Bitcoin Core for years, someone, somewhere, may still be depending on it unbeknownst to everyone. Of course, this has to be weighed against the practical risk to all Bitcoin users of a miner exploiting this issue.

Even though the confiscation concern is fairly theoretical, there is a philosophical point on how to perform Bitcoin protocol development in trying to design an appropriate mitigation for the vulnerability with the smallest confiscatory surface possible. My later iteration of the Consensus Cleanup proposal addressed this concern by introducing a limit which pinpoints exactly the harmful behaviour, without invalidating any specific Bitcoin Script operation.

Forged proofs of payment

Bitcoin block headers contain a Merkle root that commits to all transactions in the block. This makes it possible to give a succinct proof that a given transaction is part of a chain with a certain amount of Proof of Work. This is commonly referred to as an “SPV proof”.

Due to a weakness in the design of the Merkle tree, including a specifically-crafted 64-byte transaction in a block allows an attacker to forge such a proof for an arbitrary fake (non-existent) transaction. This may be used to trick SPV verifiers, commonly used to validate incoming payments or deposits into a side-system. Mitigations exist that enable verifiers to reject such invalid proofs; however, these are often overlooked—even by cryptography experts—and can be cumbersome in certain contexts.

The Consensus Cleanup addresses this issue by invalidating transactions whose serialized size is exactly 64 bytes. Such transactions cannot be secure in the first place (they can only ever burn funds or leave them for anyone to spend), and have not been relayed or mined by default by Bitcoin Core since 2019. Alternative approaches were discussed, such as a round-about way of improving the existing mitigation^a, but the authors chose to fix the root cause of the issue, eliminating both the need for implementers to apply the mitigation and the need for them to even know about the vulnerability in the first place.

^a: committing to the Merkle tree depth in part of the block header’s version field

UTXO Doppelgängers: duplicate transactions

“Mirco… Mezzo… Macroflation—Overheated Economy” is the title of a blog post⁴ Russell O’Connor published in February 2012, in which he describes how Bitcoin transactions can be duplicated. This was a critical flaw in Bitcoin, which broke the fundamental assumption that transaction identifiers (hashes) are unique. This is because miners’ coinbase transactions have a single blank input, meaning that any coinbase transaction with the same outputs would have an identical transaction identifier. 

This was fixed by Bitcoin Core (then still called “Bitcoin”) developers with BIP 30², which required full nodes to perform additional validation when receiving a block. That extra validation was not strictly necessary to solve the issue, and was side-stepped with BIP 34³ the same year. Unfortunately, the fix introduced in BIP 34 is imperfect and the BIP 30 extra validation will once again be required in 20 years. Beyond not being strictly necessary, this validation cannot be performed by alternative Bitcoin client designs such as Utreexo and would effectively prevent them from fully validating the block chain.

The Consensus Cleanup introduces a more robust, future-proof fix for the issue. All Bitcoin transactions, including the coinbase transactions, contain a field to “time lock” the transaction. The value of the field represents the last block height at which a transaction is invalid. The BIP 54 specifications require that all coinbase transactions set this field to the height of their block (minus 1).

Combined with a clever suggestion from Anthony Towns to make sure the timelock validation always occurs, this guarantees that no coinbase transaction with the same timelock value may have been included in a previous block. This in turn guarantees that no coinbase transaction may have the same unique identifier (hash) as any past one, without requiring BIP 30 validation.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure

The vulnerabilities addressed by the Consensus Cleanup (BIP 54) are not an existential threat to Bitcoin at the moment. While some have the potential to cripple the network, they are unlikely to be exploited for now. That said, this might change and it is paramount that we proactively mitigate long-term risks to the Bitcoin network, even if it means having to bear the short term burden of coordinating a soft fork.

The work on the Consensus Cleanup started with Matt Corallo’s original proposal in 2019. It came together 6 years later with my publication of BIP 54 and an implementation of the soft fork in Bitcoin Inquisition, a testbed for Bitcoin consensus changes. Throughout this time the proposal received considerable feedback, various alternatives were considered and mitigations for additional weaknesses were incorporated. I believe it is now ready to be shared with Bitcoin users for consideration.

The Consensus Cleanup is a soft fork. Bitcoin protocol developers choose which improvements to prioritize and make available to the public. But the ultimate decision to adopt a change to Bitcoin’s consensus rules rests with the users. The choice is yours.

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-0054.md 

[2] https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0030.mediawiki 

[3] https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0034.mediawiki 

[4] https://r6.ca/blog/20120206T005236Z.html 

This post The Core Issue: Consensus Cleanup first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Antoine Poinsot.

A large volume of US commercial real estate (CRE) debt is rolling into a very different market from the one that produced it.

The Mortgage Bankers Association says $875 billion of commercial and multifamily mortgages are scheduled to mature in 2026, equal to 17% of the roughly $5 trillion of outstanding balances it tracks.

While that's below the $957 billion that was due in 2025, it's still a massive refinancing event landing in a world where borrowing costs are far higher than they were when many of these loans were made.

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Aug 23, 2025 · Christina Comben

That matters because commercial real estate debt doesn't disappear at maturity and usually gets refinanced. In low-rate years, that often meant rolling a loan into new debt with manageable payments. But today, the same property may face a higher coupon, tighter underwriting, and a lower appraised value all at the same time.

The Federal Reserve said in a report last year that transaction-based commercial property prices had been flat, while a sizable number of borrowers would need to refinance maturing loans in the next few years. By November 2025, the Fed said aggregate CRE prices were showing signs of stabilization, though credit standards were still tight and the refinancing issue had not gone away.

The math is simple. A building financed at a low rate can carry its debt as long as rental income covers interest and principal. When the loan matures, the owner has to replace it.

If the new rate is materially higher, annual debt service rises. If the property is worth less than it was a few years ago, the owner may also need to add fresh equity to close the gap. So if cash flow can't support the new payment, the options narrow quickly: sell the asset, negotiate an extension, inject capital, hand the keys back, or default.

That basic vulnerability is a recurring theme in the Fed’s stability work on commercial property refinancing.

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May 26, 2025 · Oluwapelumi Adejumo

Why CRE refinancing risk lands hardest on regional banks

The banking angle matters because small and regional banks are much more concentrated in commercial real estate than the largest institutions.

A 2025 paper found that almost a third of US commercial mortgage dollars sit on regional bank balance sheets. An earlier Cohen & Steers analysis put the figure for regional and community banks at 31.5% of outstanding commercial mortgages.

The exact number is less important than the message: even if commercial real estate isn't a universal banking problem, it can still be a serious problem for a subset of lenders.

Regulators have been making that point for years. Interagency guidance on CRE concentration risk says concentrations add a layer of risk that compounds the risk of individual loans. The FDIC says institutions with CRE concentration risk may require additional supervisory analysis, and its 2023 advisory told banks with CRE concentrations to focus on capital, loan-loss reserves, liquidity, and tighter risk management in what it called a challenging environment.

The Government Accountability Office made the same point in more practical terms. Its 2024 review said the rise in remote and hybrid work, higher rates, and lower prices had made it harder for some property owners to repay loans, especially in office. It also said banks had responded by modifying loans, tightening standards, and drawing heavier regulatory scrutiny where CRE concentrations were high.

This is already a managed stress point. The open question is how smoothly banks can keep managing it as another large maturity year arrives.

The Office of Financial Research framed the risk more sharply. In a 2024 brief, it said future CRE losses could exceed shareholders’ equity for hundreds of smaller banks under severe loss assumptions, especially where institutions also carry large unrealized securities losses and sizable uninsured deposits.

That's not a forecast of imminent bank failures, but a warning about future sensitivity. A bank with a concentrated CRE book doesn't need the whole market to break, just enough loans in the wrong places, at the wrong loan-to-value ratios, to turn a refinancing problem into a capital problem.

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Apr 26, 2025 · Abdul Rafay Gadit

The real weakness is the office, and that is where valuation risk lingers

Commercial real estate sounds like one trade, but it's not. Apartments, industrial warehouses, neighborhood retail, hotels, and office towers don't all behave the same way.

Offices still carry the heaviest structural baggage because demand changed when hybrid work took hold, and that fed directly into vacancy, rent growth, and valuations. The GAO said those strains were particularly acute for office properties, and MSCI said office underperformed broader US commercial real estate in 2025.

MSCI’s price data shows why that distinction matters. The January 2026 RCA CPPI report said the national all-property index was up just 0.3% from a year earlier and down 0.1% from the previous month, which is a picture of stabilization, not a broad rebound.

MSCI’s wider US market work also described weakening price momentum, with downtown office still acting as a drag on the aggregate market. That doesn't mean every office building is distressed. But it shows that the part of the market with the weakest demand profile is still the part most likely to create refinancing friction and valuation disputes.

The spillover risk comes from what banks do when losses start to crystallize.

They reserve more, get more selective, and pull back from marginal borrowers. The Fed treats CRE as a broader vulnerability because losses never stay neatly inside a single building or one loan file.

Credit tightening at CRE-heavy banks can spill into construction lending, small-business credit, and local development pipelines. A real estate problem can become a local economy problem well before it becomes a national banking crisis.

Where Bitcoin fits into the spillover story

Commercial real estate stress matters for crypto through the same channels that carry stress into the rest of the market: liquidity, credit, and risk appetite.

If regional banks take losses, tighten lending, or become more defensive, money gets more expensive across the system, and that tends to hit speculative assets first. Bitcoin may be structurally different from tech stocks or real estate, but in periods when markets are repricing growth, credit, and liquidity all at once, it still trades inside the same macro environment.

The immediate effect would probably be how investors react to tighter financial conditions. A refinancing crunch in CRE could push banks to conserve capital, slow loan growth, and reinforce a broader risk-off tone across markets.

Tighter liquidity usually weighs on leverage, reduces demand for high-volatility assets, and makes it harder for bullish positioning to build. In that setup, Bitcoin can come under pressure even if nothing inside crypto itself is broken.

The longer-term effect is more complicated, and it depends on how far the banking stress goes.

If CRE stress stays contained, Bitcoin is likely to trade it mainly as another macro headwind. But if pressure on regional banks starts to revive broader doubts about the stability of the banking system, the asset can start to pick up a different bid.

That's the point where Bitcoin's role as a non-bank financial asset becomes more relevant. It doesn't automatically turn every banking stress event into a bullish crypto story, but a deeper loss of confidence in bank balance sheets, deposit safety, or credit creation could eventually strengthen the case for Bitcoin as an asset outside the traditional financial system.

That larger market reaction is still secondary to the core question in commercial real estate itself, which is whether refinancing stress stays manageable or starts showing up more clearly in bank credit data.

There are signs the strain is real, even if it's still not explosive.

The FDIC’s fourth-quarter 2025 Quarterly Banking Profile said past-due and nonaccrual rates for non-owner-occupied CRE and multifamily CRE were still well above pre-pandemic averages. That tells you two things at once: some stress has already surfaced, and the system is still operating with abnormal credit quality in important CRE books.

That's why the next phase of this story isn't one scary number but four practical indicators:

1. How much of the 2026 maturity calendar gets refinanced cleanly, and how much gets extended because lenders don't want to force a loss?
2. Do office-heavy markets keep producing discounted sales that reset comparable values lower?
3. Do delinquency and charge-off measures climb at banks with concentrated CRE portfolios?
4. Does tighter bank behavior start to show up in local credit conditions outside real estate?

The best way to read the situation is this: the maturity wall is real, the danger is concentrated, and offices still do most of the damage.

A national banking collapse isn't the base case in the public data. A drawn-out credit squeeze at the wrong banks, in the wrong cities, tied to refinancing that no longer pencils out, is much easier to imagine. That's what makes this bigger than a property story. It's a test of how much pain regional balance sheets can absorb before real estate stress starts leaking into the rest of the economy.

The post $875B in property debt is due soon — and regional banks may be the weak link Bitcoin is watching appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Headlines about Bitcoin ETF outflows often mix two things: Bitcoin's price move and actual share redemptions.

If BTC drops, ETF AUM drops in dollars even if nobody sells a single share. That mark-to-market drop gets read as money leaving, and it can look like an institutional exit when the wrapper's Bitcoin holdings and shares outstanding barely move.

To understand whether investors are actually leaving, you have to separate the USD thermometer from the BTC and share-count thermometer.

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Mar 7, 2026 · Andjela Radmilac

Two thermometers, two stories

Start with the USD thermometer. ETF assets-under-management (AUM) is a mark-to-market number. A 10% drop in BTC produces a 10% drop in AUM even with zero redemptions. Many dashboards put AUM and net flows side by side, but readers mentally treat both as money in or out. But AUM doesn't show investor behavior, just the asset price plus structure.

The BTC thermometer is closer to behavior. Total Bitcoin held by the complex, plus shares outstanding by fund, answers the real question: did the wrapper lose underlying exposure, or did the price do most of the work? Data from Glassnode puts the total US spot Bitcoin ETF balances at around 1.285 million BTC even after a long stretch of outflows, which is the sort of detail the dollar headlines tend to bury.

A simple example shows why the USD number misleads. If the complex holds 1.285 million BTC and BTC drops from $70,000 to $63,000, AUM falls from about $89.95 billion to about $70.95 billion.

That's a $19 billion drawdown with zero selling. The headlines would say that billions left, but the wrapper would remain unchanged in BTC terms.

So why do flow tables still feel violent in certain windows? Because a significant chunk of activity is tied to a trade that treats ETFs as a financing leg.

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The trade that turns flows into plumbing

It's your run-of-the-mill cash-and-carry trade, or the basis trade.

The idea is straightforward: hold spot exposure and short futures, collecting the futures premium when it exists. When the premium is wide, the trade throws off yield-like returns. But when the premium compresses, the trade stops paying, and desks unwind it. It's attractive when spreads are wide, but that appeal fades quickly as the spread tightens.

For many institutions, the cleanest and easiest way to gain exposure to Bitcoin is through ETFs.

When the trade grows, it shows up as steady ETF demand. When the trade shrinks, it shows up as ETF selling or redemptions. The motivation behind the trade is just spreadsheet math and is rarely a result of a change in sentiment.

You can see the hedge leg in the data that has nothing to do with ETF narratives.

In the CFTC's CME Bitcoin futures positioning, leveraged funds often sit heavily net short, consistent with a hedge against spot exposure held elsewhere. A Jan. 6 report showed leveraged funds held 2,554 long contracts versus 14,294 short contracts in the CME “BITCOIN” futures contract. While that doesn't prove every short is a basis book, it shows how large the hedge constituency can be.

When basis compresses, the unwind starts to matter more than daily flows. One market note in February tied near-neutral futures premium conditions to weaker incentives for basis trades that rely on futures premia to generate carry. CF Benchmarks has also reported on the CME basis behavior, linking it to market structure and positioning rather than pure story-driven sentiment.

Now connect that back to the two thermometers. During a basis unwind, you can get a week where USD AUM drops hard, and dollar flow headlines look catastrophic, while BTC holdings and shares outstanding move less.

It's the price that does most of the damage in dollar terms. At the same time, desks trim trades, which can create real redemptions in some products and plain secondary-market selling in others. Both can happen at the same time; the point is just that the driver can be structural rather than emotional.

ETFs further amplify the confusion because their creation/redemption mechanism is designed to keep the ETF price close to NAV. Authorized participants create or redeem shares in large blocks, swapping shares for the underlying basket or cash depending on the structure.

Crypto ETP plumbing has also been shifting toward a more commodity-ETF-like model. The SEC has allowed in-kind creations and redemptions for crypto ETFs, which can make the path between redeemed shares and Bitcoin moves more direct. That matters most during trade unwinds, when the exit route gets cleaner.

So how should readers interpret the next flow print?

Treat USD outflows as noise unless you pair them with the BTC and shares numbers. The dollar figure is a mix of mark-to-market and structure. The BTC holdings and shares outstanding are closer to whether the wrapper actually shrank.

A quick decoding framework helps:

• Directional exits: BTC held by the complex trends down, and shares outstanding decline across the major products. That's investors leaving the wrapper.
• Rotation: flows shift between issuers. Aggregate BTC held stays flatter while the plumbing moves underneath.
• Carry unwind: basis compresses, hedge positioning shifts, and ETF prints show stress that maps to spread math and balance sheet limits more than sentiment.

The real hinge for the next market phase isn't whether tomorrow's flows are deeply red, but whether the basis stabilizes at a level that makes carry viable again, or keeps sliding toward zero. The trade's appeal fades when spreads tighten, and other yields compete for capital.

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That's a much better way to say what the viral headlines can't. Some of what looks like an $80 billion “exodus” is a unit problem, and some of what looks like panic is just a trade closing. Watch the BTC and shares thermometer for behavior.

Watch basis and futures positioning for plumbing. The rest is mostly the dollar lens doing what it always does when Bitcoin moves.

The post $19B could “vanish” from Bitcoin ETFs without a single Bitcoin being sold appeared first on CryptoSlate.

When crude starts leading the headlines, crypto people tend to ask the wrong questions, like what it is that oil actually does to Bitcoin.

While it's the simplest and easiest way to explain what you don't know, it's a pretty bad question. A better one is what oil actually does to the cost of money, because Bitcoin is now trading like a live chart of liquidity expectations.

Oil is one of the fastest ways to force that repricing, especially when the move comes from geopolitics and shipping risks rather than a slow increase in demand for BTC.

That's basically the backdrop right now. Brent has been trading in the low $80s, and WTI in the mid $70s as the market prices disruption risk around the Strait of Hormuz, with banks and strategists openly talking about scenarios that could drag oil toward $90 or $100 if flows stay impaired.

While the end state of the conflict in Iran matters, the market mechanisms that determine price start working long before the world gets any certainty.

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Oil is a Fed story told through inflation psychology

Oil hits inflation in two ways at once.

One is very literal: energy feeds directly into headline CPI, and higher fuel costs also filter through shipping, plastics, and basic inputs.

The other is psychological: people see gasoline prices, they talk about them, politicians react to them, and that visibility keeps inflation from feeling finished. Central banks care about the second part more than the first because it shapes expectations, wage behavior, and the political tolerance for staying tight.

You can find this logic in plain-English terms across mainstream econ explainers, including older but still useful guidance from the San Francisco Fed. It breaks the oil-to-inflation link into a simple pass-through story: energy prices feed directly into headline CPI, and they also spill into other prices through transportation and production costs, with the size and staying power depending on whether households and firms start to expect higher inflation and build it into wages and pricing.

Guidance from the US EIA, drawing from Lutz Kilian's work, adds a more technical layer to this. It explains that not all oil moves are the same, because their effect on inflation depends on what caused the shock (a disruption of supply or a surge in demand), how quickly retail fuel prices transmit the move, and whether the jump leaks into broader inflation via second-round effects rather than fading as a one-off energy spike.

Markets take all of that and start basing their trades on what happens to the path of Fed cuts. If oil's jump pulls inflation expectations up at the margin, the market tends to push the first cut further out, price fewer cuts over the year, or both.

That repricing can happen in a single day, and it shows up first in the two places Bitcoin watches most closely, even when crypto doesn't say it out loud.

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The two-variable squeeze: yields and the dollar

Those two places are Treasury yields and the US dollar.

Yields are the discount rate for everything. When the 10-year yield climbs, long-duration assets reprice. That includes tech, credit-sensitive equities, and Bitcoin, which still behaves like an asset that benefits from easier financial conditions.

The dollar is the global funding unit. When the dollar strengthens at the same time yields rise, global financial conditions tighten in a way that reaches far beyond the US, because so much trade and debt is dollar-linked.

This week provided us with a perfect example of that chain in action.

The oil shock was followed by a jump in Treasury yields and a stronger dollar as investors reassessed inflation risk and the cut path. Reuters described a broader dash-for-cash dynamic, with cross-asset stress and the dollar bid firming as oil rose.

If you want a simple macro dashboard for BTC in weeks like this, watch the dollar index and the 10-year yield together. When both are climbing, liquidity gets pricier. When both ease, risk appetite usually finds oxygen again.

Why Bitcoin can look crypto-native even when the first domino is macro

Once oil tightens the Fed-path narrative, and yields and the dollar react, crypto supplies its own amplification. That's the most complicated part of this reaction, because the second-order effects happen inside the complex machinery of crypto leverage.

Start with the basic reality of modern crypto markets, which is that most of price discovery comes from perpetual futures, basis trades, and options hedging. When macro volatility increases, risk desks and systematic traders reduce gross exposure. In crypto, that often looks like funding swinging hard, open interest dropping, and liquidations doing what liquidations always do.

On March 2, Bitcoin held up better than equities as the Iran conflict drove oil higher, with liquidations rolling through over the weekend and price rebounding toward the mid-$60,000s.

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People expected Bitcoin to behave like a panic asset in these market conditions, but it didn't. This is mostly because it had already paid the price in positioning.

Derivatives data from late February also fits that story. Deribit's report showed a growing demand for protection and skew conditions through the February drawdown and into the late-month stabilization. CME has written about volatility spikes and how open interest and the mix of puts and calls can hint at how participants are positioning for the next move.

All of this tells us that spot can hold up or recover even when macro feels heavy, because the market has already rotated into protection and reduced leveraged longs. When that happens, the next bounce can be driven by shorts covering and hedges being adjusted rather than a sudden wave of new spot buying.

The cleaning phase: leverage resets can set up the next leg

Leverage getting trimmed is usually framed negatively. But in practice, it's often the market turning itself into something tradable again.

When funding gets stretched one way and then snaps back, it tells you positioning was crowded.

When open interest drops sharply, it tells you that traders reduced gross exposure. When options skew gets more put-heavy while spot stabilizes, it tells you buyers want upside exposure but still want insurance, which can dampen forced selling.

Derivatives show whether the move is coming from flows or from positioning. If price drops in a hurry and leverage drains at the same time, you're often watching a positioning reset.

If price rises and open interest rises with it, that means new risk is being added. Neither is good nor bad by itself, as each one just changes what the next 1% move tends to look like.

Oil as the backdrop, not the verdict

So where does oil fit now?

It fits as a macro backdrop that can keep the Fed-path conversation jumpy. Markets are treating Hormuz risk as a reason oil could stay high for days, which is another way of saying the inflation tail stays alive as long as the disruption premium stays embedded.

When strategists talk about $90 to $100 scenarios, they're also telling you what kind of inflation psychology they're bracing for, even if the final outcome never reaches those price levels. For Bitcoin, that means the easy macro tailwind depends on what happens next in the yields-and-dollar pair.

If oil cools and the market pulls rate-cut expectations forward again, Bitcoin will get room to breathe, because financial conditions loosen quickly when those two variables ease together.

If oil holds its risk premium and inflation fears stick, the market can keep pricing money as scarce, and Bitcoin tends to trade with that constraint in the background.

The useful way to hold the whole chain in your head is simple, and it keeps you from getting lost in narratives:

Oil sets the inflation tone, the inflation tone shapes the cut path, and the cut path moves yields and the dollar. Yields and the dollar then set the liquidity climate. Crypto leverage then either amplifies the move or cushions it, depending on how crowded positioning already was.

That's why crude is worth watching, even if you're never going to own a barrel. It's a fast, public, globally traded number that pushes markets into repricing the cost of money. Bitcoin sits downstream from that repricing, and it tends to show you the result in real time.

The post Forget CPI and ETFs — oil prices may now be the biggest signal for Bitcoin appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Bitcoin’s rebound on March 4 looked odd if you only watched it through the usual “risk assets are breaking” lens. Oil was jumping, shipping insurers were repricing war risk, and traders were treating the Strait of Hormuz like a live wire. All of the headlines had the cadence of a full-blown crisis.

However, Bitcoin climbed back into the same $70,000 zone it has been orbiting for weeks, despite seeing a notable drop the weekend before.

Two factors explain that move.

The first is a pretty straightforward macro influence. Whenever the Middle East starts seeing oil shocks, markets quickly price in higher energy costs, messier supply chains, and a whole other range of negative outcomes. Joint US and Israeli strikes on Iran and retaliatory attacks across the Gulf caused disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz and led to a severe energy shock.

As threats around the Strait intensified, war risk insurance and freight rates spiked, leading to a quick surge in oil and gas prices.

The second factor is derivatives. While it's not the only cause of the recovery, it explains why BTC can drop on shock and then rebound into a familiar price band even while the market remains nervous. The biggest effect comes from options, where hedging flows can pull the price toward crowded strike zones.

The macro shock supplied the match, but the options market supplied the dry timber already stacked around $70,000.

The shock that hit everything first: oil, Hormuz, and the cost of moving fuel

The Strait of Hormuz is a critical transit chokepoint in the global oil and gas trade. Data from 2024 showed around 20 million barrels passed through the Strait each day, equal to about 20% of the entire global consumption of petroleum liquids. (eia.gov)

When conditions in that narrow channel deteriorate, the market quickly reprices logistics, insurance, and the practical ability to export.

Between Feb. 28 and March 4, the Iran war threw the oil market into one of its biggest shocks in decades. The strikes and retaliation that followed threatened exports from the world's most important oil-producing region.

As traffic through the strait collapsed, shipping costs soared, and insurers were pulling cover and widening risk zones, with some shipping companies even diverting around the Cape of Good Hope.

Oil is the lifeblood of the global economy, and oil prices bleed into everything else. It affects everything from transport costs and airline economics to heating costs, food logistics, and inflation expectations.

So, when oil prices spike because the world's most important transit route is threatened, investors ask the same questions across markets: where does the risk go now?

Why Bitcoin sold first, then bounced while nerves stayed high

Bitcoin’s first move in a macro shock often looks like a simple set of liquidations. Blaming it on liquidations isn't surprising, given that Bitcoin trades 24/7, in size, and with fewer friction points than many other instruments. So when traders want to cut exposure quickly, they sell what they can sell quickly.

And part of that is certainly true. Bitcoin dropped after the weekend strikes and saw just under $1 billion liquidated between Feb. 28 and March 1.

That's the macro narrative: when shock hits, BTC sells quickly and in size.

But the missing piece of the puzzle is why it rebounded faster than everything else and kept pulling toward the same zone that has mattered for weeks. That is where the options market steps in.

The $70,000 area is a crowded intersection in options

Options come with a lot of Greek letters and dense terminology, so they tend to fall down the ladder of importance in times of macroeconomic shocks. But crypto options, and Bitcoin options in particular, have become so large that they have their own gravitational pull.

Large institutions now carry options exposure so large that even the slightest daily price movements force them to hedge.

Gamma measures how quickly an option’s sensitivity changes as the price moves. When gamma is high, small moves in Bitcoin can force larger hedge adjustments. That kind of trading can add speed and amplify short-term swings.

The peak gamma area for options expiring on March 5 and March 6 was around $71,000, with an elevated band from about $70,500 to $73,000. That's the zone where hedging sensitivity peaks.

Inside it, the market can feel spring-loaded, and dips and rallies tend to travel faster because the hedging response scales up.

The strike data backs up the same point. CoinGlass data shows dense exposure between $70,000 and $75,000, so these two strikes are doing most of the work.

At $70,000, open interest sits around 9.3k puts and 9.25k calls, roughly $1.32 billion in notional exposure. At $75,000, open interest sits around 17.36k calls and 9.41k puts, roughly $1.9 billion in notional. Those figures create a corridor where a lot of risk is anchored to a narrow set of prices.

You can think of it like traffic. A city has roads everywhere, but the congestion happens at chokepoints because many routes intersect there. The chokepoint exists because the map funnels activity through it, and strike clusters do the same thing: they funnel hedging flow through a small band of prices.

March 27 matters because deadlines concentrate behavior

Looking at expiries shows one date dwarfing the rest: March 27.

That expiry carries about 111.7k calls and 74.97k puts, around $13.27 billion in notional exposure.

Total BTC options open interest also rose from about $32 billion in late February to about $36 to $37 billion in early March, which raises the influence of options-related flows during a volatile period.

Large expiries concentrate behavior because time compresses and traders roll positions forward, forcing dealers manage risk more tightly. Hedging can intensify as the calendar moves closer to a large expiry.

That's why the magnetic effect of certain price points has often strengthened into expiry windows.

The closer the calendar gets to March 27, the more the strike corridor around $70,000 and $75,000 can act like a rail. Price still moves and headlines still matter, and the market also keeps bumping into the same concentrations of risk.

How oil ties to options

The oil shock supplied the volatility, and the options market shaped where the price traveled as the rebound took hold.

A clean sequence fits the window from Feb. 28 through March 4.

First, oil and shipping markets repriced risk quickly as Hormuz conditions worsened and export logistics tightened.

Second, Bitcoin sold in the first wave because it's liquid and always open, and because investors reduce exposure broadly when volatility rises. (fortune.com)

Third, as the selling faded and price began recovering, Bitcoin ran into a corridor where options exposure is dense between $70,000 and $75,000, with peak gamma around $71,000, where hedging sensitivity is highest. A rebound that reaches into that band can become more reactive because hedgers are forced to adjust more often.

Fourth, funding adds torque. CoinGlass data showed repeated negative funding spikes from late February into early March, each followed by rallies. That fits a market leaning short, because when price goes up, short covering adds buying pressure. That buying can push price into the strike corridor faster, and the high gamma band can amplify the move once price gets there.

Why the $70,000 corridor can keep showing up into late March

A $13.27 billion expiry acts like an anchor. Big expiries pull trading activity toward strikes with heavy open interest, because that's where rolling and hedging are most concentrated. Strike data points to $70,000 and $75,000 as major nodes in that corridor.

At the same time, the macro backdrop stayed tense. Ongoing volatility keeps Bitcoin acting like a liquid release valve. It sells early in the shock and then rebounds into the places where derivatives positioning concentrates flows.

That's why $70,000 can keep showing up as a destination even when the headlines have nothing to do with crypto. The market keeps returning to the same area because that's where the risk sits today.

Three things to watch next

You don't need to read an options chain to track whether the $70,000 corridor story still fits.

Watch where the biggest strike concentrations sit. If open interest goes higher, the corridor moves with it, and if it shifts lower, the corridor will follow.

Watch the calendar. March 27 is the biggest expiry we've seen in a while, and large expiries often reshape positioning when they pass because traders roll or close risk.

Watch the macro volatility tied to oil and shipping. The Hormuz situation pushed crude and shipping costs higher. (reuters.com) If that persists, Bitcoin is likely to keep trading as a fast, liquid asset that sells early and then rebounds into the derivatives zones that concentrate hedging.

An oil shock rattled markets, and Bitcoin dropped first and dropped fast because it's liquid. The rebound then flowed into a $70,000 to $75,000 corridor where options positioning, hedging sensitivity, and a large late-March expiry make price action more reactive around the same set of levels.

The post Why Bitcoin keeps snapping back to $70k — and the $13B options “magnet” behind it appeared first on CryptoSlate.

AI is raising demand for builders, not erasing them

In February, a Citadel Securities analysis using Indeed data showed software-engineer job postings rising while overall job postings stayed weaker.

That split does not mean AI is creating jobs across the whole economy. However, one of the clearest fears around large language models may be somewhat overblown. The current narrative is that companies will need fewer skilled builders as the tools improve, but this has not shown up in this part of the labor market.

The sharpest conclusion is narrower and stronger. AI is increasing the value of people who design systems, test outputs, fix failures, and own results, while putting more pressure on roles built around repeatable processes such as formatting, scheduling, and throughput.

In the crypto industry, exchanges, wallet teams, data providers, staking firms, and protocol developers can use AI to write code faster, review documents faster, and automate support tasks. They still need people who know what a secure product looks like, what a broken workflow looks like, and what can go wrong in production.

Labor data points in the same direction. A January 2026 report found tech job postings rose 13% month over month, even as tech industry employment fell by about 20,155. Companies appear willing to cut in some places while still hiring for scarce technical capacity.

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Longer-term projections also do not fit the simple replacement narrative. Federal projections show software developers, quality assurance analysts, and testers growing 15% from 2024 to 2034, with about 129,200 openings each year.

The same federal forecast projects 6% growth in project management specialist jobs over that span, with roughly 78,200 openings a year. Those numbers do not say every developer or manager wins. Firms still expect to need large numbers of people who can ship products, coordinate teams, manage budgets, and own delivery. And that aligns with what the current AI tools are actually used for.

A January 2026 index found that computer and mathematical tasks still accounted for about a third of Claude.ai conversations and nearly half of first-party API traffic in November 2025.

The single most common task was modifying software to correct errors, at 6% of usage. In other words, one of the most visible uses of AI is not replacing software work. It is speeding up software maintenance, debugging, and iteration.

That same workflow logic reaches beyond code

For illustration or graphic design, the evidence is thinner, but the mechanism looks similar.

When a company uses AI to generate concepts, draft a visual identity, or expand a design system, it still needs a person who can judge composition, coherence, brand fit, and finish.

AI can widen the output of a skilled designer. It does not remove the need for someone who knows what good looks like and can reject what does not.

For crypto firms, that applies to product art, marketing assets, exchange interfaces, wallet flows, dashboards, campaign creative, and brand systems.

A designer using AI can move faster across variations, mockups, and production tasks. The value shifts toward direction, editing, taste, and final approval.

The value shifts toward architecture, verification, integration, and release judgment. AI compresses production time. It does not erase the need for expert oversight.

That is why the cleanest framing is not “AI saves jobs” or “AI kills jobs.”

The better assessment is that AI is changing the mix of work inside firms. The workers who gain the most are those who can set direction, judge quality, test claims, and take responsibility when a model fails.

The workers at higher risk are those whose output can be measured as a sequence of rules and handed off to a cheaper human-plus-software workflow.

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AI use is spreading, but the pressure is uneven

Adoption data supports change rather than panic. A late-2025 survey found generative-AI use among adults ages 18 to 64 rose from 44.6% in August 2024 to 54.6% in August 2025.

Work use rose from 33.3% to 37.4% over the same period. The share of work hours spent using generative AI moved from 4.1% in November 2024 to 5.7% in August 2025. Those numbers show real diffusion. They do not show a labor market already hollowed out by automation.

The same survey estimated AI time savings equal to 1.6% of all work hours and said labor productivity may have risen by up to 1.3% since ChatGPT’s release. It also found that industries with one percentage point higher AI-related time savings saw 2.7 percentage points higher productivity growth relative to prepandemic trend, while noting that the relationship was not necessarily causal.

Productivity can rise before headcount falls. In many firms, the first move is not elimination. It is asking the same team to produce more.

That pattern fits what crypto firms have been doing for years, even before this AI cycle.

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Teams stay lean. Work moves into software where it can. Functions with clear rules get automated first. What changes with LLMs is the range of tasks software can now touch: internal search, policy drafting, coding assistance, support triage, fraud review, and document handling.

But crypto products still involve security trade-offs, operational risk, compliance judgments, user-experience decisions, incident response, and release discipline. A model can help with all of those tasks. It does not own any of them.

The same applies on the creative side inside crypto businesses. Teams can use AI image and design tools to generate options faster, test multiple directions, and build more variants for social, editorial, product, and campaign use. But speed does not settle the hard parts. Someone still has to choose which visual language fits the product, which illustration style matches the brand, which dashboard or landing page reads clearly, and which asset crosses a line on quality or trust.

In that sense, AI can make skilled creative workers more productive, just as it makes skilled developers more productive: by reducing time spent on first drafts and widening the range of outputs they can explore.

That is also why managers and senior individual contributors look more durable than the public debate assumes. Federal definitions for project management specialists still center on staffing, schedules, budgets, milestones, and risk. Those are not ornamental functions.

The work of turning a product idea into something a firm can ship, maintain, defend, and explain still requires humans to lead.

In crypto, where teams often move across jurisdictions, smart contract stacks, and shifting market conditions, that coordination burden can rise as AI lowers the cost of producing drafts and prototypes.

Even the debate inside AI usage data points to a mixed picture rather than a clean handoff from humans to models.

A September 2025 report found directive conversations rose from 27% to 39% between early 2025 and late summer 2025, suggesting users were delegating more. But a January 2026 update found augmented use had regained the lead on Claude.ai in November 2025, at 52% versus 45% for automated use. Firms are still testing where they trust the model to act on its own and where they still want a human-in-the-loop.

For the crypto sector, that line likely runs through security, treasury operations, listings, market surveillance, product launches, and brand-facing work.

AI can reduce the time spent on repetitive work inside those functions. But as the financial and reputational stakes rise, the value of judgment, review, and accountability rises too. That tends to favor experienced operators, editors, designers, and technical leads over firms hoping to run critical systems or public-facing outputs on autopilot.

The bigger labor question is who still gets a path in

The strongest warning sign is not a collapse in demand for experienced builders. The strain at the bottom of the ladder is increasing, and a January 2026 paper found lower employment only for younger workers in the most AI-exposed occupations, with the share of employment in those jobs slipping from 16.4% in November 2022 to 15.5% in September 2025.

The authors stressed that aggregate effects remained small, estimating that even if the entire decline translated into unemployment, it would explain only a 0.1 percentage-point rise in aggregate unemployment since November 2022. Still, the signal is there.

That fits the rest of the evidence. Routine office and administrative support work rose by 3 percentage points to 13% of API traffic in a January 2026 index. The categories include email management, document processing, CRM work, and scheduling.

A 2025 study also found that clerical occupations remained the highest exposure category globally, while estimating that one in four workers worldwide were in jobs with some generative-AI exposure, and only 3.3% of global employment sat in the highest exposure category. Transformation looks more common than outright replacement. But transformation is not painless when it starts by cutting junior tasks.

The same risk could extend into junior creative and junior technical roles. If entry-level work gets absorbed into AI-assisted workflows, fewer people may spend their early years doing the production tasks that once taught pacing, taste, debugging, revision, and client judgment.

In software, that may mean fewer junior coding and QA openings. In design, it may mean fewer production-heavy roles where people learned layout, systems thinking, and visual discipline by doing. Firms may gain speed in the short run and still weaken their own pipeline.

That is where the forward-looking case gets more serious. If firms use AI to shrink the volume of entry-level coding, coordination, support, research, drafting, and production work, then fewer people will get the apprenticeship that once led to senior jobs.

The short-term economics can look good. Teams stay smaller. Output rises. Margins improve. But the medium-term risk is a thinner talent pipeline.

Crypto firms, which already struggle to hire people who understand market structure, security, product, and trust under pressure, could end up competing even harder for experienced operators if they stop training enough new ones.

Global forecasts support a mixed outcome rather than a one-line verdict

A 2025 forecast projected structural labor-market change equal to 22% of today’s jobs by 2030, with 170 million jobs created and 92 million displaced, for a net gain of 78 million. The same forecast listed AI and machine learning specialists, fintech engineers, and software and application developers among the fastest-growing roles in percentage terms. But an IMF review warned that advanced economies would feel both the benefits and the disruptions sooner, and that gains could concentrate among higher-income workers and capital owners.

That leaves a cleaner conclusion than the public debate usually offers. AI is not yet showing up as a broad collapse in demand for high-skill builders. The numbers point the other way. They show stronger hiring signals for developers than for the broader market, rising use of AI inside work, measurable productivity gains, and clearer substitution pressure in administrative and clerical tasks than in expert technical roles.

The same logic also appears to apply to creative work. In both cases, AI looks more like a force multiplier for skilled workers than a substitute for them.

For crypto companies, the next step is plain. Firms can use AI to produce more drafts, ship more tests, generate more concepts, and automate more support work. They still need humans to decide what gets shipped, what stays secure, what meets policy, what fits the brand, and what breaks trust.

The near-term winners are likely to be the teams that use AI to widen the output of experienced operators without destroying their own training pipeline.

The next open question is whether companies keep hiring the people who can own outcomes while quietly cutting the people who once learned how to do so.

The post AI is boosting demand for developers — but quietly wiping out entry-level jobs appeared first on CryptoSlate.

The meme coin sector is feeling the heat in March 2026. Shiba Inu ($SHIB) is currently trading near $0.0000055, down over 8% in the last seven days. Despite a headline-grabbing 53,000% spike in the burn rate, the price has failed to react positively.

Is Shiba Inu Price Down?

Despite the massive burns, SHIB is struggling to find a floor. Users are increasingly looking toward exchange inflow data to gauge if a "capitulation event" is near or if the current support at $0.00000545 will hold.

Why SHIB is Down: Geopolitical Volatility and Risk Appetite

The "Second Iran War" has effectively sucked the oxygen out of the "alt-speculation" market. High-risk assets like SHIB are often the first to be liquidated when military conflict escalates, as seen with the recent transfer of 157 billion tokens to exchanges. However, a contrarian "war-liquidity" thesis suggests that if the conflict forces a massive expansion of the US money supply to fund military operations, the resulting dollar devaluation could eventually benefit fixed-supply or "deflationary" meme coins. For now, however, the "risk-off" mood dominates, and SHIB remains a casualty of global instability.

Shiba Inu Price Prediction: Will SHIB Coin Recover?

In the last 24 hours, the surge in "exchange inflow" signals a clear intent to sell. If the broader market continues its sideways chop, SHIB may retest the "danger zone" at $0.00000530. The long-term hope rests on Shibarium adoption, which must provide enough utility to offset the current macro-driven sell pressure.

Crucial SHIB Levels

Cardano ($ADA) enters the second week of March 2026 trading at approximately $0.27. The sentiment surrounding the ecosystem is currently characterized by "Extreme Fear," with the token trading well below its 50-day and 200-day Simple Moving Averages (SMAs).

Current data suggests that ADA is testing the resolve of long-term "HODLers." With the Fear & Greed Index lingering at 14, the primary question is whether $0.25 represents a generational bottom or a temporary pitstop before a drop to $0.20.

Why is Cardano Price Down: War Spending and Inflation

The conflict in Iran has triggered a surge in oil prices above $90, fueling fears of a renewed inflation spike. For an "academic" and development-heavy chain like Cardano, this macro environment is particularly hostile. As investors flee to "safe havens" like the US Dollar and Gold, Cardano’s lack of immediate "meme-driven" or "speculative" volume makes it susceptible to slow bleeds. Furthermore, the possibility of the Federal Reserve delaying rate cuts to manage war-induced inflation suggests that a liquidity-driven rally for ADA might be postponed until the geopolitical situation stabilizes.

Cardano Price Prediction: Will ADA Price Recover?

The technical chart shows a persistent descending trendline that has capped every recovery attempt since February. The recent rejection at $0.285 underscores the lack of buying momentum. With an RSI of 45, the asset is not yet "oversold" enough to guarantee a sharp reversal, keeping the risk of a drop to $0.24 on the table.

Summary of ADA Price Targets

• Bearish Scenario: A break below $0.25 opens the door to $0.20.
• Bullish Scenario: Reclaiming $0.32 negates the bearish structure, targeting $0.44.

As of March 7, 2026, $XRP is currently trading around $1.42, showing signs of a "post-crash purge." After a massive 60% decline from its 2025 highs, the asset is attempting to stabilize. However, the technical structure remains fragile as it faces a significant rejection at the $1.45 resistance zone.

Why is XRP Price Down? 

Recent on-chain data highlights a record low in exchange liquidity for XRP. While a decline in exchange reserves is often viewed as bullish (suggesting less immediate sell pressure), it also increases volatility. If a major buy-side order hits the market, the thin liquidity could trigger a rapid move toward $1.50. Conversely, a failure to hold current levels could see a "stop-run" toward the $1.11 support.

Geopolitical Macro: The "Operation Epic Fury" Impact

The ongoing "Second Iran War" has introduced a unique dynamic for XRP. Following the US-Israeli strikes on February 28, 2026, and the subsequent targeting of Iranian leadership, XRP has functioned as a "proxy" for regional liquidity. While the XRP-USD price dropped 3.2% in the last 24 hours, on-chain data suggests a spike in "sanctions-busting" flows. 

With the Strait of Hormuz facing potential blockades, the demand for cross-border, non-fiat settlement via the XRP Ledger (XRPL) is rising, even as the "risk-off" sentiment from the war keeps a ceiling on the price.

XRP Price Prediction: The Path to $2

For the bullish thesis to remain intact, XRP must secure a daily close above the $1.45 horizontal barrier. Analysts point to a historical chart pattern similar to the 2017 breakout. 

If this fractal plays out, a mid-term target of $4.00 is possible by late March. However, the immediate RSI remains neutral-bearish at 44, suggesting the "wait-and-see" approach from institutional investors continues.

• Key levels to watch:
• Resistance: $1.45, $1.50
• Support: $1.35, $1.27

The global crypto news landscape over the last 24 hours has been dominated by a return to volatility, as Bitcoin (BTC) struggled to maintain its footing above the $70,000 psychological barrier. After a brief relief rally earlier in the week, the market is currently navigating a "stormy sea" of institutional de-risking and geopolitical tension.

Why is the Crypto Market Down Today?

The primary driver behind the recent 24-hour decline is a combination of renewed Bitcoin ETF outflows and pre-data de-risking. After three days of significant inflows totaling over $1.1 billion, U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs saw a sharp reversal on Thursday and Friday. This shift in sentiment was compounded by the latest U.S. Non-Farm Payrolls (NFP) report, which showed a significant slowdown in job growth, fueling fears of a broader economic cooling.

For traders monitoring the Bitcoin price, the rejection at the $73,500 resistance level has led to a retracement toward the $68,000 support zone.

Latest Crypto News: Top Stories from the Last 24 Hours

1. Wall Street’s $25 Billion OKX Move

In a landmark deal for institutional adoption, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE)—the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange—has reportedly agreed to acquire a stake in the OKX exchange. The deal values the platform at $25 billion and signals a major shift toward regulatory alignment for one of the world's largest crypto platforms.

2. SEC Dismisses Charges Against Justin Sun

In a surprising legal turn, the SEC has moved to dismiss personal charges against Tron founder Justin Sun and the Tron Foundation with prejudice. While a subsidiary was ordered to pay a $10 million penalty, the dismissal of personal claims has provided a temporary boost to TRX sentiment, even as the broader market remains red.

3. Florida Passes State-Level Stablecoin Bill

On the regulatory front, Florida has become the first U.S. state to pass a dedicated state-level stablecoin bill. The legislation aims to provide a clear legal framework for the issuance and use of digital dollar equivalents, potentially setting a precedent for other states as federal crypto regulation continues to stall in Washington.

What to Watch: Major Crypto Events Next Week

Investors should prepare for a "binary" week where macro data will likely dictate the next major trend for digital assets.

The CPI release on March 11 is the most significant event on the horizon. A "hot" inflation print could delay expected rate cuts, pressuring risk assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Conversely, a cooling inflation trend might be the catalyst needed for BTC to reclaim the $72,000 level.

Is a Global Liquidity Shock Starting?

Global financial markets are entering a period of rising uncertainty as multiple macroeconomic signals begin flashing simultaneously. Oil prices are surging, geopolitical tensions in the Middle East are escalating, and investors are increasingly questioning whether a broader liquidity shock could be forming across global markets.

At the same time, the crypto market is experiencing renewed volatility. Bitcoin is testing key support levels while institutional flows fluctuate and macro headlines dominate market sentiment.

The key question now is whether these developments represent temporary turbulence — or the early signs of a deeper liquidity squeeze.

Oil Surge Raises Global Inflation Concerns

One of the clearest signals of market stress is the rapid surge in energy prices. Brent crude recently climbed above $90 per barrel after rising more than 25% in the past week.

The move comes amid escalating geopolitical tensions and concerns over potential disruptions to global energy supply routes. Markets are particularly focused on developments in the Middle East, where conflict risks have increased dramatically.

Energy shocks often ripple through the global economy. Higher oil prices raise transportation and production costs, fueling inflation and tightening financial conditions for businesses and consumers alike.

Historically, sharp oil spikes have frequently preceded periods of market volatility.

Geopolitical Risks Are Driving Market Anxiety

Recent reports of intensified geopolitical tensions involving Iran, the United States, and regional actors have added another layer of uncertainty for investors.

Geopolitical instability tends to trigger a “risk-off” reaction in financial markets. Investors often rotate capital away from risk assets such as equities and cryptocurrencies while seeking perceived safe havens.

Indeed, U.S. equity markets recently saw significant selling pressure at the open, with hundreds of billions of dollars temporarily wiped from market capitalization as traders reacted to the evolving situation.

These sudden shifts in sentiment can amplify volatility across multiple asset classes.

Bitcoin Faces Volatility as Liquidity Tightens

The cryptocurrency market is particularly sensitive to changes in global liquidity conditions. Bitcoin has recently been testing the $70,000 level as ETF flows fluctuate and macroeconomic uncertainty weighs on sentiment.

While some investors view Bitcoin as a long-term hedge against geopolitical instability, the short-term reality is that crypto often behaves like a risk asset during periods of market stress.

When liquidity tightens, leveraged positions unwind and traders reduce exposure to volatile assets. This dynamic can produce rapid price swings across the crypto market.

Are We Entering a Global Liquidity Shock?

A liquidity shock occurs when capital suddenly becomes scarce in financial markets. This can happen when several forces align simultaneously, including rising energy costs, geopolitical risk, and shifts in monetary policy expectations.

The current environment shows early signs of such a convergence. Oil prices are rising rapidly, geopolitical tensions are intensifying, and macroeconomic data is creating uncertainty about the path of global interest rates.

However, it remains too early to determine whether these developments will escalate into a full liquidity shock or stabilize as geopolitical risks evolve.

For crypto investors, the coming weeks may prove critical. Bitcoin and the broader digital asset market often react quickly to shifts in global liquidity conditions.

If macro uncertainty continues to build, volatility may remain elevated across both traditional financial markets and cryptocurrencies.

Conclusion

The recent surge in oil prices, combined with escalating geopolitical tensions and shifting macroeconomic signals, is creating a fragile environment for global markets.

While it is not yet clear whether a full liquidity shock is underway, the alignment of these factors is already influencing investor behavior and driving volatility across multiple asset classes.

For Bitcoin and the broader crypto market, the interaction between macro liquidity conditions and geopolitical developments will likely remain one of the most important forces shaping price movements in the near term.

$BTC

With a “box of goodies” and a team of four, the firm is trying to replace payment incumbents with an Ethereum layer-2

As chatbots grow more conversational, some users are forming emotional bonds with AI, raising questions about the future of human–machine intimacy.

Kalshi is facing a class action lawsuit based on its handling of a recent market related to Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The bill establishes Florida-centric consumer protections and safeguards against money laundering

Grammarly's “Expert Review” feature uses AI to give feedback through the lens of noted writers and scholars—some of whom are no longer living.

Traders have pushed XRP derivatives up 1,185% amid the market watch.

Bitcoin ETFs have recorded another day of negative inflows as institutional demand continues to grow weak following the recent shift in market sentiment.

Two price liquidity clusters come into focus for Solana as market uncertainty remains.

Circle has begun to independently handle internal treasury settlements as the CEO reveals a new development to boost digital asset adoption.

Cardano builder Input Output Group has explained the motivation behind the recent stablecoin push in the Cardano ecosystem.

TLDR:

• Kuwait declared force majeure on day 18 as onshore tanks hit full capacity with no export route available.

• Seven insurance letters from London closed the Strait, not Iranian strikes on Kuwait’s oil production facilities.

• JPMorgan warns total Gulf shut-ins could reach nearly 5 million barrels per day if Hormuz stays closed.

• Forced well shut-ins risk 10 to 30 percent permanent recovery loss, turning disruption into long-term supply destruction.

Kuwait oil production has been curtailed after onshore storage tanks reached full capacity. This occurred on day 18 of the Strait of Hormuz closure to commercial shipping.

The Gulf nation was producing 2.8 million barrels per day before February 28. Since that date, no tankers have loaded at Kuwaiti export terminals.

Oil continued flowing from wells into storage with no route to market. Kuwait declared force majeure and began reducing output in response.

Insurance Withdrawal, Not Missiles, Closed the Strait

Analyst Shanaka Anslem Perera raised the root cause of the shutdown in a post on X. He noted that seven letters from London-based insurance companies effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz.

Without shipping insurance, commercial vessels could not legally transit the waterway. Those letters, rather than missiles, triggered Kuwait’s oil production cuts.

Iran fired missiles at military bases and the US embassy in Kuwait. However, zero confirmed strikes landed on any oil production or export facility.

Kuwait’s refineries and export terminals remained physically intact throughout the conflict. The shutdown was driven entirely by the logistics breakdown downstream of the wells.

JPMorgan had estimated Kuwait held an 18-day storage runway following the closure. That estimate proved accurate as tanks reached capacity on schedule.

Iraq had already cut 1.5 million barrels per day the prior week for identical reasons. The same storage arithmetic is now counting down in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar.

JPMorgan further warned that continued closure could push total Gulf shut-ins to nearly 5 million barrels per day. That figure represents roughly 5 percent of global oil supply.

The cuts would stem from storage limits, not from any attack on production infrastructure.

Reservoir Damage Could Make Kuwait Oil Production Cuts Partially Permanent

Kuwait oil production shut-ins carry a second concern beyond immediate volume loss. Forced well closures under reservoir pressure can cause lasting formation damage.

Asphaltene precipitation, fines migration, clay swelling, and pressure depletion are the primary risks. These factors can reduce long-term recovery rates by 10 to 30 percent even after wells restart.

The Society of Petroleum Engineers has documented this pattern across decades of forced shut-ins. During the 1991 Gulf War, some Kuwaiti fields lost 15 to 25 percent of long-term recovery capacity.

Mitigation options exist, including chemical inhibitors and controlled shut-in procedures. However, these measures require planning time that an insurance-driven closure did not provide.

Kuwait had roughly 18 days of warning before the storage crisis peaked. Whether that window was sufficient to protect thousands of producing wells remains an open question.

Post-restart treatments may limit damage if applied promptly. The outcome will determine whether the production cut proves temporary or partially permanent.

Markets are currently pricing a supply disruption. Reservoir physics, however, may be signaling supply destruction.

The gap between those two outcomes could equal 10 to 30 percent of Kuwait’s long-term output. That distinction is the central question the energy market has yet to fully price in.

The post Kuwait Oil Production Cut Begins as Strait of Hormuz Closure Fills Storage Tanks to Capacity appeared first on Blockonomi.

Online gambling is going through a clear split. One side sticks with the traditional model — state licenses, bank transfers, and familiar interfaces. The other side is pushing forward with cryptocurrency, massive game catalogs, and reward systems built for a new kind of player. BetRivers and ZunaBet sit on opposite sides of that divide, and looking at them together paints a useful picture of where the market stands right now.

What BetRivers Brings to the Table

BetRivers operates under Rush Street Interactive and holds active licenses across multiple US states, including New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Michigan. It runs both an online casino and sportsbook with a straightforward interface that prioritizes ease of use.

Game availability at BetRivers depends on your state. Most players can access somewhere between a few hundred and a couple thousand titles covering slots, table games, and live dealer rooms. The sportsbook handles NFL, NBA, MLB, soccer, and other popular leagues with competitive lines and a simple bet slip process.

Banking at BetRivers follows the traditional playbook. Credit cards, debit cards, bank wires, and approved e-wallets handle both deposits and withdrawals. Cash-outs typically land within one to five business days, which is standard across most regulated US platforms. Nothing surprising, but nothing fast either.

The loyalty offering is iRush Rewards, a points-based system where real-money play earns credits that can be redeemed for bonuses. It does the job but follows the same template the industry has relied on for over a decade.

What Makes ZunaBet Different

ZunaBet entered the market in 2026 with a completely different blueprint. Strathvale Group Ltd owns the platform, which operates under an Anjouan gaming license. The team behind it brings over 20 years of combined experience in the gambling industry, but they chose to build something forward-looking rather than copying existing models.

The first thing that stands out is scale. ZunaBet hosts 11,294 games from 63 different providers. That puts it among the biggest game libraries in the crypto casino category. Names like Pragmatic Play, Evolution, Hacksaw Gaming, BGaming, and Yggdrasil anchor the catalog, with slots making up the largest portion alongside a strong selection of live dealer and RNG table games.

The sportsbook runs as a fully integrated part of the platform, not an add-on. Coverage spans football, basketball, tennis, NHL, and other major global leagues. Esports betting is baked in with markets on CS2, Dota 2, League of Legends, and Valorant. Virtual sports and combat sports round out a sportsbook that holds its own against dedicated betting sites.

Payments run entirely on crypto. ZunaBet supports over 20 coins — BTC, ETH, USDT across multiple chains, SOL, DOGE, ADA, XRP, and more. The platform charges no processing fees and processes withdrawals quickly. For crypto holders, there is no need to convert to fiat or wait days for a bank to release funds.

New players can access a welcome package worth up to $5,000 plus 75 free spins, split across three deposits. The first deposit earns a 100% match up to $2,000 with 25 spins. The second gives 50% up to $1,500 with 25 spins. The third adds another 100% up to $1,500 with 25 spins. Spreading the bonus across three deposits rewards players who stay active past their first session.

The platform runs on modern HTML5 technology with a dark-themed interface that loads fast and works smoothly across devices. Dedicated apps are available for iOS, Android, Windows, and MacOS, and 24/7 live chat support is on hand whenever something comes up.

How Their Reward Systems Compare

Loyalty is where these two platforms tell very different stories about what they think players deserve.

BetRivers hands out points through iRush Rewards. Play enough, earn enough points, and convert them into bonus money. The conversion rates are modest, and the overall experience feels like something designed a long time ago and never meaningfully updated.

ZunaBet built a gamified loyalty system around a dragon mascot called Zuno that evolves as players progress through six tiers. It starts at Squire with 1% rakeback and goes all the way up to Ultimate at 20% rakeback. Along the way, players unlock benefits like up to 1,000 free spins, VIP club access, and double wheel spins.

Rakeback changes the math for regular players. Instead of collecting abstract points and hoping the conversion rate is decent, players receive a direct percentage of their wagering activity back. At 10% or 20%, that represents serious value over time — far more than what most point-based systems deliver. The dragon evolution theme gives the whole thing a sense of progression that keeps players engaged beyond just the financial return.

The Crypto Question

The payment infrastructure is one of the biggest practical differences between these platforms.

BetRivers works through banks. That means processing times, potential holds, and availability limited to states where the platform is licensed. It is a system that functions but has not evolved much in years.

ZunaBet was designed around crypto from the start. Twenty-plus supported coins, zero platform fees, and quick withdrawals make it a fundamentally smoother payment experience. Players who already use crypto in their daily lives do not have to jump through conversion hoops or wait for institutional banking timelines. The crypto-first approach also opens up access to a broader international audience that state-locked platforms simply cannot reach.

This is not a small distinction. As crypto adoption continues to grow, platforms built natively around digital assets have a structural advantage over those trying to bolt crypto onto traditional systems after the fact.

Which Direction Is the Market Moving

BetRivers occupies a stable position. It has regulatory backing in its licensed states, a known brand, and the resources of Rush Street Interactive behind it. Players who want a traditional, regulated experience in the US still have a good option here.

But the momentum in 2026 sits with platforms like ZunaBet. The combination of 11,000-plus games, 63 providers, a full sportsbook with esports, up to 20% rakeback, and crypto-native payments puts it ahead of most competitors on the metrics that matter to today’s players. It is not just offering more — it is offering a different kind of experience that aligns with how a growing segment of the market actually wants to play and pay.

BetRivers is a safe, known quantity. ZunaBet is the platform that feels built for what comes next. For players deciding where to put their time and money in 2026, that difference matters more than it used to.

The post Crypto Casinos vs Traditional Platforms: How BetRivers and ZunaBet Stack Up in 2026 appeared first on Blockonomi.

Introduction

For decades, Zacks Investment Research has maintained its position as a leading authority in stock analysis. The company established its credibility through earnings estimate tracking, analyst revision monitoring, and its celebrated Zacks Rank methodology that evaluates stocks using earnings momentum indicators.

KnockoutStocks represents a fresh generation of AI-driven investment platforms that employs a more comprehensive methodology. It merges fundamental metrics, market indicators, and artificial intelligence capabilities within a unified system centered on the KO Score. While both services aim to guide investors toward superior stock selections, their approaches differ substantially.

Platform Overview

What Is KnockoutStocks?

The service provides an AI-powered investment advisor, immediate AI-generated equity reports, sophisticated stock filtering tools, portfolio monitoring capabilities, and customized market intelligence. The platform delivers rapid, transparent, evidence-based investment guidance without requiring users to maintain multiple tool subscriptions or services.

What Is Zacks Investment Research?

Established in 1978, Zacks Investment Research ranks among the industry’s most enduring stock analysis organizations. The company’s primary offering is the Zacks Rank — an equity evaluation framework that assigns ratings from 1 through 5 determined by earnings projection modifications and analyst perspectives.

The service additionally features stock filtering utilities, investment research publications, portfolio management instruments, and numerous premium subscription offerings. Zacks maintains particular appeal among investors who prioritize earnings trajectory analysis and incorporate earnings revision data as a fundamental component of their investment methodology.

Feature Comparison

Stock Rankings and Ratings

The Zacks Rank forms the cornerstone of the company’s entire business model. This framework assigns scores from 1 (Strong Buy) through 5 (Strong Sell) based predominantly on earnings estimate revision patterns. The underlying principle suggests that upward analyst earnings revisions typically precede positive stock performance. This concentrated, extensively validated methodology carries substantial historical documentation.

The KO Score from KnockoutStocks adopts a more expansive evaluation framework. It synthesizes five weighted components — profitability, financial stability, growth trajectory, momentum indicators, and analyst consensus — into a single numerical rating spanning 0 to 100. Instead of concentrating exclusively on earnings revisions, it assesses overall business quality across multiple parameters. This methodology delivers a more comprehensive evaluation of a company’s fundamental strength.

AI Tools and Insights

Artificial intelligence serves as a foundational element throughout the KnockoutStocks platform. The AI advisory feature enables users to pose questions regarding specific securities, portfolio holdings, or market conditions on demand. Subscription tiers provide voice-activated AI functionality and unrestricted daily query volumes at premium levels.

Zacks has not integrated artificial intelligence capabilities into its primary platform infrastructure in any substantial capacity. The service continues operating as a data and research-focused offering built upon human analyst contributions and quantitative earnings frameworks. For investors who value AI-assisted research capabilities, KnockoutStocks maintains a decisive edge in this category.

AI-Generated Stock Reports

KnockoutStocks produces immediate AI-powered equity reports for any publicly traded security upon request. Each analysis encompasses company background, financial condition assessment, critical performance indicators, market behavior patterns, current developments, and analyst perspectives — compiled within seconds.

Zacks releases investment research documents on covered securities, authored by its analytical personnel. These publications offer thorough detail with substantial emphasis on earnings information. However, availability is restricted to stocks within Zacks’ coverage universe and reports are not produced instantaneously on demand.

Earnings Research

This category represents Zacks’ primary competitive advantage. The platform’s earnings projection data, earnings surprise historical records, and analyst revision monitoring rank among the finest resources accessible to individual investors. For those who construct investment decisions predominantly around earnings momentum and require comprehensive earnings intelligence, Zacks has constructed its complete infrastructure around this specialization.

KnockoutStocks incorporates analyst sentiment as one component within its five-pillar KO Score framework, which encompasses certain earnings and analyst perspective data. However, it does not provide the same depth of earnings estimate revision analysis and surprise history that characterizes the Zacks platform.

Stock Screener

KnockoutStocks provides an advanced filtering system featuring more than 20 criteria spanning KO Score metrics, market capitalization, price ranges, trading volume, fundamental indicators, and technical analysis parameters. Complete screener functionality is accessible through the no-cost subscription tier.

Zacks similarly offers a robust stock screening tool. The platform’s screener maintains strong industry recognition and permits filtering by Zacks Rank, earnings metrics, valuation multiples, and fundamental characteristics. However, comprehensive screener access requires premium membership, with the most sophisticated filtering capabilities reserved for higher-tier subscription packages.

Stock Picks and Investment Services

Zacks provides an extensive portfolio of premium investment advisory offerings beyond the foundational platform. These encompass curated equity recommendation portfolios, industry-specific investment ideas, and options strategy suggestions. Investors seeking a comprehensive menu of advisory services will discover abundant options.

KnockoutStocks features its proprietary Stock Picks collection — a concentrated portfolio carefully selected based on fundamental quality, competitive positioning, and sustainable growth prospects. This offering is available to Middleweight and Heavyweight subscribers. While more focused than Zacks’ extensive service range, it follows the same evidence-driven KO Score methodology.

Portfolio Tracking

KnockoutStocks delivers comprehensive portfolio monitoring with live performance metrics, profit and loss calculation, and AI-enhanced portfolio evaluation. The Heavyweight subscription accommodates up to 100 securities per portfolio with unlimited portfolio creation and AI-generated portfolio assessment reports.

Zacks offers portfolio tracking functionality that overlays Zacks Rank information and earnings data onto user holdings. The tool proves valuable for monitoring earnings-related indicators across portfolio positions but lacks AI-driven portfolio analysis capabilities or the tracking depth provided by KnockoutStocks.

Alerts and Updates

KnockoutStocks transmits customized daily or weekly email notifications covering watchlist activity, leading KO Score changes, earnings releases, analyst rating adjustments, and breaking developments customized to user holdings.

Zacks maintains a comprehensive alert infrastructure emphasizing earnings estimate modifications, Zacks Rank transitions, and analyst upgrade and downgrade activity. For investors who monitor earnings momentum closely, these notifications deliver authentic value and timeliness.

Pricing

KnockoutStocks presents three tiers. The complimentary plan includes complete screener access, single portfolio capability, five watchlist positions, one AI consultation weekly, and one AI equity report weekly. The Middleweight tier costs $19.99 monthly with 10 AI inquiries daily and 10 AI reports weekly. The Heavyweight tier runs $59.99 monthly with unlimited AI access, voice advisory services, PDF report exports, and CSV data downloads.

Zacks pricing commences with a no-cost tier providing limited Zacks Rank data access. The Zacks Premium subscription runs approximately $249 annually. Supplementary advisory services and premium portfolio offerings can substantially increase total subscription costs, positioning a comprehensive Zacks subscription among the market’s more expensive alternatives.

Pros and Cons

KnockoutStocks

Pros

• KO Score provides rapid, comprehensive quality assessment across thousands of publicly traded companies
• Integrated AI advisor for on-demand equity and portfolio inquiries
• Instantaneous AI equity reports accessible for any security at any moment
• Complete screener functionality on the complimentary subscription tier
• Robust portfolio monitoring with live data and AI evaluation
• Greater affordability across all subscription levels
• Voice-activated AI advisor accessible on premium subscription
• Comprehensive market coverage beyond earnings-focused securities

Cons

• Less comprehensive earnings estimate revision analysis compared to Zacks
• Emerging platform continuing to establish long-term performance history
• Limited premium advisory service offerings relative to Zacks
• Reduced historical earnings data comprehensiveness

Zacks Investment Research

Pros

• Zacks Rank maintains extensively documented long-term performance history
• Industry-leading earnings projection and revision intelligence
• Extensive selection of premium advisory offerings and equity recommendations
• Superior earnings surprise and estimate historical records
• Established platform with multi-decade research heritage
• Capable screener with comprehensive earnings-oriented filtering options

Cons

• Absence of dedicated AI investment advisory functionality
• No on-demand AI equity report generation
• Premium service costs can escalate rapidly
• Platform interface appears outdated relative to contemporary research tools
• Concentrated earnings emphasis results in diminished attention to other fundamentals
• Complimentary tier offers restricted meaningful functionality

Which Platform Is Best for Different Investors?

Use KnockoutStocks if you:

Prefer a rapid, comprehensive assessment of equity quality across thousands of companies utilizing one transparent scoring system. The KO Score evaluates profitability, balance sheet health, growth potential, momentum characteristics, and analyst sentiment — not merely earnings revision patterns.

Desire AI-enhanced capabilities on demand — submitting questions about securities, obtaining instant analytical reports, or evaluating your portfolio without awaiting analyst publications. KnockoutStocks incorporates this functionality throughout its core architecture.

Seek a contemporary, intuitive platform with superior portfolio monitoring and personalized notification systems at competitive pricing. The complimentary subscription tier alone delivers more functionality than Zacks’ free offering.

Aim to identify investment opportunities independently using sophisticated screening tools without encountering subscription barriers. Complete screener access on the free plan represents a meaningful competitive advantage.

Use Zacks if you:

Monitor earnings estimate revisions intensively and require the most comprehensive earnings momentum intelligence available to individual investors. Zacks has constructed decades of infrastructure around this particular data specialty.

Desire access to an extensive portfolio of premium advisory offerings, curated equity portfolios, and sector-focused recommendations beyond basic research platform functionality.

Operate as an earnings-focused investor who considers analyst estimate revisions the most reliable indicator of near-term equity performance. The Zacks Rank methodology is engineered specifically for this investment approach.

Require extensive historical earnings information and surprise history to guide your security selection methodology.

Final Verdict

Both Zacks and KnockoutStocks provide genuine investment value, though they reflect fundamentally different investing philosophies.

Zacks represents the superior solution if earnings momentum forms the central pillar of your stock selection methodology. The platform’s earnings projection data, revision monitoring, and Zacks Rank framework possess extensive historical validation and remain difficult to replicate for this particular application.

KnockoutStocks functions as the superior comprehensive platform. The KO Score methodology encompasses broader territory than the Zacks Rank, the AI capabilities introduce an on-demand intelligence dimension that Zacks completely lacks, and the portfolio tracking functionality extends considerably deeper. These advantages arrive at reduced pricing with a more accessible complimentary subscription tier.

For investors seeking a complete, contemporary research infrastructure that addresses fundamentals, market indicators, and AI-enhanced intelligence — KnockoutStocks delivers superior value in 2026. Zacks continues as a capable specialized instrument for earnings-focused investors, though as a comprehensive research platform it demonstrates its age against newer AI-powered alternatives.

The post KnockoutStocks vs Zacks Investment Research: 2026 Stock Platform Showdown appeared first on Blockonomi.

Apple just delivered one of its strongest quarters in recent memory, beating earnings estimates by a wide margin and posting 15.7% revenue growth that caught even the bulls off guard. Institutional buyers are adding to their positions, a new Street high price target has arrived, and the M5 chip cycle is still in its early stages. A small but growing number of equity investors are also beginning to diversify into digital assets for the first time, and today we will break down one specific crypto project with a very bright future.

Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives raised his AAPL price target to $350, the highest on Wall Street, while keeping his Outperform rating. With Apple stock near $260, the target implies roughly 34% returns. The confidence follows a quarter where Apple posted earnings of $2.84 per share against expectations of $2.67, and revenue of $143.76 billion that topped forecasts by more than $5 billion.

Source: TIPRANKS

The M5 Mac lineup and $599 MacBook Neo are opening Apple to first time buyers, with nearly half of Mac purchasers being new to the platform. Institutions are piling in too.

Oppenheimer added 9%, Vanguard added 1.1%, and Norges Bank opened a position worth roughly $38.9 billion. The consensus sits at Moderate Buy with an average Apple stock price prediction of $306.12. That is solid for equities, but it is not the kind of return that changes your financial future.

Why AAPL Investors Are Starting to Look Beyond Traditional Equities

Apple is one of the best companies ever built, and holding AAPL long term remains smart. But the math at these valuations tells a clear story. Even hitting the Street high $350 on a stock priced at $260 delivers 34% over many months.

Wall Street is quietly moving capital into crypto infrastructure through ETFs and direct investments, and the pre-listing entries in projects with real revenue generating technology produce asymmetric returns that blue chip stocks at $3 trillion valuations cannot deliver. One project is catching attention from investors who think in P/E ratios and annual yield.

Pepeto Is Building the Digital Wall Street of the Cryptocurrency Market

Every stock you buy trades on an exchange that someone built before you arrived. The Nasdaq and NYSE are infrastructure businesses that profit from every transaction. Now imagine getting into the company building that exchange before it goes public, at a price so early that even a small position could produce returns that make the best Nasdaq stocks look like savings accounts. That is what Pepeto represents.

The project is building a full crypto trading exchange with cross chain bridge technology, essentially infrastructure connecting multiple blockchain networks the way a brokerage connects multiple exchanges. Every cryptocurrency will eventually be traded on platforms like this, and Pepeto is positioning itself as the infrastructure layer for that future.

According to Business Insider, Pepeto just announced that presale wallets will receive a permanent share of all exchange trading fees once the platform goes live. The project has raised $7.5M while each round closes quicker than the last.

Source: Markets.businessinsider

The founder already built a project to a $7 billion valuation and is starting again from day one. The SolidProof security audit was completed before raising a single dollar, the crypto equivalent of an SEC compliance review, and the Binance listing is approaching as the IPO moment. NVIDIA delivered a remarkable 10x over five years.

Pepeto’s 267x math requires only the listing valuation that exchange tokens routinely achieve, in months not half a decade. Investors who enter now also earn 204% annual yield, meaning a $10,000 position generates $20,400 per year or roughly $1,700 per month. The S&P 500 averages 10%. Treasury bonds pay 4.5%. No stock on the Nasdaq produces this yield at this entry point.

The Bottom Line

Oppenheimer, Vanguard, and Norges Bank are all adding Apple stock because institutions understand that buying quality during strong quarters builds wealth over decades. But the investors who got Amazon before it hit the Nasdaq understood something different: the biggest single returns come before the ticker goes live on the main exchange.

Pepeto’s exchange infrastructure is approaching its listing, $7.5M in presale capital proves the conviction, and the entry at six decimal zeros will not survive the moment public volume arrives. Every week the rounds close tighter and the window gets smaller.

Click To Visit Pepeto Project Official Website

FAQs

Is Apple stock or Pepeto a better buy right now?

Apple is a great hold targeting $350, but Pepeto at pre-IPO pricing with 204% annual yield offers asymmetric returns that blue chips at $3 trillion cannot produce. Visit the Pepeto official website.

Can a crypto presale beat Apple stock price prediction targets?

AAPL’s best case is 34% to the Street high. Pepeto’s listing math delivers multiples in months that equities need years to match.

Why are AAPL investors looking at crypto presales like Pepeto?

Pepeto builds crypto exchange infrastructure the way Nasdaq built stock rails. With $7.5M raised and a Binance listing approaching, stock investors see pre-IPO entry.

The post APPL – Apple Stock Price Prediction Gets Street High $350 Target After Earnings Beat as One Crypto Project Gains Traction Pepeto appeared first on Blockonomi.

Elon Musk just made the biggest move in meme coin history. The X Money beta is rolling out to let users trade crypto directly from their timelines, and Dogecoin spiked 8% as its official account pushed businesses to accept DOGE instead of paying credit card fees.

But here is what the Dogecoin community is not talking about: rumors are spreading fast that Pepeto, the exchange presale that raised $7.5M from the cofounder who built Pepe to $7 billion, could be the meme coin that catches Elon Musk’s attention next.

Bloomberg reported Elon Musk confirmed X will allow users to trade stocks and digital assets directly from their timelines through the X Money payments system, while CoinDesk confirmed Dogecoin’s official account responded by encouraging businesses to accept DOGE and drop credit card fees of 2 to 3%.

When Elon Musk builds payment rails inside the world’s biggest social platform, the meme coin that combines exchange infrastructure with viral community energy is exactly the kind of project that lands on his radar.

Elon Musk, Dogecoin, and the Meme Coin Presale That Rumors Say Could Be Next

Pepeto: The Meme Coin That Elon Musk’s Community Cannot Stop Talking About

Every time Elon Musk makes a crypto move, the market scrambles to figure out what comes next. Dogecoin has always been his favorite, but the rumors spreading across Telegram and X right now are about Pepeto, the exchange presale that raised $7.5M from the person who cofounded the Pepe ecosystem and built it to $7 billion.

The reason is simple. Elon Musk has always said the crypto he supports needs to be funny, useful, and cheap to transact with. Pepeto checks every box. The zero tax engine means every trade costs nothing. The cross chain bridge connecting Ethereum, BNB Chain, and Solana moves assets in seconds. The risk scoring system checks contracts before your capital goes near them, and the SolidProof audit backs every line of code.

The community energy around Pepeto feels exactly like early Dogecoin before Elon Musk started tweeting about it, a passionate base spreading the word organically. The difference is Pepeto has exchange infrastructure Dogecoin never built, and in a market where Elon Musk builds payment rails inside X, the meme coin with real trading tools fits the vision he keeps describing.

The presale at $0.000000186 does not need Elon Musk to deliver returns, because the Binance listing creates the demand, and 209% APY staking compounds for wallets already inside while Dogecoin holders sit 87% below the all time high with zero yield. But if the rumors turn true, the entry that exists right now becomes the trade that defines the cycle.

Dogecoin Spikes 8% on X Money News but the $0.10 Resistance Keeps Blocking Recovery

Dogecoin jumped 8% to $0.090 after Elon Musk’s X Money announcement, but the 20 day EMA at $0.10 caps the price according to CoinMarketCap.

Closing above $0.10 opens $0.11, but losing $0.09 means $0.08 then $0.06. Elon Musk keeps Dogecoin relevant, but at $12.5 billion and 87% below the all time high, even Elon Musk cannot produce the multiples a meme coin presale at six decimal zeros delivers on listing day.

The Bottom Line

Elon Musk launched X Money and Dogecoin spiked 8%, but the rumors spreading about Pepeto tell a different story about where smart money goes. The presale raised $7.5M from the $7 billion Pepe cofounder with exchange tools that match the vision Elon Musk keeps building, and the SolidProof audit and Binance listing path are the foundation Dogecoin at $12.5 billion never had.

The 209% APY compounds daily while Dogecoin holders wait for the next Elon Musk tweet, and by the time rumors become headlines, the entry at six decimal zeros will belong to the wallets that moved first.

Visit the Pepeto official website and enter the presale before the next headline drops and the entry that was available during the rumors becomes a price only early believers ever saw and acted on it, securing the highest returns of this cycle.

Click To Visit Pepeto Website To Enter The Presale

FAQs

Is Elon Musk connected to Pepeto?

Rumors are spreading fast that Pepeto could catch Elon Musk’s attention because its zero fee exchange tools and meme community energy match the vision Elon Musk keeps building. Visit the Pepeto official website.

Why did Dogecoin spike after Elon Musk’s X Money announcement?

Dogecoin jumped 8% after Elon Musk confirmed X Money will enable crypto trading from timelines, but the $0.10 resistance keeps blocking recovery while Pepeto’s presale keeps rising.

Is Dogecoin still Elon Musk’s favorite crypto?

Elon Musk confirmed Dogecoin remains his favorite, but the meme coin presale with exchange infrastructure at six decimal zeros is attracting the same energy early Dogecoin had before Elon Musk first tweeted about it.

The post Elon Musk Launches X Money Beta With Crypto Trading as Dogecoin Spikes 8%, but Rumors Are Spreading Fast That Pepeto Could Be Elon Musk’s Next Favorite Meme Coin appeared first on Blockonomi.

A crypto holder known online as Sillytuna said on March 5 that attackers stole about $24 million worth of tokens after threatening him with violence during a real-world robbery.

The incident has renewed concern about so-called “wrench attacks,” a form of crime where perpetrators use physical threats to force victims to hand over control of their crypto wallets instead of attempting to hack them.

Victim Describes Violent Coercion

In several posts on X, Sillytuna said the theft involved armed attackers who threatened severe violence unless he transferred control of his holdings. He wrote that the group used weapons and issued threats of kidnapping and sexual assault, adding that police in the United Kingdom were already involved.

“$24 million dollar theft of AUSD from 0x6fe0fab2164d8e0d03ad6a628e2af78624060322 Involved violence, weapons, kidnap and rape threats. Obvs police involved,” he tweeted.

Blockchain analytics platforms soon began tracking the movement of the stolen assets, with Arkham sharing data showing the attackers taking about $23.6 million in aEthUSDC linked to an address associated with Sillytuna.

The firm’s analysis established that most of the funds were quickly converted into other tokens and spread across several wallets. About $20 million was swapped into DAI and placed in two Ethereum addresses. The attackers also bridged smaller portions of the funds to other networks.

Roughly $2.48 million was transferred to the Arbitrum network, where the funds were routed through multiple Wagyu accounts. Those accounts were then used to purchase Monero, a privacy-focused cryptocurrency that makes transaction tracing significantly more difficult.

Arkham also reported that approximately $1.1 million was moved to the Bitcoin network through a bridging service, with part of that amount potentially sent to a mixing service.

Security firm PeckShield initially described the incident as a possible address-poisoning attack, but Sillytuna rejected that explanation, insisting that the funds were taken through direct physical intimidation rather than a wallet exploit.

The victim offered a 10% bounty for any funds recovered, even if returned by the perpetrators themselves. Additionally, he asked exchanges and blockchain investigators to help block or trace the transfers.

Community Tracking Effort

Soon after Sillytuna shared his ordeal, members of the crypto community began examining the transactions in detail, with security researcher Tay Vano flagging multiple addresses connected to the theft and confirming that Wagyu was being used to launder funds to the privacy coin Monero.

PerpetualCow, the developer behind Wagyu, later responded, saying that the platform does not freeze user funds as a matter of policy. However, they claimed they would have stopped the transactions from going through in the first place, but they had been asleep when the transfers happened.

Nevertheless, they pointed out that compliance systems eventually flagged the suspicious transactions, preventing additional transfers from passing through.

While some members of the community focused on tracing the stolen funds, others reacted in different ways. For example, a group within the Solana ecosystem launched a meme token linked to Sillytuna’s name and said trading fees would be directed toward helping offset the losses.

Sillytuna’s case is not an isolated event but part of a documented increase in wrench attacks. Some of the more well-known incidents include the January 2025 kidnapping of Ledger co-founder David Balland from his home in France, with attackers severing one of his fingers to pressure associates into paying a ransom.

In another case, a U.S. resident visiting London was drugged and lost approximately $122,000 in crypto after being tricked into smoking a cigarette laced with scopolamine.

The post Crypto Investor Says Attackers Stole $24M in Violent Robbery appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Bitcoin remains trapped in a broader corrective structure, but the price action is starting to stabilize after defending the $60,000 demand region. The daily chart still leans cautiously as BTC trades below the major moving averages and beneath the descending resistance trendline.

That leaves the cryptocurrency at an important crossroads, where a push higher could extend the recovery toward overhead supply, while failure would keep the broader downtrend intact.

Bitcoin Price Analysis: The Daily Chart

On the daily timeframe, Bitcoin is still trading inside a well-defined bearish structure, with the price capped below both the 100-day and 200-day moving averages. The 100-day MA is now trending lower near the mid $80,000 region, while the 200-day MA sits even higher around the mid $90,000s, showing that the broader trend remains under pressure.

In addition, BTC is still moving beneath the descending trendline that has guided the correction for months, which means the buyers have not yet delivered a convincing structural reversal.

That said, the reaction from the blue support zone around $60,000 was technically important. Buyers stepped in aggressively after the sharp flush below $60,000, and BTC has since rebounded toward the $68,000 area. The first major resistance remains around $76,000 to $80,000, where previous horizontal support turned into supply. As long as Bitcoin stays below that region, rebounds are likely to be viewed as corrective.

BTC/USDT 4-Hour Chart

On the 4-hour chart, Bitcoin is consolidating inside a rising channel, suggesting that the recent move off the lows is more of a recovery phase than a full bullish reversal. The asset is currently hovering around $68,000 after rejecting from the upper boundary of the channel near the $72,000 to $75,000 resistance area. This rejection confirms that sellers are still active on rallies, especially when BTC approaches confluence resistance, where the channel top overlaps with horizontal supply.

Momentum has also cooled noticeably. The RSI pushed into overbought territory during the recent rally, but has since rolled over and dropped back toward neutral, showing fading upside strength in the short term.

For buyers, holding above the mid-channel area and continuing to defend the $64,000 to $65,000 region would keep the structure constructive for another attempt higher. On the downside, a breakdown below the lower boundary of the channel could send Bitcoin back toward the $60,000 support zone and potentially even lower.

On-Chain Analysis

From an on-chain perspective, Bitcoin’s Net Unrealized Profit and Loss, or NUPL, has fallen sharply and is now sitting around 0.20. That is a major reset compared to the euphoric readings seen during the rally toward the cycle highs.

In simple terms, the market has flushed out a large portion of paper profits, which usually reflects a substantial reduction in speculative excess. While this does not guarantee an immediate trend reversal, it often creates a healthier backdrop than the overheated conditions seen near major tops.

Historically, a NUPL reading around this zone points to a market that is no longer in euphoria and is instead moving closer to the kind of sentiment reset that can support medium term base building. That fits well with the current price structure, where Bitcoin is trying to stabilize after a heavy correction rather than accelerate into a fresh expansion leg.

So, on-chain data suggests downside risk may be more limited than it was near the highs, but for a stronger bullish case, that improving on-chain backdrop still needs confirmation from price through a reclaim of higher resistance levels on both the daily and 4-hour charts.

The post Bitcoin Price Analysis: BTC Must Break This Key Level to Confirm a Real Rally appeared first on CryptoPotato.

In a press release shared on March 7, Binance announced that a US Federal Court in the Southern District of New York had dismissed all claims brought against it under the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA).

Eleanor Hughes, the company’s General Counsel and spokesperson on the matter, indicated that this dismissal is a “complete vindication of all false allegations.”

The case was brought up by 535 plaintiffs who alleged that the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange had provided material support connected to 64 terrorist attacks, citing provisions under the ATA.

However, the 62-page ruling provided by the Court and Judge Jeannette Vargas officially dismissed the civil lawsuit targeting the exchange and its former CEO, Changpeng Zhao, after finding that the plaintiffs failed to establish any of their central allegations.

“The court has unambiguously rejected the false and damaging narrative that Binance assisted terrorists. We have always maintained that these claims were without merit, and today’s ruling confirms that. We will continue to defend ourselves aggressively against any litigation or reporting that misrepresents who we are and how we operate,” also commented Hughes.

The plaintiffs have 60 days to file an amended complaint in light of the recent appellate decision. However, the exchange said it’s confident that no amended pleading will be “able to cure the fundamental deficiencies the Court identified as the “underlying claims have been thoroughly examined and rejected.”

In a separate but slightly related note, 11 US Democratic Senators, led by Richard Blumenthal, urged the US DOJ and Treasury to investigate Binance for allegedly facilitating $1.7 billion in transactions to Iran-linked entities.

The exchange “strongly rejected” the allegations, indicating that it has more than 1,500 specialists worldwide to strengthen its robust compliance program.

The post Binance Wins Major Legal Victory as US Court Throws Out Anti-Terrorism Lawsuit appeared first on CryptoPotato.

XRP continues to trade under pressure on both its USDT and BTC pairs, with the broader structure still favoring sellers despite some short-term stabilization near key support levels.

The charts suggest that buyers are trying to defend important demand zones, but the token still needs a convincing breakout above major moving averages and overhead resistance areas before any stronger recovery narrative can take shape.

Ripple Price Analysis: The USDT Pair

On the XRP/USDT chart, the asset remains trapped within a clear descending channel that has been in place for months, keeping the overall daily trend bearish. The price is currently hovering around $1.36 after failing to reclaim the mid-channel resistance and both the 100-day and 200-day moving averages, which are now acting as dynamic resistance around the $1.80 and $2.20 regions. As long as XRP stays below those levels, the structure points to continued weakness rather than a confirmed reversal.

From a support perspective, the $1.10 to $1.20 zone is the key area to watch in the short term, as it lines up with the lower boundary of the channel and has already attracted demand. If that region breaks decisively, the market could open the door for a much deeper decline.

On the upside, bulls would first need to recover the $1.80 zone before even thinking about a push toward the broader $2.40 to $2.50 resistance band. The RSI has also improved slightly and is no longer deeply oversold, but it still does not show the kind of momentum strength that would confirm a sustained bullish shift.

The BTC Pair

Against Bitcoin, XRP is also in a weak position and continues to trend lower while trading below both major moving averages. The pair is trading around 2,000 sats, with the price recently slipping back under the 2,200 to 2,400 sats resistance cluster created by the confluence of the 100-day and 200-day moving averages.

This makes the mentioned area a strong barrier for any bullish recovery attempt. The fact that XRP has failed multiple times to break and hold above that range shows that buyers still lack control.

The key support on this chart sits around 2,000 sats, and XRP is now testing that zone once again. A clean breakdown below it could expose the lower support areas around 1,500 sats and possibly even the 1,200 sats zone over time.

On the other hand, if buyers manage to defend current levels and push the pair back above 2,400 sats, the next upside target would likely be the 2,700 to 2,800 sats region, followed by the major resistance level near 3,000 sats. For now, though, the trend remains tilted to the downside, and XRP needs a clear reclaim of lost ground before the BTC pair can start looking structurally constructive again.

The post Ripple Price Analysis: Why the XRP/BTC Pair Is Flashing a Major Warning Signal appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Pi Network’s native token has been on a spectacular run lately, defying the overall market-wide trend by registering consecutive double-digit gains that drove it to a fresh three-month peak of over $0.23 earlier today.

The most probable reasons behind these gains are related to protocol updates and the latest Pi Node case study published by the team earlier this week.

The Case Study

The team’s statement indicated that they are exploring how the global network of distributed nodes could support decentralized AI training and computing tasks, which could unlock a new layer of utility beyond securing the Pi Network blockchain.

They claimed that the network itself is relatively energy efficient and does not require the full computational capacity of its worldwide node community. Consequently, a large portion of that unused computing power remains available across thousands of machines running Pi Nodes.

The team believes this untapped capacity could be utilized by third parties requiring larger-scale computing resources, especially for AI model training and inference workloads. Pi Node operators who choose to participate in such a system could lend their computing resources and receive cryptocurrency-based compensation for completing computational tasks.

With over 421,000 Pi Nodes globally, representing more than a million CPUs, the network already operates as a large distributed computing environment, continued the statement. Its ecosystem includes tens of millions of claimed KYC-verified users who could potentially provide human-in-the-loop input for AI training tasks.

“This, in addition to the computing power from Pi nodes, can offer a unique resource for scalable, authentic human input in AI systems, and further complete the one-stop service to AI clients.”

The team said they already ran a pilot with 7 volunteer Pi Node operators. The results were quite promising, as tasks were “correctly pushed to the external testers (volunteer Pi node operators) and valid results were sent back to OpenMind.” They added that the use case was proven: Pi Nodes can opt in to run computations defined and requested by a third party, unrelated to their blockchain obligations, and return meaningful results to a third-party client.

PI’s Rally

In addition to the promising news for the vast Pi Node community, another possible reason behind the underlying token’s massive run lately could be related to the successful implementation of the protocol v19.9 upgrade and the approaching next one – v20.2, which should be completed by March 12.

PI continues to be the top performer from the larger-cap alts, surging by 16% daily to over $0.23. This is its highest price tag in roughly three months. The asset is now the 40th-largest, according to CoinGecko, with a market cap of over $2.2 billion.

Even the substantial number of unlocked tokens today (almost 21 million) couldn’t shake it off. However, the upcoming schedule shows that more similar days are ahead, which could lead to an upcoming correction.

The post Pi Network’s (PI) Price Soars 16% Again as Team Reveals Distributed AI Computing Plans appeared first on CryptoPotato.