Drift Protocol is experiencing an active attack. Deposits and withdrawals have been suspended. We are coordinating with multiple security firms, bridges, and exchanges to contain the incident. This is not an April Fools joke. We’ll provide additional updates from this account as… https://t.co/03SRPq4fHj

Hi @driftprotocol, you may want to take a look: https://t.co/7ATmq4GJ5P

— PeckShield Inc. (@peckshield) April 1, 2026

not 100% fully certain yet, but it seems drift might be getting exploited

monitor your positions https://t.co/xaHqJNDHg2

— mert (@mert) April 1, 2026

Circle announces plans to debut wrapped Bitcoin for institutions. Here’s what it meanshttps://t.co/KmpjZ25vb5

Circle announces plans to debut wrapped Bitcoin for institutions. Here’s what it meanshttps://t.co/KmpjZ25vb5

— DL News (@dlnews) April 3, 2026

Hi. Eric here.

Bitcoin has had a raw few months.

After achieving a $126,000 record high in October, a $19 billion wave of liquidations triggered a massive sell-off that saw the cryptocurrency lose roughly half of its total value.

And since February 28 when the US and Israel attacked Iran, the price of Bitcoin has trembled around $70,000.

But despite the downturn and the tsunami of gallows humour flooding social media feeds, investment firms are surprisingly positive about the market conditions.

“We are reluctant to call it a ‘crypto winter’ given how busy we are with prospective investors,” Zach Pandl, head of research at Grayscale, told me. “The current feeling at Grayscale could not be more different than the tone on Crypto Twitter — probably because we can see the institutional capital coming.”

Pandl represents one of the investment firms I spoke to this week that say that institutional investors are revving up to inject money into crypto assets. Indeed, VanEck estimates that institutional investors will pile up to $13 trillion into Bitcoin by 2030.

That wave of investment comes as James Butterfill, head of research at CoinShares, told me that he expects that the price will creep towards $80,000 over the next month or so.

His argument is simple. Whales, which he defines as individuals or entities that own over 10,000 in Bitcoin, started to take profit in October. If previous cycles are anything to go by, sell-offs usually ebb after six months, which would be around April or May this time around.

Once that sell-off ends, the price will go up, Butterfill said.

That’s an optimistic outlook. Punters on Polymarket bet that Bitcoin’s price has a 69% chance of reaching $80,000 in 2026. Conversely, they put the chances of it dropping to $55,000 at 74%.

To be sure, there are plenty of factors threatening to drag down the price.

The conflict in the Middle East still weighs on markets, and has eroded the probability that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates this side of July. Higher interest rates are usually bad for risk-on assets like cryptocurrencies.

Elsewhere, there’s the upcoming midterms in the US. Republicans seem to be in for an absolute beating, despite the crypto lobby heavily favouring their candidates. If Democrats retake the House, that will likely grind crypto legislation to a halt.

Unless banks, crypto companies, and politicians on Capitol Hill find a way to move forward with the Clarity Act before that, the landmark crypto markets bill is unlikely to get passed before 2028.

Polymarket bettors give the bill a 61% chance of getting passed this year, down from 82% in February.

Still, after almost a month of war, it’s good to see some glimmers of hope.

Crypto hackers armed with AI stand to make millions of dollars attacking old code

Bad actors are now using the large language models that power AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude to search thousands of lines of code a second. Their goal? Identify vulnerabilities that have slipped by developers and auditors. Check out Tim Craig’s report.

SBF stumbles in error-ridden trial push as judge tells his mother to step aside

Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced co-founder of the defunct FTX crypto exchange, wants to get out of prison. However, he keeps getting in his own way, Aleks Gilbert reports.

Crypto owners should be allowed to carry guns, says Ledger co-founder

After seeing his Ledger co-founder get kidnapped and tortured, Éric Larchevêque is on a mission to arm crypto workers and influencers in France.Tim Alper reports.

Post of the Week

The Clarity Act has been stuck in a legislative limbo for months. The core problem? Whether the law should allow passive yield on stablecoins. The banks say no, crypto says yes and so far no one is budging.

Guys with $73 in crypto, waiting for the CLARITY Act to pass: https://t.co/mj6TZ4OoGU pic.twitter.com/QYRnkryhd5

— Shibo (@GodsBurnt) March 20, 2026

As CoinShares’ head of research, one of his jobs is to meet prospective institutional investors and try to convince them to trust the asset management firm to invest their money into cryptocurrencies.

Five years ago, that was a tall order.

“We would generally meet them in the corner of some coffee shop because they were worried about the image it would portray of them meeting some crypto guys,” Butterfill told DL News.

But things have changed.

“Now we’re being invited into the boardrooms,” he said.

The shift marks a dramatic change in institutional investors’ attitude towards digital assets. In the past, they often viewed Bitcoin and altcoins with scepticism, as speculative assets that only hedge funds and family offices with huge risk appetites dared to touch.

Now, pension funds and university superannuation funds are pouring capital into Bitcoin exchange-traded funds and digital asset treasuries to get exposure to cryptoassets.

They’re expected to pile up to $13 trillion into Bitcoin investments alone by 2030, according to Ark Invest, an ETF provider.

Their bullishness comes at a peculiar time for the crypto industry.

On the one hand, the industry has never had more governmental support. On the other, it has lost almost half of its market value since October, and uncertainties surrounding the war in the Middle East threaten to exacerbate market jitters.

Even so, most of the firms DL News spoke to that provide crypto investment services to institutional investors remain optimistic — the market, they say, will bounce back soon.

“Believe it or not, most institutional investors have still not allocated to crypto,” Zach Pandl, head of research at Grayscale, told DL News. “They therefore tend to see drawdowns as an opportunity to build positions at compelling prices.”

The turn

US President Donald Trump is a key driver behind the changing attitude among institutional investors.

“Regardless what you think about Trump, he’s done a lot of things to the asset class,” Butterfill said.

Since taking office, Trump has appointed crypto supporters to key government roles, signed executive orders to create a national Bitcoin reserve and banned the creation of a central bank-issued digital dollar.

He has also pardoned industry leaders, signed a landmark stablecoin bill into law, and backed the Clarity Act, a bill designed to clarify the rules the industry must adhere to.

More importantly, his policies, and the appointment of Paul Atkins to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission, have effectively halted the tougher policing of the Joe Biden years.

In its place, Atkins, and his counterpart at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission Michael Selig, have introduced regulatory guidelines that the industry could only dream of a few years ago.

“All of that has just improved the legitimacy of the asset class,” Butterfill said.

To be sure, these firms have reason to talk up the shifting attitudes towards the industry — their business models depend on the idea that more people will invest in cryptocurrencies.

That being said, Wall Street is positioning itself to capitalise on what they see as a wave of interest in blockchain-backed investments.

This week, banking giant Morgan Stanley launched a Bitcoin ETF to compete with the ones of investment giants BlackRock and Fidelity, and US mortgage-finance giant Fannie Mae is said to soon accept crypto-backed mortgages.

Elsewhere, JPMorgan, led by it’s perennial Bitcoin sceptic CEO Jamie Dimon, has started to allow institutional clients to pledge their crypto holdings to secure loans.

The October crash

Two major factors still demand vigilance among investors: the $19 billion market implosion in October, and uncertainties caused by the war in Iran.

That’s triggered renewed concerns from investors about digital assets’ ties to crime, volatility, computing risks and crypto’s impact on the environment.

Despite the downturn following the joint US and Israeli attack on Iran, Bitcoin has performed better than equities and gold.

Investment managers tell DL News that this fact has incentivised institutional investors to bet on the asset class — especially as they expect things to get better soon.

Whales are to blame for the downturn, Butterfill argues. Many individuals who own over 10,000 Bitcoin believe that the cryptocurrency’s price adheres to a four-year cycle.

This cycle starts at every halving, an event where the reward for mining Bitcoin drops by half. This usually sets the stage for a massive rally that culminates about 18 months later. Then the price starts to drop, and won’t rise again until the next rally.

“I would argue that that’s nonsense because the supply is perfectly known for the next 100 years,” Butterfill said.

Even so, whales that adhere to the idea of the four-year cycle started to take profit in October, he said.

The good news?

“That’s slowing right down, which is quite encouraging,” Butterfill said, predicting that the selling will end in April and pave the way for Bitcoin’s price to start its climb back above $80,000.

Bitcoin ETFs’ $2.3 billion haul

Since February 23, investors have injected over $2.3 billion into Bitcoin ETFs, marking four solid weeks of inflows into those funds, according to DefiLlama data.

“That’s quite encouraging,” Butterfill said.

While that doesn’t offset the $1.6 billion pulled out of these funds since October, Bitcoin ETFs still hold over $83 billion worth of Bitcoin.

“Crypto ETF demand has been remarkably sticky,” Pandl said.

Eric Johansson is DL News’ managing editor. Got a tip? Email at eric@dlnews.com.

The head of research at Fundstrat Global Advisors and chair of Bitmine Immersion Technologies, a digital asset treasury that invests heavily in Ethereum, offered that advice in a clip posted on the former company’s YouTube channel on Thursday, just as Ether’s price took a 3% nosedive over the past 24 hours.

“For the next year, I think that’s a money trade,” Lee said.

“As a wartime store of value, crypto looks a lot stronger. Crypto has been outperforming since the war started while gold has actually underperformed,” he said.

The call comes amid a $2 trillion downturn in the crypto market since October that has left most tokens heavily bruised, while other asset classes, like gold and stocks, soared to new highs in early 2026. Bitcoin is down 45% from its October peak while Ethereum has fallen nearly 60%. Many popular memecoins have plunged over 90%.

Ethereum bull case

But the tables have turned since the US-Israeli war on Iran began in late February — at least for Ethereum.

Since then, Ethereum is up 17% on a relative basis compared to the S&P 500, and has outperformed all major global market benchmarks including Bitcoin, Gold, Real Estate, MSCI World Energy and Mag-7 tech stocks, Fundstrat’s March research report shows.

To be sure, Lee warns of lingering risk stemming from the war in the Middle East.

“The US is at war with Iran. There’s misinformation. Investors are risk-averse. They want to sit on the sidelines. It’s very difficult to navigate markets like this,” he said.

Lee has long been a big supporter of Ethereum and forecasts the network’s Ether token will eventually hit $250,000.

Bitmine purchased another $133 million of Ether earlier this week, and now holds over $9 billion worth, the firm said.

Lee’s optimism is shared by institutions including BlackRock, the world’s largest investment manager overseeing $14 trillion, which launched a new Ethereum exchange-traded fund on March 12.

They see Ethereum as a key technology for tokenisation — the representation of traditional financial assets using blockchain-based tokens — as a means of lowering barriers to investment.

Despite the number two crypto stalling near $2,000, “key progress at the Ethereum protocol level continues to advance,” Tim Sun, senior researcher at HashKey, told DL News.

Sun said that Ethereum’s key thesis as an institutional-grade settlement layer remains intact, despite the market action.

“In this context, the market’s current discounting of Ether and related assets reflects a shift in sentiment and risk preference more than a fundamental rejection of the core thesis,” he said.

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.

The Financial Times reported on Friday that the crypto industry’s largest stablecoin issuer had signed on KPMG to conduct an audit of the firm.

The outlet added that PwC would assist with preparing internal systems, citing sources familiar with the matter.

Tether and PwC did not immediately respond to a request for comment. KPMG declined to comment.

The 12-year-old stablecoin company, which boasted $10 billion in profits in 2025, announced the news on Tuesday but did not share the name of the auditing firm.

“At a scale rarely seen outside the world’s largest sovereign institutions and encompassing a uniquely complex mix of digital assets, traditional reserves, and tokenised liabilities, this audit marks a defining moment not only for Tether, but for the evolution of modern finance itself,” the company said.

The move comes just as larger financial institutions are taking a closer look at digital assets and landmark stablecoin legislation passed in the US last summer.

Now, Tether is looking to tap into this momentum — and clear its chequered past.

Big Four question answered

In 2024, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino told DL News that Big Four accounting firms — Deloitte, PwC, EY, and KPMG — were afraid to work with Tether because they feared it would damage their reputations.

“So you are a Big Four auditing firm, and you have the entire banking industry that is your customer,” Ardoino said.

“Why would you risk 100,000 customers for a couple of stablecoins?”

Much has changed since then.

For starters, Tether’s USDT stablecoin is now worth $184 billion, more than 70% larger than in April 2024.

Second, stablecoins are now subject to federal supervision following the passage of the Genius Act last summer.

The bill also paved the way for the launch of Tether’s USAT stablecoin in the US. Bo Hones, who previously served an advisory role for the White House on crypto, is the CEO of the company’s US-based firm.

This appears to have been enough to derisk taking on Tether’s business.

Run-in with regulators

Tether has long been scrutinised for failing to execute a formal audit from a large accounting firm.

It’s also had run-ins with regulators over its reserves reporting.

In 2021, the company settled with the New York Attorney General’s office over misrepresentations regarding the backing of its USDT stablecoin. Tether and Bitfinex, its sister company also founded by Ardoino, paid $18.5 million.

That same year, Tether paid a $41 million fine to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission after the CFTC accused the stablecoin firm of making “untrue or misleading statements” regarding its US dollar reserves.

Update, March 27: KPMG declined to comment.

Liam Kelly is DL News’ Berlin correspondent. Contact him at liam@dlnews.com.

MARA Holdings sold off 15,133 Bitcoin for $1.1 billion over the past three weeks.

Now, it holds 38,689 Bitcoin worth around $2.3 billion.

„Our decision to sell a portion of our Bitcoin holdings reflects a strategic capital allocation move designed to strengthen our balance sheet and position the company for long-term growth,“ CEO Fred Thiel said in a statement.

He added the move “enhances financial flexibility“ as MARA expands “beyond pure-play Bitcoin mining into digital energy and AI/HPC infrastructure.“

Translation: Mining Bitcoin doesn’t pay anymore. Powering AI does.

Another domino

MARA trades at $8.50, up around 3.5% today, according to Yahoo Finance.

The company fell to third place in the Bitcoin treasury trade, now relinquishing the second spot to Jack Mallers’ Twenty One Capital.

Indeed, MARA is the latest — and biggest — domino to fall in Bitcoin mining’s wholesale pivot towards artificial intelligence infrastructure.

Every other major US miner had already begun their transition as mining became significantly unprofitable following the latest halving event, according to Bernstein analysts.

In 2024, the halving — an event that occurs every 4 years and halves block rewards — cut mining rewards to 3.125 Bitcoin per block.

On its own, that’s already a problem. But transaction fees have also collapsed as Bitcoin gets locked up in exchange-traded funds rather than traded on-chain.

The result is that companies that could profitably mine Bitcoin at $50,000 per coin now struggle to break even at $100,000 per coin.

But Bitcoin now trades around $69,000.

Meanwhile, AI companies are desperate for power capacity and willing to pay premium rates for it.

The great mining unwind

MARA’s sale is just the biggest example of a broader trend.

Core Scientific contracted 590 megawatts to AI cloud provider CoreWeave for 12 years in a deal that’s expected to generate $10 billion in revenue.

IREN is targeting over half a billion in annualised revenue from AI cloud services in 2026.

Even CleanSpark — previously committed to pure Bitcoin mining — appointed a senior vice president for AI data centres in October.

Some miners aren’t moving fast enough for their own shareholders.

To be sure, pivoting to AI doesn’t guarantee success.

The AI play that looked bulletproof barely six months ago is now facing some serious investor scrutiny. Market watchers are wondering whether OpenAI and other hyperscalers can actually execute and monetise their aggressive buildout plans.

That scepticism has fed directly into Bitcoin miners, said Matthew Sigel, head of digital assets research at VanEck.

“The once-dominant AI trade has weakened,” he said in February.

“This has had second-order effects on Bitcoin miners as financing conditions tightened alongside Bitcoin weakness,” forcing many to sell off more of their coins to fund the pivot.

Pedro Solimano is a markets correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email him at psolimano@dlnews.com.

Now the digital asset treasury, which is already staking nearly $7 billion of Ethereum, is planning even more avant-garde moves to bridge crypto with traditional finance, according to Bitmine Chair Tom Lee.

“MAVAN represents a critical step in our vision to build one of the leading staking and onchain infrastructure platforms globally,” Lee said on Wednesday.

“We plan to expand across additional proof-of-stake networks and critical blockchain infrastructure over time, and through 2026, we’ll grow our efforts in areas such as onchain vaults, post-quantum client development, and more,” he added.

The initiative highlights how traditional finance is merging with crypto and comes on the back of a similar move made by investment giant BlackRock earlier this year.

Over 30% of Ethereum’s total circulating supply is now staked, according to ValidatorQueue data. In other words, nearly one-third of all Ethereum is now illiquid, earning just under 2.8% yield — modest by crypto industry standards.

MAVAN plans to broaden its offering to cater to institutional investors, custodians and ecosystem partners seeking high-quality staking infrastructure, Lee said.

Still, the grand ambitions haven’t helped out Bitmine’s share price, which has dropped 66% since October. While its share price jumped some 2% on the back of the news, pre-market trading suggests shares have dropped over 3% of their value since.

Bitmine is the biggest digital asset treasury holder of Ethereum. The firm and other of its kin have struggled in the market after $19 billion worth of leverage crypto trading positions were liquidated in October, which triggered a cascade of sell-offs that dragged down the price of cryptocurrencies.

The total cryptocurrency market has lost almost half of its value since. For DATs like Bitmine, the crash has triggered falling share prices, investor rebellions and mass sales.

Even so, Lee remains one of the most prominent Ethereum bulls and predicts $250,000 per token, but hasn’t provided a timeline for that call.

Institutions back Ethereum

MAVAN’s debut comes amid continuous institutional support for staked Ethereum, despite the network’s token price still down 57% from its August peak of $4,950.

BlackRock, the world’s largest investment manager, launched its newest Ethereum exchange-traded fund on March 12. The iShares Staked Ethereum Trust ETF saw close to $16 million in trading volume after debuting with $100 million in assets under management.

Thomas Brunner, head of custody and staking at Sygnum Bank in Zürich, told DL News that these new staked Ethereum products from BlackRock and Bitmine appeal to traditional finance investors.

These clients typically want Ethereum exposure and yield “through a familiar brokerage account, without having to self-custody or navigate the mechanics of staking directly,” Brunner said.

BlackRock said in its 2026 outlook that Ethereum will lead the tokenisation of real-world assets.

In his 2026 annual letter to shareholders, CEO Larry Fink highlighted tokenisation — the conversion of traditional financial assets into blockchain-based tokens — as a means of lowering barriers to investment.

“Half the world’s population carries a digital wallet on their phone,” Fink said on Tuesday.

“Imagine if that same digital wallet could also let you invest in a broad mix of companies for the long term — as easily as sending a payment.”

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.

On Wednesday, Google announced that it’s setting an “ambitious timeline” to migrate most of its authentication and digital signature models to post-quantum cryptography by 2029.

The company cited faster-than-expected progress in quantum hardware development, error correction, and factoring resource estimates.

A day earlier, the Ethereum Foundation published a four-pronged roadmap to protect the $260 billion network.

The organisation also set a 2029 target for completion, although researchers inside the Ethereum Foundation don’t think quantum computing will be “cryptographically relevant” for another eight to 12 years.

Even so, researchers are erring on the side of caution.

Chaincode Labs has estimated that up to 50% of all Bitcoin — roughly $700 billion — is vulnerable to a quantum computing threat.

At the upper echelons of finance, there are also concerns about the threat posed by quantum computing.

In January, Sergio Ermotti, CEO of $5 trillion Swiss bank UBS, sounded the alarm.

Moves from Google, the Ethereum Foundation, and members of the Bitcoin Core development group form a growing chorus of voices that reckon that quantum computing could break the security models that undergird the majority of crypto networks.

Two main threats

Google’s timeline shows two main quantum risks, both with distinct levels of urgency.

The first threat is already happening, according to Google.

It is called “store-now-decrypt-later attacks, where adversaries capture encrypted data today and wait for future quantum computers to decrypt it.

This makes encryption vulnerable right now, even though current quantum computers can’t break it yet.

The second threat directly targets cryptocurrencies. That’s because the attack targets digital signatures, the cryptographic proof that transactions are authentic.

For protocols like Bitcoin and Ethereum, compromising digital signatures is existential.

They prove you own your coins and authorise any transactions, meaning if quantum computers can forge signatures, they can drain users’ wallets.

Developers prepare

Even though the Ethereum Foundation doesn’t expect quantum computing to pose a threat to users for another 8 to 12 years, researchers acknowledge that “the work must begin well before the threat arrives.”

Bitcoin developers aren’t waiting around either. A proposal, dubbed BIP360, already exists to address quantum risks before they materialise.

“Our whole motto is: prepared, not scared,” Hunter Beast, one of the proposal’s authors, previously told DL News.

Pedro Solimano is a markets correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email him at psolimano@dlnews.com.

After all, its former top executive, James Gorman, said in 2024 that he never understood the value of Bitcoin.

Things have changed now, and with the “imminent” launch of a Morgan Stanley Bitcoin ETF, the $83 billion already sitting in Bitcoin ETFs is about to get a whole lot bigger.

On social media, Eric Balchunas, a senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, shared a screenshot of a pending listing for the bank’s ETF under the ticker MSBT.

Morgan Stanley did not immediately respond for comment.

Morgan Stanley operates the largest network of financial advisors in the United States, with roughly 16,000 advisors managing over $6.2 trillion in client assets.

That’s double the combined assets of Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan’s wealth management units, he said.

“First bank to do a Bitcoin ETF (unthinkable couple years ago),” Balchunas wrote on X. “But not just any bank, a big boy bank with the largest network of financial advisors.”

When BlackRock and 11 others launched Bitcoin ETFs in January 2024, banks like Morgan Stanley took a more cautious approach.

They allowed some of their advisors to offer third-party Bitcoin ETFs only to select wealthy clients.

Fast forward two years, and Morgan Stanley is putting its own name on a Bitcoin fund.

The new ETF gives Morgan Stanley’s 16,000 advisors a proprietary Bitcoin product they can recommend without routing clients to a competitor’s fund.

16,000 advisors

The ETF move is part of a larger push from the bank to embrace crypto in the US.

Morgan Stanley CEO Ted Pick said in January that the bank was working with the US Treasury Department and other regulators to launch crypto products.

In February, Morgan Stanley also joined a growing list of companies filing for a banking charter to custody cryptocurrencies.

Morgan Stanley’s competitive edge is its advisor network.

While retail investors can buy BlackRock’s IBIT themselves, many wealthy investors rely on financial advisors to construct portfolios.

Those advisors have traditionally been gatekeepers, either recommending Bitcoin exposure or dismissing it.

Some market watchers forecast strong interest from Morgan Stanley clients.

Morgan Stanley would not be launching their own Bitcoin ETF “unless it believes that Bitcoin will be a persistent allocation across its wealth management client base,” said John Haar, head of private services at Bitcoin-focused financial services company Swan Bitcoin.

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin is up 0.7% over the past 24 hours, trading at $71,223.
• Ethereum rose 0.3% in the last day to $2,164.

What we’re reading

• Bitcoin price holds steady as investors flee gold. Have safe-haven roles finally reversed? — DL News
• Bitcoin Is in Uncertain Territory. Could Strategy’s STRC Be the Last Straw? — Unchained
• Will the war cause a global recession? — Milk Road
• SBF stumbles in error-ridden trial push as judge tells his mother to step aside — DL News

Pedro Solimano is a markets correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email him at psolimano@dlnews.com.

A total of $17 billion in digital assets options — more than $14.5 billion in Bitcoin — are set to expire on crypto derivatives platform Deribit on Friday.

“This is a huge expiry, large enough to influence spot prices,” Daniel Reis-Faria, CEO of ZeroStack, told DL News.

A Bitcoin options contract gives the trader the right, but not the obligation, to purchase the underlying asset at a specific price on a future date.

This means traders don’t have to buy the Bitcoin when the contract expires, but they can if they want to.

The expiry date falls on the same day that US President Trump set as the deadline for Iran to make a deal to end the ongoing military conflict between the two countries.

The president postponed a threat to bomb Iran’s power grid on Tuesday after he said he’d had productive talks with Iranian officials.

Iran has denied that such talks took place.

When options are set to expire, crypto markets can become more volatile as would-be traders will either continue to hold or dump their potential buys.

In the past, when large amounts of options have expired, the market has crashed.

This isn’t a given, however, as market makers can sometimes suppress volatility by selling option premiums.

War in Iran a factor

Things are different this time around, as crypto markets have experienced greater volatility amid geopolitical strife.

Deribit’s Chief Commercial Officer, Jean-David Pequignot, said in a note shared with DL News that the Iran war was playing a part in Friday’s option expiry.

“Bitcoin’s recent surge back toward $71k was catalysed by President Trump’s decision to postpone strikes on Iranian power plants for five days,” he wrote.

Bitcoin is up 8% since the US and Israel hit Iran on February 28.

The coin has experienced significant volatility, along with stocks, since the attack took place, but has proven to be a safer haven than gold — at least in the short-term.

Now, Trump’s decision to postpone strikes on Iranian power plants for five days will reach its deadline the same day the crypto options expire, which could mean even more volatility, according to Pequingnot.

“This diplomatic window expires almost perfectly in tandem with Friday’s options expiry, exacerbating a localised volatility kink in the term structure,” he added.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

The $65 billion Menlo Park-headquartered juggernaut announced the scheme after revealing record revenues of $4.5 billion in 2025, despite being dragged down by the crypto market downturn in the final quarter of the year.

“This authorisation reflects the confidence of our management team and board in our ability to continue delivering innovative products for customers and creating value for shareholders while returning capital over time,” Robinhood’s Chief Financial Officer, Shiv Verma, said in a statement.

The programme comes as Robinhood, along with other crypto company stocks, has taken a hit this year.

Since the beginning of 2026, Nasdaq-listed Robinhood is down over 36%. Even so, it is still up almost 53% over the past 12 months.

A share buyback programme allows a company to buy its own stock, with the hope of increasing its price by reducing its supply.

Crypto slump

Over the past few years, Robinhood has rolled out crypto trading for both retail and institutional investors, expanded digital asset-trading services to Europe, and launched its own stablecoin network together with Kraken, and Galaxy Digital.

Robinhood’s latest quarterly earnings showed that the company’s crypto-side of business took a hit along with the price of Bitcoin.

Crypto trading revenue for the company slid in the final quarter of 2025, but was saved as its new prediction markets feature gained traction.

“We’re not getting distracted by short term [price] fluctuations,” Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said in the company’s earnings call.

Crypto markets got battered in October when more than $19 billion in leveraged bets were wiped out. Bitcoin is now over 40% below its all-time high; Ethereum has slumped by more than 56%.

The selloff hurt crypto companies which have cut staff and introduced buyback schemes to increase stock prices.

Ripple, the issuer of the XRP cryptocurrency, is one of the companies buying back stocks, according to reports. The company is said to be buying back $750 million worth of stocks at a company valuation of $50 billion.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

The top cryptocurrency’s outperformance compared to other assets like gold has emboldened analysts to forecast that the price will more than double to $150,000 by the end of the year.

Yet, that growth will need more than just sentiment, according to Max Kahn, CEO of Digital Wealth Partners.

“For Bitcoin to more than double in value by year’s end, we’ll need to see an acceleration in new capital entering the market,” he told DL News.

That means that Bitcoin’s price will follow a “choppier path higher where price appreciation follows actual capital formation, rather than a straight-line move driven by sentiment alone,” Kahn said.

The hesitant bullishness comes as Bitcoin has spent the past month locked between $66,000 and $76,000, a range that reflects a tug-of-war between capital inflows and macroeconomic crosswinds.

But there are signs of recovery. March is on track to be the strongest month for Bitcoin exchange-traded fund inflows since October. Investors have poured in over $1.5 billion so far, with four trading days still on the calendar, DefiLlama data shows.

In a Tuesday note to investors, analysts at Bernstein argued that Bitcoin will reach $150,000 by the end of the year thanks to strong institutional interest in the asset.

To be sure, Bernstein’s predictions have not always panned out. In 2024, the firm forecasted that Bitcoin would end 2025 trading at $200,000. It ended last year trading around $90,000.

Still, investors remain cautious. EToro analyst Simon Peters told DL News that Bitcoin investors are closely monitoring geopolitical tensions, particularly the conflict in the Middle East and its impact on global oil prices.

The conflict has effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, the artery for roughly one-fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas.

The recent rise in crude prices has revived inflation concerns, raising the risk that central banks may tighten financial conditions — a dynamic that could weigh on cryptoasset prices in the near to medium term, he said.

Risky assets like Bitcoin are hurt by higher interest rates because they incentivise investors to hold bonds by paying more risk-free yield.

On Wednesday, the International Energy Agency signalled it will release more strategic reserves as Asian economies, heavily reliant on Gulf crude, scramble to contain fuel shortages.

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.

At the heart of the sell-off is new language widely reported to be included in the latest version of the Clarity Act, a long-awaited crypto market structure bill that would define how the industry will be regulated in the US.

But Bernstein says the market has misread the risk.

“The market is conflating who earns yield with who distributes yield,” analyst Gautam Chhugani and his three Bernstein colleagues said in an investor note shared with DL News.

“Circle earns. Coinbase distributes. The Clarity Act targets distribution.”

The analysts added that carve-outs for activity-based rewards could still allow platforms to offer incentives, meaning the sell-off “may not be calibrated enough.”

Clarity at last?

The proposal would ban companies from paying users simply for holding stablecoins in a way that resembles interest on bank deposits, Politico reported.

However, rewards linked to “bona fide activity” — such as payments, trading or loyalty programmes — may still be permitted.

Patrick Witt, the executive director of the President’s Council of Advisors for Digital Assets, confirmed the move on Friday.

“Credit to Senator Thom Tillis and Senator Angela Alsobrooks for bridging the partisan divide to tackle a difficult issue,” he said. “More work to be done to close out this and other outstanding issues, but this is a major milestone toward passing the Clarity Act.”

Neither Alsobrooks nor Tillis immediately replied to a request for comment from DL News.

President Donald Trump’s administration has also relentlessly pursued crypto-friendly policies despite partisan gridlock.

Last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission delivered a pivotal interpretation of federal securities law, offering long-awaited clarity on which blockchain-based assets fall within its remit — and which do not.

“As lawmakers consider broader reform to guard against rogue regulation, the SEC is doing what it can and should be doing by providing clarity about the proper boundaries of our jurisdiction within existing law,” SEC chair Paul Atkins said at the Digital Assets Summit in New York on Tuesday.

Deeper struggle

To be sure, there are plenty of financial leaders opposed to the administration’s pro-crypto stance.

The clash over stablecoin rewards reflects a deeper struggle between banks and crypto firms.

Earlier in March, at the American Bankers Association summit in Washington, executives warned that stablecoins could drain deposits from the traditional banking system, threatening lending capacity across the $23 trillion US credit market.

“It would be extremely detrimental should our deposits be cut back,” said ABA chair-elect Cathy Owen.

Vikram Arun, co-founder and CEO of the wealth management platform Superform, told DL News that “with Trump supporting the crypto industry, the question is no longer ‘is this allowed’ but rather ‘how does the US win’, and that weight will be translated to lawmakers far more than any single policy win.”

More FUD?

The sell-off of Circle shares also coincided with a viral post from pseudonymous blockchain investigator ZachXBT alleging that Circle froze multiple USDC wallets, amplifying concerns around government control and censorship.

The post has reignited debate on X over centralisation risks in stablecoins, landing just as regulatory uncertainty intensifies.

“You fail to protect users during actual incidents yet respond to a request riddled with errors,” ZachXBT said.

Adding to Circle’s headaches is the fact that long-term rival Tether is making overtures to muscle into the US market.

Having long restricted US users from using its USDT stablecoin, Tether launched a US-regulated stablecoin called USAT in January.

On Tuesday, DL News reported that Tether has also signed up one of the Big Four auditing firms to audit the stablecoin issuer, which may help answer some questions about its record.

It is unclear whether PwC, EY, Deloitte, or KPMG has signed up to do Tether’s audit.

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.

One is concentration risk, said James Seyffart, a fund expert at Bloomberg Intelligence.

If an institutional investor who knows nothing about the Bitcoin space sees that a majority of the token’s supply is owned by a single company, “I’m going to be a little bit skeptical,” Seyffart said on the Bitcoin History podcast on March 24.

The other two include qualms about quantum computing and concerns about portfolio diversification.

“These are all things that are just going to be barriers,” he said.

Investors unwilling to buy up Strategy stock could have serious negative repercussions for Bitcoin, too.

If investment into Strategy co-founder Michael Saylor dries up, his firm’s ability to buy up more Bitcoin would also slow — effectively stopping one of the biggest Bitcoin buyers on the planet from more purchases.

Concentration risk

Right now, Strategy owns more than 720,000 Bitcoin worth around $53 billion.

That’s around 3.5% of Bitcoin’s total supply in the hands of Michael Saylor.

For Seyffart, the power that Saylor commands over his own company is a risk that’s simply too hard to ignore.

“Saylor doesn’t own full voting control, but he owns a lot of it and de facto control right now,” Seyffart said. “He has a lot of control over a significant portion of Bitcoin’s outstanding balance and future outstanding balance.”

Institutions don’t like that, noted Seyffart.

Quantum computing

Then there’s quantum computing.

“Obviously, I do hear people from the traditional fianncial world asking me what’s going on with quantum computing,” said Seyffart. “That’s another risk that people are asking about.”

Over the last year or so, the Bitcoin community has been embroiled in a heated debate over how to address the alleged threat of quantum computers, a still-theoretical yet rapidly progressing technology that could break the encryption that secures the Bitcoin network.

Researchers at Chaincode Labs have published estimates that up to 50% of all Bitcoin could be vulnerable to a quantum attack.

Diversification risk

The third barrier is diversification.

Endowments and sovereign wealth funds building crypto allocations may baulk at a market where a single entity controls an ever-growing share of supply, regardless of whether that control is direct or distributed across shareholders, Seyffart noted.

Even so, Seyffart doesn’t think any one of these concerns, on its own, is enough to bring down Strategy.

“I don’t have any blatant ‘this domino is going to fall and cause all these dominoes to fall,’ he said.

“It’s more just like, obviously this is something that people are going to point to.”

Pedro Solimano is a markets correspondent based in Buenos Aires. Got a tip? Email him at psolimano@dlnews.com.

Indeed, critics have spent years attacking Bitcoin for failing to serve as a store of value amid myriad geopolitical crises.

But during the latest military conflict in the Middle East, investment data paint a much different picture: Bitcoin exchange-traded funds are holding up while gold spot ETFs are bleeding out.

“Since the Iran strike, Bitcoin, surprisingly, has looked like a good safe haven. and gold hasn’t,” Eric Balchunas, senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, told DL News.

In the last week, around $3.8 billion has exited the top two gold ETFs, GLD and IAU, while Bitcoin ETFs, on the other hand, have taken in around $2 billion, over the past few weeks.

Gold is worth around $4,500 today, while Bitcoin is worth $70,400 today.

Too soon to tell

Balchunas pushed back on the idea that Bitcoin and gold should move in opposite directions.

“They are more like zero correlated, not inversely,” he said on March 24. “They both perform similarly. Both are stores of value, just one is older and the other is younger.”

Balchunas’s framing challenges the common assumption that Bitcoin behaves like digital gold, tracking the yellow metal in lockstep with the $1.4 trillion cryptocurrency, or in its perfect opposite, like a levered tech stock.

Instead, the Bloomberg analyst argues that they’re both stores of value operating independently. Sometimes they rise together, sometimes they diverge, but they are not necessarily opposed.

To be sure, Balchunas noted that it’s too early to tell that the role between the cryptocurrency and the precious metal has actually reversed.

“You have to look long term about both of these and you will find that they’re both store values, but people like to make these judgments based on a couple of weeks,” he told DL News.

Meanwhile, the S&P 500 has lost around 2.5% over the last week, and crude oil has fallen around 8% after US President Donald Trump reported positive talks with Iranian leader over opening the Strait of Hormuz — a key trade channel that facilitates roughly 20% of the world’s oil demand.

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin is up 0.2% over the past 24 hours, trading at $70,572.
• Ethereum rose 0.8% in the last day to $2,153.

What we’re reading

• Tether signs Big Four accounting firm after years of criticism over its reserves transparency — DL News
• Resolv’s $23m hack highlights DeFi risk management struggle — DL News
• BitGo and Susquehanna Launch Institutional OTC Access to Prediction Markets — Unchained
• Bittensor. So hot right now — Milk Road

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent, and Pedro Solimano is a markets correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email them at mdisalvo@dlnews.com and psolimano@dlnews.com.

This time, the first family’s memecoin machine is back with another high-stakes pitch: buy in, and you might get a seat at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on April 25.

The team behind the TRUMP memecoin is inviting its biggest 297 holders to a gala lunch, with Donald Trump billed as the keynote speaker alongside “the world’s power players” including Ark Invest chief Cathie Wood, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino, and Silicon Valley scion Tim Draper.

“This event will be a memory you will talk about forever!” the official website says. “There will be no private meetings with the President. No gifts will be accepted.”

Fight Fight Fight LLC, the entity behind the TRUMP memecoin’s official website, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from DL News.

The event will happen just two months after the Trump family crypto startup World Liberty Financial gathered a star-studded lineup including the heads of Coinbase, Goldman Sachs, FIFA, and other prominent figures in a mix of capital, celebrity and crypto clout.

It comes as the memecoin trades over 95% below its January 2025 all-time high.

The president is highly supportive of the nascent industry. He has wielded the power of the Oval Office to support cryptocurrency firms over legacy financial institutions, a dynamic unseen in prior administrations.

He has used his influence to appoint industry supporters to key government positions, sign a landmark stablecoin bill into law, regulators adopt more light-touch policing of the sector, and to back a far-reaching markets bill.

‘Crypto corruption club’

The event is the second time the Trump family has staged a private gala for buyers of the president’s memecoin.

Last May, the top 220 holders of the token, which launched days before Trump’s January 2025 inauguration, were invited to a private dinner at the family’s Virginia golf club.

In the months leading up to the event, investors piled millions into buying the memecoin, hoping that it would be enough to snatch a ticket. Trump made a brief appearance.

Democrats derided the gathering as a “crypto corruption club,” casting it as a case study in a president monetising proximity to power.

Critics also pointed to the roster of international guests, which featured Chinese-born Tron founder Justin Sun and the pseudonymous co-founder of Singapore-based MemeCore, underscoring the global draw of the event and raised concerns over undue foreign influence.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said at the time that there was nothing wrong with the dinner.

“It’s absurd for anyone to insinuate that this president is profiting off of the presidency,” she said. “This president was incredibly successful before giving it all up to serve our country publicly.”

This year, the scale and stakes are bigger. The invite list has expanded to the top 297 holders, with the top 29 promised a “VIP reception” with their “favourite president” and celebrity guests.

One key detail remains unresolved: whether Trump will actually attend. The event website says yes, in all caps. But the president is already scheduled to appear at the prestigious White House Correspondents’ Dinner on the same day.

Democrats ramp up attacks

The Trump family’s crypto ties are emerging as a key attack point for the Democratic Party ahead of the crucial midterm elections later this year.

Leading the charge is Senator Elizabeth Warren, an outspoken critic of the crypto industry. She and others have called for a probe into one of the Trump family’s top crypto ventures and launched an investigation into Binance, which custodies nearly 90% of a Trump-linked stablecoin.

And experts expect more attacks like it.

“As the midterm elections approach, various political actors are naturally highlighting distinctions in policy and personal financial involvement to mobilise their respective bases,” G Clay Miller, partner at digital asset consultancy Penrose Partners and previous Brooklyn County Democratic Committee member, told DL News earlier in March.

The White House has consistently denied allegations of wrongdoing.

​​“The president has no involvement in business deals that would implicate his constitutional responsibilities,” White House counsel David Warrington told DL News in February.

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.

That’s the case Bernstein analysts made in a March 24 investor’s note shared with DL News. The research and brokerage firm said that the top cryptocurrency’s relative strength versus other assets, coupled with a strong base of long-term holders which includes Michael Saylor’s Strategy, is fuelling its conviction in a blow-out rally in the coming months.

“We believe Bitcoin has found its trough and is now heading higher,” the analysts said in the note. “We retain $150,000 as our 2026 year-end expected price for Bitcoin.”

Bernstein’s renewed conviction comes as the ongoing conflict in the Middle East and its impact on the global economy plagues financial markets.

The price of oil is roughly 30% higher than before the US and Israel first struck Iran on February 28, fuelling inflation concerns among financial analysts and central banks.

Gold, typically viewed as a store of value in times of uncertainty, has fallen over 17% from its pre-war price. US stocks have also taken a broad beating.

Yet amid the chaos, Bitcoin has fared better than most other assets. It’s up almost 8% since the conflict began.

Bullish signs

Bernstein has listed three reasons for its bullish outlook.

Firstly, Michael Saylor’s Strategy keeps buying. According to Bernstein’s forecasts, the treasury firm has plenty of room to continue scooping up Bitcoin, and shows no signs of slowing.

That’s despite widespread chaos among other Bitcoin treasury firms, and shorts piling into Strategy as they attempt to profit from Bitcoin’s falling price, and the firm’s exposure to it.

Secondly, investors are continuing to buy Bitcoin exchange-traded funds.

Bitcoin ETFs have added $2.2 billion over the last four weeks, and have seen more long-term allocations from wealth managers and institutional funds, including pension and sovereign funds, the Bernstein analysts said.

Finally, existing long-term Bitcoin holders haven’t sold, despite a near 50% drawdown from the asset’s October all-time high.

“Bitcoin holders inactive for more than one year stand at 60% of total supply,” the Bernstein analysts said.

“This ownership structure is unique to Bitcoin signifying long term ‘believers’ who remain insensitive to Bitcoin volatility holding Bitcoin as a ‘store of value.’”

‘Weakest Bitcoin bear case in history’

Bernstein has a history of making bullish Bitcoin price predictions, but has yet to see one of them come through.

In early 2024, the firm first predicted Bitcoin would hit $150,000 by the end of 2025. It then raised that target to $200,000 in June 2024, then reaffirmed the target throughout 2025 and called it “conservative.”

In December as Bitcoin traded around $90,000, Bernstein retracted the $200,000 target and shifted to a new framework that forecast the top cryptocurrency to hit $150,000 by the end of 2026, with a potential cycle high of $200,000 in 2027.

Last month, Bernstein called the Bitcoin selloff, which saw the top cryptocurrency trade below $63,000, the “weakest bear case in history.”

Punters on Polymarket give Bitcoin a 10% chance of hitting $150,000 before the end of the year and a 25% chance that the price will drop as low as $30,000.

Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@dlnews.com.

The top cryptocurrency is trading around $71,000 as the Iran war enters its fourth week, some 43% below its $126,000 October all-time high.

Bitcoin is “demonstrating resilience in the face of a genuine macro shock,” Rachael Lucas, crypto analyst at BTC Markets, told DL News.

Lucas notes that Bitcoin has gained roughly 7% since hostilities began, “outperforming equities, gold, and silver.”

Her comments come as Bitcoin and the rest of the crypto market have lost almost half of their volume since the October wipeout. Yet, she warns that things could get worse.

If Bitcoin falls below $67,500, that suggests more short-term weakness, with $59,000 seen by traders as the key long-term support level, meaning it could act as a price floor if markets drop, Lucas warns.

Bloomberg Intelligence Strategist Mike McGlone warned in February, before the outbreak of the war, that Bitcoin could slump as low as $10,000 this year.

If Bitcoin stays above $73,000, it shows the price is breaking out higher from its March trading range, Lucas says.

Polymarket punters give Bitcoin’s price a 70% chance of slipping below $55,000 and a 77% chance of hitting $80,000 in 2026.

Here are three factors seen to drive the price.

Iran war

The escalating conflict in the Middle East is a key driver behind Bitcoin’s price.

Paul Howard, senior director at the high-frequency market maker Wincent, sees the cryptocurrency market absorbing shocks rather than succumbing to it.

“The short term volatility provides many trading opportunities for those in the market and supports both our short and long term theses,” Howard told DL News.

The situation is not just wreaking havoc in crypto markets. Oil rose to $103 a barrel after Iran rejected Trump’s assertion of “very good and productive” conversations, calling it an attempt to manipulate financial markets.

Tehran’s Revolutionary Guards described the remarks as “worn-out psychological operations.”

Investors should be highly cautious about any chatter on peace talks because “it’s not clear that anyone is actually in control of Iran since so many of its leaders have been assassinated,” wrote Ed Yardeni, president of Yardeni Research.

The Federal Reserve

“The single biggest drag on Bitcoin’s recovery is the Federal Reserve,” Lucas told DL News.

While the US central bank has signalled that it still plans to cut interest rates this year, those cuts will likely be delayed as elevated oil prices keep inflation hot. Lower interest rates are usually seen as a boon to risk-on assets like cryptocurrencies.

Just a few weeks ago, traders priced in that the Fed would slash interest rates at its June meeting. Now they don’t just expect it to hold, but are giving it a 13% chance that the central bank will hike rates, according to the CME FedWatch tool.

Then there’s the question of Jerome Powell.

The Fed chair is set to end his term in May. However, an ongoing legal standoff between the Trump administration and the central bank has increased the risk that Powell’s successor, devoted Donald Trump nominee Kevin Warsh, won’t be confirmed until Powell is set to step down.

If that happens, Powell has hinted that he may stay in charge of the central bank, citing both legal and historical precedent for him to do so.

Institutional interest

Despite the market turmoil, institutional interest in Bitcoin and blockchain remains strong.

Investors have ploughed almost $1.6 billion into Bitcoin exchange-traded funds since the outbreak of the war, according to DefiLlama data — and they have more to give.

Grayscale estimates less than 0.5% of US advised wealth is currently in crypto, leaving a significant runway ahead,” Lucas said.

Moreover, traditional financial players are also tapping into digital ledger technology at scale across the world, which is seen to ultimately benefit Bitcoin too.

Over the past month alone, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has repeated his belief in the power of tokenisation to transform the world economy, Mastercard has acquired stablecoin infrastructure startup BVNK and launched a partnership programme for over 100 players in the crypto industry, and the S&P 500 debuted on Hyperliquid, the decentralised crypto exchange that has also become a hub for off-hours oil perpetuals trading.

Eric Johansson is DL News’ managing editor. Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email them at eric@dlnews.com and lance@dlnews.com.

In order to realise the potential of tokenised markets, the EU will need a central bank digital currency, or CBDC, Piero Cipollone, a member of the European Central Bank’s Executive Board, said on Monday.

It’s the latest reminder that officials’ halting embrace of blockchain technology doesn’t necessarily come with an embrace of the beliefs that inspired it, such as scepticism of government-issued money and the desire for a “permissionless” financial system.

Crypto entrepreneurs have, by and large, inveighed against CBDCs, arguing they would become a tool of surveillance and control.

While some lawmakers in the US have attempted to ban the development of a digital US dollar, politicians and bureaucrats in the EU are moving ahead with a digital Euro they say will “guarantee the highest level of privacy.”

“The potential of tokenisation for Europe is significant — more efficient and more innovative financial markets, and the prospect of genuine cross-border integration that has long eluded Europe’s fragmented capital markets,” Cipollone said on Monday at a speech at House of the Euro, a co-working space in Brussels for central bankers.

“But two main obstacles are preventing scale.”

The first is an issue familiar to any crypto developer or user: the sheer number of blockchains, most of which are incompatible with one another.

“This fragments liquidity and increases integration costs,” Cipollone said.

The second obstacle is the lack of “tokenised central bank money,” he continued, “the safest and most liquid settlement asset.”

Addressing those issues will unleash tokenisation in the EU, according to Cipollone. But it will require three initiatives.

Digital Euro

The first is the development of a digital Euro.

Without it, people might be paid “in an asset they are not comfortable holding – one exposed to price volatility or credit risk,” Cipollone said. That, he added, “limits the market’s ability to scale.”

While businesses and consumers might transact in Euro-pegged stablecoins, those tokens would make a poor substitute for government-issued money, Cipollone said, citing research that shows fiat-backed stablecoins “rarely trade exactly at par.”

“Private settlement assets – whether tokenised deposits or stablecoins – will play a role,” he said. “But they require a trusted public anchor to function effectively across the whole tokenised financial market.”

Still, the central banker believes it is possible that one stablecoin becomes large enough that network effects cement it as the digital currency of choice. But he called it a “sub-optimal” outcome that would have “serious consequences for Europe’s monetary sovereignty.”

EU officials have worried in public and in private that the rapid growth of US dollar-pegged stablecoins could undermine the EU. That alarm has fueled development of a CBDC and what EU officials call “Eurosystem distributed ledger technology” — bureaucrat-speak for a European blockchain.

An EU initiative dubbed “Pontes” is developing a Eurosystem blockchain that will connect “market DLTs” with the bloc’s existing system for settling transactions, known as TARGET. The EU is aiming to release a pilot version of the Eurosystem blockchain in the third quarter of the year.

Companies and laws

The second initiative the EU will need to realise its tokenisation goals is a productive partnership with businesses that operate within the bloc.

“The services, liquidity and business models that will make tokenised markets valuable must come from the market itself,” Cipollone said. “In other words, the underlying infrastructure needs to be designed with the market’s needs at its core.”

The third initiative is the harmonisation of member states’ corporate law.

“Distributed ledger technology cannot harmonise corporate law across 27 Member States, reconcile divergent securities regulations or override national insolvency regimes that treat the same asset differently depending on where it is held,” Cipollone said.

Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi correspondent. You can reach him at aleks@dlnews.com.

Trump took to Truth Social just before noon, London time, to say that on the back of those talks, he had postponed “any and all military strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for a five day period, subject to the success of the ongoing meetings and discussions.”

Tehran, however, has denied that those talks have taken place.

“We deny what US President Donald Trump said regarding negotiations taking place between the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Iran’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

Even so, Trump has, in subsequent conversations with the press, doubled down on the statement, telling the AFP news agency that “things are going very well.”

This latest back and forth comes as markets have been rattled by the ongoing war in the Middle East since the US joined Israel in attacking Iran on February 28, triggering the conflict.

Since the outbreak of war, Iran has barricaded the Strait of Hormuz, a key artery for the flow of oil. As a result, oil prices have shot through the roof.

Brent crude is up some 44% since the beginning of March. Yet, it slumped some 9% to $101 after Trump issued his statement.

Bitcoin, by comparison, has remained far less affected and has traded around $70,000 for most of the last month.

The conflict could help the cryptocurrency “outperform” other assets as Bitcoin proves itself a key hedge against the dollar, David Brickell, head of international distribution at FRNT, an institutional capital markets and advisory platform, told DL News earlier on Monday morning.

Bitcoin “is the ultimate hedge against the failure of existing economic and political structures given its non-sovereign, immutable, borderless characteristics,” Brickell said.

To be sure, Bitcoin could also suffer from the war. A growing fear is that the conflict will trigger a recession. If that happens, most central banks are unlikely to cut interest rates and pump more liquidity into markets.

Low interest rates are usually seen as a boon for risk-on assets like Bitcoin.

The Federal Reserve has already signalled that it is more unwilling to cut interest rates and some traders are already betting on it to hike rates later this year.

“A prolonged conflict in the Middle East would generally be negative for Bitcoin,” Georgii Verbitskii, founder of the crypto trading platform TYMIO, told DL News on Sunday. “Any disruption to global trade routes increases uncertainty across financial markets.”

This uncertainty will put pressure on equities, Verbitskii said.

“Bitcoin is still highly correlated with risk assets, particularly US stock indices. When those markets come under pressure, Bitcoin usually follows.”

Eric Johansson is DL News’ managing editor. Got a tip? Email him at eric@dlnews.com.

The top cryptocurrency’s price plunged below $68,000 on Monday morning after President Donald Trump warned the US would “hit and obliterate” Iranian power plants unless Tehran fully opens the Strait of Hormuz by 23:44 London time on Monday.

Iran’s army responded by warning that any such attack would see it target energy and desalination infrastructure “belonging to the US and the regime in the region,” threatening to throw the world economy into further chaos.

But that escalation can help push Bitcoin to “outperform other assets and remain well supported, if not outright accelerating higher,” David Brickell, head of international distribution at FRNT, an institutional capital markets and advisory platform, told DL News.

Bitcoin “is the ultimate hedge against the failure of existing economic and political structures given its non-sovereign, immutable, borderless characteristics,” Brickell said.

The comments come as Bitcoin is up about 2% in March. The cryptocurrency has been far less affected by the Iran conflict than other assets like Brent crude and gold, which have respectively surged by 48% and dropped 18% this month.

Still pressure on Bitcoin

To be sure, Bitcoin could also suffer from the war in the Middle East, with the spectre of a global recession looming over markets.

The Federal Reserve is less likely to cut interest rates on the back of the conflict and traders are now starting to price in rate hikes later this year in order to curb inflation. That will likely affect risk-on assets like tech stocks and cryptocurrencies, experts say.

“A prolonged conflict in the Middle East would generally be negative for Bitcoin,” Georgii Verbitskii, founder of the crypto trading platform TYMIO, told DL News on Sunday. “Any disruption to global trade routes increases uncertainty across financial markets.”

This uncertainty will put pressure on equities, Verbitskii said.

“Bitcoin is still highly correlated with risk assets, particularly US stock indices. When those markets come under pressure, Bitcoin usually follows.”

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin is down 1% over the past 24 hours to trade at $68,100.
• Ethereum is down 2.3% over the past 24 hours to trade at $2,036.

What we’re reading

• Resolv Labs stablecoin plummets 80% as exploiter mints millions in unbacked USR tokens — DL News
• Swiss Private Bank Dynasty Splits Over Clashing Views on Crypto — Bloomberg
• Uneasy Money: Should DeFi Frontends Block High Slippage Swaps? — Unchained
• New crypto regulations likely to be big favor to the Trump family, industry insiders say — The Guardian
• Stablecoin-sceptic BIS exec set to become new South Korean central bank boss — DL News

Eric Johansson is DL News’ managing editor. Got a tip? Email him at eric@dlnews.com.

And experts say the deepening conflict in the Middle East could take a heavy toll on Bitcoin prices, with the spectre of an incoming global recession looming over crypto markets.

“A prolonged conflict in the Middle East would generally be negative for Bitcoin,” Georgii Verbitskii, founder of the crypto trading platform TYMIO, told DL News. “Any disruption to global trade routes increases uncertainty across financial markets.”

This uncertainty will put pressure on equities, Verbitskii said. “Bitcoin is still highly correlated with risk assets, particularly US stock indices. When those markets come under pressure, Bitcoin usually follows.”

The warning comes as experts spoke of an incoming “double-whammy” for risk assets in the wake of the Federal Reserve’s decision not to cut interest rates at its March meeting.

David Lawant, Anchorage Digital’s head of research, told DL News earlier this week that crypto “isn’t immune to macro[economic] headwinds.”

‘No safe haven’

Trump’s warning came hours after suggestions he may “wind down” the conflict.

“Within 48 hours from this exact point in time, the United States of America will hit and obliterate [Iran’s] various power plants, starting with the biggest one first,” he wrote on Truth Social on Saturday.

Tehran has countered by saying the strait remains open to maritime transport, with the “exception of Iran’s enemies.”

Missiles continued to fall across the Middle East on Saturday night and Sunday morning, with Bitcoin prices tumbling by around 3% in the past 24 hours.

“The ongoing Middle East conflict remains the primary lens for traders, investors, and even policymakers worldwide,” Han Tan, chief market analyst at crypto exchange Bybit’s education arm Bybit Learn, told DL News.

Tan said major central banks and others have expressed concern about the “uncertainty surrounding the war’s duration and intensity.”

Rising oil prices could spark inflationary forces in global economies, Tan said.

And Bitcoin investors who expect the world’s most popular cryptocurrency to act as a gold-like hedge against inflation may see their hopes dashed during the conflict, the analyst warned.

“The prudent stance is to withhold from prematurely according the safe haven title to Bitcoin just yet,” Tan said. “Bitcoin is yet to prove its merits on that front.”

Verbitskii concurred.

“Bitcoin is not yet behaving as an independent geopolitical hedge,” Verbitskii said. “It is still largely reacting to global liquidity conditions and movements in traditional financial markets.”

At the time of writing, Bitcoin was trading at $68,700.

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.

HYPE, the 14th largest coin by market value, was up nearly 6% over a weekly period, and was priced at a little over $40, according to CoinGecko.

Its rise came after crypto asset manager Grayscale on Friday filed for a new product, a “Grayscale HYPE ETF”, that would trade on the Nasdaq if approved.

Bitcoin, meanwhile, hadn’t budged over a seven-day timeframe. The leading cryptocurrency was trading for $70,943 at 10am in New York.

What’s all the HYPE?

Grayscale’s filing comes as the decentralised crypto exchange sees a surge in trading as traders bet on the price of other assets like oil and gold.

Commodity trading on Hyperliquid has become popular since the US and Israel attacked Iran; when traditional markets are closed, Hyperliquid continues processing trades, allowing speculators to make bets on weekends.

Its native coin, HYPE, is up 56% year-to-date.

Hyperliquid is so popular that the S&P 500 this week gave crypto platform Trade[XYZ] the green light to debut a new derivative contract on the exchange giving non-US investors exposure to the equity index.

Two days after it debuted, it hit $100 million in 24-hour volume — making it one of the 10 largest markets on the booming blockchain.

Other market movements

Elsewhere, Ethereum rose 4% over a 24-hour period, hitting $2,163 per coin. Its modest rise came despite US investors cashing out of Ethereum ETFs this week.

XRP also rose by close to 4% over the same period, and was trading hands for $1.44 on Saturday.

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin was trading for $70,943 per coin on Saturday, flat over the past day.
• Ethereum’s price touched $2,163, a 24-hour rise of 1%.

What we’re reading

• Crypto firms are slashing jobs — and they’re mostly citing the same reason — DL News
• Hyperliquid’s S&P 500 market quickly hits $100m in just one day. Here’s what to expect next — DL News
• Oil. That’s it. That’s what matters. — Milk Road
• The US Wants War Without Entanglement. It May Not Exist. — Bloomberg

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell didn’t just hold interest rates steady this week, but also signalled that the cuts traders expected to see this year may be held back for longer due to the uncertainties caused by escalating war in the Middle East.

High interest rates are usually bad for investors’ appetite for riskier bets such as cryptocurrencies and untested tech startups. In short, the US central bank is saying to prepare for some lean times.

However, that’s just where innovation thrives, VCs tell DL News.

“History consistently shows that the best companies aren’t built during periods of loose monetary policy,” Adam Winnick, general managing partner at investment firm Finality Capital, told DL News.

“They’re built during periods of tightening,” he said. “This is precisely the time to back founders and teams with proven execution skills and a strong clarity of thought.”

Winnick said that the 2000s dot-com bust became a proving ground for firms such as Amazon, Google and Salesforce, which endured the shakeout and went on to dominate.

“We’re seeing the same dynamic play out today,” he said. “While sentiment-driven investors react to near-term rate signals, builders across the blockchain ecosystem are shipping at an accelerating pace.”

Indeed, venture investors poured $155 million into crypto startups in the third week of March, DefiLlama data shows. That brings this year’s fundraising to nearly $3 billion. That’s 51% of the $5.8 billion raised by the industry in the first quarter of 2025.

Here are the top three raises this week.

MetaComp, $35 million

Singapore-based MetaComp secured $35 million in pre-Series A funding. The round is notable less for its size than its backers, with Alibaba and Spark Venture supporting the firm’s StableX Network.

MetaComp combines fiat and stablecoin rails for institutional wealth flows, targeting Asia–Middle East corridors long plagued by friction.

For Alibaba, the investment reflects a strategic move into the underlying infrastructure of cross-border commerce, with stablecoins positioned as a regulated, real-time settlement layer.

It is yet another sign that the titans of tech and finance are increasingly muscling into the crypto space by adopting blockchain rails.

Ironlight, $21 million

Austin-based Ironlight has raised $21 million in Series A funding for its tokenised securities platform.

It is a sign of deepening convergence between traditional finance and blockchain markets. The round was led by Greg Braca, former TD Bank chief executive, who now chairs the company.

Operating under SEC and FINRA oversight, Ironlight aims to bring private equity and real estate assets on-chain via the Sei blockchain. The model blends a conventional order book with blockchain settlement, reflecting a broader push to institutionalise tokenised real-world assets.

TransFi, $19 million

Dubai-based TransFi has raised $19.2 million to expand its stablecoin-powered payments infrastructure across high-growth emerging markets.

Backed by Turing Financial Group, the round combines equity with a dedicated liquidity facility, suited to the demands of cross-border settlement.

The platform serves more than two million users across 70 countries, enabling near-instant payroll and vendor payments while bypassing legacy systems such as SWIFT. The model addresses persistent inefficiencies in global finance, positioning TransFi as a key enabler of faster, lower-cost international payments.

You’re reading the latest instalment of The Weekly Raise, our column covering fundraising deals across the crypto and DeFi spaces, powered by DefiLlama.

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.

The IPO documents falsely portrayed the firm as focused on expanding its reach as a crypto exchange, the lawsuit said. Instead, Gemini has shuttered operations in the UK, the EU and Australia. It has also laid off nearly one-third of its employees, including its chief operating officer, chief financial officer, and chief legal officer.

“As a result of defendants’ wrongful acts and omissions, and the precipitous decline in the market value of the company’s securities, plaintiff and other class members have suffered significant losses and damages,” the lawsuit says.

Since the September IPO, Gemini has seen its stock lose 82% of its value. In February, the firm projected that it would see a net loss of as much as $602 million in 2025, or $267 million before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortisation and other adjustments.

The lawsuit isn’t just the latest headache to befall the Winklevii. It also punctures an IPO craze that swept across the crypto industry over the past year.

IPO boom interrupted

Gemini was among the crypto companies that went public in 2025. Initial public offerings for crypto firms raised $3.4 billion last year, according to DefiLlama data.

While several companies have announced public listings this year, others are freezing those plans due to the market downturn, which has seen Bitcoin lose nearly half its value since October.

Crypto exchange Kraken confidentially filed for an IPO in November. Now, it’s reportedly putting its IPO plans on hold.

Other crypto companies have slashed jobs. Crypto.com, Messari, Optimism Labs, and, of course, Gemini are among those that have lowered their headcount since the start of 2026.

Allegations

Gemini’s IPO documents stated the company was “predominantly focused” on expanding its business by attracting new users, increasing trading volume, and adding new assets to its exchange, according to the lawsuit.

But those documents overstated Gemini’s business prospects, the lawsuit continues. Rather than follow through on its stated plans, the company launched an “expensive and disruptive restructuring.”

In December, Gemini said it would launch a prediction market. In a February blog post, the Winklevoss twins detailed their vision for the company’s future, dubbed “Gemini 2.0.”

The prediction market would be “more front and center in our experience,” the company would cut jobs, and it would exit European and Australian markets.

Gemini’s stock debuted at $28. As of Friday, it was trading at $5.82.

Co-founders of Facebook, the Winklevoss twins have become power players in Washington, DC. They donated millions to Donald Trump’s reelection campaign and reportedly derailed the nomination of the president’s first choice to lead the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi correspondent. Eric Johansson is DL News’ managing editor. Got a tip? Email them at aleks@dlnews.com and eric@dlnews.com.

It’s impressive growth for a market that debuted just days earlier, and it’s the latest sign that blockchain-based traders are eager to trade in futures for traditional assets.

Hyperliquid has become a popular venue for weekend trading of tokenised oil futures amid the war in Iran, topping $1 billion in weekend volume earlier this month.

As traders increasingly use Hyperliquid and other blockchains to trade over nights and weekends, they may become a venue for true price discovery.

Oracles that bring the price of real-world assets onchain give enormous weight to an asset’s most recent price on traditional markets in order to prevent dramatic price swings in relatively illiquid onchain markets, Marcin Kazmierczak, founder of crypto oracle RedStone, told DL News.

“But as we move forward and this trading volume on HIP-3 keeps growing, this divergence between Friday closing and weekend trading can be larger and larger,” he added, referring to a Hyperliquid feature that allows users to deploy new markets without seeking permission from the blockchain’s creators.

Trade[XYZ], the firm that licensed S&P’s index for use on Hyperliquid, has a name for its feature limiting after-hours price movements: “Discovery Bounds.” It rolled out an updated version of this feature on Thursday for six new markets in order to allow prices greater freedom to move as trading outside regular business hours increases.

That feature was first introduced earlier in the week, after one of Trade[XYZ]’s oil markets hit $1 billion in weekend volume.

“To realise the radical concept of 24/7 trading, we made an explicit trade-off: limit the extreme tails of price movement, and the range within becomes substantially more conducive to genuine price discovery,” a pseudonymous employee wrote on X last week.

But Trade[XYZ]’s blockbuster markets have changed that calculus.

“With more participants, deeper liquidity, and higher-signal price movements, we’ve reached a point where the static protections themselves have become the primary constraint on price discovery,” they wrote.

And there’s much more room for onchain markets to reduce their reliance on price signals from traditional markets, according to Kazmierczak — all they need to do is grow.

“The closing price on Friday, it can have a parameter of relevance — let’s call it 90% and then 10% is the price discovery that’s happening [onchain] over the weekend,” Kazmierczak said.

“As more and more volume happens on Hyperliquid, this parameter can be diminished to, let’s call it 80% and maybe 70% and so on. It’s just the question of how much of the volume and the serious players will be playing.”

Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi correspondent. Have a tip? Email him at aleks@dlnews.com.

The volume is a record that underlines how fast traders are rotating into energy bets on the crypto-native decentralised trading platform as the Iran war spirals.

Hyperliquid’s growth amid all the chaos will “only accelerate,” Hyunsu Jung, CEO of Hyperliquid treasury firm Hyperion DeFi told DL News.

“We firmly believe liquidity begets liquidity, and Hyperliquid is currently the most liquid onchain venue by a wide margin, especially in terms of trading volume and open interest, which are key metrics for any perpetual futures exchange,” he said.

The milestone lands as Israel launched fresh strikes on Tehran on Friday. The strikes came despite President Donald Trump urging restraint following attacks on Iranian gas infrastructure.

Iran has retaliated against Qatar’s Ras Laffan Industrial City, which processes about a fifth of global liquefied natural gas. The damage is expected to take years to repair.

As attacks intensify, uncertainty is ripping through global energy markets and redrawing trading flows in real time, pushing oil firmly above $100 a barrel.

The US-Israeli war on Iran has sent Hyperliquid’s native HYPE token up 35% over the past month even as Bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies have mostly stagnated.

Arthur Hayes, Maelstrom chief investment officer, was quick to flag the rotation to Hyperliquid.

“Pretty impressive that oil contracts are trading $1.5 billion a day,” he said.

“HYPE is taking over. See you at $150.”

To be sure, that’s almost three times the all-time high of $59 HYPE notched in September. It currently trades at $40.

Traders are betting big that HYPE will stay above $35 over the next three months, according to onchain options platform Derive.xyz.

Polymarket punters put the chances of HYPE reaching $100 before the end of the year at 24%, according to one bet. Another prediction market put the chances of the price climbing to $44 in March at 56%.

War spiraling

The backdrop to this trading frenzy is a rapidly intensifying regional conflict that has already reshaped energy flows.

The Strait of Hormuz, a conduit for about 20% of global oil supply, still sits under heightened threat. Tankers face mounting insurance costs while naval patrols have increased. Western governments and Japan are scrambling to secure shipping lanes and diversify supply routes.

Markets are pricing not only barrels, but disruption, delay and escalation.

The war has already killed thousands and spread across multiple theatres. Energy infrastructure in Iran and neighbouring states is now in the crosshairs, transforming pipelines, terminals and liquified natural gas trains into strategic assets and potential targets.

In this context, Hyperliquid is also expanding its toolkit. The upcoming HIP-4 upgrade will introduce outcome markets, prediction contracts and bounded options designed for hedging cross-asset dislocation.

“With the coming HIP-4 Outcome Markets upgrade, users will also be able to access new instruments like prediction markets and bounded options, which can serve as hedging instruments for positions in perpetuals and HIP-3 assets,” Jung said.

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin is up 1.7% over the past 24 hours, trading at $71,151.
• Ethereum is up 0.2% over the past 24 hours at $2,165.

What we’re reading

• XRP hits $1bn in tokenised assets. But price is stalling despite Ripple’s big plays — DL News
• Bitcoin options traders show ‘peak defensiveness’ as bets top $33bn — DL News
• Bitcoin Is in Uncertain Territory. Could Strategy’s STRC Be the Last Straw? — Unchained
• Why Washington won’t spoil crypto’s SEC victory — DL News
• Fed zaps Bitcoin investors’ risk appetite. Here’s what to expect next for the price — DL News

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.

They have been loading up heavily on downside protection at levels not seen in five years, according to VanEck’s latest Bitcoin ChainCheck report.

Last month, the put-to-call ratio — a gauge of bearish versus bullish bets — peaked at 0.84 and averaged 0.77. That’s the highest level since June 2021, and is among the 9% most bearish periods since mid-2019. Bitcoin options open interest is at around $33 billion.

Translation: investors are buying way more protection against Bitcoin falling than they are betting on the asset rising.

Puts function as insurance against price drops, giving investors the right to sell Bitcoin at a specific price even if it crashes below that level. Calls, by contrast, give investors the right to buy Bitcoin at a fixed price even if the asset rallies above it.

And unlike retail investors who mostly buy and sell spot Bitcoin, options markets are dominated by institutional players who use derivatives to bet whether an asset is going to rise or fall. So when a put-to-call ratio rises to extreme levels like 0.84, it signals that professional investors are paying premium prices for downside protection rather than betting on a true recovery.

VanEck’s analysis comes just as Bitcoin gets rattled amid another escalation of force in the war between Iran, Israel and the US. The top crypto dropped to around $69,000 during the evening hours of March 18.

Extreme defensiveness

When put-to-call ratios are high, they signal two possible scenarios.

The first scenario is that peak fear tends to mark the bottom. When everyone is positioned for more downside, it can signal capitulation.

Take the last time the ratio hit last month’s levels. In June 2021, right after China had banned Bitcoin mining. Bitcoin crashed to $30,000 from $64,000. Just a few months later, it bottomed near $29,000 before rising again to $60,000 in November.

Then there’s a second scenario: institutions see what’s coming. When investors are willing to pay elevated premiums for puts — and VanEck noted that this premium has reached record levels — it suggests they expect more pain ahead.

Meanwhile, today’s levels sit in the 91st percentile historically. That means in 91% of periods since mid-2019, options traders were less bearish than they are right now.

Piling into puts

There’s another particularly striking situation that’s playing out.

Even as options traders keep piling into puts, other sectors of the markets are cooling down, noted VanEck.

Futures funding rates — essentially the cost of borrowing money to bet on Bitcoin rising — dropped, while realised volatility fell, and the spot market has also stabilised some.

It’s one thing for retail investors to panic during a crash. But it’s another thing entirely for institutional options traders to maintain extreme defensiveness even as volatility drops and prices stabilise.

Either they are all wrong and are about to get caught flat-footed by a Bitcoin rally, or they’re seeing something in the macro environment — which could range from an escalation of the conflict in the Middle East, some sort of regulatory risk, or concerns around liquidity — that justifies paying historically high premiums for protection against another crash.

Pedro Solimano is a markets correspondent based in Buenos Aires. Got a tip? Email him at psolimano@dlnews.com.

Iran hit Qatar’s main gas plant, Ras Laffan, causing billions of dollars in damage. The strike came after the Federal Reserve on Wednesday dampened investor hopes of interest rate cuts later this year.

“We’re seeing a double-whammy for risk assets,” David Lawant, Anchorage Digital’s head of research, told DL News. “Crypto isn’t immune to these macro headwinds.”

Bitcoin dropped to under $69,000 per coin before rising slightly. CoinGecko data shows it was recently priced at $70,473, down 1% over a 24-hour period.

But how low could it go?

Temporary ‘decoupling’

Market analysts previously told DL News that the price of Bitcoin and other major coins would suffer because of the Iran war.

Bitcoin was doing well, spiking in price despite a dip in other risk-on assets. Analysts told DL News that it was temporarily “decoupling” from stocks. But it’s feeling the pain again as war rages on.

“Escalations in Iran have driven a sharp move higher in oil prices, and if sustained, this could begin to weigh on economic growth,” Matt Howells-Barby, VP of growth at Kraken, said in an investor note shared with DL News.

He added that Bitcoin was already feeling the strain, and the leading cryptocurrency could trade as low as $65,000 over the coming weeks if it fails to hold $69,000 now.

Sebastián Serrano, the CEO of Argentinian crypto exchange Ripio, told DL News that Bitcoin trading lower than $54,000 was realistic if the cryptocurrency experienced a continued selloff.

“[In March], Bitcoin reacted to a sequence of events that began outside the crypto market and were gradually transmitted into it,” he said.

“The move started with the escalation of the conflict involving Iran and energy infrastructure, which pushed oil prices higher and increased uncertainty around global inflation,” he continued, adding that macro repricing, particularly through interest rates and inflation, was hurting crypto markets.

What’s energy got to do with it?

Iran’s military spokesman last week warned the world should prepare for oil prices to double due to the war.

Analysts are now worried about oil prices getting out of control. JP Morgan Chase on Thursday cut its official S&P 500 forecast, noting a recession risk from oil shock.

Recent strikes — Israel hitting Iran’s South Pars gasfield on Wednesday and Iran retaliating by hitting Qatar’s Ras Laffan — have led market observers to forecast more inflation.

And with more inflation comes less chance of interest rate cuts, which restricts the liquidity that Bitcoin needs to surge.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.

The $451 billion company added stablecoin infrastructure startup BVNK to its portfolio just as traditional financial players ramp up their adoption of blockchain technology.

Market watchers say the move is part of a bigger financial industry land grab where Wall Street giants are vying for dominance.

“Everyone wants the orchestrators,” Wyatt Lonergan, general partner at VanEck Ventures, told DL News. “Why? Because moving between the fiat and stablecoin layer is where the complexity [is], and complexity is where they can extract margin.

“The goal is to build distribution and whoever does that can likely begin to eat at other layers of the stack to further increase margin and increase loyalty — think wallets, stablecoin issuance, maybe even their own chain.”

Mastercard’s move comes on the back of high-profile acquisitions and initiatives from rival firms.

Stripe, the $159 billion fintech, is a key example. Over the past two years, it has not only bought businesses like stablecoin venture Bridge, but has also backed the creation of its own blockchain, Tempo, which debuted this week.

Wall Street’s adoption of blockchain rails saw the total value of crypto M&As surge more than sevenfold in 2025 to reach $37 billion, according to Architect Partner’s data. Yet 2026 will easily outpace that number thanks to institutions buying other businesses rather than developing in-house, analysts said at the beginning of the year.

The race for blockchain dominance is on and Lonergan “wouldn’t be surprised” if more acquisitions are announced soon by leading financial firms.

Mastercard did not answer questions about further acquisitions.

Mastercard’s crypto play

Mastercard has explored blockchain technology for years. In 2016, it started to develop a set of blockchain APIs in a bid to stoke interest among banks and merchant developers.

While Mastercard and many other financial services firms went a bit quiet about their blockchain efforts during the Biden Administration’s years-long crypto crackdown, they seem emboldened by the pro-digital asset policies championed by US President Donald Trump.

Now, investment giants like BlackRock and banks like Morgan Stanley have announced initiatives to tap into digital ledger technologies. Big banks like Goldman Sachs and CitiGroup are actively recruiting for crypto talent.

Mastercard’s acquisition of BVNK is part of this wave. The deal will enable the payments giant to tap into BVNK’s stablecoin infrastructure.

“Stablecoins and tokenised deposits have potential where cards may not be as fit for purpose, in areas like cross border payments, payouts, B2B payments, settlement and liquidity management,” a Mastercard spokesperson told DL News.

The BVNK deal comes on the back of Mastercard launching a partnership programme earlier in March. The scheme already includes over 100 companies to “shape the future” of finance, as Raj Dhamodharan, Mastercard’s executive vice president of digital asset blockchain products partnerships, said in a statement.

The partners span both traditional financial players like PayPal as well as crypto native firms like Ripple, Circle, Ava Labs, and Kraken.

Top crypto networks like Solana, Arbitrum, and Aptos were also included in the mix.

“Participation isn’t about endorsing a specific protocol or asset,” a Mastercard spokesperson said when asked about the wide-ranging choice of companies and protocols.

“Instead, we’re focused on where partners are solving concrete problems for consumers, businesses and financial institutions today, and where we can help connect those solutions to trusted payment rails at scale.”

Everyone wants a stablecoin

Mastercard’s acquisition comes as other traditional finance players frantically rush into the stablecoin space.

Since Trump signed the Genius Act, a landmark stablecoin bill, into law last year, banks and other entities can issue the tokens if they are backed by assets like US Treasuries and provide monthly disclosures of their reserves.

And with a $316 billion market value, according to DeFiLlama data, everyone wants a piece of the action.

Jamie Dimon, CEO of Wall Street titan JP Morgan Chase, has praised stablecoins. The bank already has a cash-backed cryptocurrency, JPM Coin, which runs on Coinbase’s layer 2 network, Base.

JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo are in talks to issue a stablecoin.

And 11 European banks have already joined forces to launch a euro-denominated stablecoin — expected to be released this year.

The issue is infrastructure: blockchain rails may be foreign to a number of traditional financial players — hence the amount of research and investment going into the space.

“Mastercard’s core strategic problem is that stablecoin rails are becoming a legitimate alternative settlement layer but until the BVNK deal — they didn’t own any of it,” added Lonergan.

“BVNK now gives them infrastructure built over the last seven years that they couldn’t build faster internally.”

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Eric Johansson is DL News’ managing editor. Got a tip? Email them at mdisalvo@dlnews.comand eric@dlnews.com.

Over the past week, gold has shed almost 10% of its value, while Bitcoin has dropped over 7% from its midweek high.

Gold is typically seen as a hedge against inflation, currency devaluation, and geopolitical and economic uncertainty.

Bitcoin, on the other hand, acts broadly as a risk-on asset, and tends to do well when there is excess money in the financial system.

But a perfect storm of economic issues brought on by the escalating conflict in the Middle East is putting pressure on both assets, despite their differences.

‘Oil-driven inflation spike’

The root problem, analysts say, is the surging price of oil.

Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane that oil produced in the Middle East must pass through, has caused the price of oil to soar as high as $119 a barrel in recent weeks.

Brent crude futures jumped 8% over the past seven days as fears that elevated oil prices will weaken the global economy pervade. Oil prices are roughly a third higher than when the conflict started almost three weeks ago.

Gold usually performs well under such conditions. But not this time.

“Geopolitical tensions are usually good for gold, but given the big rally we’ve seen earlier in the year it makes sense that it needs to cool off a bit for now,” Laurens Fraussen, a research analyst at Kaiko, a crypto data firm, told DL News.

Fraussen isn’t the only one to notice gold’s uncharacteristic weakness.

“Counterintuitively, this has been bearish for gold, because the oil-driven inflation spike has pushed Fed rate cut expectations from June out to October, with 10-year yields climbing to 4.24%,” Ben Harvey, a research analyst at crypto market maker Keyrock, told DL News earlier this week.

“Higher real yields raise the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding gold, overpowering its traditional safe-haven bid.”

Interest rate reaction

With oil on a tear and fuelling inflation concerns, investors are watching the reaction from the Federal Reserve closely.

Yesterday, the US central bank held interest rates at 3.5% to 3.75% — a broadly expected outcome.

But the event rattled markets for other reasons.

“Powell’s tone was a lot more hawkish than people anticipated,” Fraussen said. At a press conference following the decision, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said that the central bank is making progress on lowering inflation, but not as much as it had hoped.

Those comments came as a signal that the Fed plans to keep rates higher for longer to tackle rising prices, causing the US dollar to strengthen against other currencies. In fact, some analysts are now even expecting a rate hike as early as April.

“A potentially strong dollar and longer than anticipated elevated rates usually don’t do well for gold, nor for risk assets,” Fraussen said.

Bitcoin’s fake rally

To be sure, Bitcoin is still trading higher than it did before the US and Israel attacked Iran on February 28.

But analysts aren’t convinced the rally is anything for investors to get excited about.

They’ve attributed it to traders opening shorts on Bitcoin in the hope that the war would drive prices down further.

When that didn’t happen, those traders were forced to close their shorts, fuelling a temporary rally.

“It’s not real buying pressure,” Fraussen said. “You can see open interest and funding is just oscillating between short covering, longs being off-side.”

Fraussen predicts that if Bitcoin settles back below $70,000, it will eventually return to trade at its pre-war price at around $60,000.

Still, there is a glimmer of hope for Bitcoin bulls.

Bitcoin exchange-traded funds have registered seven consecutive days of inflows, adding $9.5 billion.

That brings the total amount of funds locked in the financial products to some $96 billion, the highest since the start of February.

Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@dlnews.com.

And analysts say that traders shouldn’t expect the price to bounce back as long uncertainties remain over the economy caused by the escalating conflict in the Middle East.

“Looking ahead, Bitcoin is likely to trade in a more selective environment rather than a broad risk-on rally,” Illia Otychenko, lead analyst at crypto exchange CEX.IO, told DL News.

The bearish outlook comes as the Fed decided not to cut interest rates at its March meeting. Lower interest rates usually incentivise investors to bet on riskier assets.

While it was expected that the central bank wouldn’t slash rates this month, the calamity of the US-Israeli offensive against Iran is now obliterating expectations of further cuts this year. The CME FedWatch tool shows that about 96% expects rates to hold and that 4% of investors now expect a rate hike in April. That’s down from a 61% chance of a cut on December 31.

Investors now see little chance of easing this year, or at most one move in the second half, as rising energy prices linked to the Iran conflict and a higher Fed inflation outlook reinforce a “higher for longer” stance, Otychenko said.

“The macro backdrop is becoming more complex — it’s no longer just about slowing growth, but also about inflation potentially staying sticky amid rising uncertainty,” Otychenko said.

Sharp sell-off

Otychenko’s warning comes as broader markets saw a sharp sell-off on Wednesday after Fed Chair Jerome Powell signaled geopolitical uncertainty clouding the central bank’s plans for 2026.

Global markets weakened, with the Dow falling 1.6%, closing below its 200-day moving average, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq declined over 1.4%. Europe’s Stoxx 600 fell 1.8% and major Asian indices fell between 2% and 3.4%.

Gold also sank over 4% and is trading at $4,685, down 12% from its January peak of nearly $5,400 per ounce.

On Thursday, Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil price, climbed to $115 a barrel after Israeli strikes triggered Iranian retaliation targeting energy infrastructure across the Middle East, including Qatar’s key liquified natural gas hub at Ras Laffan.

More war

The bearish Bitcoin outlook comes as President Donald Trump warned Iran on Truth Social that the US will “massively blow up the entirety of the South Pars Gas Field at an amount of strength and power that Iran has never seen or witnessed before” if Tehran attacks Qatar.

Adding to the chaos, Saudi Arabia is also threatening retaliation. Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan said Riyadh reserves the right to act against Iran if required, following talks with Arab and Islamic counterparts on Tehran’s regional attacks.

As the war enters its third week, the Pentagon is weighing the deployment of thousands of additional US troops to the Middle East, people familiar with the discussions told Reuters.

The reinforcements could help the US secure oil tanker transit through the Strait of Hormuz, primarily via air and naval assets. Some scenarios under review extend to limited ground deployments, including positioning forces along Iran’s coastline.

Officials have also examined the possibility of sending troops to Kharg Island, which handles about 90% of Iran’s oil exports, as well as securing stockpiles of highly enriched uranium. Both missions are seen as operationally complex and high risk, given Iran’s missile and drone capabilities.

No decision has been taken and a ground deployment is not considered imminent, officials said, though Trump continues to keep “all options” open.

The deliberations come as US forces intensify strikes on Iran’s naval, missile and defence infrastructure. Since February 28, Washington has carried out more than 7,800 strikes and damaged or destroyed over 120 vessels, according to US Central Command.

American casualties are also mounting. Thirteen US troops have been killed and about 200 wounded, while any move to deploy ground forces would carry significant political costs for Trump, who has long campaigned against new Middle East wars.

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email at lance@dlnews.com.

The network is now approaching eight million active wallets and processing roughly three million transactions a day, Birla said in an investor note shared with DL News.

XRP has also accumulated more than $1 billion in tokenised commodities within the past three months, as crypto traders rush to place bets on real-world assets like oil and gold amid geopolitical chaos stemming from the US-Israeli war on Iran, Birla said.

Evernorth is also preparing an initial public offering this year, according to the firm. On Wednesday, the firm said it has filed a registration statement on Form S-4 with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Form S-4 is a document where companies tell the SEC that they intend to register new securities.

Ripple surges

Ripple, the company that developed XRP, has also made big moves in capital markets recently.

Last week, it announced it is seeking to repurchase up to $750 million of shares from investors and employees in a buyback that values the company at a staggering $50 billion.

Ripple last raised $500 million at a $40 billion valuation in November from investors including Citadel Securities and Fortress Investment Group.

Ripple has also deployed billions of dollars on acquisitions to broaden its footprint beyond payments into areas such as prime brokerage and stablecoin infrastructure, notably through its $1 billion acquisition of Hidden Road in October.

Adding to the momentum, Ripple is in the final stages of securing a financial services licence in Australia through the acquisition of BC Payments, a subsidiary of European payments group Banking Circle, as it looks to deepen its presence in the region.

The transaction is expected to close in April 2026. It would give the US-based crypto company regulatory approval to expand its payments operations in one of its fastest-growing markets.

The deal marks Ripple’s second acquisition this year, following its purchase of Sydney-based Solvexia in January, and reflects a strategy that has relied heavily on M&A to build out capabilities over the past decade.

ETFs also down

Still, Ripple’s capital markets successes aren’t helping out XRP’s price, which has been on a downtrend since peaking at $3.65 in July.

Investors ploughed over $1 billion into US spot XRP exchange-traded funds shortly after they launched in November.

Canary Capital’s blockbuster XRP ETF debut on November 13 was the top launch of 2025, drawing in $250 million in investment. CEO Steven McClurg initially predicted $5 billion to flow into XRP ETFs in their first month.

But cumulative inflows hit $1.3 billion in January and have flatlined around that level ever since, SoSoValue data shows.

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin is down 5.1% over the past 24 hours, trading at $70,461.
• Ethereum is down 6.3 over the past 24 hours at $2,184.

What we’re reading

• Here’s what the CFTC’s Phantom letter really means for DeFi — DL News
• Libra scandal: Argentine forensics reveal years of payments from lobbyist to President Milei — DL News
• Kraken Freezes IPO Plans as 2026 Crypto Listing Market Loses Steam — Unchained
• How a Trump fan snagged $2m betting on president’s second memecoin gala dinner — DL News
• Nigel Farage Cameo videos backed cryptocurrencies that collapsed in value — The Guardian

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.