Cointelegraph

Bitcoin (BTC) neared $66,000 at Friday’s Wall Street open as analysis called US inflation trends “objectively unsustainable.”

Key points:

Bitcoin drops further on oil-supply woes as Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz.

BTC price performance is set to seal its sixth straight month of losses at the March close.

Traders eye the lows with $70,000 back as resistance.

Oil squeeze creates US bond-market havoc

Data from TradingView captured ongoing BTC price losses, which approached 4% on the day and threatened to turn March into Bitcoin’s sixth consecutive “red” month.

BTC/USD one-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Macro headlines drove weakness across risk assets. US stocks opened downward after Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, sharpening nerves over global oil supplies.

With the US-Iran war set to extend into April, markets showed stress everywhere — including US bonds.

“The US bond market is in major trouble today,” trading resource The Kobeissi Letter warned in a post on X.

Kobeissi noted that the 10-year Treasury note was now at its highest levels since the war began, creating a major headache for the Federal Reserve as it tries to tame inflation as labor-market conditions worsen.

“In less than one month, markets have gone from discussing rate cuts to rate hikes, with the base case showing a Fed PAUSE for the next 18 months,” it continued. 

“Keep in mind, the Fed was cutting interest rates because the labor market was weak, and it remains weak. However, inflation expectations have just become an even bigger problem than the labor market. This is objectively unsustainable.”

Federal Reserve target rate probabilities (screenshot). Source: CME Group FedWatch Tool

As Cointelegraph reported, oil prices have a pronounced impact on US inflation trends, while markets have also raised expectations of recession hitting in 2026.

“Inflation expectations have become so bad that the market is trading like an emergency Fed rate hike is imminent,” Kobeissi founder Adam Kobeissi added.

US two-year bond chart. Source: Adam Kobeissi/X

Bitcoin price resistance settles in at $70,000

Among Bitcoin traders, the mood was just as wary as BTC/USD circled its lowest levels in three weeks.

Analyzing four-hour time frames, Telegram trading resource Technical Crypto Analyst predicted a “likely” return to $64,000 next.

“BTC has clearly broken its ascending trendline and is now showing lower highs under the 70–72K supply, confirming a short-term bearish shift; with price losing the 68K support, continuation toward the 64–65K demand zone is likely, and only a reclaim above 70K would invalidate the bearish momentum,” it told subscribers.

BTC/USDT perpetual contract four-hour chart. Source: Crypto Technical Analyst/Telegram

Data from CoinGlass revealed the high stakes for price into the March monthly close, with BTC/USD readying its first six straight months of losses since the end of its 2018 bear market.

BTC/USD monthly returns (screenshot). Source: CoinGlass

“Indeed seeing the market derisking into the weekend as expected and as we've been seeing several weeks now,” trader Daan Crypto Trades continued. 

“Eyes on that $65.6K low from last week Monday. Main area to watch for me will be the range low. Seeing there's still quite a bit of liquidity around that area.”

BTC/USDT perpetual contract four-hour chart. Source: Daan Crypto Trades/X

Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), said Friday it completed a new $600 million direct cash investment in Polymarket, deepening its bet on prediction markets as a new area of growth for exchange operators.

The company also said it expects to purchase up to $40 million of Polymarket securities from existing holders, adding to its previously announced investment commitment made in October 2025.

In that earlier deal, ICE said it would invest up to $2 billion in Polymarket, marking one of the largest institutional moves into the prediction market sector. The latest transaction advances that arrangement, though terms for the new investment, including valuation, were not disclosed.

The deal signals ICE’s intention to expand its exposure to prediction markets, even as the sector faces evolving US regulatory scrutiny.

Polygon Labs says Polymarket scaling highlights infrastructure role

Aishwary Gupta, global head of business at Polygon Labs, said ICE’s latest investment reflects institutional attention toward onchain market platforms. 

Gupta told Cointelegraph that Polymarket’s growth on Polygon shows how blockchain infrastructure is being used to support high-frequency, real-time market activity.

“Intercontinental Exchange’s investment in Polymarket highlights the growing institutional interest in onchain market platforms,” Gupta said.

He said Polymarket’s growth on Polygon shows how blockchain infrastructure can support high levels of real-time market activity at scale.

Regulators in 11 states made moves against prediction markets

The news comes as prediction markets face increasing regulatory pressure across the US.

At least 11 states are pursuing legal action against prediction market platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi. 

Nevada has issued a temporary ban on Polymarket competitor Kalshi, while Arizona filed criminal charges alleging the platform operated an illegal gambling business. Several other states have sent cease-and-desist orders or are considering new legislation.

Polymarket recently updated its rules to more clearly prohibit trading on confidential information as lawmakers and critics raise concerns that prediction markets can be vulnerable to insider-style activity, especially around politics, sports and geopolitics.

Magazine: Banks want to run Vietnam’s crypto exchanges, Boyaa’s $70M BTC plan: Asia Express

Bitcoin holds ground as rate cut hopes fade

Bitcoins price is holding firm despite the market losing faith in more rate cuts from the US Federal Reserve, according to Kraken chief economist Thomas Perfumo.

(Alex Thorn)

Bitcoin has remained range-bound even as rate expectations have shifted meaningfully, Perfumo tells Magazine.

Perfumo pointed out that not long ago, crypto traders were pricing in three Fed rate cuts by the end of 2026. He said that outlook has since flipped due to rising geopolitical tensions particularly the conflict in Iran that have pushed crude oil higher, along with mounting inflation fears and yield levels.

The long end of the curve is responding; the 10-year Treasury yield hit fresh year-to-date highs above 4.4%, he says.

Higher interest rates are typically a bearish signal for risk assets such as Bitcoin, as safer instruments such as bonds and term deposits become more attractive to investors. The Fed held rates at 3.50%3.75% during March. 

Now, US Fed Funds futures imply zero rate cuts for the remainder of 2026, with a notable probability of a hike, he adds.

Higher lows are a bullish sign

Crypto analysts are split on Bitcoins near-term outlook. MN Trading Capital founder Michael van de Poppe said that Bitcoins structure is leaning bullish for now, based on the asset “constantly” printing higher lows.

It doesn’t say that we’re out of the woods entirely, as those higher lows trigger a lot of liquidity if the markets get there, he said in an X post. 

Bitcoin is up 6.06% over the past 30 days. (CoinMarketCap)

Bitcoin is trading at $68,895 at the time of writing, according to CoinMarketCap.

Van de Poppe says that as long as Bitcoin holds around this level, the asset’s price should move back up toward $80,000.

Meanwhile, crypto analyst Jelle said that Bitcoin’s repeated struggle to reclaim and hold above $70,000 could lead to a more aggressive downtrend. Bulls want to see this reclaim sooner than later: rejecting again would likely mean a cascade down back to the low $60Ks, Jelle said.

Bitcoin reached a yearly low near $60,000 on Feb. 6.

XRP has not fully priced in these three catalysts: Exec

XRPs price could be gearing up for a stronger move upwards, according to Yellow chairman Alexis Sirkia, who argues the market is still underestimating several bullish catalysts for the asset.

XRP is trading at $1.34 at the time of publication, down 1.36% over the past 30 days. (CoinMarketCap)

“Three things happened in the XRP ecosystem this month that the market has not yet fully priced in, and they each tell a different part of the same story, Sirkia tells Magazine.

Sirkia flagged the recent SEC-CFTC crypto classification as a significant bullish signal. The doors that were previously closed to pension funds, asset managers, and bank treasuries are now open, and the question shifts to what they will find when they walk through them, Sirkia said.

He also points to XRP Ledgers quiet transformation into a compliance-grade tokenization layer.Six protocol upgrades over the past two years, including on-chain identity verification, asset clawback mechanisms, and a permissioned DEX, have rebuilt the ledger from the inside out, he says.

‘Price often follows utility,’ says exec

The third catalyst he pointed out is the relationship between Ripple USD, the ecosystems stablecoin, and XRP itself, which is still widely misread as competition.

A fast, low-cost settlement layer and a stable unit of account are not rivals. They are like two sides of the same coin. The more RLUSD grows, the more the underlying settlement infrastructure gets used, creating a feedback loop, he says.

Price often follows utility, but rarely on the schedule that impatient markets expect, he says.

Read also

Features Will Robinhood’s tokenized stocks REALLY take over the world? Pros and cons

Features When privacy and AML laws conflict: Crypto projects’ impossible choice

Bitcoin whales are holding off for more clarity: Santiment

Large Bitcoin holders are staying on the sidelines, holding off on adding to their positions until theres greater regulatory clarity and geopolitical tensions ease, according to crypto analytics platform Santiment.

Bitcoin’s whale activity has become historically quiet as key stakeholders await clarity (literally) from the CLARITY Act, as well as long-term finality to the war, Santiment said in an X post.

Weekly Bitcoin transfers above $100,000 dropped to 6,417 for the week ending Mar. 22 the lowest since September 2023. Daily transfers above $1 million came in at just 1,485, also marking their weakest level since October 2024.

Read also

Features Will Robinhood’s tokenized stocks REALLY take over the world? Pros and cons

Features When privacy and AML laws conflict: Crypto projects’ impossible choice

This has little to do with bullish or bearish indication of what’s to come, Santiment said. What it signals is that smart money is in the same boat as smaller retail holders at the moment and has been reluctant to make moves amid so much policy and global uncertainty.

Sentiment indicators reflect caution

Market indicators suggest investors are still taking a cautious approach to the crypto market.

The Crypto Fear & Greed Index, which measures overall crypto market sentiment, has been in Extreme Fear territory since Mar. 20.

The Crypto Fear & Greed Index posted an “Extreme Fear” score of 10 on Thursday. (alternative.me)

Meanwhile, CoinMarketCaps Altcoin Season Index suggests the market is warming up to cryptocurrencies down the risk curve, reading a Bitcoin Season score of 48 out of 100, up 13 points over the past 30 days. 

The Index flicks between Bitcoin Season and Altcoin Season based on the performance of the top 100 altcoins relative to Bitcoin over the past 90 days.

What are the Prediction Markets saying?

Prediction market traders arent betting on a big end-of-month surge for Bitcoin, but theyre not expecting it to completely tank either.

The odds of Bitcoin ending March above $70,000 are sitting at 35%, and the odds of it falling below its yearly low of $60,000 over the coming days are only 4%.

Polymarket pundits are tipping a 72% chance Bitcoin will stay above $66,000 on April 1. (Polymarket)

Most arent betting it will hit its all-time high again by the end of the year.

Bitcoins chances of reclaiming the $120,000 level in 2026 has fallen 2% from the last Trade Secrets edition to 20%, with just a 10% chance of the asset reaching above $150,000.

Pundits are still backing the idea of a Christmas rally, with December tipped as the strongest month of 2026 at 16%, followed by October and November at 15% each.

Meanwhile, the weakest stretch is already out of the way, with January coming in at just 1%.

Subscribe

The most engaging reads in blockchain. Delivered once a week.

Email address

SUBSCRIBE

Δ

The European Central Bank published a working paper on March 26, finding that governance in four major DeFi protocols was heavily concentrated.

The staff paper looks at Aave, MakerDAO, Ampleforth and Uniswap, and finds that while governance tokens are held across tens of thousands of addresses, the top 100 holders control more than 80% of the supply in each protocol.

Based on holdings snapshots from November 2022 and May 2023, the authors found that a large share of governance tokens could be linked either to the protocols themselves or to centralized and decentralized exchanges, with Binance the largest identified centralized exchange holder across the four protocols.

The authors said the findings challenge the idea that decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) are inherently decentralized, raising questions about accountability and complicating efforts to identify possible regulatory anchor points under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) framework. MiCA currently excludes “fully decentralised” services from its scope.

Top token holders dominate governance

The authors also look at who actually votes on key proposals, concluding that top voters are mostly delegates who wield delegated voting power from smaller token holders. 

The top 20 voters in Ampleforth control 96% of delegated voting power, while the top 10 voters in MakerDAO hold 66% of delegated votes, and the top 18 in Uniswap hold 52%. Around one-third of top voters cannot be publicly identified, and among those that can, the largest groups are individuals and Web3 companies, followed by university blockchain societies and venture firms.

ECB Working Paper on DeFi: Source: ECB

Cointelegraph reached out to Aave, Uniswap, MakerDAO, and Ampleforth, but had not received a response by publication.

Kavi Jain, senior research associate at Bitwise, told Cointelegraph that many large DeFi protocols were not as decentralized in practice as they might appear, especially in the earlier stages, where a small group still has “meaningful influence over decisions.”

He pointed to the recent Aave governance debate that highlighted how, even with a DAO structure, voting power can “still be concentrated among a few participants.”

MiCA faces DeFi accountability problem

The paper catalogues what governance actually decides, finding that the largest share of proposals relates to “risk parameters” that shape the protocols’ risk profiles. That raises further questions about accountability, especially given that it is “not possible” to tell from public data whether protocol-linked holdings belong to founders, developers or treasuries, or whether exchange wallets are voting their own positions or those of customers.

There are some caveats with the methodology, and the paper itself warns that it does not capture the “full scope of the DeFi ecosystem,” due to insufficient data.

The paper also stresses that it reflects the authors’ views rather than official ECB policy, however, it warns that the difficulty of reliably identifying who controls major protocols makes it harder to lean on popular entry points such as governance token holders, developers or centralized exchanges, and says that the relevant anchor may differ protocol by protocol and require information that is not publicly available.

Its findings echo earlier warnings from the Financial Stability Board and others, cited in the paper, that DeFi’s promise of disintermediation often masks new forms of concentration and governance risk that resemble, and sometimes amplify, those seen in traditional finance.

Magazine: Ethereum’s Fusaka fork explained for dummies — What the hell is PeerDAS?

The chances of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried getting a pardon didn’t seem great this year, and a recent downtick on prediction markets shows that they aren’t getting any better. 

Both major prediction markets in the United States, Polymarket and Kalshi, have the likelihood of Bankman-Fried receiving a presidential pardon this year at 11% and 9%, respectively. 

Chances of a pardon have decreased 1% on Kalshi and 2% on Polymarket after a CNN interview on March 21 with Bankman-Fried’s parents, Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried. In the interview, both explained why they’re challenging their son’s fraud conviction. 

The change may be small, but the interview and the public appeals for a reconsideration of the case have drawn renewed attention to Bankman-Fried’s parents’ role. 

Bankman-Fried odds on Polymarket. Source: Polymarket 

Bankman and Fried challenge FTX narrative 

In a new interview with CNN’s Michael Smerconish, Fried and Bankman said that the judgement against their son was wrong. “There’s an appeal on the case, but we don’t think it’s fraud,” Bankman said. 

Bankman and Fried both agreed that Alameda Research had borrowed customer funds from their son’s exchange FTX. But Bankman said that the funds “were not used improperly.” On the exchange, “you were able to put in money, and you were able to borrow money. Alameda acted like everybody else, putting in money and borrowing money.” 

Bankman and Fried’s claim challenges the public narrative on the case, one in which they themselves were involved. Bankman worked as a paid advisor to FTX, chiefly concerned with the exchange’s efforts regarding “effective altruism,” while Fried served as a political consultant, per the CNN interview.

FTX attempted to sue them as the exchange was restructuring in 2023. In a complaint in the Delaware Bankruptcy Court, FTX sought to recover millions of dollars that it claimed Bankman and Fried “fraudulently transferred and misappropriated.” 

“Bankman played a key role in perpetuating this culture of misrepresentations and gross mismanagement and helped cover up allegations that would have exposed the fraud committed by the FTX Insiders,” the complaint alleged. 

Chiefly, FTX claimed that “Bankman and Fried discussed with Bankman-Fried the transfer to them of a $10 million cash gift and a $16.4 million luxury property in The Bahamas.” The exchange sought the return of both of these funds and of the luxury property. 

The case was eventually dismissed without prejudice in February 2025. This means that the case is not permanently closed and the plaintiffs could still refile at a later time and different venue. 

A year later, in February 2026, Fried filed an appeal on behalf of her son. Documents filed in the New York Southern District Court said that new testimony, “would have refuted three principal claims the Government made about FTX’s financial condition on which its allegations of fraud rested.” These were that:

FTX was insolvent on Nov. 11, 2022,

There was no prospect that customers would be repaid, and

Alameda regularly ran a multi-billion-dollar deficit in its account on FTX.

Speaking to CNN, Bankman said that “the money was always there” and that Alameda “always had more than enough security to cover everything.” He said that everyone has already gotten paid back; “the money never left the companies.”

Fried said that “all the money was turned over by Sam voluntarily when there was a liquidity crisis. All the assets ended up in the estate in FTX which was taken over by the debtors, so-called debtors, who ran the bankruptcy. All the money, it was there, every penny of it.”

Looking for a pardon

The appeal filing also moved to change the judge, claiming “many instances of extreme prejudice” that Judge Lewis Kaplan showed to Bankman-Fried during the trial. 

In the interview, Fried claimed that “Sam’s prosecution was essentially political.” She added that the “Biden administration had decided to destroy crypto, to strangle the baby in the crib, if I can use that horrible metaphor.” 

Rather than clearly state the administration was not going to legalize crypto and outline how it would punish offenders, “they quite deliberately tried to sabotage the crypto industry behind the scenes.” 

She further claimed the prosecutions were being used for political ambition. “I am describing a part of the Biden administration that I think did really bad things,” she said. 

Bankman-Fried made significant political donations to the Biden administration and to Democratic lawmakers. But in the CNN interview, his parents attempted to distance him from liberal politics. 

Bankman said, “Sam came to DC and did contribute to Biden. But by the time he got to DC, he had had bad experiences with the Biden administration on crypto and on business in general.”

Bankman-Fried’s donations to Democratic candidates and organizations in 2020. Source: Open Secrets

“He ended up giving at least as much to Republicans. To think of Sam as just a liberal Democrat was never true,” he said.    

Bankman-Fried himself has attempted to downplay any support he’d given to Democratic politicians. Last year, he told the media that he was “really frustrated and disappointed with what I saw of, you know, Biden’s administration of the Democratic Party.”

He also tried to liken himself to Trump in regards to his prosecution and frustrations with Judge Kaplan. Kaplan found Trump guilty of sexual abuse and defamation, awarding the plaintiff E. Jean Carroll $88 million in damages. 

His parents doubled down on these claims and appeared to make a direct appeal to Trump. When asked, “What does Sam Bankman-Fried’s mother want to say to the President of the United States?” Fried replied, “I think that Sam was a victim of an out-of-control prosecution and I know that Trump himself feels he was.”

“I would say also that being one of the most brilliant, talented young men of this generation and the amount of good that he can do in this world, if he is free to live a life he wants, it would be of enormous benefit to the economy, to a lot of things that Trump cares about in this world. He [Trump] ought to regard Sam as a huge asset going forward for the country.”   

Pardons have become an industry unto themselves. A Campaign Legal Center analysis showed that Trump usually pardons allies in exchange for loyalty, rewards people who broke the law on his behalf or, crucially, offers brokered pardons, “where deep-pocketed individuals hire well-connected lobbyists or political fixers to secure clemency.”

Amid the most recent push for a pardon, Pro-crypto Senator Cynthia Lummis told Politico, “I hope the president doesn’t fall for that. [...] He hurt a lot of people.” Trump himself indicated to The New York Times that he would not pardon Bankman-Fried.

According to Bloomberg, Fried and Bankman have been exploring ways to get a pardon for their  son since Trump took office in January of last year. This reportedly included speaking to lawyers and “other figures considered to be in Trump’s orbit.”

On March 18, Bankman-Fried wrote a post through legal proxies, supporting Trump's decision to bomb Iran. Polymarket odds show the chance of a US/Iran ceasefire by year’s end at 78%, some 68 points higher than a pardon for Bankman-Fried.  

Source: Aleph

Magazine: Nobody knows if quantum secure cryptography will even work

Bitcoin (BTC) neared three-week lows into Friday’s Wall Street open amid reports of Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz oil route.

Key points:

Bitcoin reacts badly to fresh oil-supply threats ahead of Friday’s Wall Street open.

BTC price action hunts bid liquidity, continuing a week of low-time frame liquidity grabs.

Another bear flag threatens to send the market below $50,000, analysis says.

Bitcoin eyes range lows into monthly close

Data from TradingView showed BTC price action slipping below $66,500 ahead of the Wall Street open.

BTC/USD four-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

US stocks futures trended down and US WTI crude oil eyed $97 per barrel as geopolitical tensions refused to let up.

Data from CoinGlass showed BTC/USD eating into a ladder of bid liquidity extending down to $65,000, with a wall of asks keeping price pinned below the $70,000 mark.

BTC liquidation heatmap (screenshot). Source: CoinGlass

“$70-71k confirmed as resistance again,” trader Jelle wrote in analysis on X the day prior. 

“Still a bunch of liquidity built up below, generally not what you see at market bottoms. Expecting that liquidity to be taken out; sooner or later.”

BTC/USD chart. Source: Jelle/X

The latest market moves continued a theme of liquidity grabs seen throughout the week.

Continuing, crypto trader Michaël Van de Poppe said that he would not be “surprised” about further BTC price weakness into the March monthly candle close.

“Especially given that we're currently anticipating a potential sweep of the lows,” he told X followers on the day. 

“In that case, I remain to be interested to be buying in the lower $60K regions.”

BTC/USDT one-day chart. Source: Michaël Van de Poppe/X

BTC price gets $41,000 “measured target”

On longer time frames, market participants focused on a potential bearish support breakdown from Bitcoin’s second bear flag construction of 2026.

Previously occurring in January, the current bear flag has produced targets below $50,000.

“Bitcoin setting up for a rising wedge sell signal,” veteran trader Peter Brandt warned on Wednesday, joining those calls.

BTC/USDT one-day chart. Source: Peter Brandt/X

In his own X update, trader and educator Aaron Dishner continued the bearish tone around the flag structure.

“BTC is doing exactly what the bear flag setup called for. Price broke below the cloud yesterday on the daily, and today opened below it - currently down just 0.32% but that's not a recovery, that's hesitation,” he commented. 

“The measured target from the January 14th high to the February 6th low, applied to the current flag structure, puts the downside at $41K.”

Bitcoin (BTC) dropped toward $67,000 during the European trading session on Friday despite an increase in long-term buying. Exchange withdrawals also increased to 16-month highs, suggesting reduced “immediate selling pressure,” a new analysis said.

Key takeaways:

Bitcoin withdrawals from exchanges increases, reducing BTC available for sale.

Long-term holders accelerate accumulation, adding 155,450 BTC over the past 30 days.

Bitcoin analysts view $65,000–$66,000 as a potential support zone for a bounce.

Bitcoin supply tightens as long-term buying accelerates

CryptoQuant’s exchange flow data highlighted “renewed signs of supply tightening,” as large Bitcoin withdrawals continue across major exchanges. 

The chart below shows that investors withdrew nearly $1.6 billion of BTC from Bitfinex on March 16, as shown by the orange bar in the chart below.

Since then, the trend has expanded across other major exchanges, with a $678 million withdrawal from OKX on Sunday, a $728 million withdrawal from Kraken on Monday, and another $400 million in BTC leaving Binance on Wednesday.

“This pattern suggests that the latest wave of withdrawals is no longer isolated to one platform,” CryptoQuant analyst Amr Taha said in his latest QuickTake analysis. 

Bitcoin exchanges netflow, $. Source: CryptoQuant

The figures support the latest data showing Bitcoin whales and sharks have been accumulating over the last two months, a pattern that could trigger an eventual breakout from the range. 

Other data also reflects an accumulation phase, as long-term holders (LTHs), investors who have held Bitcoin for more than 155 days, ramped up buying.

The LTH net position change has been positive since March 5, as about 155,450 BTC has been bought over the past 30 days.

In other words, holders are buying more on the dips, including the latest one below $68,000.

Bitcoin: LTH net position change. Source: Glassnode

When Bitcoin leaves exchanges while LTHs expand their positions, it “usually signals lower immediate sell pressure and stronger conviction from investors with a longer time horizon,” Amr Taha said.

If this trend continues, the market could be entering another phase where tightening sell-side liquidity and stronger LTH demand “create a more supportive backdrop for price,” the analyst added.

Bitcoin price to revisit $65,000 before bounce

As Cointelegraph reported, $70,000 remains the key for the Bitcoin bulls and that losing it could trigger the next leg down.

The BTC/USD pair was trading below $67,000 at the time of writing, below the 50-day simple moving average (SMA) and the 200-week exponential moving average (EMA).

Bears will attempt to push the price toward the $65,000-$63,300 demand zone, with a deeper focus on the range low below $60,000, reached on Feb. 6.

BTC/USD daily chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

“It’s quite clear that there's not enough strength for the markets to move higher after that rejection at $75K,” MN Capital founder Michael van de Poppe said in a recent X post.

An accompanying chart suggested that the price was seeking to print a higher low within the $65,000 to $66,000 range, failing which “we’ll start to see an acceleration downwards,” van de Poppe said, adding:

“I would be looking at longs in the lower-$60K range.”

BTC/USD daily chart. Source: Michael van de Poppe

The Glassnode liquidity heatmap highlighted “stronger” whale bid orders near $65,000, suggesting that the BTC price could retest this area before a bounce.

Bitcoin whale orders. Source: CoinGlass

As Cointelegraph reported, a break and close below the ascending trend line at $68,000 could result in Bitcoin price dropping toward $60,000, where it could consolidate next.

Opinion by: Kirill Avery, founder and CEO of Alien

AI-generated voices are already being used in ransom scams. Synthetic agents now trade, vote and interact on blockchain networks. In this environment, the greatest threat to crypto is no longer scalability or regulation; it is the collapse of trust.

As deepfakes, bots and synthetic agents saturate every corner of the internet and as scams increased by 1,400% in 2025, authenticity is becoming a scarce resource.

Scarcity produces markets. Every major technological shift has centered on what becomes hard to fake and costly to produce. In the industrial era, it was energy. In the internet era, it was attention. In the AI era, it is authenticity.

In the AI era, the crypto industry will stop competing on throughput and start competing on proof of humanity, and most existing identity and compliance models will collapse under synthetic users.

The great flood of the unreal

The internet was built to connect us through information; however, it now overwhelms us with imitation. Every day, new stories expose how generative models are collapsing the boundary between the real and the synthetic.

A mother in Arizona receives a ransom call: Her daughter’s voice pleads for help, matching her tone, cadence and even her breathing. But it isn’t real; the audio was stitched together by an AI model trained on a few seconds of public video. Across the country, a job seeker completes what seems like a normal interview, unaware that the “recruiter” asking questions is an automated agent collecting behavioral data for resale.

These aren’t edge cases. They mark the transition from the information economy to the imitation economy, an era where an abundance of data no longer guarantees truth. The internet once promised to democratize knowledge. Now, it demands we verify everything we see and hear. The problem isn’t that technology can fake reality; it’s that humans can no longer tell the difference.

Newsrooms fight algorithmic propaganda, financial systems battle synthetic users, and governance dissolves in digital fog. Reality itself is subject to replication without friction.

Realness as the new scarcity

When anything can be generated, creation ceases to be a constraint, and verification becomes the bottleneck, with authenticity acquiring economic weight. Proof that something, or someone, is real becomes an asset class.

Gold represented physical scarcity, and bandwidth represented informational scarcity. Authenticity represents epistemic scarcity. It underwrites the credibility of every domain: Social media requires real followers, finance requires Sybil resistance, and entertainment requires verifiable creators.

In “Nexus,” Yuval Noah Harari described a coming inversion in which artificial intelligence will not need money but will transact in reputation, credibility and identity. Machines will value proof over possession. What they demand is not currency but confirmation of trust, reliability and truth. Authenticity becomes the medium of exchange between humans and the system.

The invisible infrastructure of trust

Proof of what’s real is becoming part of the market itself. That means we need new infrastructure to support it.

Instead of relying only on things like fingerprints or face scans, we’ll need cryptographic proofs, decentralized identities and systems that can continuously verify trust and behavior.

Authenticity won’t be a one-time check; it will be something we demonstrate over time through our actions. Just as the last century built systems to measure creditworthiness, this one will measure realness. A “realness score” could become the new credit score of the AI era, with identity verified by protocols, authenticity built into platforms and markets rewarding those who prove they’re genuinely human.

This infrastructure will serve AI as secure sockets layer (SSL) once served e-commerce: unseen, indispensable and lucrative.

Verified or synthetic

The next social divide will not be rich versus poor but verified vs. synthetic. Verified humans will gain access to finance, governance and digital legitimacy. Unverified entities will operate in restricted zones, powerful but distrusted.

The moral issue is not verification itself but control. Surveillance models corrupt authenticity by owning it. Decentralized verification prevents ownership, separating proof from power. Identity then becomes the new passport, but only a neutral system can stamp it without subjugation.

The business of trust

For decades, the internet’s economy has been built on buying attention, not trust. Companies pour billions into ad networks chasing impressions and clicks that never convert. A brand might spend $1 million on online ads, only to later discover that half of those “views” came from bots, click farms or automated scraping tools that never had the capacity to buy, believe or belong.

Businesses already feel the cost of synthetic engagement, but they have no way to measure or verify authenticity at scale. In an AI-saturated internet, that problem becomes existential.

Trust — not reach — will determine value. The next generation of networks won’t sell eyeballs; they’ll sell verified human attention. Imagine a marketing system where advertisers pay only for provably real interactions, a verified consumer who actually watched, engaged or purchased. That is what authenticity infrastructure enables: an economy where truth itself becomes a performance metric.

Proof of being

Humanity has always outsourced trust to gods, states, banks and algorithms. That chain ends now. The next leap forward demands that proof originates not from institutions or code, but from the individual.

The true destination of AI is not to surpass humanity but to define where its edges end, to create a world where humans and machines operate under mutual proof, mutual respect and shared accountability.

In an era where imitation is infinite, authenticity is the last scarcity. And in the economy that follows, the most valuable currency will not be digital; it will be human realness itself.

Opinion by: Kirill Avery, founder and CEO of Alien.

Vietnamese authorities have detained multiple ONUS-linked suspects after alleging they used false promotions and manipulated token trading to misappropriate investor funds through the crypto platform.

The Ministry of Public Security said Thursday that the investigation targeted a group accused of selling digital tokens through the Onus platform, using misleading promotions and coordinated trading activity to attract users. Authorities claim the group manipulated supply and demand and adjusted token prices, presenting the assets as legitimate investment opportunities while maintaining centralized control over their markets. 

Investigators named several suspects in the case, including Vuong Le Vinh Nhan, who is linked by Vemanti to XPLOR, the Singapore-based parent company of ONUS Pro; Tran Quang Chien, identified in Vietnamese reporting as the technical administrator of the ONUS exchange; and Ngo Thi Thao, director of HanaGold Jewelry JSC.

Authorities said the suspects are accused of creating and promoting tokens, including VNDC, ONUS and HNG, through the ONUS platform. Police say the scheme raised billions of dollars from investors. However, the authorities did not provide a breakdown of the losses. 

The case adds to scrutiny of crypto activity in Vietnam, one of the world’s most active retail digital asset markets.

Vietnam ranks fourth in Chainalysis' crypto adoption index in 2025. Source: Chainalysis

Vietnam widens ONUS fraud probe

According to the Ministry of Public Security, the arrests follow a multi-agency investigation spanning several cities, with police summoning over 140 individuals for questioning and seizing evidence, as part of a broader effort to dismantle large-scale crypto-linked fraud operations. 

On Thursday, Vemanti said it learned of the indictments of Nhan Vuong and Chien Tran through the ministry announcement and Vietnamese media, and had engaged US legal counsel to assess the situation. Vemanti identified Vuong as chairman of its board and Tran as a board member.

The ONUS platform presents itself as a digital asset ecosystem offering trading, staking and investment products, claiming more than seven million users and backing from the US-based fintech company Vemanti Group. 

Its official X account has more than 885,000 followers. However, market data aggregator CoinMarketCap lists the ONUS token with a self-reported market capitalization of around $25 million, highlighting a gap between the scale of alleged losses and publicly available token metrics.

Onus has not released an official statement addressing the situation.

Cointelegraph reached out to Onus for comment, but had not received a response by publication. 

ONUS token's all-time price chart. Source: CoinMarketCap

India case points to wider scam network risks

In a separate case, India’s Central Bureau of Investigation said Thursday that it arrested a Mumbai-based suspect accused of helping traffic victims to scam compounds in Myanmar, where individuals were allegedly forced to carry out online fraud schemes, including crypto investment scams and romance scams.

The agency said victims were lured with job offers in Thailand before being diverted to scam centers in Myanmar’s Myawaddy region, where they were subjected to confinement, intimidation and abuse while being made to target victims globally.

Magazine: Banks want to run Vietnam’s crypto exchanges, Boyaa’s $70M BTC plan: Asia Express

The Federal Court of Australia has ordered Oztures Trading Pty Ltd, trading as Binance Australia Derivatives, to pay a 10 million Australian dollar ($6.9 million) penalty after the company admitted to misclassifying more than 85% of its Australian client base and exposing retail investors to high-risk crypto derivatives without required protections.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) said the affected group included 524 retail investors who were wrongly treated as wholesale clients between July 2022 and April 2023. Those clients later incurred $6.3 million in trading losses and paid $2.6 million in fees.

Binance also admitted in a statement of agreed facts to multiple compliance failures, including not providing product disclosure statements to retail clients, not making a target market determination and not maintaining a compliant internal dispute resolution system.

The penalty comes on top of the around $9 million in compensation that Binance’s local derivatives unit was ordered to pay to affected clients in November 2023.

Court order against Binance Australia Derivatives. Source: The Federal Court of Australia

Binance did not immediately respond to Cointelegraph’s request for comment.

This is a developing story, and further information will be added as it becomes available.

US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) logged $171 million in outflows on Thursday, their biggest day of redemptions since March 3, when they posted $348 million in outflows. 

BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) led the outflows with $41 million, Fidelity’s Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC) followed with $32 million, the ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ARKB) sold $30.5 million, and Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust ETF (GBTC) sold $24 million, according to data from Farside Investors.

The outflows follow a period of demand for Bitcoin ETFs, which attracted $1.36 billion in monthly inflows so far in March and are on track for their first month of net accumulation since October 2025, when ETFs clocked $3.42 billion in net inflows, according to Sosovalue data.

US-listed spot Bitcoin ETFs are a signal of institutional demand for Bitcoin (BTC), which fell below the $70,000 mark on Thursday. BTC fell 4.7% over the past week and traded at $67,780 at the time of writing, according to CoinMarketCap.

Bitcoin ETF flows, in USD, million. Source: Farside Investors

Still, Bitcoin ETFs are just “one good day away” from reversing their year-to-date outflows, said senior Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas, who praised the ETFs for their “incredible fortitude” amid Bitcoin’s 46% correction from the $126,198 all-time high in October 2025.

“For context, when gold fell 40% in a short time frame about 10 years ago, it saw 1/3 of its investors bail,” said Balchunas in a Tuesday X post.

Investors fear weekend war escalation

The Bitcoin ETF sell-off follows reports that the US Department of War is sending thousands of soldiers to the Middle East, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Tuesday. 

On Thursday, US President Donald Trump announced an extension to the ceasefire on Iranian energy infrastructure by 10 days to April 6, citing constructive ongoing negotiations.

Source: Truth Social, President Donald Trump

Despite the extension of the ceasefire, market participants remain worried about another unexpected weekend escalation, Kyle Rodda, senior financial analyst at Capital.com, told Cointelegraph. He said:

“Amidst the headline risk and he-said, she-said games about whether negotiations between the US and Iran are taking place, the US is moving assets and personnel towards the Middle East to prepare for what looks like a limited ground invasion.”

Investors are jittery about any potential escalation after being caught off guard by the initial US and Israeli strikes on Iran on Feb. 28, which occurred in the middle of constructive negotiations, Rodda added.

Magazine: Bitcoin’s ‘biggest bull catalyst’ would be Saylor’s liquidation — Santiment founder

The Financial Times reported Friday that Tether has hired KPMG to conduct its first full audit of USDT’s financial statements and brought in PwC to help prepare its internal systems, citing people familiar with the matter.

The reported mandate follows Tether’s Tuesday announcement that it had formally engaged a Big Four firm for an inaugural financial statement audit, without naming the provider, and comes after years of pledges to deliver a full review of its books while relying instead on periodic reserve attestations from BDO Italia, the Italian member firm of the BDO global accounting network that has been producing USDt (USDT) assurance reports since 2022.

The move comes as Tether (USDT) weighs a major equity raise and a push into the US under the new federal stablecoin framework created by the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act. 

USDT, a dollar-linked token with about $185 billion in circulation, is the largest stablecoin by market capitalization, according to CoinGecko. Tether said in January that it held more than $122 billion in direct US Treasury securities and about $141 billion in total Treasury exposure, including related instruments such as overnight reverse repurchase agreements.

A comprehensive audit by KPMG is expected to go beyond snapshots of reserves, covering Tether’s assets, liabilities and internal controls across its sprawling balance sheet, a process the company has billed as “the biggest ever inaugural audit in the history of financial markets.” 

Tether’s Big Four Announcement on Tuesday. Source: Tether

Tether said the Big Four firm was chosen through a competitive process and that it already operates at Big Four “audit standards,” but has not yet committed publicly to when the audit will be completed.

Cointelegraph reached out to Tether and KPMG but had not received a response by publication. PwC refused to comment on the matter.

KPMG audit and Tether’s funding ambitions 

Bloomberg reported in September 2025 that Tether was exploring raising as much as $20 billion in fresh equity, implying a valuation of $500 billion. Tether CEO Paulo Ardoino refuted these claims, telling Cointelegraph in February that such a figure had not been agreed upon, while maintaining its $500 billion valuation target based on the company’s profits.

The company has previously paid a $41 million Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) fine over what the regulator called “untrue or misleading statements” about its reserves.

In a separate case, Tether agreed to an $18.5 million settlement with the New York Attorney General over allegations it concealed losses and misled investors about USDT’s backing. Under the NYAG deal, Tether was compelled to provide detailed quarterly reserve reports for two years and later dropped its opposition to the release of those materials. 

Magazine: Bitcoin’s ‘biggest bull catalyst’ would be Saylor’s liquidation — Santiment founder

Large Bitcoin holders accumulated 61,568 more Bitcoin over the past month against the backdrop of escalating conflict in the Middle East and macroeconomic uncertainty. 

Whales and sharks, defined as those holding between 10 and 10,000 Bitcoin (BTC), have increased their holdings by 0.45%, while wallets with under 0.01 Bitcoin have added 0.42%, or 213 BTC, over the past month, Santiment said in an X post Thursday.

The figures support recent data showing that Bitcoin exchange outflows have persisted throughout March, indicating that Bitcoin holders are accumulating rather than looking to sell. 

Santiment analysts added that whale accumulation could be a “promising sign” of an eventual breakout from the range. 

“Ideally, the ranging pattern will break upwards when large wallets are accumulating, while retail is dumping. This has historically been a very reliable pattern to signal the start of bull cycles,” the analysts said.

Source: Santiment

Tensions in the Middle East escalated in February after the US and Israel launched strikes against Iran. Iran retaliated against several neighboring countries, and the conflict has continued since.

Some whales wait for breakout; small holders driven by FOMO

Some Bitcoin whales are taking a different approach. 

On March 19, two Bitcoin whales moved tens of millions of dollars to exchanges as Bitcoin fell and energy prices jumped after attacks on Gulf oil and gas infrastructure deepened during the Iran conflict.

Dominick John, an analyst at Zeus Research, told Cointelegraph that the whales who have been accumulating in the background are likely preparing for the next breakout.

“Whales are scooping up BTC because they’re positioning ahead of a potential breakout, quietly stacking during consolidation periods. Small wallets are chasing the momentum, driven by FOMO during uptrends and the fear of missing the next leg up,” he said.

“Whales tend to buy in waves, so accumulation could continue if the range holds and macro conditions stay supportive. On the other hand, if retail FOMO overheats, we could see a pause or slight sell-off before the next accumulation phase,” John added.

Fear and greed index in “extreme fear”

Meanwhile, investor sentiment remains deeply uncertain. The Crypto Fear & Greed Index returned a score of 13 on Friday, firmly in “extreme fear” territory.

The Crypto Fear & Greed Index has been firmly in “extreme fear” territory. Source: alternative.me

Thursday’s score was 10, and both the prior week and the month of February averaged “extreme fear” ratings as well, according to the index.

Magazine: Banks want to run Vietnam’s crypto exchanges, Boyaa’s $70M BTC plan: Asia Express

The UK government is cracking down on a $20 billion Chinese-language crypto guarantee marketplace, with sweeping sanctions aimed at cutting the platform off from crypto access.

The UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office said in a statement Thursday that Xinbi provides crypto-based services, scam-enabling tools and other illicit services to bad actors and plays a central role in scam centers operating across Southeast Asia.

“The UK’s sanctions will isolate the platform from the legitimate crypto ecosystem, significantly disrupting its operations by affecting its ability to send and receive cryptocurrency transactions,” the agency said.

While the sanctions mainly target the crypto ecosystem, the latest wording from the UK government highlights a separation between legitimate and illicit crypto ecosystems rather than lumping them together — a positive direction for the industry’s reputation.

Under the sanctions, any UK assets connected to Xinbi will be frozen, and the platform will be barred from the country’s financial, trade and travel networks. UK-based businesses, including banks, crypto firms and individual citizens, are prohibited from providing goods, services, loans or investments to Xinbi.

Source: Foreign Commonwealth & Development Office

Key infrastructure targeted in crackdown

Chainalysis estimates Xinbi processed more than $19.9 billion between 2021 and 2025 and is deeply interconnected with a range of other illicit services.

The department’s recent sanctions include Thet Li, who allegedly managed the international financial network of Prince Group, a Cambodia-based company accused of orchestrating large-scale crypto fraud schemes.

Hu Xiaowei, who is allegedly involved in the Prince Group’s financial network and #8 Park, a scam compound linked to the group, was also sanctioned.

Blockchain analytics company Chainalysis said in a report Thursday that the sanctions target the scam ecosystem’s on- and off-ramps that enable large-scale fraud and are “exploiting the efficient, borderless nature of crypto rails.”

“By blacklisting a well-known Chinese-language guarantee marketplace, the FCDO is addressing the commercial marketplaces that sustain scam operators with payment facilitation and marketing services,” it said.

Traditional financial systems, such as wire transfers, have long been exploited for money laundering and fraud, largely because of their scale and global reach.

The Financial Action Task Force estimates that 2% to 5% of global GDP is laundered through traditional financial systems, whereas Chainalysis estimates that less than 1% of crypto transactions are linked to illicit activity.

The US has also intensified sanctions targeting illicit crypto operations. Earlier this month, the Treasury Department sanctioned six individuals and two entities for their alleged roles in an IT worker fraud scheme orchestrated by North Korea, a state actor that frequently targets the crypto industry.

Magazine: Big Questions: Can Bitcoin save you from the dreaded Cantillon Effect?

Tech-focused asset manager ARK Invest said it will start using Kalshi’s prediction market data to improve how it makes its investment decisions, one of the latest cases demonstrating the broader value of prediction market data beyond trading.

According to a statement from Kalshi, ARK will use prediction market data to gauge real-time expectations and guide its existing market-based research, in addition to analyzing performance indicators such as trading volume, regulatory approvals and technological milestones. ARK will also use the data for risk management and hedging strategies.

“Bringing prediction markets into institutional workflows is a natural next step for innovation in financial research,” ARK Invest founder and CEO Cathie Wood said Thursday, while the company’s research director, Nick Grous, said prediction markets “offer some of the purest expressions of risk around key economic and company-specific outcomes.”

Prediction markets became one of the hottest use cases in crypto last year and have consistently surpassed $10 billion in monthly trading volume. Prediction market data has also increasingly been seen by institutions, including the Federal Reserve and Cornell University, as valuable for making decisions that require a pulse on the market. 

In a post on X, Wood also said ARK has been working with Kalshi to list markets on topics it is curious about on the prediction markets platform, including macroeconomic data and scientific milestones.

Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour noted that “a few of these are already live on Kalshi, including non-farm payroll markets, deficit-to-GDP ratio markets, business KPIs, and more.”

Source: Cathie Wood

Fed, Cornell eye opportunity in prediction markets

Last month, researchers at the US Federal Reserve argued that Kalshi can better measure macroeconomic expectations in real time than its existing solutions and thus should be incorporated into the Fed’s decision-making process.

“Kalshi markets provide a high-frequency, continuously updated, distributionally rich benchmark that is valuable to both researchers and policymakers,” the Fed researchers said at the time.

Predictions market data from Polymarket has also been researched at Cornell University to study how traders reacted to political events in real time, such as Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s presidential debates and the assassination attempt on Trump in 2024.

Magazine: IronClaw rivals OpenClaw, Olas launches bots for Polymarket — AI Eye

A US federal judge in San Francisco has granted Anthropic’s request for temporary reprieve after the Pentagon’s designation of the company as a supply chain risk.

In an order on Thursday, Judge Rita Lin of the District Court for the Northern District of California ordered a preliminary injunction against the Pentagon over the label. It also temporarily halts a directive from US President Donald Trump ordering federal agencies to stop using Anthropic’s chatbot, Claude.

“Nothing in the governing statute supports the Orwellian notion that an American company may be branded a potential adversary and saboteur of the US for expressing disagreement with the government,” said Judge Lin.

Anthropic was the top player in enterprise AI markets with 32%, ahead of OpenAI on 25%, as of 2025, according to Menlo Ventures. A government-wide ban on Anthropic would plummet this position.

The judge said that these “broad punitive measures” taken against Anthropic by the Trump administration and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth appeared “arbitrary, capricious, [and] an abuse of discretion.”

The order came after Anthropic filed a lawsuit in a Columbia federal court on March 9, alleging that Hegseth overstepped his authority when he designated the company a national security supply-chain risk.

Screenshot from court ruling. Source: Courtlistener

Anthropic opposed autonomous weapons and mass surveillance

The dispute stems from a deal in July 2025 between the AI firm and the Pentagon on a contract to make Claude the first frontier AI model approved for use on classified networks. 

Negotiations collapsed in February with the Pentagon seeking to renegotiate, insisting Anthropic allow military use of Claude “for all lawful purposes” and without restrictions.

Anthropic maintained that its technology should not be used for lethal autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance of Americans.

On Feb. 27, Trump ordered all federal agencies to cease using Anthropic products. “The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War,” he wrote on Truth Social. 

A 90-minute court hearing took place in San Francisco on March 24, during which Judge Lin pressed government lawyers on whether Anthropic was being punished for publicly criticizing the Pentagon.

Classic illegal First Amendment retaliation

“Punishing Anthropic for bringing public scrutiny to the government’s contracting position is classic illegal First Amendment retaliation,” the March 26 ruling stated. 

Anthropic said in a statement that it was “grateful to the court for moving swiftly, and pleased they agree Anthropic is likely to succeed on the merits.” 

Magazine: Nobody knows if quantum secure cryptography will even work

US lawmakers have introduced a second bill this week aimed at curbing prediction market insider trading by government officials, amid growing concerns over such activity on major platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket.

In an announcement on Thursday, US lawmakers Todd Young, Elissa Slotkin, John Curtis and Adam Schiff unveiled the bipartisan Public Integrity in Financial Prediction Markets Act of 2026.

"No one should be profiting off the information and knowledge gained as a public servant, period," Slotkin said, adding: "This bill is an important first step in placing common sense rules around prediction markets, and it has real teeth to ensure those who break these rules face real consequences."

The bill underscores growing unease that prediction markets could become a new frontier for insider trading, as bets tied to real-world events blur the line between wagering and financial activity. 

Bill aims to stop insider profiteering

The latest bill, which has been introduced in the second session of the 119th Congress, aims to prohibit government executives from using "insider information to bet on a prediction market contract."

Public Integrity in Financial Prediction Markets Act of 2026 document. Source: John Curtis  

If enacted, the Public Integrity in Financial Prediction Markets Act of 2026 would cover the president, vice president and politicians across Congress, the House of Representatives and the Senate. 

It would also cover political appointees and “employees of an Executive agency or independent regulatory agency.”

The bill defines insider information as anything that a "reasonable investor would consider important in making a decision related to a prediction market contract and is not publicly available."

It also outlines reporting requirements under which a government official must report any contract wagers over $250 within 30 days to the supervising ethics office. The individual must include "the number of contracts purchased, price of contract, date and time of transaction, name of contract, position taken on contract, name of trading platform used, profit or loss made on transaction."

The penalties will see individuals charged the greater of $500 or double the amount of profit made from the prediction market contract.

The bills come amid an increasing number of state and federal lawmakers taking aim at prediction markets.

It also marks the second bill introduced this week to try to stop government officials from using insider information to profit on prediction markets, the first being the PREDICT Act introduced by US Representative Adrian Smith and Representative Nikki Budzinski on Tuesday.

However, the PREDICT Act focuses on preventing insider trading on prediction markets relating to political events, policy decisions and other government actions.

Recently, both Kalshi and Polymarket have made attempts to tighten their rules to stop insiders wagering on their platforms.

Magazine: Nobody knows if quantum secure cryptography will even work

Retail investors are reportedly the largest cohort in Strategy’s high-yield, low-volatility “Stretch” shares, which have been used to buy more than $1 billion worth of Bitcoin this year. 

Around 80% of the owners of Strategy’s “Stretch” perpetual preferred shares (STRC) are owned by retail, said Strategy CEO Phong Le on Wednesday.

“Retail investors prefer low-volatility, high-yield digital credit,” he added.

The figure suggests that retail investors are still interested in exposure to Bitcoin, even though it is down about 45% from its all-time high. 

Strategy’s executive chairman, Michael Saylor, has been stepping up sales and marketing of Stretch following the drop in Bitcoin and company stock, pitching the shares as a way to get exposure to BTC without the volatility. 

In March, Strategy used around $1.2 billion from at-the-market sales of STRC to buy Bitcoin, though it switched back to using the sale of common stock in its most recent buy. 

“Normally, the hardest thing in the world to do is to sell a new credit instrument to a retail investor,” Saylor said Thursday at the 2026 Digital Asset Summit in New York. 

“11% is a big number.”
“Am I offending you if I call it a money market fund?” - @SullyCNBC

Digital Credit is redefining yield.
Today we discussed Stretch $STRC on @PowerLunch. pic.twitter.com/oirw3PGZBi

— Michael Saylor (@saylor) March 26, 2026

Speaking on CNBC’s “Power Lunch” on Thursday, Saylor said, “the idea is to create an onramp for people who believe Bitcoin is going to be around for the long term, but they can't handle the volatility in the near term.” 

He added that Stretch strips the first 10% to 11% of annual Bitcoin (BTC) returns and passes it to the credit investor. STRC is “way overcollateralized,” but Strategy is betting that Bitcoin will rise more than 11% per year, and “our equity holders are going to make a fortune,” while credit investors are happy with 11%, he said.

Strategy’s common stock (MSTR) is down 19% this year and almost 71% from its July 2025 all-time high of $456, according to Google Finance. The Stretch shares, meanwhile, pay annual dividends of about 11.5%, higher than US Treasurys, which currently yield about 4%.

The investments are perpetual derivatives, meaning they do not have a maturity date, so Strategy never has to pay investors back like a bond, and they can be held indefinitely, earning dividends. The dividend rate is variable and adjusts monthly with market conditions.

The goal of these adjustments is to keep the trading price anchored near $100, making it behave more like a high-yield savings account than a volatile stock or crypto asset. 

Saylor looks to double down on Stretch

In February, the company said it would rely more on its preferred stock sales to acquire Bitcoin.

It went further this week, revealing plans via a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Monday to raise up to $21 billion by selling Strategy stock and another $21 billion from Stretch, via new at-the-market programs. 

Magazine: Nobody knows if quantum secure cryptography will even work

David Sacks, a venture capitalist who became a special White House official under US President Donald Trump last year, has wrapped up his 130-day tenure as crypto and AI czar but will continue to shape policy in a new role.

“We've now used up that time,” Sacks told Bloomberg on Thursday, noting that he will continue making policy recommendations across a broad range of tech industries as co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).

Sacks has been an influential figure in the White House since Trump’s appointment in 2025, acting as the president’s key adviser on technology.

The new role will overlap with his previous role as crypto and AI czar, noting that he and other members would “study issues together” before issuing official recommendations to regulators.

Sacks speaking with Bloomberg on Thursday. Source: Bloomberg

As the crypto and AI czar, Sacks helped the President's Working Group on Digital Asset Markets release a 166-page report in July, which outlined recommendations on how the crypto industry should be regulated. 

More recently, on March 20, Sacks helped the Trump administration put out an AI framework that seeks to empower AI innovation and workplace development while protecting children and intellectual property rights.

Sacks also played a role in the passage of the stablecoin-focused GENIUS Act in July and continues to push for crypto market structure legislation, such as the CLARITY Act.

A report from Fox Business, quoting a senior adviser to the president, said Sacks will continue serving as AI and crypto czar while taking on a broader portfolio.

"David will always be his crypto and AI czar, but to the admin more broadly, this new role will allow him to advise on a broader range of critical tech issues," they said.

PCAST may be more AI-focused than crypto

PCAST will consist of 13 tech-leaders spread across AI, crypto, health care and quantum computing.

Among the members joining Sacks are Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, AMD’s Lisa Su, Oracle’s Larry Ellison, Andreessen “a16z” Horowitz’s Marc Andreessen and Dell Technologies’ Michael Dell.

The only crypto-native member is Fred Ehrsam, who co-founded Coinbase with CEO Brian Armstrong in 2012 before co-founding crypto-focused VC Paradigm in 2018.

Sacks said a primary focus of PCAST is to ensure America’s AI strategy is aligned between the federal and state governments:

“The problem that we're seeing right now is that you've got 50 different states regulating this in 50 different ways, and it's creating a patchwork of regulation that's difficult for innovators to comply with.”

“So what the president has called for is one rulebook,” he added.

Magazine: Big Questions: Can Bitcoin save you from the dreaded Cantillon Effect?

US Representative Maxine Waters, the ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, is demanding answers from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City over the approval of Kraken Financial’s limited-purpose master account.

In a letter Thursday, Waters asked Kansas City Fed President Jeff Schmid to respond by April 10, outlining what Kraken’s approval means in practice; which Federal Reserve services it can access; the conditions or restrictions that apply and what anti-money laundering and consumer protection measures were considered.

Kraken’s banking unit was granted a limited-purpose master account by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City earlier this month. It was seen as a milestone for the crypto industry as several crypto-linked US companies have been pursuing a master account with the Fed for years. 

The account provides direct access to Fedwire, the Fed’s core payments system, potentially allowing Kraken to move money on the same rails used by banks and credit unions. 

“The Kansas City Fed’s announcement does not disclose specific information about Kraken’s access to the range of Federal Reserve financial services due to the confidentiality of business information provided by applicants,” Waters wrote in the letter.

US Representative Maxine Waters is demanding answers regarding the approval of Kraken Financial’s limited-purpose master account. Source: House Committee on Financial Services

“Answers to these questions are critical to ensuring that the process of approving Federal Reserve Bank account access is conducted consistently with the law, with impartiality, and in a manner that continues to foster a safe and efficient payment system,” she added. 

Full transparency required to mitigate risks, Waters argues

Waters also argues that Kraken’s access to the Federal Reserve’s payment system raises policy, regulatory and consumer protection concerns. As a result, she said full transparency and clear legal grounding are required to ensure any risks are properly managed.

“Innovations in payments, digital assets, tokenization, and even artificial intelligence are rapidly outpacing statutory frameworks developed to mitigate risk, promote competition, and protect consumers in a traditional financial environment,” Waters wrote.

“Given this environment, much is required of those who exercise discretionary authority over safe access to, and operation of, our nation’s critical financial infrastructure,” she added.

US crypto companies that have been pursuing Fed master accounts include Caitlin Long’s Custodia Bank, which filed a court petition in late 2025 to renew its bid.

Crypto platform Anchorage Digital Bank also applied for an account last year and Ripple has applied through its Standard Custody & Trust Company.

Waters is classed as “strongly against crypto” by advocacy group

Crypto advocacy group Stand With Crypto has a scorecard for US politicians on how supportive they are of crypto based on public statements and voting behavior.

Waters is listed by the group as “strongly against crypto,” based on five statements and six votes against crypto legislation, including the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act and the GENIUS Act.

Crypto advocacy group Stand With Crypto has listed Maxine Waters as “strongly against crypto.” Source: Stand With Crypto

She also called for a hearing with Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Paul Atkins last year, citing concerns about the agency’s dismissal of crypto enforcement cases.

Magazine: How crypto laws changed in 2025 — and how they’ll change in 2026