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The BETS OFF Act from two Democratic lawmakers came in response to several “highly unusual bets” on the US-Israel conflict with Iran, suggesting insider information.
Two Democratic lawmakers in the US Congress have introduced legislation in response to “government corruption” over bets on prediction markets platforms.
In a Tuesday announcement, Texas Representative Greg Casar and Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy said they had introduced the Banning Event Trading on Sensitive Operations and ​Federal Functions (BETS OFF) Act after several Polymarket accounts made “highly unusual bets” that a war between the US and Israel against Iran would begin.
Murphy said on March 4 that it was likely that people with “inside information” of US President Donald Trump’s plan to bomb Iran had made the bets.
“We shouldn’t live in a country where someone sitting in the situation room making decisions about whether to invade or to bomb, decisions about war and peace, life and death, that those decisions could be driven by the fact that they have hundreds of thousands of dollars riding on the decision,” said Casar.

The bill is the latest twist in US lawmakers’ efforts to crack down on prediction market platforms and accounts allegedly using insider information to profit from government actions. Last week, California Senator Adam Schiff introduced the DEATH BETS Act to prevent prediction markets platforms from listing events contracts related to war, terrorism, assassination and individual deaths.
Related: Arizona AG files charges against Kalshi over ‘illegal gambling‘
Platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi offer bets on a variety of outcomes, including sporting events and US politics. However, users betting on the specifics of the US-Israel conflict with Iran have ignited controversy in many areas of government. On Monday, a military correspondent with the Times of Israel said that he had received death threats over his report of the date when an Iranian missile had struck Israel, all “in order to resolve a prediction on Polymarket.”
War-related bets still live on Polymarket
As of Tuesday, Polymarket still offered users the opportunity to place bets on the outcomes of several potential decisions in the US-Israel conflict against Iran, including on whether the US would send ground forces into the country, when a ceasefire might happen, and changes to Iranian leadership.
“The promise of prediction markets is to harness the wisdom of the crowd to create accurate, unbiased forecasts for the most important events to society,” said Polymarket in a note on Middle East markets. “That ability is particularly invaluable in gut-wrenching times like today. After discussing with those directly affected by the attacks, who had dozens of questions, we realized that prediction markets could give them the answers they needed in ways TV news and [X, formerly Twitter] could not.”
Kalshi, in contrast, offered event contracts related to the Iranian conflict but not on specific military actions, such as if the country might reach a nuclear deal with the US and whether Trump or other elected officials might visit Iran.

In the chaotic world of crypto, most projects throw every function into a single token governance, fees, staking, everything. The result? Gas prices that spike wildly, networks that feel more like trading floors than useful tools, and everyday people getting priced out. Midnight is quietly doing the opposite, and it feels like someone finally got the memo.

The NIGHT token has a clear, focused job: it secures the network and lets holders vote on governance decisions. That’s it. When you actually want to send private transactions or use the platform’s core features, you don’t have to touch your NIGHT at all. The team separated utility from speculation on purpose, and the difference is night-and-day. No more forced token juggling just to do basic stuff.

Even better is how they got these tokens into people’s hands. Instead of the usual insider-heavy vesting rounds and VC allocations, Midnight sent 4.5 billion NIGHT straight into the community. The Glacier Drop and Scavenger Mine events reached users across eight different blockchains. It wasn’t a lazy airdrop either. Scavenger Mine turned distribution into an activity real tasks, real participation, real engagement. People actually had to show up and do things, which weeds out the pure farmers and rewards the ones who care.

The claiming process shows the same care. Tokens don’t flood the market in one go. They unlock gradually over 450 days with multiple stages, plus a thoughtful 90-day grace period if life gets in the way and you miss a claim window. That tiny detail says everything about the mindset: Midnight isn’t rushing to dump supply and chase short-term hype. They’re building for people who plan to stick around.

Paying for services is just as user-friendly. Through their capacity exchange, you can use assets from other ecosystems without ever swapping into NIGHT. If you already hold tokens you like on another chain, you can bring that value straight in. It removes the usual “you must buy our token first” tax that so many projects impose. The barrier to entry drops dramatically.

Fees follow the same honest logic. You only pay for the exact resources your transaction consumes no mystery auctions, no surprise spikes. It’s predictable, transparent, and feels fair in a space where fairness is rare.

Zoom out and the whole design clicks. Midnight isn’t treating privacy like an exclusive club for whales or early insiders. They’re making it accessible, sustainable, and actually useful for normal users. Broad community distribution, gradual unlocks, flexible payments, and resource-based fees all point to a project thinking years ahead instead of next week’s chart.

In an industry full of quick launches and even quicker exits, Midnight’s approach lands like a deep breath. It’s not flashy marketing. It’s thoughtful engineering that puts real users first. And after watching so many projects lose sight of that, it’s genuinely exciting to see.

#night @MidnightNetwork $NIGHT

The current market structure between Bitcoin and Ethereum is starting to reveal a very interesting shift in momentum. While Bitcoin continues to climb steadily, Ethereum is clearly taking the spotlight with a much stronger and more aggressive move.

Looking at the BTC chart first, Bitcoin is trading around 74K after a strong recovery from the 69K zone. On the 4H timeframe the structure remains bullish with consistent higher lows forming. Buyers defended the 71K region very well and pushed price toward the recent high near 74.5K. However, BTC is currently moving in a controlled grind rather than an explosive breakout. This type of movement often signals market stability where the leading asset holds its structure while liquidity begins rotating into other major assets.

Ethereum, on the other hand, is displaying strong momentum. ETH moved from the 2000 area to above 2300 in a relatively short period of time, printing several powerful green candles on the 4H timeframe. The breakout above the 2200 resistance triggered strong buying pressure and pushed price rapidly toward the 2350 zone.

Another key observation is the clear strength difference between the two assets. Bitcoin is posting moderate gains, while Ethereum is showing nearly double digit percentage growth in the same window. Historically, this type of divergence often marks the beginning of an Ethereum outperformance phase where capital rotates from Bitcoin into ETH and eventually into the broader altcoin market.

From a technical perspective, Ethereum is now approaching a critical resistance region around 2350 to 2400. A confirmed breakout and hold above this level could open the door for the next bullish expansion. The first upside target would likely be around 2500, where previous liquidity and psychological resistance exist. If buying pressure continues and overall market sentiment remains strong, the next extended target could appear in the 2700 to 2800 range where a larger resistance cluster is positioned.

For Bitcoin, the key level remains the 74.5K resistance. A clean breakout above this zone would likely push BTC toward the 76K region and potentially the 78K level afterward. However, if Bitcoin continues its slow upward movement while Ethereum accelerates, the market could begin to experience a shift where ETH dominance starts expanding and altcoins gain additional momentum.

At the moment the broader structure suggests a healthy bullish environment. Bitcoin is acting as the market anchor by maintaining stability, while Ethereum is injecting momentum and attracting liquidity.

If both $BTC breaks above 74.5K and $ETH successfully clears the 2350 to 2400 resistance zone, the market could be preparing for the next major leg upward. This combination often signals the early stage of a broader bullish expansion across the crypto ecosystem.

There's this quiet frustration I've had with blockchain for years.

We all say we want privacy the real kind, where your balances, your logic, your entire workflow stays completely hidden from the world. But we also want apps that actually feel alive: fast, responsive, where lots of people can poke the same contract at the same time without everything falling apart.

For a long time, those two wishes just didn't play nice together.

Most privacy solutions work great… until two users touch the same piece of hidden state. Then suddenly you're stuck choosing between leaking information or forcing everyone to wait in line. Concurrency becomes the silent killer.

That's exactly the headache Midnight decided to fix.

**Kachina: Finally Making Multi-User Privacy Feel Natural**

The coolest part of Midnight's design is something they call Kachina. It's basically a smart way to let multiple people interact with the same private contract bidding in an auction, splitting payments, updating shared records without anyone seeing what anyone else is actually doing.

Other chains usually solve this by either locking everything down (slow and painful) or limiting what you can even build. Kachina takes a different route. It gives developers a clean structure so concurrent private actions just… work. No leaks. No weird delays.

Think about it: supply chains, group loans, collaborative DeFi, private DAOs. None of those are single-player games. They need real teamwork happening in real time. Without solid concurrency, private smart contracts stay cute experiments. With it, they become actual infrastructure people will use every day.

The Engine Under the Hood

Once I started digging into how Midnight actually works, it felt less like another blockchain and more like a proper research lab that somehow shipped.

There's a private execution layer (also called Kachina) that runs your contract logic locally first away from public eyes before anything touches the network. Then Nightstream handles the networking side, keeping everything fast and confidential at the same time. Privacy projects usually trade speed for secrecy; Nightstream tries hard not to make that trade.

The part that genuinely impressed me was how they handle zero-knowledge proofs. They use something called Tensor Codes that line up perfectly with modern GPUs. As AI keeps pushing GPU power higher and higher, generating privacy proofs gets cheaper almost for free. That's not just smart engineering that's riding the wave instead of fighting it.

Consensus That Borrows the Best of Both Worlds

They didn't stop at execution either. The consensus layer, Minotaur, mixes proof-of-work and proof-of-stake so the network can pull security from multiple ecosystems at once. No need to pick one camp and pray.

And for the really heavy lifting when proofs start getting massive they use a technique called Folding. It shrinks huge computations down to something the network can actually verify quickly. Again, the kind of detail that separates toys from systems that can actually scale.

The Intention Layer (This Is Where It Gets Exciting)

But the piece that really makes me pay attention is the Universal Intention Layer.

Normal smart contracts force you to spell out every single step like a recipe. Midnight flips it: you just declare what you *want* to happen, and the network figures out the safest, most private way to make it real—across chains if needed.

Now imagine AI agents doing business on your behalf. They won't want to expose every decision they make. They'll need infrastructure that stays invisible while still getting things done. Midnight's whole stack private computation, zero-knowledge proofs, decentralized identities starts to look like the perfect foundation for that future.

That's why I keep coming back to this project.

Not because it's another token or another chain. But because it's quietly solving problems that most teams have quietly given up on.

And if they pull it off, private blockchain apps might finally stop feeling like science projects.

#night @MidnightNetwork
$NIGHT