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Here are some major developments across the crypto and DeFi space of late:
1) MARA sold 15,133 Bitcoin for roughly $1.1B between 4 March and 25 March and used the proceeds to fund a $1B buyback of its 0% convertible senior notes due 2030 and 2031.
The company agreed to repurchase around $367.5M of its 2030 notes for $322.9M and $633.4M of its 2031 notes for $589.9M, effectively retiring debt at a discount.
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2) Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chairman, Michael S. Selig, announced the launch of the Innovation Task Force to provide clearer regulatory direction for emerging technologies in U.S. derivatives markets, as activity grows in areas like crypto and AI.
The initiative will initially focus on crypto assets, blockchain, artificial intelligence, and prediction markets to support responsible innovation while maintaining U.S. competitiveness.
Led by Michael J. Passalacqua, the task force will also coordinate with agencies, including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and its Crypto Task Force, to align oversight alongside the Innovation Advisory Committee.
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3) Robinhood’s Board of Directors approved a new $1.5B share repurchase program, expected to be executed over the next three years, with flexibility to adjust based on market conditions.
This builds on its previous programs announced in 2024 and 2025, where Robinhood have repurchased more than 25M shares at an average price of around $45, totalling over $1.1B.
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4) ParaFi Capital has reportedly raised $125M for a new venture fund.
According to Bloomberg, the New York-based firm is focusing the new capital on areas such as stablecoins, tokenisation and institutional onchain finance.
Outside the new fund, ParaFi has also raised a further $325M for its broader digital asset strategies since the start of 2025, bringing total assets under management to around $2B.
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5) Grayscale has filed to launch a HYPE ETF on March 20th, offering public market exposure to Hyperliquid’s native token.
The proposed fund, which would trade on Nasdaq under the ticker GHYP if approved, would track HYPE using CoinDesk benchmark data and custody assets with Coinbase Custody.
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6) NYSE Arca and NYSE American have become the final major U.S. exchanges to drop the 25,000-contract cap on spot BTC and ETH ETF options, bringing crypto ETF options into line with the treatment of other commodity-based ETF options across all major U.S. exchanges.
With the SEC waiving the standard waiting period, the changes took effect immediately and also allowed these products to trade as FLEX options (Flexible Exchange Options).
Separately, Nasdaq ISE is still seeking approval to raise IBIT-specific position limits to 1M contracts.
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7) Kalshi and Polymarket are tightening controls around insider trading and market manipulation as Senate scrutiny of prediction markets intensifies.
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8) Strategy stated in its official press release that it is expanding its capital-raising platform with new at-the-market programmes for up to $21B of STRC preferred stock and $21B of MSTR common stock.
The filing also adds new sales agents, keeps prior MSTR and STRC issuance programmes in place, and replaces the prior STRK programme with a new $2.1B STRK facility.
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9) Morgan Stanley has advanced its spot Bitcoin ETF application with a second amended S-1 filing, adding key operational details including the ticker, MSBT, proposed NYSE Arca listing, and seed basket structure.
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10) Amundi, Europe’s largest asset manager, has launched the Spiko Amundi Overnight Swap Fund (SAFO), a tokenized fund debuting with $100M in committed AUM across Ethereum and Stellar.
Designed for treasury and collateral management, the fund offers near-instant settlement, multi-currency subscriptions and redemptions, and 24/7 transferability, with Chainlink providing on-chain NAV reporting.
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11) Kalshi is reportedly raising $1B in a new funding round at a $22B valuation, marking a sharp step-up from its previous $11B valuation following its late-2025 Series E raise.
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12) Moody’s announced the launch of its new network-agnostic Token Integration Engine (TIE).
The first rollout is on the Canton Network, where Moody’s is also operating a node, embedding credit insight directly into blockchain-based financial workflows rather than leaving it as a separate off-chain input.
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13) Flow Traders, a leading global technology-enabled principal trading firm and liquidity provider, is expanding its 24/7 OTC desk into tokenised assets, offering two-way liquidity in products such as Franklin Templeton’s BENJI and Tether Gold (XAUT).
The development allows institutional clients to trade and hedge exposure outside traditional market hours using either fiat or stablecoins.
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14) Evernorth, a crypto treasury firm focused on building institutional exposure to XRP, has filed an S-4 with the SEC to go public via a $1B SPAC merger with Armada Acquisition Corp. II.
The company’s strategy focuses on holding and actively deploying XRP, and the combined entity is expected to launch with at least 473M XRP on its balance sheet.
If completed, the Nasdaq listing would position Evernorth as a dedicated vehicle for both price exposure and yield generation.
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15) Polymarket has acquired crypto payments startup Brahma in a move aimed at improving the platform’s trading experience and deepening liquidity, particularly in thinner, niche prediction markets, according to its statement on Wednesday.
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16) HIVE Digital Technologies announced that its first AI GPU cluster in Paraguay is now live, marking an early move beyond bitcoin mining and into high-performance computing.
The Asunción-based deployment, part of its BUZZ AI Cloud platform, is already running large language model training workloads and will serve as a proof-of-concept for scaling AI infrastructure across the company’s hydro-powered footprint in the country.
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CLUSDT is a crude oil-linked perpetual contract quoted against USDT, with its pricing anchored to CL - the index that tracks the front-month WTI crude oil futures contract (Bybit: USOUSD).
As the key benchmark for US oil price discovery, CL is the instrument through which the market most directly reprices changes in crude fundamentals. That importance extends well beyond the energy complex - movements in oil feed directly into fuel costs, inflation expectations, transport margins and broader cross-asset risk sentiment.
As a result, CL is closely watched across both traditional finance and crypto markets, especially in light of the ongoing Middle East conflict.
What's driving CL at present is a sharp repricing of a global oil shock.
In its March 2026 Oil Market Report, the IEA said the war in the Middle East is creating the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market.
It noted that crude and product flows through the Strait of Hormuz had fallen from around 20M barrels per day (mb/d) before the war to minimal levels, and that Gulf producers had cut total oil production by at least 10 mb/d as storage filled and alternative export capacity proved limited.
The crisis has intensified global energy pressures, with Chevron warning of a potential California fuel crisis, hundreds of fuel shortages reported in Australia, the Philippines declaring a national energy emergency, and Asian nations reportedly hoarding jet fuel.
Bybit listed CLUSDT Perpetual Contract on 24 March 2026. Trading is now open with up to 50x leverage.
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