Crypto World
Solana survived six years of near-death experiences
The Solana blockchain turned six years old yesterday, and the community has taken the opportunity to reiterate its motto, “Just one more hard quarter.”
Although intended as a source of pride about the grit and determination of workers under the leadership of founder Anatoly Yakavenko, the motto could just as easily describe the experience of using the Solana blockchain.
Since its first multi-hour outage in 2020, Solana users have endured weeks of combined mainnet disruption, bridge collapses, wallet drains, market manipulation, and the criminal conviction of its once-most influential tokenholder and supporter, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF).
However, after six years of near-death experiences, Solana is still here. Whether it can credit resilience or stubbornness for its success depends on the user’s perspective on those difficult times.
Even its own social media manager was conflicted, posting a birthday message with a picture that hinted at a solider in the trenches.
Solana outages since its founding year
Solana’s mainnet, built by former Qualcomm engineer Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder Raj Gokal, and other developers, went live on March 16, 2020.
Their first catastrophe struck before the network’s first birthday.
On December 4, 2020, a bug in Turbine, Solana’s block propagation system, halted the entire blockchain for six hours. A validator transmitted two conflicting blocks for the same slot, and the network split into partitions.
Nine months later, a series of misfortunes began that would eventually make Solana outages so well-known that its offline status became a meme.
On September 14, 2021, bots flooded the network during Grape Protocol’s IDO on Raydium. Over 300,000 transactions per second overwhelmed validator memory. The chain went dark for 17 hours.
Then 2022 arrived. There’s no other year containing more media attention about a blockchain repeatedly failing than Solana’s outages across almost every month of 2022.
The miracle of Solana surviving 2022
Between January 6 and 12, bots spamming duplicate transactions degraded Solana’s network so badly that transaction success rates dropped 70%.
Another wave of outages from January 21 to 23 repeatedly knocked Solana’s public RPC endpoints offline.
- On February 2, hackers exploited the Wormhole inter-blockchain bridge between Solana and Ethereum, minted 120,000 fraudulently wrapped ether, and stole over $320 million. Within hours, Jump Trading covered the loss from its corporate balance sheet.
- On April 30, NFT minting bots hit the Candy Machine program with millions of requests per second, crashing Solana’s blockchain’s consensus-making. The blockchain was down for about seven hours.
- On June 1, a durable nonce bug stalled blocks for over four hours.
- On August 2, a hacker drained over 9,000 wallets of millions of dollars worth of Solana assets. Slope, a once-popular Solana wallet, had leaked private keys through a misconfigured Sentry server.
- Less than two months later on September 30, a validator’s malfunctioning hot-spare node produced duplicate blocks. A fork-selection bug halted consensus for over eight hours.
- On October 11, Avraham Eisenberg manipulated Mango Markets’ MNGO price oracle and drained over $110 million from the Solana-based exchange. A jury convicted him in April 2024.
Read more: CHART: It’s been 262 days since Solana’s last major outage
‘Sam coin’ crashes as Sam crashes
Solana’s worst days in history began on November 11, 2022. FTX, Alameda Research, and over 100 affiliates filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Founder SBF had held massive solana (SOL) positions and had become so influential in the Solana community that many people called SOL a “Sam coin” alongside FTT and his other doomed darlings.
The panic around SBF’s demise sent SOL from roughly $33 to under $10 by late December, a 97% collapse from its November 2021 cycle high of $259.
SOL bottomed below $8 in December 2022.
Going into 2023, Solana’s ecosystem hemorrhaged developers, projects, and credibility.
In fact, the bankruptcy estates of Alameda and FTX still hold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of SOL as of writing time. Bankruptcy trustees periodically unstake and liquidate tokens for creditor distributions.
Survival and Solana’s 6th birthday
Unfortunately, Solana kept breaking. On February 25, 2023, a malfunctioning validator broadcast an abnormally large block which overwhelmed Solana’s “Turbine” deduplication logic.
Yet again, the blockchain was offline for nearly an entire day.
Almost a year later, on February 6, 2024, an infinite recompile loop halted Solana’s mainnet for five hours. The bug had been spotted a week earlier but never patched.
With at least seven total blockchain outages totaling at least three full days of combined downtime, Solana users have suffered weeks of degraded performance and years of uncertainty about whether mainnet will remain stable.
Moreover, users have suffered hundreds of millions of dollars in a bridge hack, manipulations of DEX exchanges, and multiple drains of wallets affecting thousands of users.
At its worst moment, they suffered alongside the collapse of one of history’s most notorious fraudsters and dubiously generous patron, SBF.
With SOL now trading at roughly $96 per coin on its sixth birthday, Yakovenko called the celebration “six years of perfection.”
The community motto describes history more aptly: “Just one more hard quarter.”
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The SEC has issued an official interpretation clarifying the application of federal securities laws to crypto assets and transactions, marking a significant step in regulatory clarity for the industry.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission have jointly released a sweeping interpretive guidance that formally classifies major crypto assets and activities under federal securities law, a long-awaited move that ends years of regulatory ambiguity that industry participants described as “regulation by enforcement.”
The guidance, Release No. 33-11412, establishes a five-category taxonomy for crypto assets and clarifies the legal status of a range of on-chain activities including staking, mining, airdrops, and token wrapping.
A New Taxonomy
At the heart of the document is a classification system that divides crypto assets into five categories: digital commodities, digital collectibles, digital tools, stablecoins, and digital securities.
The most consequential determination for the market is the SEC’s explicit designation of 16 major tokens as digital commodities — assets that derive their value from the programmatic operation of a functional crypto network rather than from the managerial efforts of a centralized party. The list includes Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Solana (SOL), XRP, Cardano (ADA), Avalanche (AVAX), Chainlink (LINK), Dogecoin (DOGE), and eight others. As digital commodities, these assets are not securities and fall outside SEC jurisdiction, though they could be subject to CFTC oversight as commodities under the Commodity Exchange Act.
NFTs, Meme Coins, and Fan Tokens
The guidance also formally addresses NFTs and meme coins, classifying them as digital collectibles — assets with artistic, entertainment, social, or cultural value. Examples cited include CryptoPunks, Chromie Squiggles, and the meme coin WIF. The SEC notes that meme coins are typically acquired for non-investment purposes, their value driven by supply and demand rather than any issuer’s efforts, and are therefore not securities.
However, the agencies drew one notable bright line: fractionalizing a digital collectible — splitting a single NFT into multiple ownership interests — could constitute a securities offering, because it introduces elements of shared investment and reliance on managerial efforts.
Fan tokens received a nuanced treatment, with the SEC noting they have “hybrid characteristics” and could also be classified as digital tools.
Staking and Mining Get a Safe Harbor
One of the most practically significant sections of the guidance covers protocol staking and protocol mining, both of which the SEC determined are not securities transactions. The ruling covers solo staking, third-party custodial staking, and liquid staking arrangements — provided that staking providers do not guarantee fixed returns, do not use deposited assets for speculation or rehypothecation, and function as administrative agents rather than active managers of investor funds.
Liquid staking receipt tokens — the tokenized receipts issued to depositors in liquid staking protocols — are similarly deemed non-securities when they represent non-security underlying assets. This determination is significant for protocols like Lido and Rocket Pool, which issue tokens such as stETH and rETH.
Wrapped Tokens Also in the Clear
The guidance also provides clarity on token wrapping, concluding that redeemable wrapped tokens — one-for-one representations of an underlying crypto asset, such as wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) — are not securities when the underlying asset is itself a non-security. The SEC specifies that wrapped token providers cannot use deposited assets for any purpose, including lending or trading, for this safe harbor to apply.
From “Regulation by Enforcement” to a Written Framework
The joint release comes after years of industry frustration with SEC enforcement actions against crypto firms, which many characterized as the agency’s primary tool for defining the regulatory perimeter. The guidance explicitly acknowledges those criticisms, noting that the SEC’s previous approach prompted complaints that it was pursuing actions rather than “developing a tailored regulatory framework that accommodates crypto asset innovation.”
The new framework grows out of work by the SEC’s Crypto Task Force, established in January 2025 under then-Acting Chairman Mark T. Uyeda, and was formalized as “Project Crypto” under Chairman Paul S. Atkins following a White House working group report on digital asset markets released in July 2025. On January 29, 2026, Atkins and CFTC Chairman Michael S. Selig announced the initiative would proceed jointly between both agencies.
The SEC emphasized that the guidance does not replace the Howey test — the Supreme Court precedent used to determine what constitutes an investment contract — but rather articulates how the agency interprets its application to crypto assets. Importantly, the guidance supersedes prior SEC staff statements on topics including meme coins, stablecoins, proof-of-work mining, and staking.
What Remains a Security
The document makes clear that assets structured as digital securities — tokenized stocks, bonds, or other traditional financial instruments recorded on a blockchain — remain fully subject to securities law regardless of their on-chain format. It also reaffirms that any non-security crypto asset can become subject to an investment contract if issuers make explicit promises of profit tied to their own managerial efforts — the classic token sale model — and that such investment contracts must be registered or exempt.
The agencies are soliciting public comment on the guidance and indicated the framework may be revised or expanded based on feedback.
This article was written with the assistance of AI workflows. All our stories are curated, edited and fact-checked by a human.
Tether has unveiled a cross-platform AI training framework that the company says can fine-tune large language models on consumer hardware, including smartphones and non-NVIDIA GPUs. The system, part of Tether’s QVAC platform, leans on Microsoft’s BitNet architecture and LoRA techniques to shrink memory and compute demands, potentially lowering the cost and hardware barriers for developers. The announcement positions the framework as compatible with a broad spectrum of chips—from AMD and Intel to Apple Silicon—along with mobile GPUs from Qualcomm and Apple. In internal tests, engineers reportedly fine-tuned models with up to 1 billion parameters on smartphones in under two hours, with smaller models achievable in minutes, and supported models as large as 13 billion parameters on mobile devices.
Key takeaways
- Tether’s QVAC framework leverages a 1-bit model architecture (BitNet) to drastically cut VRAM usage, enabling larger models to run on constrained hardware.
- LoRA-based fine-tuning is extended to non-NVIDIA hardware, broadening compatibility across AMD, Intel, and Apple Silicon platforms, as well as mobile GPUs from Qualcomm and Apple.
- On-device training and federated learning are highlighted as potential use cases, pointing to reduced reliance on centralized cloud compute for model updates.
- Performance gains extend to inference, with mobile GPUs reportedly delivering faster results for BitNet models than traditional CPU workloads.
- The move fits a broader industry trend of crypto firms expanding into AI compute and high-performance computing, touching on AI data center capacity and autonomous software agents.
Tickers mentioned: $BTC, $USDT, $USDC, $COIN, $HIVE
Sentiment: Neutral
Market context: The push to bring AI training and inference closer to edge devices mirrors a broader shift toward on-device AI and distributed learning within crypto and fintech ecosystems, alongside ongoing capital allocation to AI compute by mining operators and data-center firms.
Why it matters
For a market built on trust in programmable money and permissionless ecosystems, the ability to run substantial AI workloads on consumer hardware could recalibrate who can train and fine-tune models. By reducing VRAM requirements by up to 77.8% compared with comparable 16-bit models, according to Tether, the BitNet-based framework tackles one of the most persistent friction points in edge AI: memory constraints. This could enable developers to push more experimentation to devices that sit closer to users, potentially enabling privacy-preserving on-device training and federated learning, where updates are aggregated locally rather than uploaded to centralized servers.
Beyond the novelty of running billion-parameter models on smartphones, the initiative hints at a broader strategy: crypto firms are leaning into AI and HPC to support new products and services, from on-chain analytics to autonomous agents that transact or interact with services. The article notes that major players have already begun integrating AI into core operations or exploring AI-driven infrastructure. As crypto mining and data-center operators seek higher-margin use cases, AI compute becomes a natural extension of the sector’s infrastructure footprint. This aligns with a wider trend of institutional players diversifying into AI workloads, underscoring how blockchain-native firms view AI as a critical component of long-term scalability and product development.
On the technology side, the cross-platform capability signals a shift away from Nvidia-dominated AI stacks toward more hardware-agnostic approaches. The combination of a 1-bit model architecture with LoRA fine-tuning on non-NVIDIA hardware expands the potential hardware pool for AI development, a move that could accelerate experimentation and reduce barriers for smaller teams or individual developers who rely on consumer devices. This development is also likely to influence how AI agents—autonomous programs that interact with services and execute tasks—are trained and updated on-device, potentially strengthening privacy-preserving use cases by minimizing data transfer to cloud endpoints.
The broader industry backdrop includes crypto firms expanding into AI-enabled services and data centers. For example, strategic moves by miners and infrastructure vendors to scale AI compute capacity have been reported in recent quarters, with several large players pursuing AI-centric data-center deployments and partnerships. While the immediate impact of Tether’s framework remains to be demonstrated at scale, the emphasis on cross-platform interoperability and on-device capabilities suggests a future where AI tooling becomes more accessible to a wider range of devices, including those with limited compute budgets.
What to watch next
- Adoption pace: Will other crypto firms and AI developers publicly deploy BitNet-based training on consumer hardware, and what applications emerge first?
- Cross-platform expansion: How quickly will the LoRA-enabled workflow extend to additional non-NVIDIA GPUs and mobile accelerators?
- On-device AI pilots: Will we see real-world federated learning deployments or on-device training pilots that demonstrate data privacy benefits?
- Competitive benchmarks: Independent tests comparing BitNet-based training to traditional GPU-centric workflows across edge devices and data centers.
- Ecosystem partnerships: Any collaborations with wallet providers, AI agents, or on-chain analytics platforms that integrate edge-trained models into user-facing products.
Sources & verification
- Tether’s QVAC launch announcement detailing the cross-platform BitNet/LoRA framework and its aims. Verify at the official Tether news page linked in the announcement.
- The QVAC/BitNet framework’s claimed VRAM and parameter-strength reductions, as described in Tether’s release.
- HIVE Digital Technologies’ reported AI/HPC-driven revenue and performance metrics cited in industry coverage from Cointelegraph.
- World’s AgentKit and related AI agent verification and payment capabilities, as described in World’s official communications and coverage.
- Coinbase’s wallet infrastructure for AI agents and the Alchemy system enabling access to blockchain data via USDC, as reported in coverage cited in the article.
What to watch next
Keep an eye on updates from Tether on QVAC milestones, including any broader platform integrations or additional hardware compatibility announcements. Monitor whether other crypto-native or fintech firms begin publishing performance benchmarks or pilot deployments that validate on-device training claims. Finally, track moves by AI and crypto industry players toward federated learning and privacy-preserving on-device inference, which could reshape how models are trained and updated in distributed networks.
Sources & verification
- Tether QVAC launch: https://tether.io/news/tethers-qvac-launches-worlds-first-cross-platform-bitnet-lora-framework-to-enable-billion-parameter-ai-training-and-inference-on-consumer-gpus-and-smartphones/
- HIVE Digital Technologies revenue context: https://cointelegraph.com/news/hive-digital-focus-crypto-mining-ai-data-centers
- World AgentKit and human-verified AI agents: https://cointelegraph.com/news/world-launches-agentkit-coinbase-integration-enable-human-verified-ai-agents-embargo
- Coinbase wallet infrastructure for AI agents: https://cointelegraph.com/news/coinbase-launches-crypto-wallets-built-ai-agents
- Alchemy AI agents data access using USDC: https://cointelegraph.com/news/alchemy-ai-agents-pay-access-blockchain-data-usdc
Key figures and next steps
With Tether positioning QVAC as a cross-platform compute framework and citing substantial reductions in memory requirements, the company signals a strategic pivot toward enabling AI workloads on widely available hardware. If the framework gains traction, developers could see accelerated experimentation on consumer devices, expanding the reach of AI-assisted on-chain tools and analytics. The coming months will reveal whether these capabilities translate into broader developer adoption, practical on-device AI pilots, and tangible reductions in cloud compute demand for crypto-related AI tasks.
What this could mean for users and builders
For end users, the potential exists for faster, more private AI-powered features embedded in wallets and on-chain services. For builders, the framework lowers the barrier to prototype, test, and refine AI models without the need for high-end data-center GPUs. In a sector where compute cost can be a constraint, this shift toward edge AI adoption aligns with long-term goals of decentralization, privacy, and efficiency. It also underscores the ongoing convergence between crypto infrastructure and advanced AI compute, a development that could influence everything from on-chain data services to the design of autonomous agents and governance tools. As with any new technology, scalability, security considerations, and interoperability standards will shape how quickly such capabilities mature and how widely they are adopted across the ecosystem.
Moody’s Ratings has debuted a system to deliver its credit analysis onchain, bringing its ratings data into blockchain-based financial infrastructure.
The system, called Token Integration Engine (TIE), connects Moody’s traditional ratings data to blockchain networks, allowing permissioned participants to access credit insights within blockchain-based financial workflows. It is built for institutional use, with issuers controlling participation while Moody’s retains oversight of its ratings process.
The company claims it is the first credit rating agency to deliver its credit analysis onchain. In June 2025, Moody’s teamed up with a fintech startup called Alphaledger to run a pilot program to explore how traditional credit ratings could be integrated into blockchain systems.
The initial deployment runs on the Canton Network, a permissioned blockchain designed for institutional finance. Moody’s is operating its own node on the network as part of the rollout, and said it plans to expand the system to additional blockchains and asset types.
The system is designed to be network-agnostic, with access controlled by issuers under the company’s existing governance and compliance framework.
Moody’s, a US-based credit rating agency founded in 1909 with operations in more than 40 countries, assesses the creditworthiness of governments, companies and financial instruments, with its ratings widely used by investors across global capital markets.
Related: Crypto accounting startup Cryptio lands $45M as institutions move onchain
The rise of the Canton Network
Moody’s deployment adds to the growing use of the Canton Network as infrastructure for institutional blockchain applications, particularly in tokenized assets and collateral markets.
A growing list of asset managers are integrating tokenized funds into the network. Franklin Templeton expanded its Benji platform to Canton in November, allowing its tokenized assets, including a US government money market fund, to be used as collateral and liquidity within the ecosystem.
Other efforts have focused on market infrastructure and settlement. In December, the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC) said it plans to issue a subset of US Treasury securities on Canton, extending blockchain-based processes into core clearing and settlement systems, with potential expansion to additional asset classes.
Banks and digital asset infrastructure platforms are also building on the network. In January, Digital Asset and Kinexys by JPMorgan said they plan to bring JPMorgan’s dollar deposit token, JPM Coin, to Canton, while Temple Digital Group launched a platform enabling 24/7 trading of digital assets through a central limit order book with non-custodial settlement.
The value of Canton Coin, the network’s native token, has increased about 30% since its launch in November 2025, according to CoinGecko data.
Magazine: China’s ‘50x’ blockchain boost, Alibaba-linked AI mines Bitcoin: Asia Express
For the first time, the U.S Securities and Exchange Commission has sought to clearly define different types of crypto assets and how the regulator will approach them, issuing those new standards Tuesday alongside its sister agency that’s responsible for commodities.
The SEC’s interpretive guidance, which doesn’t yet carry the weight of a formal new rule, has been promised by its new leader, Chairman Paul Atkins, put in place by President Donald Trump. And it was issued in partnership with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, just days after the two agencies agreed on a formal relationship in which they plan to regulate crypto and other industries as close partners.
“After more than a decade of uncertainty, this interpretation will provide market participants with a clear understanding of how the Commission treats crypto assets under federal securities laws,” Atkins said in a statement.
The previous chairman of the SEC, Democratic appointee Gary Gensler, had declined to commit to tailored policies for the crypto sector, leaving a longstanding gap in its regulator certainty in the world’s most important market.
Atkins said the new “token taxonomy” interpretation on Tuesday takes a stance that Gensler’s agency refused to: “Most crypto assets are not themselves securities.”
He said in remarks at the Digital Chamber’s DC Blockchain Summit that the SEC created four categories of tokens.
“The interpretation then clarifies that only one crypto asset class remains subject to securities laws, namely digital securities, which are traditional securities in new technology,” he said. “This distinction returns the SEC to its core mission and statutory authority of protecting investors involved in securities transactions.”
Additionally, those investment contracts that are securities don’t necessarily keep that status permanently, he said.
“We’re not the securities and everything commission anymore,” he said Tuesday at the Digital Chamber’s DC Blockchain Summit, just minutes after releasing the new standard. The line drew enthusiastic applause from the crypto crowd.
The guidance seeks to define digital commodities, digital collectibles, digital tools, stablecoins and digital securities. It also clarifies how U.S. securities laws should treat airdrops, protocol mining, protocol staking and the wrapping non-security crypto assets.
“For far too long, American builders, innovators, and entrepreneurs have awaited clear guidance on the status of crypto assets under the federal securities and commodity laws,” said CFTC Chairman Mike Selig.
Atkins said that the legislation being devised in Congress to establish new crypto laws will be the only way to guarantee the permanence of pro-digital assets policy shifts.
In the new guidance, the commission is saying that a digital asset becomes a security when its issuer offers it as an investment in a common enterprise that comes with promises of profits based on the management’s efforts. Such an investment contract ends, though, when “either the issuer has fulfilled its representations or promises or the issuer has failed to satisfy its representations or promises,” at which point it wouldn’t be regulated as a security anymore.
The agency says its reach into digital securities does not include airdrops, protocol staking and protocol mining.
The CFTC’s Selig said his agency was also signing on to the same taxonomy, as part of the two agencies’ push toward “harmonization.”
“I think the signal is clear now that it’s time to build in the United States,” he said.
UPDATE (March 17, 2026, 20:35 UTC): Adds additional detail.
The court ordered Google and Apple to restrict Polymarket after investigators flagged unregulated betting and missing identity checks across Argentina.
Argentina has moved to restrict access to the prediction market platform Polymarket after a Buenos Aires court determined it was operating as an unauthorized betting service.
In a ruling issued by Judge Susana Parada, authorities ordered a country-wide block on the website and instructed Google and Apple to remove or limit access to its application on mobile devices.
No License, No Limits
The measure comes after an investigation by Prosecutor Juan Rozas, who oversees gambling-related cases in the city. As part of the enforcement, the telecom regulator Ente Nacional de Comunicaciones (ENACOM) has been directed to ensure internet service providers prevent access to the platform within the country.
The probe concluded that Polymarket allowed users to trade on the outcomes of real-world events without complying with gambling regulations. Prosecutors said accounts could be created rapidly without identity or age checks, which ended up enabling unrestricted participation, including by minors.
They further stated that the platform facilitated payments via cryptocurrencies and credit cards without applying the controls required for regulated betting operations. The case was triggered by a complaint from the Lotería de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, which alleged that the platform was offering services locally without authorization. Additional verification conducted with the Asociación de Loterías Estatales de Argentina found no record of Polymarket holding a licence in any jurisdiction.
The court’s decision surfaced publicly during a broader controversy linked to Argentina’s inflation data. Shortly before the release of February figures by the national statistics agency INDEC, market probabilities on international prediction platforms moved toward a higher reading.
While analysts had largely estimated inflation between 2.6% and 2.8%, the official figure came in at 2.9%. Activity on Polymarket tied to that data point saw trading volumes rise to roughly $91,000 in the minutes preceding publication, which led some observers to question whether the data had circulated in advance.
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The development adds to a growing trend of regulatory crackdowns on prediction market services, with companies like Polymarket and Kalshi increasingly coming under legal or supervisory pressure in a range of jurisdictions, among them France, Germany, Italy, Australia, Singapore, Portugal, Hungary, Thailand, and the Netherlands.
Polymarket Intelligence Misuse
Earlier this year, Israeli authorities formally charged an IDF reservist and a civilian over alleged misuse of classified military intelligence to gain an advantage on the prediction platform. A joint probe by the Defense Ministry, Shin Bet, and national police found that sensitive operational knowledge may have been leveraged to place high-confidence bets on future military developments.
Prosecutors filed serious charges, including security violations, bribery, and obstruction of justice, while a court-imposed gag order limits further disclosures.
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The crypto rally is took a pause on Tuesday ahead of Wednesday’s Federal Reserve decision.
After briefly topping $76,000 overnight, bitcoin pulled back to around $74,000 during the U.S. session, modestly higher over the past 24 hours.
Crypto stocks mostly booked modest gains, with stablecoin issuer Circle (CRCL), bitcoin miner Bitdeer (BTDR) standing out advancing 5% and 12%, respectively. The Nasdaq closed with a 0.5% gain and the S&P 500 rose 0.25%.
It’s almost universally expected that the Fed will leave benchmark interest rates unchanged at 3.50%-3.75% tomorrow. But given rapidly rising oil prices and their possible effect on inflation thanks to the war in Iran, the focus shifts to Jerome Powell’s messaging and policymakers’ outlook for future rates.
Bitfinex analysts said the key question is whether policymakers still signal rate cuts in 2026 or are moving towards the idea of no further monetary ease. A more hawkish outcome could weigh on risk assets by strengthening the dollar, they said.
Powell’s take on the recent oil advance will also be in focus. Treating it as a temporary shock would support sentiment, while a more stagflationary view could limit the Fed’s flexibility.
Also coming on Wedesday is the February Producer Price Index report. Tyically not having nearly the weight of the Consumer Price Index, the PPI will be a bit more closely followed given its timing ahead of the Fed meeting.
“A hot PPI number followed by a hawkish FOMC would be the most damaging combination for equities and risk assets,” the Bitfinex team continued.
That backdrop is already showing up in market expectations toward a higher-for-longer rate path, according to Vetle Lunde, head of research at K33.
The probability of rates staying unchanged through the July meeting has jumped to over 60% from 22% last month, with potential cuts now pushed further into late 2026, he said in a Tuesday note.
For now, price action will likely remain muted. “We expect the $74,000–$76,000 region to cap price momentarily,” Bitfinex analysts concluded.
Crypto World
Next Pepe Coin: Why Investors Are Choosing Pepeto Over AlphaPepe and Other Presales as Exchange Listings Approach
Pepeto is emerging as the strongest point of interest among presale buyers in 2026 as investors become more selective about where they place capital. In a market still full of empty promises and roadmap heavy launches, Pepeto is gaining traction by offering something most meme coins cannot: three real products close to launch, the PEPE cofounder, and $8.1 million in presale funding according to CoinDesk.
That distinction is becoming increasingly important. Early stage crypto buyers are paying closer attention to whether a project has real infrastructure, verified audits, and a team with a track record. On that basis, Pepeto is starting to stand apart from every other presale in the market, including projects like AlphaPepe according to Cointelegraph.
Why Pepeto is resonating more strongly with investors
1. Pepeto
A major part of Pepeto’s appeal is that it does not ask buyers to trust a team with no track record. The PEPE cofounder who built PEPE Coin is behind this project, which gives participants real confidence in what they are buying. The difference may sound minor at first, but it changes the entire investment case. Instead of putting money into a meme coin with nothing behind it, buyers get three real products approaching launch and a SolidProof audited contract.
That makes Pepeto feel more like a real investment and less like a gamble, even though it still sits firmly in the high upside segment of the market where the next Dogecoin will come from. Investors are also responding to the fact that Pepeto has built 196% APY staking directly into the presale phase, compressing supply every single day.
Rather than limiting the experience to buying and waiting, Pepeto has created an ecosystem where PepetoSwap, Pepeto Bridge, and Pepeto Exchange will keep holders engaged long after listings begin.
That makes the ecosystem easier to believe in and gives the presale more momentum than a typical meme coin launch. One reason Pepeto is drawing more attention than competing presales is that $8.1 million raised and three products close to launch present it as an active ecosystem, not a static fundraise.
The broader structure, including PepetoSwap, Pepeto Bridge, Pepeto Exchange, and 196% APY staking, gives buyers the impression that this token is attached to a growing ecosystem instead of a one dimensional meme coin pump.
2. AlphaPepe
AlphaPepe offers instant token delivery and a participation model that keeps buyers engaged after the initial purchase. The project includes features like reward claims and rank progression that give the presale more activity than a typical token sale page.
For investors who want immediate visibility over their position, AlphaPepe delivers on that front. But AlphaPepe does not have the infrastructure depth that Pepeto brings with three announced products, a SolidProof audit, and the PEPE cofounder behind the entire build.
3. Kaspa
Kaspa holds at $0.035 as of March 17 with a loyal community and consistent on chain transaction volumes that reflect real usage. But analysts project a potential dip toward $0.027 by mid April before any meaningful recovery comes through. 
The fully diluted valuation already bakes in significant adoption, and the returns from here are measured in modest single or low double digit percentages. For investors looking for the next Shiba Inu level entry, Pepeto at six zeros offers a fundamentally different opportunity category with far more upside potential.
Do not be the person who watches from the sidelines
Pepeto is gaining an edge over every other presale because it offers something no other meme coin has: three real products, the PEPE cofounder, and $8.1 million in proof that investors believe in it. The people who hesitated on DOGE at fractions of a penny and SHIB before it exploded know exactly what it feels like to miss a life changing entry.
That regret is what drives smart investors to act early on projects like Pepeto. They can see the $8.1 million raised, the three products approaching launch, and the SolidProof audit, and they know this is the kind of setup that creates the next wave of crypto millionaires.
Do not be the person who watches Pepeto list on exchanges and realizes they should have bought when it was still at six zeros. Visit the Pepeto official website and enter the presale today.
Click To Visit Pepeto Website To Enter The Presale
FAQs
Why are investors choosing Pepeto over other presales?
Three products close to launch, the PEPE cofounder, SolidProof audit, and $8.1M raised set it apart.
What makes Pepeto the next Pepe coin?
The same cofounder who built PEPE Coin is behind Pepeto, with real infrastructure this time.
Could Pepeto have stronger upside than rival presales?
At $0.000000186 with three products approaching launch, Pepeto has the steepest trajectory in the presale market.
The post Next Pepe Coin: Why Investors Are Choosing Pepeto Over AlphaPepe and Other Presales as Exchange Listings Approach appeared first on Blockonomi.
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes announced that her office filed gambling and related criminal charges against the companies behind prediction markets platform Kalshi.
In a Tuesday notice, Mayes said that the charges alleged that Kalshi operated an “illegal gambling business in Arizona without a license” and offered election wagering, in violation of state laws. Arizona authorities alleged that Kalshi’s prediction markets platform allowed state residents to bet on event contracts related to sports and state and federal elections.
“Kalshi may brand itself as a ‘prediction market,’ but what it’s actually doing is running an illegal gambling operation and taking bets on Arizona elections, both of which violate Arizona law,” said Mayes. “No company gets to decide for itself which laws to follow.”
According to the AG’s office, the charges followed Kalshi filing its own lawsuit against Arizona “preemptively in an attempt to avoid accountability under Arizona law.” State authorities have filed similar lawsuits against the companies of prediction market platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi.
Related: Kalshi suffers court loss in Ohio over sports betting lawsuit
“Sadly, a state can file criminal charges on paper-thin arguments,” a Kalshi spokesperson told Cointelegraph. “States like Arizona want to individually regulate a nationwide financial exchange, and are trying every trick in the book to do it. As other courts have recognized and the CFTC affirms, Kalshi is subject to federal jurisdiction. It’s different from what sportsbooks and casinos offer their customers, and it should not be overseen by a patchwork of inconsistent state laws.”
Last week, an Ohio judge denied Kalshi’s request for a preliminary injunction in a similar case against state authorities, saying that the company had failed to show that the sports event contracts available on the platform were subject to the “exclusive jurisdiction” of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). However, in February, a federal judge in Tennessee blocked state authorities from enforcing gambling laws against Kalshi.
CFTC chair backs “exclusive authority” over prediction markets
Now the sole commissioner on the CFTC since acting chair Caroline Pham stepped down in December, Chair Michael Selig has publicly said that the federal regulator would defend prediction market platforms from state-level lawsuits.
Last week, Selig opened a proposed rule up to public comment on how the Commodity Exchange Act would apply to prediction markets, potentially changing how the agency approaches regulation and enforcement in the future.
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Tether, issuer of the world’s largest stablecoin by market cap, USDT, has released a new AI training framework that it says allows large language models to be fine-tuned on consumer hardware, including smartphones and non-Nvidia GPUs.
According to Tuesday’s announcement, the system, part of its QVAC platform, uses Microsoft’s BitNet architecture and LoRA techniques to reduce memory and compute requirements, potentially lowering the cost and hardware barriers to developing AI models.
The framework supports cross-platform training and inference across a range of chips, including AMD, Intel and Apple Silicon, as well as mobile GPUs from Qualcomm and Apple.
Tether said its engineers were able to fine-tune models with up to 1 billion parameters on smartphones in under two hours, and smaller models in minutes, with support extending to models as large as 13 billion parameters on mobile devices.
Built on BitNet, a 1-bit model architecture, the framework can cut VRAM requirements by up to 77.8% compared with similar 16-bit models, according to the company, allowing larger models to run on limited hardware. It also enables LoRA fine-tuning on non-Nvidia hardware for 1-bit models, expanding support beyond the GPUs typically used for AI training.
The company said the performance gains extend to inference, with mobile GPUs running BitNet models several times faster than CPUs. It also pointed to use cases such as on-device training and federated learning, where models can be updated across distributed devices without sending data to centralized servers, potentially reducing reliance on cloud infrastructure.
Related: Messari’s new CEO is doubling down on AI as firm cuts staff
Crypto companies expand into AI, from mining infrastructure to autonomous agents
Tether’s move into AI infrastructure comes as crypto companies have been expanding into compute and machine learning, with activity accelerating across Bitcoin mining and the rise of AI agents.
In September, Google took a 5.4% stake in Cipher Mining as part of a $3 billion, 10-year deal tied to AI data center capacity. In December, Bitcoin miner IREN said it planned to raise about $3.6 billion to fund AI infrastructure.
The trend has continued into 2026. In February, HIVE Digital Technologies reported record revenue of $93.1 million, fueled by growth in its AI and high-performance computing (HPC) operations, while Core Scientific secured a $500 million loan facility from Morgan Stanley in March, with the option to expand it to $1 billion.
The mining sector’s pivot to AI and HPC comes as AI agents, autonomous programs that can transact, interact with services and execute tasks, are gaining momentum across the crypto sector.
In October, Coinbase introduced wallet infrastructure enabling AI agents to conduct onchain transactions. Last month, Alchemy launched a system allowing agents to access blockchain data services using USDC on Base. Also in February, Pantera and Franklin Templeton joined Arena, a platform from Sentient for testing enterprise AI agents.
On Tuesday, World, the identity network co-founded by OpenAI’s Sam Altman, launched AgentKit, a toolkit that allows AI agents to verify they are linked to a unique human using World ID capabilities while making payments via the x402 micropayments protocol.
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GSR is buying its way into the underwriting layer of crypto, spending 57 million dollars to turn itself from a market maker into a full‑stack capital markets and treasury platform for token issuers.
Summary
- GSR is acquiring Autonomous and Architech for a combined 57 million dollars, aiming to control the full lifecycle of digital asset projects from token design and launch to governance, liquidity and secondary‑market trading under one coordinated umbrella.
- Autonomous will keep operating independently to help teams launch and run tokenized organizations, while Architech is being folded into GSR’s advisory arm to anchor its institutional consulting, filling long‑standing gaps between issuance, governance models, listings and treasury design.
- A core focus of the new platform is treasury management, with GSR pitching liquidity planning, risk management and derivatives‑based hedging so projects behave more like mid‑market corporates or funds and less like 2021‑era DAOs that hoarded volatile treasuries and blew up in drawdowns.
Crypto market maker GSR is moving aggressively up the value chain, spending $57 million to acquire Autonomous and Architech in a bid to become a full‑lifecycle capital markets and fund management platform for digital assets. The deal is designed to give GSR direct exposure to everything from token design and launch to liquidity, governance, financing and secondary‑market trading under a single, coordinated umbrella.
According to the announcement cited by ChainCatcher, Autonomous will continue to operate independently, focused on helping teams launch and operate tokenized organizations. Architech, by contrast, will be folded into GSR’s digital asset advisory arm and positioned as a core component of its institutional consulting business. Together, the two acquisitions are meant to plug long‑standing gaps in crypto’s deal infrastructure, where token issuance, governance models, listing strategy and treasury design are often handled by different providers with misaligned incentives.
GSR’s pitch is blunt: crypto projects have grown in size and complexity, but the service stack around them is still fragmented and reactive. By pulling issuance support, advisory, market making, derivatives and asset management into a single framework, the firm wants to offer what it calls a “one‑stop capital market service” for digital assets. That includes help on structuring tokenomics, planning exchange liquidity, sequencing listings, and building governance that institutional allocators can live with over a full cycle.
A key focus of the combined platform will be treasury management for crypto projects. GSR says it intends to offer tools for liquidity planning, cash‑flow forecasting, risk management and asset allocation, pushing projects away from passive token hoarding and toward more diversified, yield‑aware portfolios. In practice, that means using GSR’s existing trading and derivatives capabilities to hedge volatility, manage stablecoin buckets, and smooth runway across market regimes.
Strategically, the move is a bet that the next wave of serious crypto issuers will look and behave more like mid‑market corporates or funds than like 2021‑era degen DAOs. Those issuers want integrated counterparties that can handle launch, liquidity and ongoing risk management without forcing them to stitch together five different vendors. If GSR can execute, it will not just be making markets for tokens; it will be designing, launching and effectively underwriting them across their entire lifecycle. For a space still plagued by ad‑hoc token launches and treasury blow‑ups, that kind of vertical integration is both an obvious opportunity—and a concentration of power that regulators and rival service providers will watch closely.
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