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Bitcoin Passed Key Stress Test Amid Oil Volatility

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Bitcoin Passed Key Stress Test Amid Oil Volatility


Tom Lee says Bitcoin’s rally during an oil surge tied to Middle East tensions shows the asset passed a key stress test.

Fundstrat’s Tom Lee has said that Bitcoin passed a major test after it rallied over the weekend while oil prices surged due to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

According to him, the price action was a sign that the massive deleveraging from last October is finally behind the market, allowing Bitcoin to re-emerge as a credible store of value.

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The Speculation Has Been Cleared Out

Lee was speaking to CNBC’s Scott Wapner on the sidelines of the Future Proof conference in Miami, where he pointed out that the crypto market had already been through its bear market.

“We had a bear market already in software, the Mag-7 and in crypto,” he said. “I think that’s already taken out a lot of speculation.”

He also said he expects markets to close March in positive territory and potentially reach 5,300 on the S&P 500 later in the year. However, he warned that there might be a 20% decline at some point, which would likely be when markets stop responding to good news.

On Bitcoin specifically, Lee was direct. When pressed by Wapner on whether the OG cryptocurrency had failed as a safe haven, given that gold outperformed during the most recent stretch of market stress, Lee acknowledged the weakness but framed it as a product of extreme conditions.

“Bitcoin did basically break on October 10 because that was the biggest deleveraging event in the history of crypto,” he said. “When gold went up, Bitcoin went down.”

But according to him, that’s all in the past. “We have gone through a winter where a lot of the speculation and the leverage is gone,” he said, pointing to the weekend’s price action as a turning point, with BTC holding up in the face of oil prices climbing sharply when Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz.

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“This weekend kind of showed Bitcoin is coming back in vogue as a store of value,” Lee said, noting that BTC held above $70,000 even as oil moved aggressively higher.

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Where Bitcoin Stands Now

As of the time of this writing, Bitcoin was trading at around $70,000, only dropping 0.2% in the last 24 hours after briefly touching $71,600 per CoinGecko data. Over the past week, it is up about 3% and up nearly 7% across two weeks, although it remains down around 12% year-on-year and sits more than 44% below its October 2025 all-time high.

The picture from on-chain data is mixed, with Binance Research analysis showing approximately 29,000 BTC have been withdrawn from exchanges while the price traded in the $65,000 to $75,000 range, a pattern that contrasts with an earlier sell-off from $92,000 to $62,000 when exchange balances were rising.

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Ledger Uncovers Security Vulnerability That Could Affect 25% of Android Phones

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Ledger Uncovers Security Vulnerability That Could Affect 25% of Android Phones

The chip vulnerability makes it possible for hackers to decrypt affected Android smartphones, and steal data — including crypto wallet private keys.

Ledger said on Wednesday, March 11, that it has discovered a vulnerability that could affect as much as 25% of Android phones, letting hackers steal users’ private keys, according to a press release shared with The Defiant.

The hardware wallet company’s in-house white-hat security team, the Donjon, has disclosed a critical vulnerability in Android smartphones powered by MediaTek chips that allows an attacker to extract user data — including wallet seed phrases and PINs — in under a minute, even when the phone is off.

In a proof-of-concept test, the Donjon plugged a Nothing CMF Phone 1 into a laptop and, within 45 seconds, was able to recover the device’s PIN, decrypt its storage, and extract seed phrases from six major crypto wallet apps: Trust Wallet, Base, Kraken Wallet, Rabby, tangem, and Phantom.

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Before the operating system of the MediaTek-powered Android device even loads, Ledger’s security team found that an attacker can connect over USB and steal the root cryptographic keys that ensure the phone’s full-disk encryption, per the release. The phone’s data can than be fully decrypted offline.

The vulnerability could affects phones using Trustonic’s Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), the release said, including the Solana Seeker phone.

“Smartphones were never designed to be vaults,” said Charles Guillemet, Ledger’s CTO, adding:

“If your crypto sits on a phone, it’s only as safe as the weakest link in that phone’s hardware, firmware, or software.”

Following the standard 90-day responsible disclosure process, Ledger said it reported the flaw to both MediaTek and Trustonic. MediaTek confirmed it delivered a fix to affected original equipment manufacturers in January.

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Ledger advised users of potentially affected Androids to install the latest security updates immediately.

The news comes crypto-related theft has been on the rise. As The Defiant reported, 2025 was a record year for crypto crime, with North Korea alone stealing roughly $2 billion — including the $1.5 billion Bybit hack, the largest hack on record.

But the threat isn’t limited to centralized exchanges. In December, Trust Wallet confirmed $7 million was stolen via a malicious Chrome extension update that harvested seed phrases directly from users’ browsers. Hackers have also reportedly been increasingly using AI tools and phishing-as-a-service infrastructure to increase the number of attacks.

This article was written with the assistance of AI workflows. All our stories are curated, edited and fact-checked by a human.

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Mastercard Launches Crypto Partner Program with 85+ Industry firms

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Visa, Circle, Mastercard, Binance, Stablecoin

Mastercard has launched a global crypto partner program that initially brings together more than 85 companies across the digital asset and payments industries to collaborate on blockchain-based payment and settlement systems.

The initiative is designed to connect crypto companies, financial institutions and payments providers as digital assets begin playing a larger role in cross-border transfers, payouts and other financial services.

Participants include crypto exchanges, blockchain networks and infrastructure providers including Binance, Circle, Gemini, Paxos, Ripple, PayPal, Polygon, Solana, Crypto.com, MoonPay, Fireblocks and the Canton Network.

They will work with Mastercard on products that integrate blockchain-based systems with existing payment infrastructure. According to the announcement, the program will focus on use cases such as cross-border money movement, settlements and commercial payments.

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In a post on X on Wednesday, Mastercard said “digital assets are entering a new phase,” with technologies that once operated alongside traditional finance increasingly being applied to practical uses such as cross-border remittances and business-to-business payments.

Visa, Circle, Mastercard, Binance, Stablecoin
Source: Mastercard

Mastercard said the initiative builds on its existing work in digital assets, including partnerships with crypto companies, programs supporting blockchain startups and crypto-linked payment cards.

Related: Mastercard, MetaMask launch US crypto card, debuting in New York

Visa and Mastercard deepen embrace of digital assets

Mastercard’s new partner program comes as major payments networks deepen their embrace of digital assets. Both Mastercard and Visa have launched initiatives in recent years aimed at integrating blockchain technology and stablecoins with traditional payment infrastructure.

In September, Visa announced a pilot that allows banks to pre-fund cross-border payments with stablecoins through its Visa Direct platform, enabling near-instant payouts.

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About a month later, the company said it would expand its crypto services to support four additional stablecoins across four blockchains, in addition to stablecoins it already supports on networks including Ethereum (ETH), Solana (SOL), Stellar (XLM) and Avalanche (AVAX).