Bitcoin BTC$68,503.15 rallied to a one-month high of $71,800, effectively dismissing the risk-off sentiment that has restricted upside in U.S. equities over the past week.

The largest cryptocurrency stalled just below $72,000, a level it last reached on Feb. 8 before sliding back to $65,000.

Precious metals also rallied on Wednesday, with gold and silver up 1.8% and 5.3%, respectively, since midnight UTC. Bitcoin is up by 4.8% over the same period.

The move to haven assets comes as war continues to rage in the Middle East, with Israel saying it hit several security headquarters across Iran while Iran attacked U.S. sites in Dubai and Qatar.

Equities are little changed since midnight, lagging the broader crypto market.

Derivatives positioning

• Over the past 24 hours, global crypto futures open interest (OI) has increased by 8% to nearly $103 billion. Trading volume also rose, albeit by less than OI, indicating renewed interest in holding positions rather than trading in and out. That adds credibility to the price bounce.
• Open interest in futures tied to the top 10 tokens rose. DOGE led with a 10% increase.
• Perpetual funding rates and cumulative volume delta for most major cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin and ether, are positive, a sign of buying pressure building up in another hint of a continued price recovery.
• Bitcoin and ether’s (ETH) 30-day implied volatility indexes remain steady at levels seen before the start of the Middle East conflict, a sign there is no panic in the market.
• On Deribit, BTC and ETH puts still trade notably pricier than calls in a sign of lingering downside fears.
• The $125,000 strike call expiring end-March, a bet that prices will surge beyond that level in four weeks, is the most traded option of the past 24 hours. Deribit said that the bulk of the activity represents the closing of existing short positions rather than fresh purchases (bullish bets).
• Block flows featured demand for bitcoin call spreads and call ratio spreads, a sign of moderate bullish sentiment. In ETH’s case, traders chased both call and put spreads.

Token talk

• The altcoin market is beginning to show signs of strength after almost a month of consolidation. Ether (ETH) rose by 5% since midnight UTC, with daily trading volume remaining consistent at $25 billion.
• But it was the lower-liquidity, lower-market-cap tokens that outperformed the majors; KITE, AERO, and TAO all increased by double digits in the past 24 hours, while the likes of PUMP and DCR have rallied by around 6% since midnight UTC.
• The crypto Fear and Greed index has risen from multi-year lows of 5/100 in February to 19/100, suggesting a measure of optimism is entering the broader crypto market.
• The CoinDesk Computing Select Index (CPUS) was the best-performing benchmark over the past 24 hours, rising by 7% while the BTC-weighted CoinDesk 20 (CD20) increased by around 5% over the same period.

Lightning has promised fast, cheap Bitcoin payments for years. But for most people, using it still means choosing between an easy custodial wallet or a self-custodial setup that requires extra work – managing channels, getting inbound liquidity, and staying online so payments don’t fail.

Cake Wallet says its latest release is built to remove that friction. In the newest update, the wallet is rolling out self-custodial Lightning support designed for everyday use, so people can send and receive near-instant payments on mobile without having to run Lightning like a hobby and without giving up control of funds. Users can also move BTC back on-chain at any time.

A Lightning UX for the people

At the center of the launch is an integration powered by the Breez SDK and Spark. Cake’s announcement positions this as the missing bridge between non-custodial in principle and usable in practice, removing the need for users to manage channels, inbound capacity, liquidity, or continuous uptime monitoring.

In a short statement, Cake Labs CEO Vikrant Sharma has described the point of the release as refusing to force users into “a choice between convenience and sovereignty.”

Spark’s role is also worth unpacking. It’s a Bitcoin-native layer-2 built for payments and settlement, designed to let developers build natively on Bitcoin while remaining compatible with Lightning. In other words, the infrastructure is being engineered so wallet teams can offer a smoother Lightning experience without pushing users into a purely custodial model.

Privacy-First 

Cake is also leaning into a privacy-first framing. In its release, the company says users can receive over Lightning without revealing a Spark address, and that Spark transactions are not published to Spark block explorers by default, reducing unnecessary exposure of activity.

The company has been moving toward a privacy-by-default approach on Bitcoin for some time, adding tools like Silent Payments and PayJoin v2 to make on-chain activity harder to trace and group together.

Human-Readable Lightning Addresses and Spending Options Inside the App

Lightning can be fast and cheap, but it still struggles with day-to-day UX details, like having to generate a new invoice and paste it into a chat for every payment. 

Cake Wallet is trying to remove that step by introducing custom Lightning addresses, allowing users to receive via an @cake.cash username instead of sharing invoices or complex payment strings. Cake says the address can be created immediately, with no minimum balance requirement.

The update also brings Lightning directly into Cake Pay, the company’s prepaid debit card and gift card service. In Cake’s documentation, Cake Pay is explained as a way to buy gift cards or add a debit card to Apple Pay or Google Pay, designed to make crypto spending more practical without turning the experience into a data trail.

All Your Bitcoin, Lightning, and Storage in One App

Many Bitcoin users still use one app for everyday payments and another for long-term storage.

Cake Wallet says this update brings those workflows into one place: on-chain Bitcoin, Lightning, privacy tools, and hardware wallet support. Users can move funds between cold storage, on-chain, and Lightning inside the app, without switching tools or manually copying addresses.

With additions like human-readable Lightning addresses and Lightning-enabled Cake Pay for gift cards and prepaid debit cards, the update is clearly pushing toward everyday usability. If it delivers on reliability in real-world conditions, it finally makes Lightning a practical payment layer you can keep on your phone.

Leopold Aschenbrenner, a former OpenAI researcher who departed the lab’s superalignment cadre to launch the San Francisco‑based hedge fund Situational Awareness LP, has steered his portfolio toward the AI compute backbone. The latest 13F filing for Q4 2025 reveals a dramatic scale‑up: the fund reports about $5.52 billion in US equity exposures across 29 positions, up from a few hundred million dollars at the start of 2025. Rather than chasing consumer AI software, the strategy bets on the infrastructure that powers the AI boom—power plants, data centers, and the hardware that underpins high‑end computation. The concentration is clear: a small cadre of AI infrastructure names and energy plays that the fund believes will capture the surge in demand for AI workloads.

Key takeaways

• The Q4 2025 13F shows Situational Awareness with roughly $5.52 billion in US equity holdings across 29 positions, signaling a deliberate tilt toward AI infrastructure and energy‑intensive compute.
• Top holdings include CoreWeave, Bloom Energy, Intel, Lumentum, and Core Scientific, reflecting a strategy anchored in data center capacity and related hardware ecosystems.
• The amended Schedule 13D reveals a 9.4% stake in Core Scientific, amounting to 28,756,478 shares with shared voting and disposition power, indicating a levered view on the company’s expansion into AI hosting and HPC environments.
• Beyond pure mining, the fund has increased exposure to Bitcoin miners and energy players such as IREN, Cipher Mining, Riot Platforms, Bitdeer, and Applied Digital, signaling a broader bets on AI compute throughput via specialized energy infrastructure.
• Aschenbrenner’s strategy also includes a noted short in Infosys, reflecting a view that large‑language model adoption and AI coding tools could pressure traditional outsourcing software services models.

Tickers mentioned: $BTC

Market context: The shift underscores a growing convergence between crypto mining and AI compute ecosystems, where megawatt‑dense sites and long‑term data‑center arrangements are increasingly treated as scarce, high‑value assets in the new compute economy.

Sentiment: Neutral

Price impact: Neutral. The moves reflect strategic positioning in a sector undergoing structural changes rather than immediate price catalysts.

Trading idea (Not Financial Advice): Hold. The cross‑section of AI infrastructure and mining assets suggests exposure to broader compute demand, but the concentration in a handful of names warrants careful risk management.

Market context: The AI compute narrative is evolving from a focus on chip supply and software models to ownership of the physical and energy assets that enable massive data‑center deployments. The post‑halving environment has encouraged miners to pivot toward hosting AI workloads, recasting megawatts and data‑center capacity as strategic assets rather than mere hash rate capacity.

Why it matters

The portfolio strategy signals a shift in how investors view AI reverberations across sectors. By placing heavy bets on AI infrastructure players like CoreWeave and Bloom Energy, the fund aligns with the premise that the next era of AI growth will be defined by the reliability and scalability of compute foundations. CoreWeave, a major AI cloud firm, has pursued long‑term HPC hosting contracts, reinforcing the idea that enterprise‑grade compute capacity will anchor AI deployment for years to come. That dynamic is echoed in the fund’s positioning around Core Scientific and other miners‑turned‑infrastructure operators, highlighting a broader trend where mining assets are repurposed as high‑density compute farms capable of supporting AI workloads.

Moreover, the mix of energy‑oriented firms with traditional chip and optics players points to a convergence of energy efficiency, power reliability, and advanced hardware as the bedrock of AI scalability. The emphasis on Bloom Energy and similar energy infrastructure names acknowledges that the economics of AI compute increasingly hinge on dependable, low‑cost power and resilient facilities. In this context, the bitcoin ecosystem—often used as a proxy for large‑scale, independent energy demand—appears intertwined with broader infrastructure plays, rather than living in its own isolated corner of markets. Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) remains a barometer for how much compute demand miners can leverage, particularly as large data centers seek to optimize energy intensity and uptime amid rising competition for grid capacity.

The presence of a substantial Core Scientific stake via an amended Schedule 13D demonstrates the degree to which the fund leverages governance and ownership rights to influence a company’s expansion into AI hosting and HPC. This move aligns with a broader industry pattern where miners diversify beyond hashing to become multipurpose data‑center operators that can monetize surplus capacity across AI workloads, rendering traditional hash rate metrics less decisive in evaluating value creation.

Finally, the Infosys short reflects an acceleration of AI coding tools and large‑language models that, in the hedge fund’s view, could erode the traditional outsourcing model long relied upon by software services giants. If AI tools increasingly curtail demand for routine outsourcing tasks, equities tied to that segment may face new headwinds, even as AI infrastructure assets benefit from expanding compute demand. The net effect is a nuanced stance: bets that the core compute economy—powered by energy, data centers, and HPC—will drive durable value, tempered by selective shorts on areas perceived as vulnerable to AI displacement.

What to watch next

• Next 13F filing cycles (early 2026) to reveal whether the $5.5B positioning is sustained or expanded across additional AI infrastructure names.
• Any new or amended Schedule 13D/13G disclosures around Core Scientific or other holdings, signaling shifts in control or strategy.
• Updates on long‑term HPC contracts and data‑center expansions tied to CoreWeave and similar operators, which would validate the thesis of AI hosting as a growth engine.
• Further moves in mining‑to‑infrastructure transitions, including additional energy‑asset investments from the broader field, and how such moves interact with regulatory and grid‑capacity constraints.
• Regulatory or policy developments affecting large‑scale AI compute deployments and crypto mining operations, which could influence capital flows into AI infrastructure equities.

Sources & verification

• Situational Awareness 13F Filing, Q4 2025 — 13f.info
• Amended Schedule 13D for Core Scientific — filing PDF
• Fortune profile on Leopold Aschenbrenner and the fund’s size — fortune.com
• Hut 8 research/coverage on AI data center pivot and compute revenue — cointelegraph.com
• CoreWeave and AI data center partnerships — cointelegraph.com

Market reaction and key details

Situational Awareness has built a narrative around a recalibration of AI investment risk, moving from a focus on peak‑AI software potential to the tangible, capital‑intensive backbone that makes AI feasible at scale. The 13F results highlight how a single fund can tilt an entire sub‑sector toward a handful of strategic names, elevating the importance of long‑term contracts, energy reliability, and data‑center capacity in determining which players benefit most from the AI era. While the broader market continues to wrestle with volatility and regulatory questions, the fund’s emphasis on compute infrastructure—paired with a measured portfolio tilt toward miners pivoting to AI hosting—illustrates a disciplined approach to navigating the evolving landscape of AI, crypto, and high‑performance computing.

What to watch next

Crypto exchange Kraken has become the first digital asset company to secure access to the Federal Reserve’s core payments infrastructure.

This marks a watershed moment in the integration of crypto into the U.S. financial system, even as the exchange eyes a public listing.

Kraken Becomes First Crypto Firm to Win Access to Fed’s Core Payments System

According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, Kraken’s Wyoming-chartered banking arm, Kraken Financial, has been granted a so-called “master account” at the Federal Reserve.

The approval gives the firm direct access to the same payment rails used by thousands of U.S. banks and credit unions to move money across the financial system.

The move allows Kraken Financial to settle U.S. dollar transactions directly through the Fed’s infrastructure, rather than relying on intermediary banks.

Notably, the firm will not receive the full suite of services traditional banks enjoy, such as earning interest on reserves held at the central bank.

Still, the approval represents a significant breakthrough for an industry that has long struggled to access core banking plumbing.

“This is a watershed milestone in the history of digital assets,” WSJ reported, citing Senator Cynthia Lummis, a vocal advocate for crypto innovation.

From Wyoming Bank Charter to Fed Master Account: Kraken’s Long March Toward Wall Street Legitimacy

The development builds on groundwork laid in 2020, when Kraken became the first digital asset company in U.S. history to receive a bank charter recognized under federal and state law.

The firm obtained a Special Purpose Depository Institution (SPDI) charter from Wyoming. This enabled it to offer regulated deposit-taking, custody, and fiduciary services tailored to blockchain companies.

“Our vision is to become the world’s trusted bridge between the crypto economy of the future and today’s existing financial ecosystem,” Kraken said at the time.

Access to a Fed master account significantly advances that vision.

Direct settlement capability could allow Kraken to handle transactions more quickly and seamlessly for institutional clients and professional traders. This reduces counterparty risk and operational friction.

The approval also lands at a politically favorable moment. Under President Donald Trump, who has pledged to make the U.S. the “crypto capital of the world,” regulatory attitudes toward digital assets have shifted markedly compared to prior years.

Now, there are more industry-friendly appointments and legislative momentum around crypto frameworks.

What It Means for Kraken’s Prospective IPO

Strategically, the milestone could strengthen Kraken’s positioning ahead of a widely anticipated initial public offering.

The exchange has been expanding aggressively, completing six acquisitions in roughly a year. The company is reportedly targeting a $500 million raise at a valuation of around $15 billion.

Direct access to the Fed’s payments system enhances Kraken’s institutional credibility at a pivotal time.

For prospective IPO investors, the combination of a bank charter, expanding product suite, and now direct integration with U.S. monetary infrastructure may make the exchange’s public debut more compelling.

Still, questions remain over whether quick acquisition-driven growth translates into durable revenue momentum.

Notwithstanding, with Fed access secured, Kraken has undeniably crossed a line that crypto firms have spent years trying to reach. It has brought digital assets one step closer to the heart of the U.S. financial system.

Bitcoin price pushed back above $71,000 on Wednesday, defying geopolitical jitters tied to escalating Middle East tensions and a spike in global oil prices, as on-chain data suggests selling pressure may be drying up.

Bitcoin seller exhaustion? Exchange flows fall to near-cycle lows

According to analysis from CryptoQuant, the recent military intervention in Iran sent shockwaves through energy markets, with WTI crude jumping above $75 and Brent topping $82 after successive 6% gains. While the broader macro backdrop remains fragile and the bear market structure technically intact, Bitcoin has shown notable relative strength.

At the time of the CryptoQuant assessment, Bitcoin (BTC) was trading near $68,637 and approaching what analysts describe as an accumulation zone. A key metric backing that thesis is Exchange Inflow, the amount of BTC transferred to exchanges, often a precursor to selling.

Historically, readings below 40,000 BTC have coincided with weak selling pressure and market bottoms, while levels above 90,000 BTC have marked cycle tops.

On March 3, 2026, exchange inflows registered just 28,235 BTC, dramatically lower than prior cycle highs that ranged between 97,587 BTC and 134,619 BTC. The subdued inflow suggests sellers may be exhausted, even as global instability persists.

Bitcoin price action and key levels

Based on the attached daily chart, Bitcoin is currently trading around $71,795 after posting a strong green daily candle, up more than 5%. The move follows a sharp correction from late January highs near $95,000, with price finding a local bottom in early February around the $63,000–$65,000 region.

Since that capitulation-style drop, Bitcoin has been consolidating in a broad range between roughly $65,000 support and $72,000 resistance. The recent breakout attempt above $71,000 puts price back near the upper boundary of this consolidation band.

Immediate resistance now sits around $72,000–$73,000, followed by the heavier supply zone near $78,000–$80,000, where prior breakdown momentum accelerated. On the downside, first support lies at $68,000, with stronger structural support near $65,000.

A loss of that level would reopen the path toward the February low near $63,000.

Volume has picked up modestly on the recent rebound, though it remains below the spike seen during the early February sell-off.

Meanwhile, the Balance of Power indicator has turned positive, currently reading around 0.77, signaling buyers are gaining short-term control after weeks of sideways churn.

While the broader macro picture remains uncertain, Bitcoin’s ability to rally through geopolitical stress, combined with low exchange inflows, suggests the market may be transitioning from distribution to early-stage accumulation.

A decisive daily close above the $72,000–$73,000 zone would strengthen the case for a broader recovery attempt.

Peer-to-peer transfers made through self-custody crypto wallets are a key weak point in the stablecoin ecosystem because they can take place without a regulated intermediary, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) said in a new report urging countries to tighten oversight as stablecoins spread into payments and cross-border transfers.

In its targeted report on stablecoins, unhosted wallets and P2P transactions, the global anti-money laundering watchdog said transactions conducted directly between users through unhosted wallets can occur without regulated intermediaries such as exchanges or custodians.

The FATF said this structure can create gaps in Anti-Money Laundering (AML) oversight because the transactions occur outside entities required to monitor activity and report suspicious transfers. The report highlighted growing regulatory attention on stablecoins as their use expands across trading, payments and cross-border transfers. 

The watchdog called on jurisdictions to assess the risks created by stablecoin arrangements and apply “proportionate” mitigation measures, which can include enhanced monitoring when self-custody wallets interact with regulated platforms and clearer AML and counterterrorism financing obligations for entities involved in issuing and distributing stablecoins.