The crypto market cap rebounded 2.7% to $2.32 trillion on Wednesday after recovering some of the previous days’ losses as investors bought the dip.

Bitcoin (BTC), the industry’s primary bellwether, climbed 5.5% to hit an intraday peak of $66,233 before consolidating near $65,000, a level now serving as a vital psychological floor. 

Ethereum (ETH) followed suit with a 4% rise, stabilizing around $1,900, while other major assets, including XRP, Tron (TRX), and Dogecoin (DOGE), recorded more modest gains between 1% and 3%. 

Leading the large-cap pack, Solana (SOL) outperformed with a surge of nearly 7% and had successfully reclaimed the $80 threshold at the time of writing.

Crypto prices rebounded amid millions of liquidations across leveraged markets. Data from CoinGlass shows that around $154 million in short positions were liquidated across the futures market. Over the past 24-hour session, nearly $343 million was liquidated from the broader market, with the majority coming from short liquidations. 

When short positions get liquidated, they force the exchange’s liquidation engine to buy back the underlying assets at current market prices to close out the positions, and thus result in an upward short squeeze that accelerates the price recovery.

Crypto market rebounds amid institutional dip buying 

The crypto market recovery was primarily supported by investors buying into the recent dip.

Notably, Bitcoin plunged more than 7.5% yesterday, as it moved closer to the critical $60,000 support level. The move sparked a relief bounce, during which BTC successfully reclaimed the $65,000 threshold. The biggest tailwind for the jump was a surge in institutional buying spearheaded by Michael Saylor’s Strategy, which acquired additional BTC during the pullback.

Another key catalyst fueling the market rally came in the form of the Coinbase Premium becoming positive for the first time in 40 days. A positive reading on this metric means Bitcoin is more expensive on Coinbase than on global exchanges. Such a significant price gap is a classic signal of strong buying pressure from American investors and institutions.

As Bitcoin reclaimed the support that analysts believe is essential to avoid more downside volatility, the positive momentum rippled across the broader market.

Market rebound was supported by tech stocks rally

Crypto prices also rose after several Asian tech stocks rallied. South Korea’s KOSPI Index rose to record highs, signaling a broader risk-on sentiment among investors across global markets.

Major traditional U.S. stock indices, such as the S&P 500 and Russell 2000, also stood higher on the day. Cryptocurrencies often tend to rally when such equity markets show signs of strength and stability.

Meanwhile, the crypto market’s tight correlation with technology stocks remained evident, with software shares (IGV) rebounding nearly 1.7% over the past day after recent losses triggered by fears that generative AI tools could disrupt traditional software business models.

However, these concerns are easing as industry leaders like Intuit and DocuSign announce strategic partnerships with AI firm Anthropic, signaling that established companies may successfully adapt to the technology rather than being displaced by it.

Hopes of de-escalation in U.S. and Iran conflict

Another major catalyst for today’s rally is market hopes of a potential de-escalation of conflict between the U.S. and Iran. Reports cited that Iran’s deputy foreign minister has hinted that the country is looking to take any required step to reach a deal with the U.S., reducing fears of an imminent military conflict.

Earlier last Thursday, U.S. President Donald Trump had threatened to launch an attack within ten days from that time, spooking investors and reducing risk-on appetite.

With the latest positive headlines, investors are likely taking a breather as they await more clarity on the diplomatic front. As the geopolitical tensions eased, traditional safe-haven assets such as gold and crude oil lost the momentum they had been riding on, giving crypto assets the room to regain footing.

Bitcoin Depot has been implementing a new requirement across its crypto ATM network in the United States, and now requires users to provide identification for every transaction.

According to the official announcement, the new policy has been live since early February as it hopes to strengthen “safeguards against potential misuse.”

“By requiring identification for every transaction, the enhancement adds another layer of protection designed to help prevent account sharing, identity theft, and account takeover attempts as deployment continues,” the company said.

According to the firm’s CEO, Scott Buchanan, using continuous verification will help detect suspicious activity based on “customers, locations, or transaction amount.”

The mandate comes as Bitcoin Depot faces increased scrutiny from regulators. Earlier this month, the Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell sued the company for not implementing proper safeguards to prevent scams.

Bitcoin Depot was also targeted by Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird last year for similar reasons.

According to data from Coin ATM Radar, Bitcoin Depot is the largest crypto ATM operator in the U.S., with 9,019 kiosks in operation. It first started implementing ID requirements in October, but the measure was limited to new users only.

Reports from the FBI and other third-party agencies have warned that bad actors have continued to misuse crypto ATMs to conduct fraud, impersonation scams, and other illicit transfers, often targeting elderly victims and pressuring them to convert cash into digital assets that are difficult to trace or recover. As a result, lawmakers across the U.S. have moved to tighten oversight.

Last year, Washington’s Spokane city implemented a ban on all crypto ATMs. Elsewhere, in North Dakota, a bill was introduced to implement daily transaction caps and mandatory fraud warnings. Nebraska has also taken similar steps.

Anchorage Digital, the federally chartered U.S. crypto bank, signaled deepening institutional conviction in Bitcoin by disclosing it holds perpetual preferred stock issued by Strategy on its balance sheet.

Anchorage Digital backs Strategy’s Bitcoin play with STRC bet

CEO Nathan McCauley framed the move as a meaningful alignment between the company that “operationalizes Bitcoin infrastructure” and the firm that has become synonymous with corporate Bitcoin accumulation.

McCauley posted on social platform X that the investment in STRC, Strategy’s perpetual preferred security, underscored conviction rather than casual interest in digital assets.

STRC is a Nasdaq-listed perpetual preferred security that pays an attractive annual dividend, roughly 11.25% before expenses, and is closely tied to Strategy’s Bitcoin treasury strategy.

Strategy, led by executive chairman Michael Saylor, has aggressively expanded its Bitcoin holdings through regular purchases funded by equity and preferred stock offerings. The firm recently marked its 100th Bitcoin acquisition, adding another 592 BTC and bringing its total to more than 717,000 coins, roughly 3% of all Bitcoin in circulation.

McCauley’s post was met with affirmation from Saylor himself, who echoed the sentiment that “conviction is contagious,” offering a rare glimpse into how significant institutional actors are positioning around Bitcoin beyond simple custodial services or trading exposure.

Hong Kong will introduce sweeping reforms to strengthen its position as a global digital asset hub, Financial Secretary Paul Chan announced in his 2026-27 Budget speech, outlining new licensing rules, stablecoin approvals and tokenization initiatives.

The government will table a bill this year establishing licensing regimes for digital asset dealing platforms and custodian service providers, expanding the city’s regulatory perimeter beyond exchanges.

The move follows Hong Kong’s second policy statement on digital assets, which aims to create what officials describe as a “comprehensive regulatory framework” for innovation and investor protection.

Chan also confirmed that Hong Kong has implemented a licensing regime for issuers of fiat-referenced stablecoins, with the first batch of licenses set to be issued next month. Authorities said they will work with approved issuers to explore compliant, risk-controlled use cases, signaling a shift from policy design to real-world deployment.

The Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) will take additional steps to deepen liquidity in the city’s digital asset market, particularly for professional investors. The regulator plans to broaden the range of products and services available and launch an accelerator program aimed at fast-tracking innovation within regulatory guardrails.

Tokenization is another key focus. The government will publish guidance clarifying that debenture holder registers can be maintained using distributed ledger technology, while exploring electronic signatures for bond issuance documents and the digitalization of bearer bonds.

In parallel, Hong Kong will amend its Inland Revenue Ordinance to implement the OECD’s Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework and updated Common Reporting Standard over the next two years. The changes, with a bill expected in the first half of this year, are designed to enhance tax transparency and combat cross-border tax evasion.

Together, the measures mark one of Hong Kong’s most comprehensive digital asset policy pushes to date, reinforcing its ambition to compete with major global crypto financial centers.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has added to a newly released roadmap outlining how Ethereum plans to dramatically speed up the production of new blocks and the confirmation of transactions.

Vitalik’s comments on Thursday offered more detail on a visual public roadmap called “Strawmap” released by the Ethereum Foundation’s Protocol team. 

“Fast slots are off in their own lane at the top of the roadmap, and do not really seem to connect to anything,” said Buterin, noting that the rest of the roadmap is “pretty independent of the slot time.” 

Slot time is the time it takes for Ethereum to produce new blocks, currently around 12 seconds. The roadmap aims to get this down to as fast as 2 seconds, so the blockchain feels more like a live, responsive system rather than something that has to be waited for.

“I expect that we’ll reduce slot time in an incremental fashion,” said Buterin, suggesting reductions following a roughly square-root-of-two formula from 12 seconds down through 8, 6, 4, and eventually as low as 2 seconds.

He also suggested that p2p improvements, or upgrades to how Ethereum nodes communicate with each other — such as sharing new blocks and data without the need to download repeated data — can greatly reduce block propagation time, “making shorter slots viable with no security tradeoffs.” 

Finality from minutes to seconds 

The second major improvement in the roadmap is to finality, or the point at which a transaction is mathematically guaranteed to be irreversible, which is currently around 16 minutes. 

The future goal is finality between 6 and 16 seconds, achieved by replacing the current complicated confirmation system with a cleaner, simpler one that’s also quantum-resistant.

Related: Ethereum Foundation lists ‘quantum readiness,’ gas limits as 2026 priorities

“The goal is to decouple slots and finality, to allow us to reason about both separately,” explained Buterin. 

He said this was a “very invasive set of changes,” so the plan is to bundle the largest step in each change with a “switch of the cryptography, notably to post-quantum hash-based signatures.”

Quantum resistance of slots before finality

Buterin said that a consequence of this approach would be quantum-resistant slots before finality. 

“One interesting consequence of the incremental approach is that there is a pathway to making the slots quantum-resistant much sooner than making the finality quantum-resistant.” 

The network might “quite quickly” get to a regime where, if quantum computers suddenly appear, “we lose the finality guarantee, but the chain keeps chugging along,” he said. 

“Expect to see progressive decreases of both slot time and finality time,” Buterin summarized.

The “component-by-component replacement” of Ethereum’s slot structure and consensus will produce a “cleaner, simpler, quantum-resistant, prover-friendly, end-to-end formally-verified alternative.”

The timescale for these changes is over the next four years, with seven forks planned roughly every six months. Glamsterdam and Hegotá are already confirmed and slated for later this year. 

Magazine: Bitcoin may take 7 years to upgrade to post-quantum: BIP-360 co-author