Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has reversed a 34-year Pentagon policy, signing a memo on April 2 that authorizes off-duty U.S. service members to carry privately owned firearms on military installations — a decision that lands alongside a downed F-15 and a record defense budget request in what is shaping up to be the most militarily assertive week of Trump’s second term.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has reversed a 34-year Pentagon policy, signing a memo on April 2 that authorizes off-duty U.S. service members to carry privately owned firearms on military installations — a decision that lands alongside a downed F-15 and a record defense budget request in what is shaping up to be the most militarily assertive week of Trump’s second term. The official Department of War announcement confirmed that Hegseth also published a video statement on X alongside the signed memorandum.

The memo inverts the existing default on military base carry permissions. Previously, service members seeking to carry a personal firearm had to obtain explicit authorization from their installation commander. Under the new policy, commanders must affirmatively document a specific safety concern to deny a request — approval is now presumed rather than earned. The change ends a policy that has been in place since 1992, spanning six presidential administrations.

“Our military installations have been turned into gun-free zones — leaving our service members vulnerable and exposed. That ends today,” Hegseth said in his post on X announcing the memo.

The broader context for markets

The Hegseth announcement is the third significant military signal from Washington in a single 24-hour window — arriving alongside the shooting down of a U.S. F-15 over Iran and the submission of a record $1.5 trillion defense budget request. For crypto and risk asset investors, the aggregate message from this week’s geopolitical and fiscal headlines is clear: the U.S. is deepening its conflict posture, which sustains oil price pressure, keeps inflation elevated, and narrows the window for Federal Reserve easing.

As crypto.news has reported, Bitcoin has been trading as a risk-sensitive asset throughout the Iran conflict, de-rating during escalation rather than acting as a traditional safe haven. Until a credible path toward de-escalation and Hormuz reopening emerges, the macro regime remains structurally unfavorable for sustained crypto price recovery.

Key Highlights

• Exchange transitions from fixed VIP requirements to activity-driven advancement model

• Three distinct pathways enable progression through futures, spot trading, and asset holdings

• Immediate reward distribution system helps reduce transaction expenses

• New mobile dashboard provides live VIP status monitoring

• Enhanced benefits package includes token distributions and cyclical incentive programs

Bitget has rolled out its VIP Fast Track initiative, establishing a reward framework centered on active participation rather than passive holdings. The program eliminates traditional fixed-balance requirements in favor of performance-based criteria spanning futures contracts, spot markets, and overall portfolio value. This redesign reflects the platform’s strategy to better match user benefits with genuine trading engagement.

Multi-Path Advancement Framework Transforms VIP Access

The exchange has implemented three separate advancement channels targeting different trading styles and preferences. Users can now elevate their status through futures market participation, spot trading volume, or maintaining substantial asset positions. This flexible structure accommodates diverse trading approaches while eliminating the need for uniform qualification standards.

Each pathway operates independently, allowing participants to leverage their preferred trading methods for tier progression. Bitget has embedded these options within its comprehensive trading infrastructure, creating seamless progression opportunities without requiring users to navigate disconnected platforms or modify their established strategies.

This initiative represents another component of the platform’s ongoing VIP enhancement strategy. Following previous modifications that adjusted fee structures and reorganized benefit tiers, the exchange maintains its focus on attracting and retaining active market participants through systematic improvements to its loyalty framework.

Instant Rewards and Live Progress Monitoring

The Fast Track program incorporates an immediate distribution mechanism that activates upon reaching specific trading or balance benchmarks. Participants receive their rewards instantly rather than waiting for periodic settlements, creating a direct connection between achievement and compensation while helping manage ongoing trading expenses.

Available incentives span multiple categories including derivatives vouchers, spot market fee reductions, and enhanced yield opportunities. The platform allocates futures vouchers worth up to 300 USDT alongside spot rebates reaching 120 USDT. Users concentrating on asset accumulation gain access to boosted returns on their USDT deposits.

Bitget has simultaneously deployed a dedicated monitoring tool within its mobile platform. This interface delivers comprehensive visibility into current tier standing, outstanding requirements, and projected rewards across all levels. The addition enhances program transparency while simplifying status management for participants.

Broader Integration and Future Initiatives

The exchange continues building out its VIP infrastructure through coordinated incentive programs and scheduled promotional events. By merging trading-based rewards with token distributions and structured benefit cycles, the platform creates a comprehensive retention strategy designed to boost sustained engagement across its service offerings.

Looking ahead, the next VIP season phase will feature a token distribution campaign scheduled between April and May. Participants can anticipate receiving tokenized stock allocations and supplementary digital assets, with individual distribution rounds potentially offering prize pools exceeding 500,000 units.

The platform has also established connections between VIP advancement and its wider product ecosystem, incorporating structured savings instruments and recurring token incentives. Through unified system integration, the exchange streamlines user interaction while positioning its VIP framework as a quantitative model directly correlated with measurable trading performance.

TLDR

• Offchain Labs said Ethereum layer two networks need responsive pricing to handle rising demand and reduce gas fee swings.
• Edward Felten stated that gas price volatility still acts as the main defense against network congestion.
• Arbitrum One introduced dynamic pricing in January to better align fees with infrastructure bottlenecks.
• Data presented at EthCC 2026 showed Arbitrum maintained lower fees during peak demand compared to some rivals.
• Arbitrum One holds $15.2 billion in total value locked, while Base secures $10.9 billion, according to L2beat.

Ethereum layer-2 networks must adopt responsive pricing to handle future demand, Offchain Labs said at EthCC 2026. Edward Felten stated that gas fee swings still protect networks during congestion but deter mainstream users. He urged Ethereum L2s to align prices with real bottlenecks while keeping infrastructure stable.

Ethereum L2s push responsive pricing to manage congestion

Felten said current gas spikes remain the main defense during heavy traffic, and they raise costs quickly. However, he argued that responsive pricing allows more transactions at lower fees without overwhelming systems. He said, “[With responsive pricing], you can see more traffic at lower gas prices without overrunning the infrastructure.”

He explained that Ethereum’s EIP-1559 upgrade reformed the fee market in August 2021. The upgrade changed the gas limit mechanism and burned part of each transaction fee. Still, he said, gas volatility persists, and users reject unpredictable costs.

Felten presented charts comparing Arbitrum and Base during peak demand periods. The data showed Arbitrum gas fees stayed lower at high volumes than networks using EIP-1559 alone. He said Arbitrum adopted dynamic pricing in January to align fees with system bottlenecks.

Arbitrum described the change as a platform direction toward predictable fees under demand. The network said it aimed to match prices with actual infrastructure constraints. Felten said the rollout marked one of the first live tests of this pricing model.

Arbitrum and Base test new fee structures

Arbitrum One leads the layer-2 market with $15.2 billion in total value locked. Coinbase’s Base follows with $10.9 billion in TVL, according to L2beat data. In total, L2 networks secure over $39.7 billion, which reflects a 4.6% yearly increase.

Julian Kors, founder of Pulsar Spaces, said responsive pricing reduces predictability compared to EIP-1559. He said networks must choose between mechanism design purity and real-time efficiency. He told Cointelegraph, “EIP-1559 does the first very well. Responsive pricing leans into the second.”

Jerome de Tychey, president of Ethereum France, said responsive pricing could improve user experience. He said the model makes fees reflect actual demand more closely. However, he did not claim it eliminates volatility.

Cyprien Grau, project lead at Status Network, called the model a “real improvement in fee accuracy.” Yet he said the system still relies on a fee market that can produce spikes. He added, “It doesn’t solve the structural problem.”

Grau said L2 gas fees trend toward zero as scaling improves and competition grows. He said responsive pricing smooths the decline but does not replace the gas model. He added that future L2s must remove gas from the user experience entirely.

The debate continues as Ethereum revisits its rollup-focused scaling thesis. In February, Vitalik Buterin said some layer-2 assumptions no longer hold. He said future scaling should rely more on the mainnet and native rollups.

The Trump administration submitted a $1.5 trillion defense spending request to Congress on April 3 — the largest military budget proposal in U.S. history — pairing record military outlays with cuts to domestic programs in a fiscal combination that signals sustained inflation pressure and a narrower path to Fed rate cuts.

The Trump administration submitted a $1.5 trillion defense spending request to Congress on April 3 — the largest military budget proposal in U.S. history — pairing record military outlays with cuts to domestic programs in a fiscal combination that signals sustained inflation pressure and a narrower path to Fed rate cuts. According to NPR’s reporting on the White House release, the proposal represents a roughly 42% increase over current spending and includes $1.1 trillion in base Pentagon funding alongside $350 billion to be passed through the budget reconciliation process.

A $1.5 trillion defense budget — the first base defense budget in U.S. history to cross the $1 trillion mark — funded partly through domestic spending cuts rather than new revenue, raises immediate questions about the fiscal trajectory of the U.S. government. Budget Director Russell Vought wrote that “President Trump promised to reinvest in America’s national security infrastructure, to make sure our nation is safe in a dangerous world.” For crypto markets, the more immediate concern is the inflationary signal embedded in the spending mix.

Defense-heavy budgets during active wartime, combined with domestic spending reductions that shift costs to states, tend to sustain elevated government outlays without equivalent economic output — a dynamic that complicates the Federal Reserve’s rate path at exactly the moment investors had been positioned for monetary easing.

What investors are watching

Bitcoin was trading near $67,000 as the proposal was released, with U.S. equity markets closed for Good Friday. The budget announcement lands as an additional fiscal signal atop an already difficult macro environment for crypto — one defined by oil above $100, the ongoing Strait of Hormuz closure, and a strong March jobs print that independently reduced near-term rate cut expectations.

The budget proposal must now move through Congress, where both the size and the domestic spending cuts will face bipartisan scrutiny. A prolonged legislative fight over defense appropriations would add fiscal uncertainty to the existing geopolitical backdrop — a combination that has historically supported safe-haven assets over risk assets in the near term.

Cambodia’s parliament passed legislation targeting compounds used to defraud victims through scams, including those involving cryptocurrency.

In a Friday notice, the Senate of the Kingdom of Cambodia announced that the chamber had unanimously approved the draft law with no amendment, with 58 senators voting yes. According to reports, the draft bill, which would still need the king’s approval before becoming law, imposed prison time between two to five years and up to $125,000 in fines for certain crimes, or twice the time in prison and penalties if part of a gang or targeting multiple victims. 

“The draft law stipulates the establishment of criminal rules to fill the gaps and deficiencies in the current law, which will contribute significantly to addressing challenges that pose serious risks to social security, the economy and citizens, including affecting Cambodia’s reputation, as well as improving the effectiveness of the fight against fraud through technological systems, aiming to contribute to the preservation and protection of public security and order, and improving the effectiveness of cooperation in combating this crime,” said a translation of the Friday Senate notice on the bill.

According to a 2025 report from the US State Department, Cambodia’s government “frequently downplayed scam operation cases as labor disputes,” never arresting or prosecuting any owner or operator of a suspected scam compound. The Cambodian operations are just some of many across parts of Southeast Asia, where compounds are alleged sources of forced labor.

Related: UK sanctions $20B scam market by cutting ‘legitimate’ crypto ties

The passage of the bill followed UK authorities sanctioning the operators of a Cambodia-based scam center, and the country extraditing to China the leader of a criminal syndicate with alleged tied to scam compounds. Cambodia’s national assembly advanced the bill on March 30, with all 112 members voting yay. 

What happens in these scam compounds?

According to a 2024 UN News report that explored a compound in the Philippines, scam centers like the ones targeted under the Cambodian bill were massive undertakings, with facilities designed so that the residents would never need to leave. Although many of the workers were responsible for carrying out the scams, they were also “trafficked here, held against their will” and “exposed to violence” in the compounds.

“The people who work here are basically fenced off from the outside world,” said the report. “All their daily necessities are met. There are restaurants, dormitories, barbershops and even a karaoke bar. So, people don’t actually have to leave and can stay here for months.”

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