Crypto World
Price of tungsten, sulfur and helium
Almonty’s tungsten mine in Sangdong, South Korea, in March 2026.
Almonty
BEIJING — The Iran war is squeezing a global commodities market already pressured by China’s export controls and stockpiling efforts.
Prices of three niche elements — tungsten, sulfur and helium — have climbed sharply in recent weeks.
While none of the commodities are traded as widely as oil, the surge indicates how ripple effects from the Middle East conflict could end up restricting production of the semiconductors that power artificial intelligence advances.
Tungsten, a metal nearly as hard as a diamond, creates the electrical connection in the core of a semiconductor chip. Sulfuric acid, a byproduct of sulfur, cleans chip wafers. Helium enables smooth production of semiconductors since the gas prevents unwanted chemical reactions in the manufacturing process.
Those are just some of the ways in which the three elements have become critical for modern manufacturing, including for defense.
Beijing started to ramp up its control over the critical supplies even before the Iran war started on Feb. 28, partly as tensions with the U.S. escalated over the last few years.
China started restricting tungsten exports just over a year ago, and in December called for tighter limits on sulfuric acid exports. Helium, a gas that’s difficult to store, saw the volume of Chinese imports rise by 15.7% in 2025, after a nearly 65% surge in 2024, according to Wind Information.
The Iran war and the ensuing constraints on the Strait of Hormuz, a critical Middle East shipping route for energy and chemicals, has tipped some oversupply situations into undersupply, while exacerbating existing shortages.
Prices of the three commodities have jumped in some cases by more than oil. The widely used fossil fuel has climbed by more than 50% in March, putting Brent on track for a record month.
“While the Chinese supply chain is being viewed as more resilient than many peers, the risk of disruption in chemicals as raw materials for manufacturers in selected segments is higher than expected based on the feedback,” Goldman Sachs analysts said in a report late last week, citing nearly 40 commodity-related meetings and site visits in China.
Tungsten
Tungsten hit a record high of over $3,000 late last week, marking a surge of well over 50% for the month and more than tripling in price since late December. That’s based on the industry benchmark called “ammonium para tungstate (APT)” in metric ton units, or MTU, from Fastmarket, as quoted by tungsten miner Almonty.
Almonty officially reopened a large tungsten mine in Sangdong, South Korea, earlier this month, and plans to start producing some tungsten this year at a project in the U.S. state of Montana.
The company’s CEO Lewis Black told CNBC that defense sector demand for tungsten has been “extremely strong” since the beginning of last year, but that there’s been no notable change despite the Iran war.
“There’s no material to stockpile. That’s probably the biggest change,” he said.
Sulfur
The price of sulfuric acid in Africa is now at least 30% higher than it was prior to the war, and is still rising, the Goldman Sachs analysts said, citing a local Chinese miner in Africa.
Other assessments point to a milder rise in prices.
China sulfur prices, including cost and freight, climbed by about 13% from early March to $621 per tonne as of March 26, according to S&P Global Platts.
“A 2-3 month effective blockade would likely become a severe supply shock, especially as freight/insurance stay elevated and Middle East-origin cargoes become harder to execute,” Pan Yuya, lead analyst for sulfur and phosphate raw materials at S&P Global Energy, and Isaac Zhao, senior principal analyst, China fertilizers at S&P Global Energy, said in a March 20 note.
The S&P analysts said that around 56% of China’s sulfur imports came from the Middle East in 2025.
“Even prior to the Middle East conflict, sulfur prices were rising sharply as the market tightened. With sulfur prices now at fresh record highs, the ‘super squeeze’ in this rather obscure commodity in supply warrants further examination,” HSBC analysts said in a March 16 report.
Helium
Helium prices have roughly doubled since the Iran war began, according to Fitch Ratings.
As most trading occurs through long-term private contracts between industrial gas suppliers and manufacturers, it is difficult to pinpoint industry-wide prices, said Shelley Jang, Fitch’s director of Asia-Pacific corporate ratings.
Iranian missile attacks this month crippled a key industrial center in Qatar, which produces about one-third of the world’s helium.
That implies helium supply won’t be restored anytime soon, pointed out Christopher Ecclestone, principal and mining strategist at Hallgarten & Company.
In one indication of further market tightness, prices of helium in China’s Henan province have reversed a downturn this year to climb from a Feb. 28 low of 545 yuan ($78.85) a bottle to 600 yuan ($86.81), according to Wind Information.
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Shortages caused by the Iran war are the latest supply chain disruption to rock global markets, which faced similar shocks from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the Covid-19 pandemic. That’s pushed companies to diversify, and countries such as China to ramp up stockpiling plans.
“Access to supplies of certain physical materials where production and processing is concentrated in China will become more frequent topics of negotiations with Beijing,” Rhodium Group said in a March 24 report.
Limited price transparency also means the shortage could be worse than available numbers suggest.
Tungsten and helium prices have been surging, “but you don’t have anyone on the buy side saying, ‘oh my goodness, we don’t have enough product,’” Ecclestone said. “Defense contractors should have warehouses of tungsten, but they don’t.”
“The world has got lazy. It thinks life is like a supermarket, the product is a pack of cornflakes or a few tons of sulfuric acid,” he said. “The supermarket of commodities has had a few of the aisles chopped down.”
The World Foundation sold $65 million in WLD tokens through over-the-counter block trades with four private counterparties at an average price of $0.2719 per token.
Opinion by: Alex Tsepaev, chief strategy officer at B2PRIME Group.
Each generation has its own distinct characteristics, even when it comes to investing. Younger people, for example, show a higher tolerance for risk. More than 64% of Gen Z and 49% of millennials say they are willing to take on more of it.
That appetite naturally includes investing in cryptocurrencies, which is considered one of the riskiest asset classes in modern markets. No surprise, then, that nearly two-thirds of Gen Zs plan to invest in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin this year. Even more striking is that they are almost four times as likely to own crypto as to own a retirement account.
This might look like pure speculation. These numbers suggest that something more structural is happening.
For Gen Z, crypto is becoming an important part of their portfolios. The question now is whether that bet is mature or premature.
Volatility is the price of admission
Although it is arguable, crypto volatility remains one of the biggest obstacles in investing. Prices can change every millisecond, and trading happens around the clock. This has a significant effect on the final execution price.
The most interesting part here, however, is that Gen Z is fully aware of this. 84% of them acknowledged that cryptocurrencies are risky and volatile, yet continue investing, and participation continues to grow every year. Why?
Gen Z understands that digital assets are a great way to have extra, above-average profits, and volatility is perceived as an entry price. For a generation that has already witnessed two of the biggest economic crises in history, average capital growth in traditional investments can feel too slow or insufficient.
Digital assets also feel native to Gen Z. This is the first generation that has never known a life without the internet, and they are also used to digital wallets and online transactions.
At the same time, their investment behavior is shaped by social media consumption — one in four American Gen Z now gets financial advice from TikTok. Considering that the internet is flooded with so-called “finfluencers,” who help you learnn more about crypto, no surprise that Zoomers tend to invest in it so much.
FOMO and the narrative trap
Beyond risk tolerance, there is another thing that distinguishes Gen Z from previous generations.
It is the fear of missing out (FOMO). This feeling, mostly expressed as the fear of lost profits, is expressed in constant anxiety due to comparing lives with the “perfect” picture on social networks.
FOMO is especially common among Zoomers when it comes to financial matters. In fact, nearly 70% of Gen Z says they feel financial FOMO while scrolling social media. And 50% of Gen Z investors said they have even made an investment driven by this feeling, most often in crypto, in particular, memecoins.
Related: Australia warns of AI, ‘finfluencers’ as Gen Z crypto ownership reaches 23%
Memecoins thrive in this environment. By design, they are made for virality and great coverage in the media and news. The issue is not that they are built on hype, but that they are made to catch the moment and disappear, in most cases. Every memecoin cycle, where it goes up and quickly falls down, strengthens the argument that digital assets are unsafe.
This creates a narrative duality. On one side, crypto is maturing, and institutionals flow in. On the other hand, the industry is still very FOMO-fueled, and this dominates the headlines. And as a result, the loudest crypto stories become more about speculative gains.
Risks that Gen Z underestimate
When Gen Z increasingly invests in crypto, many may be doing so without fully researching the risks. Sometimes they blindly trust TikTok advice without doing their due diligence or reaching out to a financial advisor.
Zoomers mostly feel confident in their decisions. More than 70% of Gen Z saying they are completely sure about their investing behavior. Confidence, however, and especially in crypto, does not mean competence. Younger generations are reportedly more susceptible to the Dunning-Kruger effect. They usually overestimate their knowledge and underestimate risks.
Beyond volatility as a primary risk, Gen Z often neglects the absence of transparency in crypto. Unlike public companies, digital assets have no reporting requirements. A “Wild West” like this, and lack of long-reaching regulation does not bother young crypto enthusiasts. On the contrary, they still trust crypto. They value transparency and direct control a lot. In fact, they should pay more attention to regulation. As it develops, it helps to protect investor rights and turn crypto into a more transparent and trustworthy market.
Investors can also forget that diversification does not simply mean putting 10-20% of your portfolio in crypto. There is the issue of correlation. During periods of systemic stress, crypto has at times moved in line with high-growth equities, weakening its diversification argument. Graphs show that Bitcoin can even correlate with gold, a traditional safe-haven asset.
Or imagine they, for example, choose the wrong coin that is going to fall and put in at least 25%. Without understanding how digital assets work, they risk losing a fourth of their investments.
Still, none of these risks devalues crypto’s role in modern portfolios. On the contrary, crypto might indeed be evolving into a genuine portfolio diversifier.
If that transformation is real, it comes with strings attached.
Opinion by: Alex Tsepaev, chief strategy officer at B2PRIME Group.
This opinion article presents the author’s expert view, and it may not reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. This content has undergone editorial review to ensure clarity and relevance. Cointelegraph remains committed to transparent reporting and upholding the highest standards of journalism. Readers are encouraged to conduct their own research before taking any actions related to the company.
Introduction
Decentralized finance has unlocked something traditional finance never could: permissionless income generation. No bank approvals, no gatekeepers — just you, your capital, and smart contracts.
But there’s a problem.
Most beginners enter yield farming the same way:
They see 100%+ APY, ape in… and learn about risk the expensive way.
This guide fixes that.
Instead of throwing random strategies at you, we’ll walk through a step-by-step “Yield Farming Ladder” — a structured path from beginner to advanced, designed to help you earn sustainably while understanding the risks.
Why Most Beginners Lose Money in Yield Farming
Before we talk profits, let’s talk reality.
Most beginners lose money because they:
- Chase high APYs without understanding the source
- Ignore risks like impermanent loss
- Trust unaudited or hype-driven protocols
- Overcommit capital too early
Here’s the uncomfortable truth:
High yield isn’t free money — it’s risk in disguise.
If you don’t know where the yield comes from, you are the yield.
Level 1: Training Wheels — Stablecoin Lending
Best for: Absolute beginners
Risk level: Low
Typical returns: 3–8% APY
This is where you start.
You deposit stablecoins (like USDC or USDT) into lending protocols, and borrowers pay interest to use your funds.
Why this works for beginners:
- No exposure to price volatility
- No impermanent loss
- Simple mechanics
What you’re learning:
- How DeFi protocols work
- How yield is generated (real demand vs incentives)
Think of this as your DeFi savings account — except it actually pays.
Level 2: Liquidity Pools — Where Real Yield Begins
Best for: Beginners ready to level up
Risk level: Medium
Typical returns: 5–20% APY
Now you step into liquidity provision (LP).
You deposit token pairs into decentralized exchanges, and earn:
- Trading fees
- Incentives (sometimes)
Example:
Provide ETH + USDC → earn fees every time someone trades that pair.
New concept unlocked: Impermanent Loss
This is the “gotcha.”
If token prices move unevenly, you might earn fees… but still lose compared to holding.
Simple analogy:
You’re running a currency exchange booth. If exchange rates swing wildly, your inventory value changes too.
What you’re learning:
- Market exposure
- Fee-based yield vs incentive-based yield
Level 3: Yield Optimization — Work Smarter
Best for: Intermediate users
Risk level: Medium
Typical returns: Variable (often higher due to compounding)
At this stage, you stop doing everything manually.
You use yield aggregators that:
- Automatically reinvest your rewards
- Optimize across pools
- Save time and gas fees
Why this matters:
Manual farming is like watering plants one by one.
Aggregators?
They install an irrigation system.
What you’re learning:
- Capital efficiency
- Compounding strategies
- Protocol diversification
Level 4: Advanced Strategies — The Danger Zone
Best for: Experienced users only
Risk level: High
Typical returns: 20%–100%+ (with serious risk)
This is where things get spicy — and risky.
Strategies include:
- Leveraged yield farming
- Farming new/high-incentive protocols
- Looping (borrow → farm → repeat)
The trade-off:
Higher returns = higher chance of:
- Liquidation
- Smart contract exploits
- Total loss
Let’s be blunt:
This is where people either multiply their capital… or become a Twitter warning thread.
Proceed with caution.
The Risks You Cannot Ignore
If you skip this section, you’re basically speedrunning losses.
1. Smart Contract Risk
Bugs or exploits can drain funds instantly.
2. Impermanent Loss
LPs can underperform simple holding.
3. Protocol Risk
Not all platforms are audited or trustworthy.
4. Market Volatility
Crypto moves fast. Your yields can vanish just as quickly.
5. Overexposure
Putting everything into one strategy = one point of failure.
The Perfect Beginner Yield Farming Path
Here’s the roadmap that actually works:
Step-by-step progression:
- Start with stablecoin lending
- Move into ETH or major asset exposure
- Try stable liquidity pools
- Explore volatile LPs
- Experiment (carefully) with advanced strategies
The key principle:
Start simple. Scale with understanding — not hype.
Example: A Beginner-Friendly $1,000 Yield Portfolio
Let’s make this practical.
Sample allocation:
- $500 (50%) → Stablecoin lending
- $300 (30%) → Stable LPs
- $200 (20%) → Experimental strategies
Why this works:
- The majority of low-risk yield
- Some exposure to higher returns
- Limited downside if experiments fail
This isn’t about maximizing gains.
It’s about staying in the game long enough to learn.
Final Thoughts
Yield farming isn’t a shortcut to wealth.
It’s a system — one that rewards:
- Patience
- Understanding
- Risk management
The real edge isn’t finding the highest APY.
It’s knowing:
- Which yields are sustainable
- Which risks are worth taking
- When to scale… and when to step back
Because in DeFi, survival is the strategy.
And once you survive long enough?
That’s when the real compounding begins.
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- Solana (SOL) price consolidates near $80 support amid strong fundamentals.
- Institutional staking and brokerage access boost Solana adoption.
- Key resistance at $87.65, and a breakout could target $97–$107.
Solana’s native token, SOL, has been showing signs of consolidation as it struggles to break through key resistance levels.
Despite a slight bounce today, the price remains confined below the $88 range.
At the same time, traders should closely monitor the altcoin which is currently hovering near the critical support at around $80, which has acted as a short-term floor for buyers.
On the surface, Solana’s technical structure appears cautious, with short-term momentum indicators showing weak buying pressure, but underneath this, Solana’s ecosystem is growing at a remarkable pace.
Solana’s fundamental strength fuels long-term confidence
One of the most compelling aspects of Solana’s recent performance is the surge in institutional and real-world adoption.
The network now hosts more than $2 billion in tokenized real-world assets according to rwa.xyz.
This milestone underscores Solana’s role not just as a blockchain for decentralized applications, but as a platform capable of handling complex financial instruments.
Institutional interest has also taken a significant step forward.
Staking products offering competitive yields have been launched, allowing both retail and institutional investors to earn returns on their SOL holdings.
These developments provide additional utility and financial incentives for participants, reinforcing Solana’s position as more than a speculative asset.
Adding to this, several traditional brokerage platforms including Galaxy now offer custody and trading services for SOL.
This integration reduces barriers for institutional investors and opens the door for mainstream adoption.
With access to regulated platforms, capital inflows could increase steadily, strengthening the network’s financial layer and liquidity.
On-chain activity remains robust as well, and the blockchain continues to see high transaction throughput, and its dominance in tokenized equity markets demonstrates that adoption is moving beyond hype-driven speculation.
Taken together, these factors highlight a token with real-world utility and strong growth potential.
Technical resistance holds back SOL’s price
Short-term market sentiment remains cautious, with recent outflows from Solana-focused ETFs reflecting institutional hesitancy despite the network’s improvements.
While the fundamentals are building, the price is still confined by technical hurdles.
SOL has found immediate resistance near $87.65, with historical data suggesting further caps at $97.56 and $106.95.
On the downside, the support zone at $75.85–$80.00 is critical for near-term stability.
A daily close below these zones could trigger a sharper decline toward $63.72, which has historically acted as a longer-term support.
Solana price outlook
Overall, Solana (SOL) is at a pivotal point where its fundamentals are strong, but the market has yet to fully recognize them.
Price action will likely depend on whether buyers defend support and whether institutional capital begins flowing into the network.
In the short term, traders should closely watch the near-term support zone between $80 and $77.32, since holding this level is crucial to prevent further selling pressure.
In case of a rebound, the immediate resistance is at $87.65, which if cleared could open the door to a rally towards higher targets at $97.56 and $106.95.
Built by Tezos R&D hub Trilitech, the new web app brings tokenized rare earth metals on-chain alongside gold and uranium as AI-driven industrial demand intensifies.
Dr. Ben Goertzel, CEO of the Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) Alliance, told BeInCrypto his team can recreate the quantum attack circuits that Google Quantum AI built but refused to publish. He warned that if his organization can do it, nation-states already can too.
Google’s March 30 whitepaper showed that two working circuits implementing Shor’s algorithm to break 256-bit elliptic curve cryptography could be built with fewer than 500,000 physical qubits. The team chose not to release the code and instead published a zero-knowledge proof. Goertzel told BeInCrypto that decision changes nothing.
“Keeping Capabilities Secret Buys You at Most a Very Short Window”
Google framed its decision to withhold the circuits as responsible disclosure. The blog post called it a deliberate departure from the team’s historical practice of full transparency, motivated by the potential for misuse.
The crypto industry largely debated whether this aligned with its founding principle of “don’t trust, verify.”
Goertzel did not share the concern. He told BeInCrypto the secrecy is functionally irrelevant.
We are confident that we could regenerate the ‘secret circuit’ Google found using our own expertise and reasonable compute, and if we can do it, the Chinese government and other well-resourced actors certainly can too. Keeping capabilities secret buys you at most a very short window.
He added that the ASI Alliance has not withheld any of its own code for safety reasons, though the team has discussed it internally. His default position is openness.
The security benefits of decentralized scrutiny, he argued, outweigh the marginal risk reduction of secrecy when parallel discovery is the norm.
He did leave room for exceptions. If something posed a specific, acute, short-term danger, the team would hold it back.
But Google’s circuit, in his view, does not meet that bar because the knowledge to build it is already widely accessible to capable actors.
The 41% Problem
The Google whitepaper models what it calls an “on-spend attack.” A quantum computer could prepare part of the calculation in advance, then crack a Bitcoin (BTC) transaction in about nine minutes once the public key is exposed.
Since Bitcoin’s average block confirmation takes 10 minutes, the attacker has a roughly 41% probability of finishing first.
The paper also estimates that roughly 6.9 million BTC are already held in wallets whose public keys have been exposed in some form.
That includes about 1.7 million coins from the network’s earliest years, as well as additional funds affected by address reuse and Bitcoin’s Taproot upgrade, which makes public keys visible by default.
Goertzel told BeInCrypto that a 41% attack rate is not a borderline risk. It is a structural failure.
Any attack success rate above single digits is deeply problematic for a store-of-value chain. Once rational actors believe there is a meaningful probability that a transaction can be reversed or an address drained during the confirmation window, the game-theoretic assurances that underpin Bitcoin’s security model collapse. At 41%, you are well past the threshold.
He noted that the hardware to execute such an attack does not yet exist. But the mathematical proof is complete, and Google has set a 2029 deadline for the industry to migrate to post-quantum cryptography (PQC).
Bitcoin currently has no coordinated upgrade roadmap to meet that deadline.
ASI Alliance Says It Was Built for This
While much of the industry debated the implications, Goertzel told BeInCrypto his team saw this coming years ago.
He has previously predicted that human-level artificial general intelligence (AGI) could arrive around 2027 or 2028.
Google’s quantum timeline puts both breakthroughs on a collision course, and Goertzel said the ASI Alliance designed its infrastructure for exactly that convergence.
The convergence of AGI and quantum computing is very real, but framing it as purely a ‘threat’ misses the other half of the picture. At the ASI Alliance we have been designing ASI:Chain from the ground up to be quantum-oriented–not just quantum-resistant but quantum-leveraging…So for us, quantum computing arriving alongside AGI is a feature, not a bug.
ASI:Chain, the layer-1 blockchain under development by the Alliance, uses MeTTa as its smart contract language instead of Solidity.
According to Goertzel, MeTTa includes quantum-type systems, and the team has developed quantum versions of core Hyperon AGI algorithms covering attention allocation, probabilistic logic, and evolutionary learning.
The encryption layer is modular. Quantum-safe cryptographic primitives, including lattice-based and hash-based schemes, can be plugged in without redesigning the chain or requiring a hard fork.
The cost is computational overhead, which Goertzel called a real engineering challenge but not an architectural one.
The Artificial Superintelligence Alliance (FET) was formed through a token merger of SingularityNET, Fetch.ai, Ocean Protocol, and CUDOS.
Ocean Protocol later exited the merger, a move that later triggered legal action amid token theft allegations.
Its token, FET, currently trades at roughly $0.241, up by over 5% in the last 24 hours.
“A Catastrophic Precedent for Digital Property Rights”
Google’s whitepaper flagged roughly 1.7 million BTC in Satoshi-era Pay-to-Public-Key (P2PK) wallets that permanently expose their public keys.
These coins cannot be migrated. Their owners are either gone or unreachable. The paper proposed a “digital salvage” framework that could give governments legal authority to quantum-crack dormant coins.
Goertzel rejected the premise.
On principle, no–giving governments a legal pathway to crack private wallets sets a catastrophic precedent for digital property rights. The entire value proposition of crypto rests on the idea that your keys are your coins. Once you establish that a sufficiently powerful actor can legally seize coins whose owners are absent, you have undermined the foundation.
He acknowledged that those coins will eventually be cracked by someone. The question is whether a legal framework governs the process or it becomes a free-for-all. He leans toward leaving dormant coins untouched as a matter of principle, with the ecosystem pricing in their eventual vulnerability.
Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) offered a different view, suggesting that if Satoshi’s coins do not move within a certain period, the community might consider locking or burning those addresses before hackers can reach them.
He added that identifying all of Satoshi’s addresses without confusing them with early holders would itself be a challenge.
The Race Is Already On
Venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya called Google’s paper “quite reasonable” and urged the crypto community to organize a quantum-resistance roadmap within the next few years.
CZ said crypto would survive the quantum era but warned that coordinating upgrades across decentralized networks would spark debates, forks, and potentially new security bugs.
Goertzel’s position is blunter. He told BeInCrypto the projects that survive will be the ones that started engineering for quantum years ago. The ones that start after the first coins get cracked will not make it.
Against this backdrop, his advice for retail holders is practical. Move holdings to addresses using the most recent key formats available.
For Bitcoin, that means native SegWit (bech32) addresses where the public key stays hidden until spending. Avoid reusing addresses. For Ethereum (ETH), the vulnerability is more structural, and individual-level options remain limited.
When asked whether the quantum threat kills the decentralization thesis entirely, Goertzel told BeInCrypto that it does not.
But it raises the stakes enormously. If a centralized actor cracks dormant Bitcoin and captures hundreds of billions in assets, that becomes a massive centralizing force. The thesis, however, was never premised on legacy cryptography lasting forever.
The decentralization thesis survives if decentralized projects out-engineer centralized ones on the quantum transition. That is exactly what we intend to do.
Google’s paper, combined with a separate Caltech and Oratomic study showing Shor’s algorithm can execute at cryptographic scale with 10,000 qubits, suggests the preparation window is shorter than most assumed.
Goertzel claims his team is already on the other side of that window. The rest of the industry is now racing to catch up.
The post ASI Alliance Can Rebuild Google’s Secret Quantum Circuit, CEO Ben Goertzel Says appeared first on BeInCrypto.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, in a wide-ranging talk at Harvard University, said Monday that he sees inflation expectations as grounded despite rising energy prices so the central bank doesn’t need to respond with higher interest rates.
As his term leading the central bank nears an end, Powell avoided questions about the longer-term direction of interest rates or inclinations his designated successor has espoused.
In the near term, he said the proper move is to look beyond the short-term gyrations of the energy market and focus on the Fed’s goals of stable prices and low unemployment.
“Inflation expectations do appear to be well anchored beyond the short term, but nonetheless, it’s something we will eventually maybe face the question of what to do here,” he said during a question-and-answer question with a moderator and students. “We’re not really facing it yet, because we don’t know what the economic effects will be, but we’ll certainly be mindful of that broader context when we make that decision.”
As he has in the past, Powell said he believes the current rate target, in a range between 3.5%-3.75%, is “a good place” for the Fed to sit as it observes events currently playing out, including the Iran war and the impact tariffs are having on prices.
Jerome Powell, chairman of the US Federal Reserve, during a moderated conversation at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, on Monday, March 30, 2026.
Mel Musto | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The comments appeared to register in financial markets, with traders no longer pricing in a significant chance of a rate hike this year. As recently as Friday morning, markets were looking at a better than 50% probability of a quarter percentage point increase amid expectations the Fed would react to the surge in energy costs. However, odds of a hike by December fell to 2.2% after Powell’s appearance.
Powell said raising rates now could have negative effects on the economy later. He noted that Fed rate moves have a lagged impact on the economy, so tightening here wouldn’t help the inflationary impact of the Iran war.
“By the time the effects of a tightening in monetary policy take effect, the oil price shock is probably long gone, and you’re weighing on the economy at a time when it’s not appropriate. So the tendency is to look through any kind of a supply shock,” he added.
Market-based measures such as breakeven rates in Treasury yields indicate few fears of an inflation spike. Breakevens measure the difference between Treasurys and inflation-indexed securities. The five-year breakeven rate most recently was around 2.56% and trending lower over the past 10 days.
Powell’s term ends in mid-May, and President Donald Trump has nominated former Governor Kevin Warsh as the next chair. However, Warsh’s nomination is being held up in the Senate Banking Committee as U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro continues her investigation into renovations at Fed headquarters.
Though a judge threw out a subpoena Pirro’s office issued to Powell, she has appealed the decision. While the case is being adjudicated, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., has vowed to prevent the nomination from going through.
For his part, Warsh has stated a preference for lower interest rates than the current level. Asked to comment on his successor’s plans, Powell said, “I’m not going to swing at that pitch.”
Regarding private credit, Powell noted rising defaults, investor withdrawals and concerns about wider issues in the $3 trillion sector.
“I’m reluctant to say anything that suggests that we’re dismissive of the risk, but we’re looking for connections to the banking system and things that might result in contagion. We don’t see those right now,” he said. “What we see is a correction going on, and certainly there’ll be people losing money and things like that. But it doesn’t seem to have the makings of a broader systemic event.”
Crypto World
Crypto edges higher as oil dips, but futures market shows hesitation: Crypto Markets Today
Crypto markets rallied on Wednesday as oil momentarily slipped below $100 per barrel after U.S. President Donald Trump said the war in Iran will end in “two to three weeks.”
Bitcoin trades at $68,500 having risen by 0.4% since midnight UTC and 3.1% over the past 24 hours, while ether (ETH) is back at $2,130 after a brief stint below $2,000 last week.
The broader crypto market remains in a downtrend dating back to October, although sentiment has shifted slightly following a period of consolidation between $62,500 and $75,000 since early February.
A selection of altcoins have performed particularly well, notably algorand (ALGO), which is up by 22% in the past 24 hours as it bounces back from oversold territory.
Derivatives positioning
- The crypto futures market appears to be churning rather than building clear directional positions, as trading volumes have risen 23% to $210 million over the past 24 hours, while open interest has remained broadly stable at around $106 billion.
- Open interest in major USD- and USDT-denominated futures has clearly diverged from BTC’s recovery from the weekend low of around $65,000. This suggests the rebound is not being driven by a meaningful buildup in leveraged positions, but rather by spot demand or short covering, pointing to a lack of strong conviction behind the move.
- Ether’s OI has risen slightly alongside its spot price, signaling participation from leveraged traders.
- ETH and ZEC stand out as major coins with positive OI-adjusted CVD and funding rate. This combination points to aggressive bidding in the futures market, with traders actively opening long positions and paying a premium to maintain them.
- The market for ADA, XMR, BCH and SHIB suggests otherwise.
- Bitcoin and Ether implied volatility indices continue to present a picture of calm.
- On Deribit, risk reversals continue to show a bias for BTC and ETH put options, which offer protection against price slides. Bearishness is slightly more pronounced in BTC options.
Token talk
- The CoinDesk Computing Select Index (CPUS) was the best performing benchmark on Wednesday, rising by 2.7% since midnight UTC while the CoinDesk Smart Contract Platform Select Capped Index (SCPXC) and the DeFi Select Index (DFX) are up by 1.5% apiece.
- The bitcoin and major-dominant CoinDesk 5 (CD5) and CoinDesk 20 (CD20) have increased by 0.35% and 0.69% respectively, indicating underperformance against the wider altcoin market.
- Algorand (ALGO) led the market gains on Wednesday but it was closely followed by decentralized finance (DeFi) tokens MORPHO and JUP, which posted double digit gains.
- A disproportionate rise in open interest for assets like ETH and ZEC suggests the recent move has been backed by leverage as opposed to spot buying, which could unwind in news to the contrary of Trump’s statement is released this week.
The US dollar is retreating from recent highs, moving into a moderate correction after a prolonged period of gains. Pressure on the currency is building amid weaker-than-expected macroeconomic data, while market participants adopt a wait-and-see approach ahead of key labour market releases, including the ADP report.
The current dynamics reflect a gradual cooling in expectations regarding the resilience of the US economy. Recently published indicators point to a slowdown in business activity and easing labour market tightness, reducing support for the dollar after it reached local highs. At the same time, upcoming releases remain a key factor that could either reinforce the corrective move or restore demand for the US currency.
Among the published figures, investors focused on mixed US macro data. The Chicago PMI fell to 52.8 versus expectations of 54.8, signalling a slowdown in the manufacturing sector. In addition, JOLTS job openings came in below forecasts (6.882 million vs 7.240 million), indicating a gradual cooling in the labour market. Further pressure came from regional business activity indices, including data from the Dallas Fed, which reinforced doubts about the sustainability of the current economic momentum.
USD/JPY
After reaching fresh yearly highs and testing the psychological 160.00 level, USD/JPY has moved lower, forming a corrective pullback. Technical analysis suggests a potential decline towards the 157.50–158.00 area, as a dark cloud cover pattern has formed on the daily timeframe.
If the price consolidates above the 159.40–159.80 range, the bearish correction scenario may be invalidated.
Key events for USD/JPY:
- today at 15:15 (GMT+3): US ADP non-farm employment change
- today at 15:30 (GMT+3): US core retail sales
- today at 16:45 (GMT+3): US manufacturing PMI
USD/CAD
USD/CAD is also showing a pullback from local highs following a strong rally. The formation of an Evening Star pattern near the 1.3930 level indicates a slowdown in bullish momentum and the potential for a correction towards 1.3860–1.3880.
At the same time, a move above 1.3970 could support a resumption of the uptrend and the formation of a new bullish impulse.
Key events for USD/CAD:
- today at 16:30 (GMT+3): Canada manufacturing PMI
- today at 17:30 (GMT+3): US crude oil inventories
- today at 18:30 (GMT+3): Atlanta Fed GDPNow indicator
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Key Takeaways
- Samsung and SK Hynix shares surged 10–13% Wednesday following significant March declines
- South Korea’s KOSPI index rallied more than 8%, bouncing back from a 19%+ monthly decline
- Optimism around a potential Middle East conflict resolution improved market sentiment
- The semiconductor giants had plunged 23–24% in March amid geopolitical concerns and AI memory chip demand uncertainty
- Overnight gains on Wall Street, spurred by President Trump’s Iran statements, provided momentum
Shares of Samsung Electronics surged 13% to reach 189,600 won during Wednesday’s trading session, while SK Hynix climbed approximately 11% to 893,000 won. The dramatic recovery followed a punishing March for both semiconductor manufacturers.
South Korea’s benchmark KOSPI index jumped 8.4% to close at 5,478.70, with the semiconductor sector rebound providing substantial support. The index had tumbled more than 19% during March.
The two technology giants each lost approximately 23–24% of their value last month. Investor anxiety centered on the escalating Middle East situation, which threatened to increase manufacturing expenses and disrupt global supply networks.
Additional pressure emerged from questions surrounding sustained demand for memory semiconductors utilized in artificial intelligence applications. Google‘s introduction of an algorithm reportedly capable of reducing AI memory needs added to sector headwinds.
Speculation intensified that memory chip pricing could weaken after OpenAI implemented cost-cutting measures. The artificial intelligence company discontinued its video generation platform, Sora, as part of broader budget reductions.
Strategic OpenAI Partnership Under Spotlight
Toward the end of 2025, OpenAI entered into an agreement with Samsung and SK Hynix for the procurement of 900,000 DRAM wafers from the Korean manufacturers. This partnership had previously fueled investor enthusiasm for both companies.
Both semiconductor producers had enjoyed rising memory chip valuations throughout late 2025, supported by expectations that AI-driven demand would exceed available supply. March’s correction erased portions of those earlier advances.
Kiwoom Securities analyst Han Ji-young attributed Wednesday’s rally to value-oriented purchasing, noting that blue-chip stocks had declined sufficiently to entice investors back into the market.
“The stock market is highly likely to enter a recovery phase rather than experience further decline,” Han stated in client communications.
Peace Prospects in Middle East Boost Market Confidence
Market sentiment strengthened following President Trump’s Tuesday statement indicating the United States would withdraw from Iran within a two to three-week timeframe. The President delivered these remarks during a White House press availability.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian indicated Tehran’s willingness to conclude hostilities, though he requested certain unspecified assurances.
These diplomatic developments triggered an overnight rally across U.S. markets, with the positive momentum extending into Asian trading sessions Wednesday.
Samsung shares concluded trading at 189,600 won, approximately $125.83 in U.S. dollar terms. SK Hynix finished at 893,000 won.
The KOSPI index settled at 5,478.70, representing an 8.4% single-day advance.
Despite Wednesday’s gains, both Samsung and SK Hynix continue trading substantially below their pre-March levels.
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