GSR is buying its way into the underwriting layer of crypto, spending 57 million dollars to turn itself from a market maker into a full‑stack capital markets and treasury platform for token issuers.

Crypto market maker GSR is moving aggressively up the value chain, spending $57 million to acquire Autonomous and Architech in a bid to become a full‑lifecycle capital markets and fund management platform for digital assets. The deal is designed to give GSR direct exposure to everything from token design and launch to liquidity, governance, financing and secondary‑market trading under a single, coordinated umbrella.​

According to the announcement cited by ChainCatcher, Autonomous will continue to operate independently, focused on helping teams launch and operate tokenized organizations. Architech, by contrast, will be folded into GSR’s digital asset advisory arm and positioned as a core component of its institutional consulting business. Together, the two acquisitions are meant to plug long‑standing gaps in crypto’s deal infrastructure, where token issuance, governance models, listing strategy and treasury design are often handled by different providers with misaligned incentives.​

A key focus of the combined platform will be treasury management for crypto projects. GSR says it intends to offer tools for liquidity planning, cash‑flow forecasting, risk management and asset allocation, pushing projects away from passive token hoarding and toward more diversified, yield‑aware portfolios. In practice, that means using GSR’s existing trading and derivatives capabilities to hedge volatility, manage stablecoin buckets, and smooth runway across market regimes.​

Strategically, the move is a bet that the next wave of serious crypto issuers will look and behave more like mid‑market corporates or funds than like 2021‑era degen DAOs. Those issuers want integrated counterparties that can handle launch, liquidity and ongoing risk management without forcing them to stitch together five different vendors. If GSR can execute, it will not just be making markets for tokens; it will be designing, launching and effectively underwriting them across their entire lifecycle. For a space still plagued by ad‑hoc token launches and treasury blow‑ups, that kind of vertical integration is both an obvious opportunity—and a concentration of power that regulators and rival service providers will watch closely.

This is a “scam coin” that “rugged people,” one analyst claimed.

The meme coin PIPPIN, which was among crypto’s rock stars not long ago due to its staggering price increase, has crashed by approximately 50% over the past day alone.

The big question now is whether a rebound is on the horizon or if this was a textbook rug pull, signaling that things may only get worse from here.

The Scam Revealed Its Real Face?

While the broader crypto market struggled throughout February, the lesser-known meme coin PIPPIN defied the negative conditions, registering a triple-digit price explosion. At one point, the valuation surged to $0.76, whereas towards the end of last month it climbed to an all-time high of almost $0.90.

PIPPIN’s market capitalization briefly reached nearly $900 million, thus entering the elite club of the 100 biggest cryptocurrencies, but that success was short-lived. The beginning of March saw a substantial correction, which intensified after a 52% decline over the last 24 hours. In a matter of a single day, nearly $200 million of the asset’s market cap was vaporized, and it now ranks as the 188th-largest digital asset.

The most evident reason for the crash appears to be the selling spree initiated by certain investors. Some X users reported that the same wallets that accumulated PIPPIN last week recently dumped their holdings en masse.

The meme coin has been the subject of criticism from many market observers, even during its bull run. Last month, X user Dippy.eth described it as “the largest scam of the past year,” while others think the whole project is “a cabal play,” in which a coordinated group of insiders is believed to manipulate the price through their actions. Most recently, Crypto Analyst joined the club of critics, classifying PIPPIN as a “scam coin” that “rugged people.”

How About a Revival?

Despite the overwhelming opinion among industry participants that PIPPIN is a red flag for traders and investors, some remain bullish on the asset. X user Nehal, for instance, envisioned heightened volatility ahead and eventual price increase to a new ATH of $1.

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The asset’s Relative Strength Index (RSI) supports the rebound theory. The indicator measures the speed and magnitude of recent price movements, helping traders identify potential reversal points. It runs from 0 to 100, and ratios below 30 are considered bullish territory that could precede a resurgence. On the contrary, readings beyond 70 signal that a pullback might be on the way. Currently, PIPPIN’s RSI stands at around 24.

Mastercard’s planned $1.8 billion acquisition of stablecoin infrastructure firm BVNK is reinforcing a growing view on Wall Street that stablecoins are moving from a niche crypto tool to a core layer of global payments.

Analysts say the deal signals a shift in how traditional financial networks see blockchain-based money movement. “Stablecoins are integral to the future of payments,” said Mizuho analyst Dan Dolev, framing the acquisition as validation that digital dollars are becoming embedded in mainstream financial infrastructure.

Mastercard said Tuesday that it would acquire BVNK, a London-based firm that enables businesses to send, receive, store and convert stablecoins across more than 130 countries, for $1.8 billion. The company processed over $30 billion in stablecoin payments in 2025, according to analyst estimates.

For investors, the move helps answer lingering questions about Mastercard’s crypto strategy.

“BVNK is a clear answer,” TD Cowen analysts, who rate the company a Buy with a $671 price target, wrote, adding that the deal connects onchain payment rails with Mastercard’s existing network. The firm said the acquisition demonstrates that stablecoins can serve as a complementary infrastructure layer rather than a direct competitor to card networks.

That distinction has become central to the investment case. Earlier concerns that stablecoins could bypass traditional payment companies have given way to a different view: that they may instead improve how money moves behind the scenes.

Cantor Fitzgerald, which has an Overweight rating and a $650 price target on the stock, said the acquisition positions Mastercard for a coming “stablecoin adoption wave,” particularly as demand grows among financial institutions and fintech firms for faster and cheaper cross-border payments.

In recent months, this “wave” of demand has become clear as many traditional financial giants scramble to adopt stablecoin as their settlement rails. Even bitcoin purists, such as Jack Dorsey, who would have dreamt of a world where payments are done via Bitcoin blockchain, are reluctantly giving in to customers’ demand for stablecoin.

Those use cases are already taking shape.

Stablecoins are increasingly used for business-to-business payments, global payroll and remittances, where traditional systems can take days to settle. By contrast, blockchain-based transfers can move funds in minutes and operate around the clock.

BVNK’s platform adds that capability directly into Mastercard’s ecosystem, enabling 24/7 settlement and reducing reliance on intermediaries in cross-border transactions.

A long-term bet

While the financial gains for Mastercard from this acquisition may be small, the credit card giant has its eye on the bigger prize.

Financially, the acquisition is not expected to have a significant near-term impact. BVNK generated about $40 million in revenue as of late 2024, meaning the contribution to Mastercard’s earnings will likely be modest.

Instead, the deal will enable Mastercard to make a longer-term bet to become a front runner on a rapidly evolving industry poised to revolutionize how money moves.

Stablecoin transaction volumes have already reached an estimated $350 billion annually, and are expected to grow as regulatory clarity improves and more institutions enter the market.

For payments giants like Mastercard, the push into stablecoin infrastructure is about protecting core business lines, not just experimenting with crypto rails, according to Harvey Li, founder of Tokenization Insight.

“Card networks are the most exposed payment rail to stablecoin disruption,” he wrote in a Tuesday note.

Meanwhile, Oppenheimer analysts, who have an Outperform rating and $683 price target, said the deal expands Mastercard’s ability to support end-to-end digital asset flows, including converting between fiat currencies and stablecoins. It also aligns with the company’s broader push toward interoperability between traditional finance and blockchain networks.

William Blair analysts led by Andrew Jeffrey said: “We see Mastercard’s BVNK acquisition as further affirmation of the stablecoin market for cross-border commerce, rather than B2C payments, which are well served by card.” The bank has an outperform rating on the stock.

More deals to come?

As stablecoins enable faster, cheaper and always-on transfers, they threaten to bypass traditional card-based settlement systems. That pressure is pushing incumbents to adapt quickly – often through acquisitions rather than in-house development.

Before Mastercard’s BVNK deal, payments giant Stripe acquired stablecoin infrastructure and issuer startup Bridge last year for $1.1 billion. Global Morgan Stanley was one of the lead investors in crypto infrastructure provider Zerohash’s $104 million fundraising round last year.

The ultimate goal behind those deals is to embed stablecoins into existing payment flows, enable large-scale conversion between fiat and digital dollars, and extend card products into 24/7 programmable payment systems.

“It’s about rewiring how money moves across their network,” Tokenization Insight’s Li said.

BVNK sits at a key junction in that transition. It handles the movement of stablecoins across blockchains, wallets and traditional accounts, making them critical to bridging crypto and fiat systems. In fact, the deal shows that BVNK is a crucial player in the upcoming stablecoin growth, as both Mastercard and Coinbase were in talks last year to acquire the firm at a valuation of up to $2.5 billion. Coinbase dropped out of the deal talks last year, leaving Mastercard to make the move at the $1.8 billion valuation.

If the stablecoin growth momentum and this deal are anything to go by, it’s a testament to how quickly stablecoins have moved from the margins to the center of financial infrastructure and may open the gate for further deals in the sector.

Mastercard and its peer Visa’s shares were trading roughly flat on Tuesday.

Read more: Stablecoin market hits $312 billion as banks, card networks embrace onchain dollars

While some analysts think ADA could climb as high as $0.50 in the near term, certain indicators also point to the possibility of a pullback.

The cryptocurrency market has posted an evident upswing over the past several days, with Cardano’s ADA following the green wave.

Its price surged 8% on a weekly basis, while some analysts believe a more substantial pump may be in the making.

The Necessary Condition

According to the popular market observer Ali Martinez, ADA “is setting up for a bullish breakout.” He argued that the prolonged sideways movement is nearing an end, outlining $0.304 as the upper boundary of this channel.

Martinez predicted that a breakout above this level could open the door to an increase to $0.338 and even $0.376. As of press time, Cardano’s native token trades at around $0.28 and is quite close to the depicted mark.

X user ZAYK Charts also presented an optimistic forecast. The analyst claimed that ADA has broken out of a falling wedge pattern on the daily timeframe, suggesting this could be a precursor to a “massive bullish wave” above $0.50.

For their part, Celal Kucuker expects the cryptocurrency to experience heightened volatility and eventually skyrocket to a new all-time high of $5.67 sometime next year.

Meanwhile, ADA remains oversold on a weekly scale with its Relative Strength Index (RSI) hovering around 30. Such ratios are considered bullish and indicate that a rally could be on the horizon. On the contrary, readings above 70 signal overbought conditions and hint that a correction might be imminent.

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Dead Cat Bounce?

Other on-chain indicators, though, suggest that ADA could head south in the short term. Over the past few days, exchange inflows have exceeded outflows, meaning that some investors have abandoned self-custody and transferred their holdings to centralized platforms. This is typically seen as a pre-sale step.

The recent whale behavior should also be taken into consideration. Earlier this month, large investors sold or redistributed 130 million ADA over a seven-day period, bringing their total holdings down to roughly 13.5 billion coins. A similar pattern was observed at the beginning of March, when whales moved about 230 million tokens.

When this cohort of investors unloads a substantial amount of ADA, it increases the available supply on the market, which can put downward pressure on the price. Big players often move before the crowd, so their selling spree can signal that they expect weaker conditions ahead. This kind of activity could scare smaller investors and might trigger panic selling on their part.

Reform UK hasn’t shared its crypto donation addresses with the UK’s Electoral Commission despite the official body’s apparent requests. 

The Nigel Farage-led party announced it was accepting crypto donations last year, a situation that’s caused concern about the potential for foreign political interference and dubious funding. 

A representative for the electoral commission told Byline Times, “Reform has not shared any crypto wallet address with us.”

They said, “We routinely request a variety of information from parties to ensure they are fulfilling their legal responsibilities,” adding that they “cannot comment any further on the nature of these requests as it may impact our enquiries.”

The commission is also seeking new powers to regulate political crypto donations and told Byline Times that existing laws need to be “strengthened to prevent impermissible foreign funds entering the UK system.”

A falling CDD Multiple means older Bitcoin isn’t moving much, showing long-term holders aren’t selling, and overall selling pressure is low.

Bitcoin briefly neared $76,000 on Tuesday, a level seen for the first time in six weeks, in spite of the global uncertainty as the conflict in the Middle East entered its third week.

Data from Alphractal shows that Bitcoin’s Coin Days Destroyed (CDD) Multiple has fallen to its lowest level since 2022. This indicates minimal movement of older units.

Veteran Holders Stay Put

Alphractal explained that the metric, which measures the intensity of Coin Days Destroyed relative to its historical average, normalizes current activity against a long-term baseline to assess whether long-term holders are spending at elevated or reduced rates.

Current readings suggest that older BTC remains largely dormant, which points to steady holding behavior among long-term investors.

According to the analysis, many of these holders previously distributed coins at higher price levels, leaving the present market dominated by relatively younger supply in circulation. The low CDD Multiple also implies limited selling pressure from mature holdings.

In previous cases, similar low levels in the metric have coincided with consolidation phases, where reduced activity from long-term holders precedes significant directional moves in the market.

Meanwhile, data from Santiment shows that Bitcoin’s recent move has been accompanied by a sharp rise in market optimism. The uptick has pushed FOMO to its highest level since January 2, as social media data from this week indicates a bullish-to-bearish comment ratio of 1.67 across platforms such as X, Reddit, and Telegram. The positive sentiment has outweighed the negative views.

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Further data reveal Bitcoin is showing early signs of recovery in buyer activity after heavy selling in February. Despite rising geopolitical tensions and expectations that the Federal Reserve will not cut interest rates at the upcoming FOMC meeting, CryptoQuant found that BTC has remained relatively “resilient” compared to traditional assets like equities and commodities.

Buyer Dominance

Data from Binance and Coinbase indicate that trading volumes are gradually changing in favor of buyers. On February 16, the 30-day average volume delta was strongly negative, at -$145 million on Binance and -$88 million on Coinbase, reflecting broad selling by both retail and institutional investors. This has now turned positive, and reached about +$21 million and +$14 million, respectively.

While this is a clear improvement, analysts say that liquidity remains low, and the trend will need further confirmation to support upward price movement.

[PRESS RELEASE – Kingstown, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, March 17th, 2026]

Non-custodial exchange platform ChangeNOW has announced the rollout of Private Send, a feature designed to prevent direct links between sender and recipient addresses on public blockchains.

Integrated into NOW Wallet, Private Send introduces a toggle within the transaction flow. Instead of a direct wallet-to-wallet transfer, funds are routed through ChangeNOW infrastructure before reaching the final address. To the recipient, the transaction appears standard, while the sender’s address does not appear in the recipient’s transaction history.

Pauline Shangett, CSO at ChangeNOW, says, “Public blockchains were supposed to be about financial freedom, not financial surveillance. Yet today, analytics firms map billions of addresses into clusters, building profiles on ordinary users. Private Send isn’t about hiding from regulators, it’s about stopping the default exposure of every move you make. One click, and the direct link between you and the recipient disappears. That’s it.”

Role of Blockchain Analytics

Blockchain analytics has become standard infrastructure across the industry. A common misconception is that holding crypto in self-custodied wallets ensures anonymity. Analytics firms map billions of addresses into identifiable clusters, linking wallet activity to individuals or entities. Private Send was developed in response to this environment by introducing an intermediary into the transaction flow. The blockchain records the transaction without establishing a direct connection between the sender and the recipient.

Transaction Flow Structure

• Users toggle “Private Send” in NOW Wallet’s standard send flow
• Transaction routes: sender → ChangeNOW → recipient
• Recipient sees funds arriving from a ChangeNOW address
• No additional apps, registrations, or technical knowledge required

Key details

• Most assets available in NOW Wallet
• All transactions undergo standard AML screening
• Geographic availability matches ChangeNOW’s existing restrictions
• Requirement: latest version of NOW Wallet

Typical use cases

• Moving funds between personal wallets without consolidating on-chain history
• Paying vendors or contractors without exposing full portfolio activity
• General privacy-conscious transfers where direct address links are undesirable

Private Send is not a mixing service or an anonymization tool. It operates entirely within ChangeNOW’s compliance framework and does not alter the final transaction record; it only changes the path to the destination.

About ChangeNOW

ChangeNOW is a non-custodial cryptocurrency exchange platform that values speed, security, and user liberty. Since its launch, it has served over 8 million customers worldwide, offering access to over 110 blockchains and 70+ fiat currencies. By combining the best rates from top centralized and decentralized platforms, ChangeNOW offers a seamless experience with simplified onboarding where users have full control over their assets.

Hyperliquid whale positioning hits $3.64B as leverage splits evenly between longs and shorts.

Leverage on decentralized derivatives venue Hyperliquid (HYPE) has reached eye‑watering levels, with on‑chain data showing whale positions almost perfectly balanced between longs and shorts even as individual traders rack up eight‑figure unrealized profits. According to Coinglass figures cited by ChainCatcher, total whale exposure on Hyperliquid now stands at about 3.644 billion dollars, split into 1.821 billion dollars of long positions and 1.823 billion dollars of shorts. That leaves the long‑short ratio effectively at 1:1, a rare equilibrium that suggests aggressive positioning on both sides of the tape rather than a one‑sided bet on continued upside.

At a P&L level, the skew is less balanced. Long positions are currently sitting on roughly 57.38 million dollars in profits, while shorts are down about 11.16 million dollars, reflecting how the recent grind higher in majors like BTC (BTC) and ETH (ETH) has quietly rewarded leveraged bulls. One address stands out: the whale wallet 0x6c85…f6 has taken a 20x leveraged long on ETH at an entry price of 2,012.11 dollars and is now running an unrealized gain of about 15.14 million dollars. That single trade captures the core dynamic on Hyperliquid right now—a structurally high‑leverage environment where a handful of well‑timed positions can print institutional‑scale P&L in days, but where a sharp reversal could erase paper profits just as quickly.​

For market structure, the 3.6 billion‑dollar positioning and near‑perfect long/short balance turn Hyperliquid into a leverage fulcrum for the broader alt and perp complex. When books are this tightly matched, the direction of the next large move often comes down to exogenous catalysts—ETF flows, macro surprises, or idiosyncratic headlines—rather than slow positioning drift. With longs in aggregate comfortably green and shorts nursing losses, the path of least resistance in the near term is still higher; but if the tape turns, those same profitable longs become forced sellers, and the 20x ETH whales that look brilliant today are exactly the ones that can drive a cascade tomorrow.