Crypto World
Silver Loses 43% in Eight Weeks as Gulf War Lays Bare Its Industrial Identity Over Monetary Role
TLDR:
- Silver fell 43% from its $121.67 all-time high to $69.50 in under eight weeks after Gulf war shocks hit.
- Over 60% of silver demand is industrial, leaving it exposed when energy costs and rate hike fears surged.
- Qatar’s helium facility destruction threatens chip fab output, reducing a core source of silver packaging demand.
- Gold dropped too but held ground as the PBOC bought for 16 straight months and 77% of central banks plan reserve increases.
Silver has dropped 43 percent since January 29, falling from an all-time high of $121.67 to $69.50 by Friday’s close. Gold also declined over the same period but found firmer ground through central bank demand.
The divergence between the two metals has raised fresh questions among commodity analysts and investors. These movements are reshaping how markets view silver’s role as both a monetary and industrial asset.
Silver’s Industrial Base Absorbs Three Simultaneous Shocks
More than 60 percent of silver demand is industrial, confirmed by JP Morgan’s commodities desk. Electronics, AI chip packaging, solar panels, and electric vehicle wiring are among its primary uses.
When hostilities closed the Strait of Hormuz, energy prices spiked and factory costs rose. Higher costs slowed industrial activity and pulled silver demand lower.
Analyst Shanaka Anslem Perera noted on social media that the divergence “is no longer a market event. It is a verdict.” The Federal Reserve now prices a 50 percent chance of a rate hike by October. The ECB and Bank of England are each repricing three or more hikes for 2026.
Qatar’s Ras Laffan complex supplied 30 to 33 percent of global helium before Iran struck it. SK Hynix sourced 64.7 percent of its helium from that facility alone.
Helium is essential for wafer cooling and lithography in chip fabrication. Fabs are reporting two to three months of buffer supply remaining.
When helium runs short, chip production slows and silver packaging demand falls. Energy spikes, rate hike expectations, and helium shortages hit silver’s industrial base at once.
The metal’s monetary narrative provided no shelter when factories came under economic pressure. Silver entered this environment with three demand shocks arriving simultaneously.
Gold Builds a Floor on Central Bank and Retail Demand
Gold fell from $5,589 in January to approximately $4,494 this week, but buying absorbed each drop. Chinese retail buyers cleared supplies in under 60 seconds each morning.
The People’s Bank of China extended its purchasing streak to 16 consecutive months. Chinese banks sold 600 kilograms of gold bars each morning in under a minute.
Seventy-seven percent of central banks plan to increase gold reserves, based on recent surveys. That sustained demand has built a structural floor under gold’s price.
Silver has no central bank buyer of last resort. Its floor rests entirely on industrial consumption, which is now under strain.
Gold’s support comes from institutional policy decisions, not factory orders. Silver’s support depends on factories now facing energy shocks and helium shortages.
The war revealed a structural difference between the two metals that many investors had not previously priced in. That difference now appears lasting rather than temporary.
Rate hike expectations in the United States and Europe continue to reinforce dollar strength. A stronger dollar adds persistent pressure on metals priced in that currency.
Silver enters this environment without central bank support. Whether industrial demand can stabilize will determine the metal’s next directional move.
The Algorand Foundation on Wednesday joined the ranks of crypto firms slashing headcount, losing 25% of its fewer than 200 employees and citing “the uncertain global macro environment” and a broader crypto downturn.
The cuts arrived as a wave of layoffs proliferates across the industry. In February, Gemini Space Station (GEMI) said it would eliminate roughly 200 positions, about a quarter of its staff, a figure that had grown to 30% by mid-March. On Thursday, Crypto.com said it is trimming 12%, about 180 roles.
That’s on top of 20 employees who got the chop at OP Labs, the company building layer-2 blockchain Optimism, earlier this month and the five full-time employees and three contractors let go at PIP Labs, the team behind Story Protocol, 10% of its workforce. Messari, a crypto data provider that now bills itself as an AI-first company, announced its third round of layoffs since 2023 alongside a CEO change, without giving a number.
Official explanations varied. Algorand pointed squarely at macro conditions and weak token prices, though many framed their cuts as a pivot toward greater use of AI in the workflow.
“AI is now too powerful not to use at Gemini,” the company said in its letter to shareholders. “Not using AI at Gemini will soon be the equivalent of showing up to work with a typewriter instead of a laptop.”
“We are joining the list of companies integrating enterprise-wide AI,” a Crypto.com spokesperson told CoinDesk on Thursday, pointing to increased efficiencies needing fewer workers. CEO Kris Marszalek on X said companies that do not pivot toward integrating AI into their processes will fail.
Algorand’s cuts reportedly hit community management and business development roles, not positions obviously displaced by AI. To be fair, the company blamed the broader crypto environment. It’s ALGO token recently traded around $0.09, down 98% from its 2019 peak. Bitcoin , the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, has lost 20% this quarter.
Industry consolidation
Industry observers pointed to a broader consolidation dynamic. Entire crypto sectors like restaking, DePIN and layer 2s, which were once flush with talent have contracted sharply, while M&A activity is adding to redundancies as acqui-hires — employees acquired by buying a company — displace legacy employees.
“I see no real indication that these layoffs have anything to do with AI workforce replacement at scale,” said Dan Escow, the founder of crypto recruitment agency Up Top. “Entire categories like restaking, DePIN and L2s that were once robust with talent are basically non-existent. Companies are forced into cost-cutting mode to buy time to figure out how to execute on whatever comes next.”
The broader hiring picture supports that reading. New job postings across major crypto job boards ran at roughly 6.5 per day in January, down around 80% from the same period a year earlier.
Just the companies mentioned in this story — excluding Messari, which did not disclose numbers — have announced around 450 job cuts in a matter of weeks. Thay may be the tip of the iceberg, in crypto winter of 2022 CoinDesk tracked more than 26,000 job losses over the course of the year, a tally that took months to become apparent.
TLDR:
- XRPL now hosts $2.3 billion in tokenized real-world assets, drawing major institutional players worldwide.
- The XRP Ledger settles transactions in 3 to 5 seconds at fractions of a penny, far outpacing traditional wire transfers.
- Société Générale, SBI Holdings, and Braza Bank have all launched financial products directly on the XRPL platform.
- Ripple has processed over $100 billion in volume across a network of more than 300 global financial institutions.
The story of money spans thousands of years, from grain trades in ancient villages to decentralized digital ledgers. Each era of exchange solved a problem the previous one could not.
Today, the XRP Ledger stands at the end of that long chain of innovation. With $2.3 billion in tokenized real-world assets and three to five second settlement, XRPL represents the most complete financial infrastructure ever built on a blockchain.
How Every Era of Money Removed a Middleman
Ancient economies ran on barter, trading grain for cattle, salt for silk, and labor for shelter. That system worked within small communities where both parties held what the other needed.
However, it collapsed under its own limits. You cannot carry livestock to a market and expect a clean trade every time.
Coins and precious metals solved that problem. Gold and silver gave value a portable, universal form. For centuries, commerce expanded on the back of metal currency. Then governments stepped in, replacing metal with paper, and banks took control of the system entirely.
Wire transfers and SWIFT later allowed money to cross oceans for the first time. Yet the cost remained steep, ranging between $10 and $50 per transaction.
Settlements took days, not seconds. Worse, correspondent banking required roughly $27 trillion locked in idle accounts just to function.
Bitcoin arrived as the first serious break from centralized control. It proved that value could travel without a bank acting as intermediary.
But Bitcoin was slow, expensive, and never designed for everyday payments. The architecture that actually completed the journey came next.
Why XRPL Closes the Chapter That Bitcoin Opened
RippleXity described the arc plainly on X: “From Barter to Blockchain. The Story of Money and Why XRPL Is the Final Chapter.” XRPL was the first blockchain to support native tokenization of any currency.
Dollars, euros, yen, and reais can all be issued and traded directly on the ledger. No smart contracts, no complex programming, just trustlines, tokens, and a built-in decentralized exchange.
The numbers behind the ledger reflect that ambition. It processes up to 1,500 transactions per second at fractions of a penny per transfer.
Settlement completes in three to five seconds. The network also operates on a carbon neutral model, which matters to institutions with governance commitments.
Major financial players have already moved onto the ledger. Société Générale launched its euro stablecoin on XRPL. SBI Holdings issued a $65 million on-chain bond through the platform.
Braza Bank brought a Brazilian real stablecoin to the ledger as well. Ripple’s own RLUSD stablecoin has crossed $1.5 billion in market capitalization.
Ripple now counts over 300 financial institutions in its network and has processed more than $100 billion in volume.
The company has applied for a Federal Reserve master account and filed VASP licenses across multiple jurisdictions. Every stage of money’s history removed one layer of friction. XRPL appears to have removed the rest.
The recent guidance from the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission establishing a taxonomy for digital assets put a “final nail” in the coffin of SEC policy under former Chairman Gary Gensler, according to Alex Thorn, the head of firmwide research at investment firm Galaxy.
The SEC guidance, published on Tuesday, established a taxonomy for digital assets, dividing them into five categories, including digital commodities, digital collectibles like non-fungible tokens (NFTs), digital tools, stablecoins, and tokenized securities.
Under the old SEC policy framework, the regulations governing which cryptocurrencies met the legal criteria of “investment contracts” were legislative rules, as opposed to the new 2026 guidance that was filed as an interpretive rule, Thorn said. He explained the significance:
“The distinction matters enormously under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). A legislative rule or substantive rule goes through notice-and-comment rule-making, has the force and effect of law, and binds both the agency and regulated parties.
An interpretive rule is exempt from notice-and-comment requirements, does not have the force of law, and merely explains how the agency understands existing statutory provisions,” he continued.
The interpretive rule does not legally bind courts to enforce the policies, which gives the SEC and the crypto industry flexibility in adapting to future regulatory changes, he added.
The new regulatory approach gives the crypto industry much-needed clarity over the next 30 months, Thorn Said; however, he clarified that the CLARITY crypto market structure bill must be codified into law to cement the rules over the next several decades.
Related: SEC interpretation on crypto laws ‘a beginning, not an end,’ says Atkins
The CLARITY Act stalls, but rumors emerge of a tentative deal between White House and lawmakers
The CLARITY Act stalled in January 2025, after crypto exchange Coinbase and other industry players voiced concerns over the prohibition on stablecoin yield and a lack of protections for open-source software developers.
Crypto companies and industry thought leaders also cited provisions that would effectively gut the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector by imposing reporting requirements and know-your-customer controls on DeFi as a major cause of contention.
On Friday, Politico published a report of a tentative deal between the White House and lawmakers to move the CLARITY bill forward.
Specific details of the prospective deal have not yet been revealed, although Senator Angela Alsoboorks said the tentative deal includes a ban on stablecoin yield from “passive balances.”
Magazine: How crypto laws changed in 2025 — and how they’ll change in 2026
Crypto World
Grayscale wants to bring the world’s hottest crypto trading frenzy to your brokerage account
Grayscale has filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to launch a new exchange-traded fund for the HYPE token, amid the surging popularity of decentralized exchange Hyperliquid.
The Crypto asset manager’s proposed fund would hold the HYPE token and be listed on Nasdaq under the ticker GHYP, according to the S-1 registration statement.
Grayscale said it may stake some holdings in the future, though it cannot do so now. The filing doesn’t disclose a proposed fee. Other asset managers that have also filed for HYPE ETFs include Bitwise and 21Shares, which already operate a HYPE exchange-traded product in Europe with a 2.5% total expense ratio.
HYPE is the native token of the Hyperliquid network, which is home to the leading decentralized exchange of the same name. Its core layer handles perpetual futures and spot markets, while a second layer supports Ethereum-style smart contracts.
Perpetual futures contracts, or “perps,” are derivative instruments without expiration dates that allow investors to place bets on an asset’s price without owning it. Their infinite duration (perpetual futures contracts never expire, unlike traditional contracts), high-leverage options, and round-the-clock access have made them extremely popular in the crypto space.
The filing comes as Hyperliquid sees growing interest from traders betting on traditional financial assets, including oil and gold, while war rages in the Middle East. The platform has also recently added an S&P 500 perpetual contract.
In simple terms, the platform’s value proposition is not just crypto trading, but also the ability to bet on traditional assets around the clock, even when most markets are closed.
The trading frenzy has seen Hyperliquid’s weekly derivatives trading volume top $50 billion, with more than $6.5 billion being traded in the past 24 hours alone, according to DeFiLlama data.
That has helped the Hyperliquid chain dominate in revenue, which stands at $1.6 million over the last 24 hours, compared to $335,000 for BNB Chain and $192,000 for the Bitcoin blockchain, according to Artemis data.
This increased activity has captured many bullish takes from crypto investors and market observers. Recently, Arthur Hayes, the co-founder of BitMEX and CIO of Maelstrom, said the platform’s strong revenue, real trading activity, and disciplined token supply could take its native token, HYPE, to $150.
The token currently trades around $40 and has risen by 57% this year, while bitcoin fell about 20% and Ethereum’s native token, ether, fell about 28%.
For years, tokenization has been framed as crypto’s bridge to Wall Street. Put Treasuries onchain. Issue tokenized money market funds. Represent equities digitally. The assumption was simple: if assets move onchain, institutions will follow.
But tokenization alone was never the endgame. As we recently argued in our institutional outlook, the real institutional unlock isn’t digitizing assets – it’s financializing yield.
Following the regulatory clarity that emerged in 2025, institutional interest in digital assets has shifted from exploratory exposure to infrastructure-level participation. Surveys increasingly suggest that institutional engagement with DeFi could rise sharply over the next couple of years, while a meaningful share of allocators are exploring tokenized assets. Yet large allocators are not entering crypto solely to hold tokenized wrappers. They are entering for yield, capital efficiency, and programmable collateral. That requires a different kind of DeFi than the retail-built one in 2021.
In traditional finance, fixed-income instruments are rarely held in isolation. They are repo’d, pledged, rehypothecated, stripped, hedged and embedded into structured products. Yield is traded independently of principal, and collateral moves fluidly across markets. The plumbing matters as much as the product.
DeFi is now beginning to replicate those core functions.
A tokenized Treasury or equity is only marginally useful if it behaves like a static certificate. Institutions want tokenized assets to become functioning, working financial instruments: collateral that can be deployed, financed and risk-managed; yield that can be isolated, priced and traded; and positions that can be integrated into broader strategies without breaking compliance constraints.
That is the shift from first-order tokenization to second-order yield markets.
Early design patterns already point in this direction. Hybrid market structures are emerging in which permissioned, regulated assets can be used as collateral while borrowing is facilitated by using permissionless stablecoins. At the same time, yield trading architectures are expanding the range of activities investors can undertake with tokenized assets by separating principal exposure from the yield stream. Once the yield component of an onchain asset can be priced, traded, and composed, tokenized instruments become usable in strategies that are much closer to what allocators already run in traditional markets.
For institutions, this matters because it turns real-world assets (RWAs) from passive exposure into active portfolio tools. If yield can be traded independently, then hedging and duration management become more feasible, and structured exposures become possible without rebuilding the entire stack off-chain. Tokenization stops being a narrative and starts becoming market infrastructure.
However, yield infrastructure alone will not bring institutional scale. Institutional constraints that shaped traditional markets have not disappeared; they are being translated into code.
One of the most important constraints is confidentiality. Public blockchains expose balances, positions, and transaction flows in ways that conflict with how professional capital operates. Visible liquidation levels invite predatory strategies, public trade history reveals positioning, and treasury management becomes transparent to competitors. For institutions accustomed to controlled disclosure and information asymmetry, these are not philosophical objections – they are operational risks.
Historically, privacy in crypto has been treated as a regulatory liability. What is emerging instead is privacy as compliance-enabling infrastructure.
Zero-knowledge systems can prove transactions are valid without revealing sensitive details. Selective disclosure mechanisms can enable institutions to share limited visibility with auditors, regulators, or tax authorities without disclosing the entire balance sheet. Proof systems can demonstrate that funds are not linked to sanctioned or illicit sources without disclosing broader transaction history. Even approaches such as fully homomorphic encryption point toward a future in which certain kinds of computation can occur on encrypted data, widening the set of financial actions that can be performed privately while retaining verifiability where required.
This is not ‘privacy as opacity’. It is programmable confidentiality, and it more closely resembles established market structures, such as confidential brokerage workflows or regulated dark pools, than it does anonymous shadow finance. For institutions, that distinction is the difference between a system that is unusable and one that can be deployed at scale.
A second constraint is compliance. Regulatory clarity has reduced existential uncertainty, but it has also raised expectations. Institutional capital demands eligibility controls, identity verification, sanctions screening, auditability and clear operational regimes. If the next phase of DeFi is going to intermediate real-world value at scale, compliance cannot remain an afterthought bolted onto a permissionless system. It has to be embedded into market design.
That is why one of the most important patterns emerging in institutional DeFi is a hybrid architecture combining permissioned collateral with permissionless liquidity. Tokenized RWAs can be restricted at the smart contract level to approved participants, while borrowing can occur via widely used stablecoins and open liquidity pools. Identity and eligibility checks can be automated. Asset provenance and valuation constraints can be enforced. Audit trails can be produced without forcing every operational detail into public view.
This approach resolves a long-standing tension. Institutions can deploy regulated assets into DeFi without compromising core requirements around custody, investor protection and sanctions compliance, while still benefiting from the liquidity and composability that made DeFi powerful in the first place.
Taken together, these shifts point to a broader reality where DeFi is not simply attracting institutional capital; it is, in fact, being reshaped by institutional constraints. The dominant narrative in crypto still centers on retail cycles and token volatility, but beneath that surface, protocol design is evolving toward a more familiar destination – a fixed-income stack where collateral moves, yield trades and compliance is operationalized.
Tokenization was phase one because it proved assets could live onchain. Phase two is about making those assets behave like real financial instruments, with yield markets and risk controls that institutions recognize. When that transition matures, the conversation shifts from crypto adoption to capital markets migration.
That shift is already underway.
Key takeaways:
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Bitcoin traders are turning cautious as high oil prices and Middle East tensions fuel inflation and stall US interest rate cuts.
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The $254 million in spot Bitcoin ETF outflows is too small to confirm a bearish flip, yet options markets show heavy hedging.
Bitcoin (BTC) price stagnated near $70,000 during the Friday trading session after failing to reclaim the $75,000 level on Tuesday. The decline marked two days of net outflows from US-listed Bitcoin spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs), reversing the trend from the prior seven days. Traders are now wondering if institutional investors are turning bearish, especially as the US stock market showed signs of weakness.
The bearish sentiment across global markets is weighing on Bitcoin as the S&P 500 plummeted to its lowest level in six months. Even gold, which typically acts as a hedge, faced a 10% sell-off over three days. As the US and Israel-Iran war triggers a broad move toward risk aversion, Bitcoin derivatives data now reflect increasing fear among traders.
Demand for put (sell) Bitcoin options premiums at Deribit was nearly 2.5 times larger than equivalent call (buy) instruments on Friday, indicating increased demand for neutral-to-bearish strategies. The prior surge in the metric occurred on Feb. 27 after Iran rejected negotiations to dismantle its key nuclear facilities and export its enriched uranium.
Traders frustrated by Bitcoin’s 17% lag behind the S&P 500
To confirm if the increased demand for put options has effectively been used for downside protection, one should assess the delta skew metric. When market makers fear imminent Bitcoin price correction risks, the put options tend to trade at a 6% or higher premium relative to equivalent call instruments. Conversely, periods of bullishness push the indicator below -6%.
The Bitcoin options delta skew (put-call) stood at 16% on Friday, meaning professional traders were not comfortable that the $69,000 level will hold. While distant from the extreme panic levels seen in late February, the current conditions reflect the stress caused by the 21% price drop in three months, while gold and the US stock market held relatively steady.
Regardless of whether Bitcoin successfully defends the $70,000 level, traders are not pleased with the 17% underperformance relative to the S&P 500 over three months. More importantly, the recent rally to $75,000 on Tuesday was unable to move the needle in Bitcoin options markets, a strong indicator that traders are acting overly cautious.
Related: Crypto Biz–Institutions aren’t waiting for the bottom
Part of the pessimism can be attributed to the surge in energy prices. WTI oil prices have sustained levels above $94 since March 12, a 50% increase versus the prior month. The disruption of oil and gas production and logistics in the Middle East negatively impacts economic growth expectations and limits the ability of the US Federal Reserve to slash interest rates due to inflationary pressure.
The fuel price surge is expected to cause consumers to pull back on spending, according to a new Oxford Economics analysis. Analysts warned that US manufacturers who rely on imports will also be impacted, causing further price increases and potential “outright shortages of some products,” according to Yahoo Finance.
The mere $254 million net outflows in two days are unlikely to be a sign of institutional investors flipping bearish, but traders are not confident that Bitcoin will hold above the $68,000 level. Traders’ sentiment has been largely driven by worsening macroeconomic conditions and uncertainty caused by the prolonged war, driving increased demand for downside protection using derivatives.
This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision. While we strive to provide accurate and timely information, Cointelegraph does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of any information in this article. This article may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Cointelegraph will not be liable for any loss or damage arising from your reliance on this information.
TLDR:
-
- TRON DAO joined DC Blockchain Summit 2026 as a Diamond Sponsor, engaging policymakers on digital asset regulation.
- Justin Sun delivered a keynote on building unified financial infrastructure combining blockchain and traditional finance.
- TRON DAO’s Adrian Wall moderated a session on U.S. crypto regulatory clarity alongside Representative Dusty Johnson.
- TRON DAO hosted a VIP Lounge at Capital Turnaround, creating space for direct policy and ecosystem conversations.
- TRON DAO joined DC Blockchain Summit 2026 as a Diamond Sponsor, engaging policymakers on digital asset regulation.
TRON DAO joined the DC Blockchain Summit 2026 as a Diamond Sponsor in Washington, D.C. The Digital Chamber hosted the event on March 17–18, drawing policymakers, regulators, and industry leaders.
Discussions covered blockchain regulation, digital assets, and the future of financial infrastructure. TRON DAO used the platform to advance policy dialogue and present ecosystem developments.
The summit marked another step in the organization’s ongoing engagement with U.S. regulatory conversations.
Justin Sun Outlines a Blueprint for a Unified Financial System
Justin Sun, Founder of TRON, delivered a keynote on the Main Stage at the summit. The address was titled “Building the Rails for a Unified Financial System.”
Sun described TRON as a foundational settlement layer for the global digital economy. He also positioned the network as infrastructure suited for supporting Agentic AI payments.
Sun stressed that collaboration between traditional finance and emerging technology sectors is essential. He said this cooperation is key to building a unified and interoperable digital asset ecosystem.
The keynote drew attention from policymakers and industry leaders throughout the two-day event. It reinforced TRON’s standing as a meaningful contributor to global financial infrastructure.
Sun pointed to the U.S. as a market with a well-established financial infrastructure. He argued that blockchain and AI can help expand such systems into more open digital environments.
“In markets like the US, where financial infrastructure is already strong and well established, blockchain and AI can help expand that system into a more open and programmable digital environment,” Sun said. His remarks reflected the growing convergence of traditional and decentralized financial networks.
Sun further noted that creating the right infrastructure remains the most pressing challenge ahead. He emphasized that a unified financial system must bring together the best of both worlds.
“As we look ahead, the most important challenge is building the infrastructure that allows all parts of the financial system to work together,” he stated.
“A unified financial system will combine the strengths of traditional finance with the openness and efficiency of blockchain networks.”
TRON DAO Shapes Policy Dialogue Through Sessions and On-Site Engagement
Adrian Wall, Senior Director of U.S. Policy at TRON DAO, moderated a key Main Stage session. The session, titled “CLARITY: What It Took and What Comes Next,” examined key regulatory milestones.
It covered recent legislative developments shaping the digital asset landscape across the United States. Wall was joined by Dusty Johnson, U.S. Representative for South Dakota (R-SD).
The session gave attendees a direct look at the current U.S. digital asset regulatory environment. Both speakers addressed recent legislative progress and outlined what still lies ahead for the industry.
Their exchange reflected ongoing efforts to establish greater regulatory clarity in the crypto space. The discussion added a policy-driven perspective to the broader summit agenda.
TRON DAO also hosted a dedicated VIP Lounge at Capital Turnaround across both days of the summit. The lounge served as a central hub for industry leaders, policymakers, and community members.
Conversations covered TRON’s ecosystem developments, policy initiatives, and the evolving regulatory landscape. The setting allowed for direct engagement beyond the formal conference sessions.
As shared across TRON DAO’s official channels, its Diamond Sponsorship reflected a firm commitment to active policy engagement.
The organization continues to work alongside governments and institutions toward a more open financial system. TRON DAO remains focused on responsible blockchain innovation and constructive collaboration with regulators.
Its presence at the summit reflected a consistent and ongoing strategy to support the future of digital assets.
Ethereum’s native token, Ether (ETH), may rise by around 25% in the coming months as its richest whale group becomes profitable for the first time since early February.
Key takeaways:
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ETH gained 25% in three months and 50% in six months on average after top whales returned to profit in past cycles.
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Ether could rally above $2,750 by June if the on-chain whale metric signal plays out.
Whale metric signals ETH is bottoming already
The unrealized profit ratio of wallets holding more than 100,000 ETH has flipped back above zero, according to data resource CryptoQuant. In other words, this whale cohort is no longer sitting on aggregate paper losses.
In the past, similar transitions to a “profitable state marked the starting point of an uptrend,” said on-chain analyst CW.
ETH delivered nearly 25% returns on average three months after the whale ratio flipped to positive. Similarly, its price gained roughly 50% after six months and 300% after a year into the signal.
The price behavior suggests that once top ETH whales return to aggregate profit, they face less pressure to sell defensively. At the same time, the shift can strengthen broader market confidence by signaling renewed conviction among the richest ETH holders.
ETH may head toward the $2,750 area by June and to over $3,200 by September if the historical post-signal pattern holds.
Related: Early Ethereum whale rebuilds stack with $19.5M in ETH buys
Still, the whale ratio metric is not flawless. In 2018, for instance, ETH dropped 17.5% in the month after a similar flip and eventually tumbled nearly 70%.
Onchain data caps Ether’s upside at $2,640
Another on-chain signal is reinforcing Ethereum’s recovery case.
Glassnode data shows ETH rebounding from its lowest MVRV deviation band (blue), a setup similar to Q2 2022 and Q2 2025, when price recovered from undervalued levels and climbed back above realized price.
At current rates, ETH remains below its realized price (purple) at $2,353, which remains the first key recovery level. A break above that threshold could open the door toward the -0.5 sigma band (teal) near $2,640.
On the downside, failure to reclaim realized price could keep ETH exposed to a retest of the lowest deviation band near $1,651.
Ethereum’s technicals reiterate rally above $2,600
From a technical perspective, ETH has broken above its ascending triangle pattern and is now pulling back toward the former resistance trendline.
Such retests are common after breakouts, as markets often revisit the breakout level to confirm it has flipped into new support.
Ether could resume its recovery toward the triangle’s measured upside target at around $2,625 or higher if the upper trendline holds as support.
That level also sits within the broader on-chain recovery range outlined by Glassnode’s MVRV bands, adding confluence to the bullish setup.
A failed retest, on the other hand, would weaken the breakout structure and risk sending ETH back toward the lower support zone near $1,950-$2,000.
This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision. While we strive to provide accurate and timely information, Cointelegraph does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of any information in this article. This article may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Cointelegraph will not be liable for any loss or damage arising from your reliance on this information.
Crypto World
Arc Launches Programmable Settlement Layer to Replace Legacy Capital Markets Infrastructure
TLDR:
- Arc’s atomic DvP settles tokenized assets and stablecoin payments simultaneously, eliminating principal risk in one transaction.
- Traditional T+1 and T+2 settlement cycles lock up capital and increase counterparty exposure across fragmented intermediary systems.
- Arc embeds transfer restrictions, jurisdictional controls, and compliance logic directly into onchain assets via smart contracts.
- Onchain collateral management on Arc automates margin calls, liquidations, and top-ups using deterministic, stablecoin-native flows.
Capital markets settlement has long been slowed by outdated post-trade infrastructure and multi-day clearing cycles. Arc, a purpose-built Layer-1 blockchain, is working to change that.
The platform combines atomic delivery-versus-payment, stablecoin-native execution, and deterministic sub-second finality.
These tools consolidate fragmented post-trade workflows into one programmable layer. Institutions can now achieve real-time settlement while maintaining compliance-ready controls across all counterparties.
Arc Addresses Deep Structural Gaps in Post-Trade Workflows
Most global capital markets still operate on T+1 or T+2 settlement cycles. These delays lock up capital and increase counterparty exposure considerably.
Risk management teams must bridge the gap between trade execution and final settlement. That process raises capital requirements and slows down institutional modernization efforts.
Post-trade workflows are also spread across multiple disconnected systems and entities. Execution, clearing, netting, custody, and settlement each run on separate infrastructure.
This fragmentation creates duplicated recordkeeping and reconciliation bottlenecks that are costly to manage. Modernizing these systems is difficult when they are not designed to communicate with each other.
Traditional ledgers add another layer of difficulty through limited real-time traceability. Audit trails are inconsistent across intermediaries, and manual reporting remains common.
Compliance checks rely heavily on human review, which introduces errors and delays. These conditions make it harder for institutions to meet regulatory requirements efficiently.
Arc addresses these gaps through its architecture. The platform offers predictable, stablecoin-denominated fees and opt-in configurable privacy with selective disclosure.
Authorized parties such as regulators or auditors can access specific data through view-key access. This design keeps sensitive information protected while maintaining operational transparency.
Programmable Settlement Enables Atomic DvP and Onchain Collateral Management
Arc’s rails enable true atomic delivery-versus-payment in a single onchain transaction. Tokenized assets and stablecoin payments transfer simultaneously, so neither leg settles without the other.
This structure reduces principal risk across institutional workflows. Settlement finality is cryptographically verifiable and arrives in under a second.
Beyond settlement, Arc supports the full lifecycle of tokenized securities and structured products. Smart contracts automate issuance, redemptions, distributions, and corporate actions directly onchain.
Asset servicing becomes a software function rather than a manual operational task. Transfer restrictions and jurisdictional controls are embedded into the asset itself.
Onchain collateral and margin management also run through Arc’s programmable logic. The system can enforce thresholds, trigger margin calls, and automate liquidations when conditions are met.
Stablecoin-native flows reduce the need for batch reconciliation between parties. Lenders and institutional counterparties gain greater transparency over margin operations as a result.
Prediction markets represent another use case built on this infrastructure. These markets can settle instantly in stablecoins with predictable fees after oracle-verified outcomes.
Economic indicators, event results, and risk signals can all serve as resolution inputs. This creates faster feedback loops for market-based forecasting built on real-time data.
The rumor followed a familiar wartime script. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed it had struck Benjamin Netanyahu’s office. Then came the forged screenshots — fake posts from the Israeli prime minister’s official account announcing he was dead. Then came the AI furore over a low-resolution freeze-frame from a press conference that, at the right angle, appeared to show Netanyahu’s right hand sporting six fingers, leading contrarian commentators to take victory laps.
Conservative influencer Candace Owens amplified the claims loudly on X, demanding to know where Netanyahu was and why his office was “releasing and deleting fake AI videos.” Iran’s Tasnim News Agency — run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — published an article titled “New Video of Netanyahu Proves Fake,” cataloguing alleged clear signs that a subsequent coffee shop clip, posted by Netanyahu’s own account to debunk the rumors, was itself generated by artificial intelligence. The conspiracy had become self-sealing; every refutation was recast as fresh evidence.
But while the fact-checkers scrambled and the podcasters speculated, one data source offered a clean, immediate signal. On Polymarket, the world’s largest crypto prediction market, the contract for “Netanyahu out by March 31” was trading at around 4 to 5 cents, implying a roughly 4 to 5% probability of him leaving office before the end of the month. The market didn’t move. For anyone paying attention to that number, the entire conspiracy theory collapsed in a single glance.
A record-breaking backdrop
To understand why the Netanyahu conspiracy took hold when it did, you need to understand the information environment it emerged from.
Since the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran on Feb. 28, Polymarket has been transformed into something closer to a real-time geopolitical intelligence terminal. In the week ending March 1, bettors placed $425 million in geopolitics wagers on the platform alone — up from $163 million the prior week — with total platform wagering hitting a record $2.4 billion. The “US strikes Iran by…?” contract accumulated $529 million in total volume, making it one of the largest single markets Polymarket has ever hosted and the fourth-largest in its entire “Politics” category.
It is a remarkable trajectory for a platform that processed $73 million in total trading volume in 2023 and was pushed offshore by a CFTC settlement a year later. By 2025, Polymarket had processed approximately $22 billion in notional trading volume across the year — a figure that underscores how quickly the platform has moved from crypto curiosity to mainstream financial infrastructure.
This is no longer a crypto curiosity. In October 2025, the Intercontinental Exchange, parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, invested $2 billion into Polymarket at a $9 billion valuation, and launched a “Polymarket Signals and Sentiment” tool that feeds real-time prediction market data directly to Wall Street trading desks. When the Iran war began, equity and oil futures markets were closed for the weekend. Polymarket was not.
The market as instant truth machine
Prediction markets don’t have death contracts in the conventional sense. What Polymarket offers instead are “politician out by X date” markets, which resolve “Yes” if a leader resigns, is removed, or steps down. They don’t directly price the probability of death. But in a context where the conspiracy theory is that Netanyahu has been killed and the government is conducting a cover-up, these contracts function as a powerful proxy.
The logic is simple. A leader who has died or been incapacitated cannot indefinitely run a country from office. Eventually, a resignation, a removal or a credible leak would surface. And if any of that happened, the payout on a “Yes” share at 5 cents would be enormous: a $1 payout on a 5-cent share is a 20-to-1 return.
One trader was willing to make that bet at scale. A single Polymarket account placed $151,000 on Netanyahu being out before March 31, accumulating nearly 3.8 million shares at 4.7 cents each. If correct, the position would pay out $3.8 million. It is currently underwater by roughly $26,000.
That number is the ceiling of rational conviction in the conspiracy. At the height of the online hysteria, the most aggressive speculator on record was willing to stake $150,000 on the theory — implying he knew the odds were long. The market as a whole put the probability at around 5%. Social media said it was certain. The money said otherwise.
“Whether a politician is in or out of office is a very economically meaningful outcome for a lot of people,” said Aaron Brogan, a managing attorney at Brogan Law who has advised on prediction market regulation. “These are exactly the kinds of markets that event contract rules were designed to accommodate.”
Why the odds are hard to fake
The 2024 US election cycle offered a masterclass in prediction market efficiency — and the limits of efforts to dismiss its signals. When Polymarket showed Donald Trump trading at a substantial premium over Kamala Harris, critics cried manipulation. A French trader, they alleged, had artificially pumped Trump’s odds using multiple accounts for political purposes.
The experts weren’t buying it. As Flip Pidot, co-founder of American Civics Exchange, told CoinDesk at the time: a true manipulator trying to move the price would simply pile in blindly and let themselves get filled at worsening prices. The French trader did the opposite — splitting orders strategically across accounts to minimize slippage. That is what profit-seeking looks like, not propaganda.
The deeper reason manipulation struggles to stick is expected value arbitrage. If a price is artificially depressed or inflated, profit-hungry traders pile in to exploit the gap until it closes. Cross-market arbitrage reinforces this: Polymarket prices in real time against Kalshi, Betfair, and others. If odds drift meaningfully out of line across platforms, traders immediately sell the higher price and buy the lower one, synchronizing markets toward a consensus.
Harry Crane, a statistics professor at Rutgers University who studies prediction markets, sees the Netanyahu episode as a near-perfect illustration of this dynamic. “These markets are an antidote to propaganda precisely because their resolution rules anchor outcomes to verifiable sources rather than narrative,” he told CoinDesk. “I understand why governments want to limit them — not because of concerns over leaking classified information, but because verifiable price signals are harder to control.”
That framing maps directly onto the Netanyahu conspiracy. The people claiming he was dead were doing structurally the same thing as those who cried Polymarket was rigged in 2024: attacking the signal rather than engaging with it.
What the market is actually pricing — and what it isn’t
Crane is careful about the limits of the signal, and his caveat is worth sitting with.
“The market is only pricing the probability that Netanyahu is verifiably out of office under these rules,” he said. The resolution criteria state that the contract resolves “Yes” if Netanyahu announces his resignation or is otherwise removed from office, confirmed by official sources or a consensus of credible reporting. If a government concealed a leader’s death so completely that no credible source ever confirmed it, the market could resolve “No” — faithfully, correctly under its own rules, and yet without capturing the underlying reality.
That dynamic was playing out in real time. Domer — a well-known prediction market trader who goes by ImJustKen online — was publicly holding a No position on Netanyahu leaving office before March 31. Not because he was certain Netanyahu was alive, but because he didn’t believe a departure would ever be confirmed under the market’s resolution criteria, even if it occurred. He was pricing the verification gap, not the conspiracy itself.
But that caveat reveals something important about the conspiracy itself. The Netanyahu death rumor only holds together if you believe in a cover-up so total — encompassing Israeli officials, international media, independent fact-checkers, and Netanyahu’s own social media accounts simultaneously — that no verifiable evidence would ever surface. At that point, the conspiracy has become unfalsifiable by design. An unfalsifiable claim is one no rational actor should stake capital on.
This is the key distinction from traditional fact-checking. A fact-checker requires institutional credibility, research time, and editorial process — all of which conspiracy theories are engineered to preemptively undermine. A Polymarket price requires none of that. It requires only that someone, somewhere, believes the opposite enough to put real money on it. When no one does, that is its own kind of proof.
The contrast case: Khamenei
The clearest evidence that these markets work as a truth signal — and not merely as a null result — is what happened with the Khamenei contract.
When Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed in the February 28 strikes, the “Khamenei out as Supreme Leader by March 31” contract on Polymarket behaved exactly as you would expect from an efficient market. It had hovered between 25% and 50% through January and February as tensions built, pricing genuine uncertainty about an escalating conflict. Then, when Iranian state TV confirmed his death, it spiked vertically to 100%. The contract drew $45 million in volume. The top trader made $757,000 on a yes bet. Four others cleared six figures.
The Netanyahu market did not do this. It stubbornly remained below 5 cents throughout the conspiracy cycle. The crowd that correctly priced Khamenei’s death — and got paid for it — looked at the Netanyahu claims and declined to move.
The regulatory storm gathering overhead
The informational value of these markets is being stress-tested at exactly the moment when political pressure against them is reaching its peak.
When Khamenei was killed, Kalshi — Polymarket’s CFTC-regulated rival — invoked a “death carveout” buried in its contract terms, settling its Khamenei positions at the last traded price before his death: roughly 39.5 cents rather than the full dollar. Polymarket, which carries no such carveout, paid out in full. A $54 million class action lawsuit against Kalshi followed.
The inconsistency in Kalshi’s approach has been pointed out sharply. In late 2024, Kalshi had run a market on whether a 100-year-old Jimmy Carter would attend Trump’s inauguration. When Carter died before it took place, Kalshi settled that contract to “No” — resolving a market directly via death, without invoking any carveout. As Crane has noted, the application of its death carveout appears to have been selective: they settle on death, just not when it’s expensive.
Kalshi disputes the characterization. “Our rules were clear from the beginning, we never changed them, and we settled based on the rules,” a spokesperson said. The company added that it reimbursed all fees and net losses out of pocket following the Khamenei settlement — “to the tune of millions of dollars” — ensuring no user lost money on the market. “Kalshi is a peer-to-peer exchange and does not profit from user losses. We have no incentive not to pay out our users, but we need to follow the rules of the exchange and the rule of law.”
On the legislative push, the company struck a conciliatory tone. “Kalshi already bans insider trading and markets directly tied to death and war,” a spokesperson said. “As a US-based exchange, we support regulators and policymakers from both sides of the aisle in their efforts to keep these markets safe and responsible in America.”
Kalshi declined to comment on record about the consistency of the death carveout as applied to the Khamenei contract versus the Carter market, or on the current status of the class action lawsuit.
Six Democratic senators, led by Adam Schiff, have written to the CFTC demanding a categorical ban on contracts that “resolve upon or closely correlate to an individual’s death.” Separately, senators Merkley and Klobuchar have introduced the End Prediction Market Corruption Act, which would bar the president, vice president, members of Congress, and their immediate families from trading event contracts, and impose fines and profit clawbacks for violations — citing the well-timed wagers on US strikes and Iranian leadership changes that netted some traders hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Blockchain analytics firm Bubblemaps identified six newly created wallets that collectively netted $1.2 million betting on the timing of US strikes on Iran, with accounts funded within 24 hours of the attack. One trader turned roughly $60,000 into nearly $500,000.
Brogan is skeptical that the legislative push has the momentum to land. “This is largely Democratic senators using the legislative process to generate political capital,” he said. “The conditions under which that legislation actually passes are where something really calamitous happens — some kind of market collapse or scandal that forces politicians to make an example of the industry. Without that, I don’t think there’s sufficient political capital to move it.”
He also draws a clear distinction between Polymarket’s legal exposure and Kalshi’s. “The restrictions Kalshi faces are not directly applicable to Polymarket,” Brogan said. Polymarket is not a CFTC-regulated US exchange — a status that stems from a 2021 settlement that pushed it offshore and barred US users from accessing it directly. That remains its largest single legal exposure, Brogan noted, though he pointed out that the Trump administration has shown little appetite for pursuing the kind of action the Biden administration explored against Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan in early 2025.
Crane, for his part, is unambiguous about what would be lost if the legislative push succeeded. “These markets have genuine informational value and can counter propaganda,” he said. “That’s the case study here — a market involving war and the fate of a political leader doing exactly what its critics say it shouldn’t exist to do.”
There is also a state-level front opening up. Arizona recently charged Kalshi with operating an illegal gambling operation — part of a broader conflict between states that regulate and tax traditional gambling markets and federally-overseen prediction markets that sit outside their control. “The question that ultimately matters is whether federal law will preempt state law on this,” Brogan said. “There are courts hearing that question right now.”
What the crowd gets right — and what it can’t fix
None of this is to say prediction markets are infallible. Crane notes that nearly 25% of Polymarket’s historical volume has been attributed to wash trading — artificial activity generated by users trying to position themselves for a potential token airdrop — a figure that Columbia University researchers found peaked at around 60% in December 2024 before falling sharply. Wash trading inflates headline volume without necessarily biasing prices, but it is a legitimate caveat to the “wisdom of crowds” narrative.
The more fundamental limitation is what Crane identified in his answer to the manipulation question: a sufficiently coordinated disinformation campaign could, in theory, move a market — especially a smaller one. The Netanyahu “out by March 31” contract had enough liquidity to make that expensive, but not impossible.
What prediction markets cannot do is replace the underlying information infrastructure they depend on. They resolve against credible sources. If those sources are corrupted or silent — as Iranian state media clearly was throughout this episode — the market’s signal is only as good as the resolution criteria it is anchored to.
But in the Netanyahu case, that is precisely where the conspiracy fell apart. The rumor required a cover-up so comprehensive that no Israeli official, no international journalist, no independent fact-checker, and no market trader with real money on the line would ever find confirmation. The market priced that scenario at 5 cents. It was right.
When Candace Owens was demanding to know where Bibi was, Polymarket already had an answer. It just costs a few pennies to read it.
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