Bitcoin BTC$68,802.94 may gain if a potential U.S.-Iran conflict stretches on for months as higher government spending, rising debt and lower interest rates create conditions that have historically supported the cryptocurrency, according to macrostrategist Mark Connors.

Wars are expensive, and financing them typically requires governments to issue more debt, said Connors, formerly the head of research at 3iQ and global head of portfolio and risk advisory at Credit Suisse. That increases the supply of dollars in the financial system, lowering — or debasing — the value of the existing circulation, and tending to benefit non-dollar assets like bitcoin.

“Liquidity drives bitcoin,” said Connors, who now has his own bitcoin advisory firm called Risk Dimensions, in an interview with CoinDesk. If the conflict extends into the next several months, he expects deficit spending to accelerate as the U.S. finances military operations. “If the war runs longer, that means more spending and more deficit spending. That’s constructive for bitcoin.”

The U.S. debt load has already been growing rapidly. Connors said federal debt has been rising at roughly a 14% annualized pace since mid-2025. If the trend continues, the debt could increase about 15% year-over-year.

“That’s debasement,” he said.

Bitcoin appeared to reflect some of that dynamic on Monday. The cryptocurrency rallied overnight and into the U.S. morning as investors pulled money out of equities and repositioned portfolios for the possibility of a prolonged conflict. Since the first U.S. strike on Iran, bitcoin has gained 3.6%.

A war-driven surge in oil prices could complicate the outlook by pushing inflation higher, Connors said. But he argued that even a stagflationary environment — where growth slows while prices rise — could support bitcoin.

In that scenario, policymakers would likely prioritize financial stability and government financing over fighting inflation alone.

Connors said the Federal Reserve effectively operates under an additional mandate beyond its traditional goals of stable prices and maximum employment: maintaining the smooth functioning of financial markets, particularly the Treasury market.

Authorities cannot allow disruptions like the 2019 repo market crisis or the regional bank failures seen in 2023 after aggressive rate hikes, he said.

“The Fed has to make sure the Treasury market functions,” Connors said.

That constraint may push policymakers toward lower interest rates over time, especially as the government shifts toward issuing more short-term Treasury bills rather than long-term bonds. Lower rates are also more likely if Kevin Walsh — picked by President Trump partly for his dovish stance — becomes chair of the Fed in May, pending confirmation by the Senate.

With a larger share of debt rolling over quickly, lowering short-term rates would directly reduce the government’s interest costs.

If rates fall while deficits continue to expand, liquidity conditions would likely improve — a combination Connors believes would favor bitcoin.

“When rates go lower and debt keeps rising, that’s the backdrop where bitcoin tends to perform well,” he said.

Crypto assets traded higher during the U.S. session on Monday, rebounding from sharp overnight losses that had brought bitcoin BTC$68,963.16 down to nearly $65,000.

Bitcoin was trading just shy of $69,000 at midday up 2.5% over the past 24 hours, while ether (ETH) reclaimed the $2,000 level, ahead 4% over the same time period.

Among crypto-related stocks, stablecoin issuer Circle (CRCL) saw the biggest price jump, up 8% as global insurance giant Aon said it paid an insurance premium for the first time in stablecoins, including in Circle’s USDC. Other crypto stocks traded in the green as well, with Strategy (MSTR) higher by 3% after announcing a large $1.28 billion acquisition of bitcoin last week. Crypto exchange Coinbase (COIN) was modestly lower for the day.

The gains for crypto came alongside a big bounce in stocks after crude oil reversed much of its spectacular overnight gain, the Nasdaq swinging from a 2% loss to flat. Up 30% to $120 per barrel at one point overnight, WTI crude pulled back to $95, ahead just 5% on the session.

The initial large gain in oil prices came after a weekend that showed no sign of an immediate end to the war in Iran.

“Bitcoin has displayed surprising resilience despite the extreme volatility exhibited across traditional assets,” said David Morrison, senior market analyst at Trade Nation. “The bulls will be encouraged if it can quickly push back above $70,000 and then hold this level on any subsequent pullback.”

“With traditional financial markets under pressure and supply chains threatened by disruptions in the Middle East, digital assets appear to be attracting defensive capital from investors seeking alternatives to oil-sensitive assets,” he said.

Speaking of stocks, Ram Ahluwalia, CEO of wealth management platform Lumida Wealth, said that he expects “we will see a local bottom sometime today and a rally during the week.”

However, that could be a tactical short-term bounce, he added, as weakness persists and the S&P 500 will struggle to reclaim the record highs “anytime soon.”

Sonic Labs has launched USSD, a USD-pegged stablecoin supported by tokenized U.S. Treasury assets, adding a new source of stable liquidity to the Sonic blockchain ecosystem.

The new stablecoin, announced on March 9, will serve as a dependable on-chain dollar across the network. It can be used for trading, lending, payments, and settlement in decentralized finance applications running on Sonic.

Sonic Labs said the launch gives developers and users a stable asset that can move easily across DeFi platforms within the network.

Institutional Treasury backing

USSD maintains a 1:1 backing with high-quality U.S. dollar assets held with regulated custodians. The reserves include tokenized Treasury products linked to major financial institutions such as BlackRock, Superstate, and WisdomTree.

These tokenized Treasury funds bring traditional financial instruments into blockchain markets while maintaining transparency and stability on-chain. Sonic Labs says the reserve structure follows the same framework used by Frax (FRAX), which focuses on clear redemption mechanics and dependable backing.

Users can mint USSD through non-custodial smart contracts on the Sonic network. Supported dollar-based assets may be deposited at a one-to-one ratio, and the minting process carries no fees.

The structure makes it easier for liquidity providers and DeFi participants to enter the ecosystem without additional costs.

Cross-chain liquidity and Sonic’s DeFi strategy

USSD launches with cross-chain minting support from more than ten blockchain networks. A user can deposit assets on another chain and receive USSD directly on Sonic, allowing liquidity to move between ecosystems with fewer barriers.

Through Frax’s cross-chain infrastructure, the stablecoin can also be exchanged for supported dollar assets. This setup enables users to settle transactions, transfer money between networks, and manage liquidity without depending on fragmented markets.

Stablecoins often serve as the main currency for DeFi, supporting trading pairs, collateral for lending, and settlement in derivatives markets.

A native stablecoin will help keep liquidity within the Sonic ecosystem and gives applications a consistent dollar reference. Revenue generated from the Treasury assets backing USSD may later support ecosystem incentives and network development as activity on Sonic continues to grow.

The opportunity isn’t that AI is new. It’s that most businesses still don’t understand it.

The narrative around AI services is intoxicating. Build an agency. Develop autonomous agents. The market is wide open. And technically, it’s not wrong. The opportunity is substantial.

But the reasoning behind this advice is fundamentally flawed.

Everyone assumes the market is wide open because AI is new. Wrong. The market is wide open because of a massive intelligence gap—the distance between what’s technically possible and what businesses actually understand about AI. And almost nobody is positioning themselves to profit from it.

Here’s what separates people making $2,000 monthly from those hitting $20,000: they understand where the real gap is, and they’re selling to businesses that haven’t figured out AI yet.

The Numbers Everyone Gets Wrong

Let’s start with adoption data. Roughly 1.3 billion people use free ChatGPT. Sounds massive. But then the numbers fall off a cliff: 15-25 million pay for any AI tool. Only 2.5 million actively use AI for coding.

These figures seem significant until you contextualize them against reality: there are 400+ million businesses worldwide.

The vast majority have never integrated AI into their operations in any meaningful way. They’ve heard the hype. Maybe they experimented with ChatGPT once drafting an email, brainstorming a meeting agenda. Then they moved on. The technology sits there, unused and underutilized.

This is the intelligence gap. And it’s the biggest revenue opportunity in the market right now.

Why Most Professionals Miss the Opportunity

Here’s what typically happens: You build AI capability. You immediately chase the most obvious prospects—tech companies, startups, venture-backed firms. These businesses understand AI. They have internal resources. They shop around aggressively.

It’s a race to the bottom. You’re competing against other AI specialists. Procurement teams are doing rigorous technical due diligence. Budgets are fixed. Margins evaporate.

You’ll close some deals. But you’ll exhaust yourself competing for scraps in the most competitive market possible.

The real money is in the opposite direction: businesses that have never implemented AI, don’t know where to start, and don’t have anyone internally who can figure it out.

The Gap Nobody’s Talking About

Ask a business owner over 40 what Claude is. Watch the blank stare. Ask them about autonomous agents. About workflow automation. About speed-to-lead systems.

They’re not being slow. They’re genuinely unfamiliar with these concepts. Their world is structured around traditional software and manual processes. AI exists in their universe as an abstract notion, not as a concrete solution to their specific problems.

This is the opportunity. These business owners have expensive problems—leads going cold because nobody answers the phone, proposals taking three hours to write, data entry consuming half someone’s day. They’d pay generously to solve these problems. They just don’t know AI is the tool.

The business owner isn’t going to watch a YouTube tutorial. They’re not going to read documentation. They’re not going to figure this out themselves. They need someone to do it for them, show them the value, and maintain it.

That someone is you. But only if you position correctly.

Where Everyone Gets Positioning Wrong

Most professionals default to chasing the same tier of prospect: startup founders, tech company leaders, people who already understand AI. They cold DM on Twitter. They attend tech events. They join startup communities.

This is psychologically understandable. These prospects ‘get it.’ Conversations move faster. You don’t have to explain what automation is.

But it’s strategically terrible. You’re competing against every other person who had the same idea. The market is saturated. Pricing pressure is brutal. These companies already know your value—so they shop aggressively and demand volume discounts.

The smartest move is the opposite: chase boring industries. Industries where nobody else is going. Where business owners are hungry for solutions but have zero competition from other AI specialists.

The Industries Where Money Accumulates

Think about the most unsexy businesses imaginable. Accounting firms. Dental practices. HVAC contractors. Real estate brokerages. Private equity offices. Insurance agencies. Law firms.

These industries have three things in common:

1. They make real money and aren’t price-sensitive on solutions that work. An HVAC contractor who closes one additional job monthly from faster lead response doesn’t blink at a $500 monthly retainer. That’s a 10-20x ROI.
2. They have minimal competitive saturation. Nobody is systematically approaching dental offices with automation solutions. There are so many of these businesses that even if a competitor starts, the market remains unsaturated.
3. They refer like crazy. Boring industries are tight-knit professional networks. One successful implementation for a law firm partner gets you introduced to three more. Same workflow, different client, same price. Build once, sell six times.

What This Means For Your Next Move

Stop chasing prestige prospects. Stop trying to impress people who already understand AI. Stop competing on technical sophistication in markets where technical sophistication is already commoditized.

Instead, pick one unsexy industry. Dentists. Contractors. Accountants. Real estate agents. Go deep on understanding their specific problems. Learn their language. Understand their workflows.

Then build solutions to their problems. Not AI solutions. Solutions to their specific expensive bottlenecks.

The business owners in these industries are hungry. They see the opportunity but don’t know how to implement. They have money and they’re willing to spend it. And they’re desperately underserved by specialists who actually understand their business.

That’s the intelligence gap. And if you’re the one filling it, you win.

Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL), a new development group formed by the former core team of the Electric Coin Company (ECC), has raised more than $25 million in seed funding to continue building the privacy-focused cryptocurrency ecosystem.

The round drew support from Paradigm, a16z crypto, Winklevoss Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Cypherpunk Technologies, Chapter One, Balaji Srinivasan and several angel investors in crypto and technology.

ZODL was founded by former ECC CEO Josh Swihart. The lab emerged after the entire ECC engineering and product team resigned in January following a governance dispute with Bootstrap, the nonprofit board that oversees ECC. The group said the conflict made it difficult to continue its work under the previous structure.

The team has since created ZODL to continue developing core Zcash software and tools.

One focus is Zodl, a self-custodial mobile wallet previously known as Zashi. The app lets users hold ZEC and send shielded transactions, which hide sender, receiver and transaction amount using zero-knowledge cryptography.

Since its launch in 2024, the wallet has helped expand activity in Zcash’s shielded pool by more than 400%, according to the project. The app has also processed over $600 million in ZEC swaps since October according to the team behind it.

The new funding will support hiring engineers and expanding development. ZODL says it will continue work on the Zcash protocol while building products designed to make private digital payments easier to use.

ECC itself remains under Bootstrap, while the engineers who built much of the network’s core software now operate through the independent ZODL lab.

The price of ZEC is up more than 8.8% in the last 24-hour period to now trade at $215, amid a wider crypto market recovery that has seen the CoinDesk 20 (CD20) index move up 3% in the same period.

Cypherpunk Technologies (CYPH), a digital asset treasury firm backed by the Winklevoss twins that’s focusing on ZEC, is up 2.7% in today’s trading session.

WIF price trades below $0.18 range support while RSI prints bullish divergence. A reclaim of this level could signal a deviation and potential move toward $0.26.

Dogwifhat (WIF) is currently trading at a crucial technical level after losing the key range support near $0.18. Price action has now been finding acceptance below this region since the February 6 low was established, signaling that the market has temporarily shifted below its previous trading range.

While a break below support often indicates further downside risk, the current setup is presenting a potential deviation scenario that traders are watching closely.

Wif price key technical points

• Range Low Support: $0.18 is the key level that must be reclaimed to confirm a potential deviation.
• Bullish RSI Divergence: RSI is forming higher lows while price prints lower lows.
• Upside Target: Reclaiming range support could trigger a move toward range high resistance at $0.26.

The recent breakdown below the $0.18 level marked an important development in WIF’s market structure. This level previously acted as the range low of the broader trading environment and had provided multiple reactions in previous price cycles. Once price broke below this level, the market entered a lower trading zone where acceptance beneath support began to develop. Sustained trading below a key range boundary typically increases the risk of further downside expansion, but this scenario may be evolving differently due to the appearance of momentum divergence.

One of the most notable signals currently present on the chart is the bullish divergence forming on the Relative Strength Index (RSI). While WIF price action has continued to print lower lows, the RSI indicator has begun forming higher lows.

This divergence between price and momentum often indicates that selling pressure is weakening and that the bearish trend may be losing strength. In many cases, bullish divergence appears during late stages of a downtrend when the market is preparing for a potential reversal or relief rally.

However, momentum signals alone are not enough to confirm a trend reversal. The broader crypto market also remains under bearish pressure, with Bitcoin and most altcoins still trading significantly below their all-time highs after double-digit declines.

As a result, the key technical confirmation for WIF will be a reclaim of the $0.18 range low. If price can push back above this level and hold it as support, it would suggest that the recent breakdown was likely a deviation rather than a true continuation move. Such a reclaim would shift market structure back into the previous trading range and increase the probability of a rotation toward the upper boundary.

From a broader market structure perspective, range-bound markets tend to rotate between support and resistance levels as liquidity moves between participants. Once a deviation occurs and price re-enters the range, the probability often favors a move toward the opposite side of the range. In WIF’s case, the next major technical target would be the range-high resistance near $0.26.

Volume and momentum behavior will also play an important role in confirming this potential shift. If price begins reclaiming support alongside increasing buying pressure and strengthening RSI momentum, it would add further confirmation that a local bottom may be forming. Conversely, continued rejection below $0.18 would keep the market vulnerable to further downside exploration.

What to expect in the coming price action

WIF remains at a key technical turning point as bullish divergence develops while price trades below major support. A confirmed reclaim of $0.18 would strengthen the case for a deviation and open the door for a rotation toward $0.26 resistance, while failure to reclaim the level could allow bearish momentum to persist.

Bithumb, South Korea’s second-largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, is reportedly facing a possible partial business suspension of up to six months as regulators step up enforcement over anti-money laundering controls.

South Korea’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) gave Bithumb a preliminary notice of a six-month partial suspension over alleged anti-money laundering and know-your-customer failures under the Act on Reporting and Using Specified Financial Transaction Information, according to local media reports on Monday. The regulator reportedly cited concerns over dealings with unregistered overseas virtual asset service providers and shortcomings in customer due diligence.

The FIU also issued a reprimand warning to Bithumb’s CEO, a warning considered a heavy penalty, which may lead to restrictions on his reappointment or future roles. Regulators are expected to hold a sanctions review later in March before deciding on any final measures. Bithumb told News1 that the action remains at the pre-notification stage and that the scope of any sanctions could still change.

“This measure is not yet a confirmed sanction, but is a pre-notification stage, and there may be some adjustments in the sanctions trial,” a Bithumb spokesperson said, adding that “restrictions only apply to the transfer (withdrawal) of virtual assets by new members.”

If finalized, the suspension would restrict new users from transferring digital assets off the platform, according to the report. Bithumb did not immediately respond to Cointelegraph’s request for comment.

Related: South Korea moves to cap crypto exchange shareholder stakes at 20%: Report

The notice follows scrutiny on South Korea’s Financial Services Commission’s failure to detect critical flaws tied to Bithumb’s internal systems after the exchange mistakenly credited 2,000 Bitcoin (BTC) per user instead of 2,000 Korean won ($1.40) during a promotional event on Feb. 6, distributing a total of 620,000 BTC (worth around $43 billion at the time).

Related: Hacker returns $21M in Bitcoin stolen from South Korean authorities: Report

South Korean regulators impose stricter money laundering regulations

South Korean regulators are seeking to impose stricter sanctions on crypto exchanges suspected of AML and KYC violations. 

In November 2025, FIU imposed a partial three-month suspension and a 35.2 billion won ($25 million) fine on cryptocurrency exchange Upbit’s parent company, Dunamu, for similar violations. 

Crypto exchange Korbit also received a warning and a 2.73 billion won ($1.9 million) fine in December 2025.

Both administrative penalties stemmed from concerns related to dealings with overseas crypto service providers and neglect of customer verification practices.