Decentral Block Post

An idea to tokenize or track US gold reserves to make their movements transparent on a blockchain won’t work in the same trustless way as Bitcoin does, but doing so could help the cryptocurrency, says a research analyst.

Greg Cipolaro, global head of research at New York Digital Investment Group (NYDIG), said in a March 21 note that Trump administration officials, including Elon Musk, have floated using a blockchain to track US gold and government spending — an idea supported by crypto executives.

“Here’s the thing about blockchains. They’re not very smart,” Cipolaro said. “They’re limited in the information they convey. For example, Bitcoin has no idea what the price of Bitcoin is or even the current time.”

He said the tokenization or tracking of gold reserves on a blockchain could help with audits and transparency but would still “rely on trust and coordination with central entities” compared to Bitcoin, which “was designed to explicitly remove centralized entities.”

Cipolaro added that tokenization and blockchain-tracking ideas aren’t competitive with the crypto market and might help to increase awareness of it, which “could ultimately benefit Bitcoin.”

The US Treasury Department says there is no need for a final court judgment in a lawsuit over its sanctioning of Tornado Cash after dropping the crypto mixer from the sanctions list.

In August 2022, Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Tornado Cash after alleging the protocol helped launder crypto stolen by North Korean hacking crew the Lazarus Group, leading to a number of Tornado Cash users filing a lawsuit against the regulator. 

After a court ruling in favor of Tornado Cash, the US Treasury dropped the mixer from its sanctions list on March 21, along with several dozen Tornado-affiliated smart contract addresses from the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list, and has now argued “this matter is now moot.”

Because Tornado Cash has been dropped from the sanctions list, the US Treasury Department argues there is no need for a final court judgment in the lawsuit. Source: Paul Grewal

“Because this court, like all federal courts, has a continuing obligation to satisfy itself that it possesses Article III jurisdiction over the case, briefing on mootness is warranted,” the US Treasury said. 

Opinion by: Brendon Sedo, Core DAO initial contributor

Bitcoin is outgrowing the “digital gold” narrative. The primary driver of this shift is the rise of Bitcoin DeFi (BTCfi), which looks beyond the mere store-of-value use cases. 

In 2024, Bitcoin (BTC) became a natively yield-generating asset and the centerpiece of Ethereum-style decentralized finance ecosystems. 2025 is when that kindling can grow its flame on innovative Bitcoin sidechains. 

Most past attempts to tap Bitcoin’s value as a productive asset required significant changes to its base layer. That’s a big reason they failed. The Bitcoin layer 1 is not designed for much change, leaving most Bitcoiners to merely hodl and not do much else. The result is that Bitcoin remained underutilized as a network and an asset.

Bitcoin sidechains have emerged as the perfect solution to all these problems, scaling Bitcoin’s utility without altering or being limited by the base layer. Naturally, these protocols will be the most potent catalyst for BTCfi’s growth, especially with BTC surpassing $100,000, constituting over 60% of the total crypto market share, and entering a new regulatory landscape with the first “pro-crypto” US government regime.

Opinion by: Ido Ben Natan, co-founder and CEO of Blockaid

Centralized exchanges (CEXs) have controlled what people can trade for years. If a token wasn’t listed on major exchanges, it didn’t exist for most users. That system worked when crypto was small. But today? It’s completely broken.

The rise of Solana-based memecoins, the popularization of projects like Pump.fun and developments in AI-driven token creation are driving the creation of millions of new tokens each month. 

Exchanges have not evolved to keep up. That must change. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong recently weighed in on the topic, saying that exchanges must shift from an allowlist model to a blocklist model, where everything is tradeable unless flagged as a scam.

In many ways, this is the Kodak moment for CEXs. Kodak’s failure to adapt to digital photography has made it a poster child of failed strategy. Now, exchanges are faced with the same threat. The old way of doing things isn’t just slow — it’s obsolete. The real question is: What comes next?

An unknown trader pocketed nearly half a million dollars in profit from a newly launched memecoin shortly before the token lost half its value, fueling insider trading allegations amid a recent wave of memecoin collapses.

The savvy trader made an over 1,500-fold return on his initial investment, turning it into over $482,000 in less than 24 hours on the Bubb (BUBB) memecoin.

Source: Lookonchain

“Turned $304 into $482K on $BUBB—a 1,586x return! This trader spent only $304 to buy 43.94M $BUBB and sold 28.9M $BUBB for $122K, leaving 15.64M $BUBB($360K),” wrote Lookonchain in a March 21 X post.

The profitable trade happened shortly before the token shed over 50% of its value, dropping from a peak market capitalization of $43.7 million at 10:00 pm UTC on March 21 to $22.6 million currently, according to Dexscreener data.

Once, long ago, cryptocurrency companies operated comfortably in the US. In that quaint, bygone era, they would often conduct funding events called “initial coin offerings,” and then use those raised funds to try to do things in the real and blockchain world.

Now, they largely do this “offshore” through foreign entities while geofencing the United States.

The effect of this change has been dramatic: Practically all major cryptocurrency issuers started in the US now include some off-shore foundation arm. These entities create significant domestic challenges. They are expensive, difficult to operate, and leave many crucial questions about governance and regulation only half answered. 

Many in the industry yearn to “re-shore,” but until this year, there has been no path to do so. Now, though, that could change. New crypto-rulemaking is on the horizon, members of the Trump family have floated the idea of eliminating capital gains tax on cryptocurrency, and many US federal agencies have dropped enforcement actions against crypto firms.

For the first time in four years, the government has signaled to the cryptocurrency industry that it is open to deal. There may soon be a path to return to the US.

Update: the CTO of TradingView told Cointelegraph in comments that the reports of a bug were inaccurate, and the Twitter user partially withdrew his earlier claims that the tool was broken.

Popular chart analysis service TradingView reportedly contains a bug in the Fibonacci retracement technical analysis tool, according to a tweet by self-proclaimed certified Elliott wave analyst Cryptoteddybear published on June 13.

The Elliott wave principle is a type of technical analysis for predicting prices in financial markets by looking at recurring patterns.

In a video that he uploaded to YouTube, the analyst explains that the tool does linear calculations when in logarithmic charts, which he notes is a significant issue for Elliot wave traders. The official Twitter account of the company behind the charting service answered his tweet, announcing that the issue is being investigated, to which Cryptoteddybear answered:

“Thank you @tradingview for finally taking this issue seriously.”

Bitcoin may have bottomed and could rebound toward $90,000 after US President Donald Trump signaled a willingness to ease tariffs and the Federal Reserve resisted short-term pressure last week, according to a crypto analyst.

“Bitcoin is attempting to form a bottom, supported by Trump’s recent shift toward ‘flexibility’ on the upcoming April 2 reciprocal tariffs, softening his earlier rhetoric,” 10x Research’s founder Markus Thielen said in a March 23 report.

The Federal Reserve signaled in its March 18-19 meeting that it would also “look past short-term inflationary pressures, laying the groundwork for potential future easing,” Thielen added.

10x Research’s Bitcoin reversal indicators have turned bullish as a result, with Bitcoin’s (BTC) 21-day moving average now at $85,200, Thielen noted.

Bitcoin’s bottoming formations over the last two years. Source: 10x Research

The UK should begin taxing crypto purchases in a bid to sway Britons to invest in local stocks, which could boost the country’s economy, says the chair of investment bank Cavendish, Lisa Gordon.

“It should terrify all of us that over half of under-45s own crypto and no equities,” Gordon told The Times in a March 23 report. “I would love to see stamp duty cut on equities and applied to crypto.”

Currently, the UK lumps a 0.5% tax on shares listed on the London Stock Exchange, the country’s largest securities market, which brings in around 3 billion British pounds ($3.9 billion) a year in tax revenue.

Gordon added that a cut could sway people to put their savings into shares of local companies, which could then spark other firms to go public in the UK and help the economy.

In comparison, she called crypto “a non-productive asset” that “doesn’t feed back into the economy.”

US authorities are seeking to return $7 million to victims of a social engineering scam that tricked them into sending money to fake cryptocurrency investment platforms. 

The scam involved the fraudsters contacting victims and earning trust before directing them to websites masquerading as legitimate crypto investment platforms, Virginia’s Eastern District US Attorney’s Office said in a March 21 statement.

Once victims made a deposit, the funds were funneled through over 75 bank accounts under the names of shell companies, then sent abroad “deceptively characterized” as domestic wires, despite being transferred to a bank outside the US.

Source: US Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of Virginia

“The sites falsely represented to the victims that their investments were making sizeable gains,” Virginia’s US Attorney’s Office added in its statement.

Fidelity Investments has filed to register a tokenized version of its US dollar money market fund on Ethereum — joining the likes of BlackRock and Franklin Templeton in the blockchain tokenization space.

Fidelity’s March 21 filing with the US securities regulator said “OnChain” would help track transactions of the Fidelity Treasury Digital Fund (FYHXX) — an $80 million fund consisting almost entirely of US Treasury bills.

While OnChain is pending regulatory approval, it is expected to take effect on May 30, Fidelity said.

Fidelity’s filing to register a tokenized version of the Fidelity Treasury Digital Fund. Source: Securities and Exchange Commission

The OnChain share class aims to provide investors transparency and verifiable tracking of share transactions of FYHXX, although Fidelity will maintain traditional book-entry records as the official ownership ledger.

Cathie Wood, founder of the Ark Invest investment firm, will give the inaugural lecture for El Salvador's new Urban Centers for Welfare and Opportunities (CUBO) AI program, a public education initiative spearheaded by the government of El Salvador.

According to El Salvador's Bitcoin Office, the program will bring university-level AI courses to students and professionals and follows the country's highly successful CUBO Bitcoin (BTC) and Lightning Network developer program.

The program will leverage industry experts to provide AI education to the public. El Salvador's Bitcoin Office wrote in a March 23 X post:

El Salvador continues to attract crypto businesses and foreign direct investment as the Central American country positions itself as a regional tech and digital finance hub.

Cathie Wood pictured left, with El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele in the center, and economist Art Laffer, on the right, meet in May 2024. Source: El Salvador’s Bitcoin Office

The Bitcoin (BTC) mining hashprice — a miner's daily revenue per unit of hashing power expended to mine blocks — has remained constant at around $48 per petahash per second (PH/s), despite a slight 1.4% uptick in Bitcoin difficulty.

Data from CoinWarz shows that the Bitcoin difficulty climbed to 113.76 trillion at block 889,081 on March 23, up from the 112.1 trillion difficulty in the previous epoch.

According to TheMinerMag, a hashprice below $50 places financial stress on miners running older hardware such as the Antminer S19 XP and S19 Pro.

The older hardware coupled with declining network transaction fees risks pushing some miners into unprofitable territory — forcing them to turn off their hardware until they upgrade their application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) or network conditions change.

Mining firms have been struggling since the April 2024 Bitcoin halving event, which slashed the block subsidy to 3.125 BTC per block mined, generally increasing network difficulty, and the recent downturn in the crypto markets due to macroeconomic uncertainty.

Bitcoin (BTC) bulls are trying to make a comeback by maintaining the price above the 200-day simple moving average ($84,899) over the weekend. Bitget Research chief analyst Ryan Lee told Cointelegraph that Bitcoin needs to close above $85,000 this week to signal strength and “prevent a drop to $76,000.” Lee added that a close above $87,000 would give a clearer bullish confirmation.

Tariff wars have rocked both traditional markets and the cryptocurrency markets in the past few days. Nansen research analyst Nicolai Sondergaard believes the markets may remain under pressure until April 2. While speaking on Cointelegraph’s Chainreaction daily X show, Sondergaard said that if the tariffs get dropped, it could act as “the biggest driver at this moment.”

Crypto market data daily view. Source: Coin360

Although analysts remain bullish for the long term, some expect a short-term decline. Analyzing previous bear market declines, market analyst and author Timothy Peterson said in a post on X that the current bear market should only last for 90 days. The analyst anticipates a fall in the “next 30 days followed by a 20-40% rally sometime after April 15th.”

If Bitcoin starts a sustained recovery, several altcoins could follow suit. What are the top cryptocurrencies that look strong on the charts?

Bitcoin (BTC) circled $85,000 into the March 23 weekly close as excitement over a key trend change brewed.

BTC/USD 1-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Bitcoin price meets decisive RSI setup

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD finding strength during weekend trading.

Up 1.5% on the day, Bitcoin edged higher as part of a broad crypto market uptick, which also lifted various major altcoins.

“I think this next week will be telling where the market wants to head for the next higher timeframe move,” popular trader Daan Crypto Trades wrote in part of his latest X analysis, noting the closing position of CME Group’s Bitcoin futures.

Strategy co-founder Michael Saylor hinted at an impending Bitcoin (BTC) purchase after the company raised additional capital this week through its latest preferred stock offering.

The executive shared a Sunday Bitcoin chart on X, hinting at another BTC purchase the following day — when traditional financial markets reopen — alongside the playful caption, “needs more orange.”

According to SaylorTracker, the company’s most recent BTC acquisition occurred on March 17, when Strategy purchased 130 BTC, valued at $10.7 million, bringing its total holdings to 499,226 BTC.

Strategy’s total Bitcoin purchases. Source: SaylorTracker

Strategy’s March 17 BTC acquisition represents one of its smallest purchases on record and came after a two-week break in buying.

Ethereum’s native token, Ether (ETH), has lost half of its value in the past three months, crashing from $4,100 in December 2024 to as low as around $1,750 in March 2025. Nevertheless, it is now well-positioned for a sharp price rebound.

65% ETH price rebound in play by June

From a technical standpoint, Ether’s price is eyeing a potential breakout as it retests a long-term support zone. Historically, bounces from this multi-year support have led to explosive rallies — most notably gains of over 2,000% and 360% during past cycles.

ETH/USD two-week price chart. Source: TradingView

As of March 23, the ETH/USD pair was hovering near $2,000, close to the given support area. A bounce from this zone can lead the price toward $3400 by June—up 65% from current prices.

This level coincides with the lower boundary of Ether’s prevailing descending channel resistance.

Opinion by: Nick Denisenko is the chief technology officer and co-founder of Brighty

You can’t fight it. Crypto investments and transactions are on the up. The technology is seamless in crossing borders and making international transactions convenient. Many people report this as a reason for choosing to receive payments in crypto. Using cryptocurrency to pay bills is becoming increasingly popular as digital currencies gain wider acceptance. And, with the number of digital nomads expected to exceed 60 million by 2030, the shift toward crypto has glaring consequences for businesses attracting talent in a global market. 

Crypto companies are multinational by default. Spread across the globe, they’re no stranger to paying salaries in crypto. But today, the traditional economy also leans toward crypto payments for a straightforward reason. 

Crypto promises to unlock talent from across the world. There are tricky compliance issues involved in hiring employees from abroad. By using crypto, companies will unlock the opportunity to pay — and work with — those who best fit their needs.

Foreign hires could even be cheaper and a better fit than locals. With border-crossing crypto fintech, the traditional economy will follow in the footsteps of crypto businesses, and location will no longer make up a competitive edge in hiring. 

Ether needs to reclaim the “macro” range above the $2,200 mark to amass more upside momentum as crypto markets remain pressured by global macroeconomic concerns until at least the beginning of April.

Ether (ETH) price is down over 51% during its three-month downtrend after it peaked above $4,100 on Dec. 16, 2024, TradingView data shows.

ETH/USD, 1-day chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

To stage a reversal from thncoinglis downtrend, Ether price needs to reclaim the “macro range” above $2,200, wrote popular crypto analyst Rekt Capital in a March 19 X post:

ETH/USD, monthly chart. Source: Rekt Capital

Bitcoin analysts are closely watching the weekly close to assess the cryptocurrency’s price trajectory for the coming week, as both traditional and crypto markets remain directionless amid a mix of global trade war fears and easing inflation concerns.

Bitcoin's (BTC) price may see more downside next week unless it manages to close the week above the $85,000 psychological mark, according to Ryan Lee, chief analyst at Bitget Research.

“Bitcoin’s relief rally after the FOMC meeting and lower CPI readings has analysts eyeing a weekly close above $85,000, as critical for resuming upside momentum,” Lee told Cointelegraph, adding:

BTC/USD, 1-year chart. Source: Cointelegraph

Bitcoin’s price has been lacking momentum, rising only 0.9% over the past week, Cointelegraph Markets Pro data shows. A disappointing weekly close risks a revisit to the previous week’s price low of $76,600.