Decentral Block Post

Celo, the blockchain network launched in 2020, has officially transitioned from a layer-1 chain to an Ethereum layer-2 protocol.

Celo announced the successful transition in a March 26 X post, stating that “Celo is officially an Ethereum layer 2” protocol. In the thread, the organization claimed the new protocol features one-second blocks, sub-cent transaction costs, and Tether’s USDt (USDT) and USDC (USDC) as gas.

Celo first proposed this transition in the summer of 2023, and it is now completed after block production on the old layer-1 platform halted and continued on the new network. The new platform is based on the OP technology stack and an optimistic rollups implementation.

Source: Celo

Related: Vitalik Buterin endorses Celo for beating Tron in stablecoin addresses

Opinion by: Paul Delio, chief business officer at CARV

Market movements come and go, naturally taking up a lot of crypto oxygen, but something far more remarkable has been happening beneath the surface in recent cycles. The past few years have generally been great for new tokens, and with their launches come significant opportunities for wealth creation, such as airdrops.

I recently sat down with Animoca Brands co-founder and executive chairman Yat Siu at Consensus Hong Kong. He mentioned a figure that instantly cured any market anxiety: $49 billion worth of airdrops were distributed directly to Web3 communities from 2021 to 2024. “I can’t think of a larger private wealth generation event than that,” Siu noted.

He’s entirely correct. Airdrops get users in at the ground floor and reward them for early support in ways traditional markets simply can’t or don’t. We can all share in one of the most significant wealth redistributions in recent history through this unique mechanism. 

While current sentiment might make some think twice, there’s still great user and network value building in the background. Bear markets are temporary, but airdrops — and the ownership and community models they enable in crypto — are forever.

Bitso Business, an arm of the Mexican crypto exchange Bitso, will launch a Mexican peso-pegged stablecoin on the Ethereum layer-2 network Arbitrum.

The stablecoin, MXNB, will be issued and managed by Bitso’s newly established subsidiary Juno and will be fully fiat-backed by Mexican pesos on a one-to-one basis, Bitso Business said in a March 26 statement.

Bitso Business’ head of stablecoins, Ben Reid, said a primary use case for MXNB could be to promote foreign investment and trade in Latin American economies by providing a more “efficient way” to do business compared to traditional finance infrastructure.

“Global companies face significant monetary challenges when it comes to serving customers in new markets and conducting cross-border payments, including high intermediary costs and inefficient transaction times,” he said.

Juno will operate independently from Bitso to manage the stablecoin and will conduct regular audits of its reserves, providing public attestation reports on the token’s website.

World Liberty Financial (WLFI), the Trump family’s crypto project, is planning to release a stablecoin, raising concern over the US president’s exposure to the digital asset industry.

The project released a memecoin immediately prior to President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the price of which skyrocketed and crashed soon after, causing many to accuse WLFI of a pump-and-dump scheme. 

WLFI has also made multimillion-dollar purchases of crypto tokens immediately prior to important crypto-related events the president has attended or announcements influencing the industry. WLFI purchased $20 million of various tokens ahead of the March 7 White House Crypto Summit. 

As World Liberty Financial’s portfolio grows and regulator oversight disappears from the crypto industry, observers and legal scholars are becoming increasingly concerned over conflicts of interest within the Trump administration. 

Son Eric Trump pumps his father’s memecoin ahead of the inauguration. Source: Eric Trump

Update March 26, 2:36 pm UTC: This article has been updated to include quotes from Brickken CEO Edwin Mata.

BlackRock’s Ethereum-native tokenized money market fund has more than tripled in value over the past three weeks, nearing the $2 billion mark amid rising demand for safe-haven digital assets.

BlackRock’s USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL) saw an over three-fold increase over the past three weeks, from $615 million to $1.87 billion, according to Token Terminal data shared by Leon Waidmann, head of research at Onchain Foundation, a Web3 intelligence platform.

BlackRock BUIDL capital deployed by chain. Source: Token Terminal, Leon Waidmann

“BUIDL fund TVL exploded from $615M → $1.87B in just 3 weeks. The tokenization wave is hitting faster than most realize,” the researcher wrote in a March 26 X post.

Key takeaways

Exit liquidity traps occur when new investors unknowingly provide liquidity for insiders to cash out, leaving them with devalued assets.​

FOMO drives impulsive trades, often leading to costly mistakes and becoming exit liquidity for early movers.

Beware of projects with exaggerated claims, low liquidity, anonymous teams or sudden price surges.

Investing in high-market-cap coins, avoiding hype-driven projects and using reputable exchanges reduce the risk.

Are you concerned about having bought a cryptocurrency only to later realize that your investment facilitated someone else’s profitable exit? This scenario is called an exit liquidity trap, a deceptive market dynamic where unsuspecting traders provide liquidity for insiders or seasoned investors to offload their holdings at inflated prices.

Bitcoin (BTC) saw the return of US selling pressure at the March 26 Wall Street open as analysis eyed a “key shift in market structure.”

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

Bitcoin sees classic US dip as dollar gains

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD heading below $87,000.

The pair had enjoyed support through the day’s Asia trading session, but the start of US hours triggered a familiar downward reversal.

Bitcoin copied US stocks’ lack of momentum, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite Index both heading lower at the open.

Crypto community members are growing more optimistic about an XRP exchange-traded fund (ETF) approval following the resolution of a multi-year legal battle between Ripple and the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). 

On March 19, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse announced the case had concluded. In an X post, the Ripple executive said the SEC will drop its appeal against Ripple, ending the $1.3 billion unregistered securities suit that started in December 2020. 

Following the development, Nate Geraci, president of the advisory firm ETF Store, said on X that the approval of an XRP (XRP) ETF is next. Geraci said it was “obvious” that it’s only a “matter of time” before the SEC approves an XRP ETF. 

The executive predicted that asset managers like BlackRock and Fidelity would be involved in offering the asset. 

Polymarket punters give 86% odds to XRP ETF approval in 2025

Aside from Geraci, users on the crypto betting platform Polymarket also expect approval for an XRP ETF in 2025. On March 26, Polymarket gave an 86% chance that an XRP-based ETF product would be approved this year. 

Prominent US-based angel investor Jason Calacanis poked fun at GameStop’s decision to invest in Bitcoin.

In a March 26 X post, Calacanis suggested that buying Bitcoin (BTC) was a solution well-suited for public companies that do not have a suitable business model:

“If you’re a public company that can’t figure out a business model, buy Bitcoin! This might actually be great advice if [Strategy co-founder Michael Saylor] is gonna buy $1T in Bitcoin.”

Still, Tomas Fanta, principal at crypto investment firm Heartcore, told Cointelegraph that there are tangible long-term benefits to holding Bitcoin on a corporate balance sheet. Among those he listed were long-term price appreciation and theoretically lower correlation to equity markets over time.

“I do disagree with the view, though, that failing companies should be using Bitcoin as the last-ditch strategy,” Fanta said.

Related: GameStop hints at future Bitcoin purchases following board approval

Canadian YouTube alternative Rumble announced the launch of its wallet with support for Tether’s USDT stablecoin.

In a March 26 X post, Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski said Rumble Wallet will be used for content creator monetization. He promised it would work better than most advertisers and that it would use Tether’s USDt (USDT). Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino showed his appreciation for the initiative, referring to it as “A wallet for the people” in an X post.

Related: Tether seeks Big Four firm for its first full financial audit — Report

A flurry of investments

The announcement follows Tether investing $775 million in Rumble in late 2024. Ardoino wrote at the time that the company “deeply believes in the fundamental values of freedom of speech and financial freedom.”

Source: Paolo Ardoino

Polymarket, the world’s largest decentralized prediction market, is under fire after a controversial outcome raised concerns over potential governance manipulation in a high-stakes political bet.

A betting market on the platform asked whether US President Donald Trump would accept a rare earth mineral deal with Ukraine before April. Despite no such event occurring, the market was settled as “Yes,” triggering a backlash from users and industry observers.

This may point to a “governance attack” in which a whale from the UMA Protocol “used his voting power to manipulate the oracle, allowing the market to settle false results and successfully profit,” according to crypto threat researcher Vladimir S.

“The tycoon cast 5 million tokens through three accounts, accounting for 25% of the total votes. Polymarket is committed to preventing this from happening again,” he wrote in a March 26 X post.

Source: Vladimir S.

Google Play implemented access restrictions to 17 unregistered overseas crypto exchanges catering to local users in South Korea at the request of the country’s regulators. 

On March 21, the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) of the South Korean Financial Services Commission (FSC) said it was considering sanctions against operators that did not report to the relevant authorities.

Authorities require virtual asset service providers (VASPs) to report to regulators under the country’s Specified Financial Information Act. 

At the time, the FIU said it was coordinating with the Korea Communications Standards Commission (KCSC), the regulator in charge of the internet, on how they could block access to the exchanges. 

By March 26, the FSC published a list of 22 unregistered platforms, highlighting 17 that had been blocked from the Google Play store. The move restricts new downloads and updates for affected apps, effectively limiting user access.

Solana (SOL) price looks ready to rise in April based on a classic bullish reversal indicator and signs of renewed appetite for memecoins.

Technicals show 65% SOL price rally in play

As of March 26, SOL’s price had entered the breakout stage of what appears to be a falling wedge pattern.

A falling wedge forms when the price consolidates inside a range defined by two converging, descending trendlines. Meanwhile, the pattern resolves when the price breaks above the upper trendline.

SOL/USD daily price chart. Source: TradingView

Solana broke above the upper trendline of its falling wedge pattern on March 19 and has since maintained bullish momentum. The breakout has held strong, with SOL continuing to climb in the days that followed.

Over 27,740 Bitcoin (BTC) worth $2.4 billion were withdrawn from exchanges on March 25, the highest daily outflow since July 31, 2024. Meanwhile, US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) continue their inflow streak, suggesting that institutional demand is making a comeback.

Is the Bitcoin bull run about to resume?

Bitcoin exchange outflows hit 7-month high

Bitcoin is making another attempt at a technical breakout above $90,000 as supply on exchanges continues to decrease.

Bitcoin: Net flow to exchanges. Source: Glassnode

A closer look at the data reveals that a considerable chunk of these withdrawals was made by whales, or entities holding at least 1,000 BTC, who withdrew more than 11,574 BTC worth about $1 billion from exchanges on March 25.

Zero-knowledge proof (ZK-proof)-based compliance protocol PureFi has launched its Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) integration for the Uniswap decentralized exchange (DEX).

According to a recent announcement shared with Cointelegraph, PureFi claims that its ZK-proof-based KYC and AML integration for Uniswap helps address security and compliance concerns at the protocol level. While the integration can be implemented as part of any Uniswap v4 pool, it was deployed as part of the PureFi DEX Uniswap implementation, replacing standard interfaces with custom compliance routers.

The new decentralized finance (DeFi) platform also introduces level-based verification that scales checks based on transaction volume. Checks go from basic identity and sanctions verification at low volumes to comprehensive KYC with risk-based wallet scoring and real-time monitoring at high volumes.

Related: Know Your Peer: The pros and cons of KYC

Not everyone is on board

Hedi Navazan, the chief compliance officer at DEX aggregator developer 1inch Labs, told Cointelegraph that “relying on transaction volume thresholds for progressive compliance enforcement is not, in my view, the right approach.” She shared concerns that such thresholds “fail to capture the broader, more complex risk profile that DeFi and financial ecosystems demand.” She explained:

Ethereum developers are under pressure as the Pectra upgrade moves to a new testnet following a series of unexpected issues that have delayed its mainnet deployment.

The Pectra upgrade, which was expected to hit the Ethereum mainnet in March, was deployed into the network’s Holesky testnet on Feb. 24. However, the upgrade failed to finalize on the network, prompting developers to investigate and address the causes. 

On March 5, the update was rolled out to the Sepolia testnet. However, developers again encountered errors, which were made worse by an unknown attacker who used an “edge case” to cause the mining of empty blocks. 

To better prepare for the upgrade, Ethereum core developers created a new testnet called “Hoodi.”

Ethereum developers “exhausted” from Pectra preparations

Hoodi was launched on March 17, and the Pectra upgrade will roll out on Hoodi on March 26. If the upgrade runs smoothly, Pectra may hit the mainnet as early as April 25. 

Fidelity Investments is reportedly in the final stages of testing a US dollar-pegged stablecoin, signaling the firm’s latest push into digital assets amid a more favorable crypto regulatory climate under the Trump administration.

The $5.8 trillion asset manager plans to launch the stablecoin through its cryptocurrency division, Fidelity Digital Assets, according to a March 25 report by the Financial Times citing anonymous sources familiar with the matter.

The stablecoin development is reportedly part of the asset manager’s wider push into crypto-based services. Fidelity is also launching an Ethereum-based “OnChain” share class for its US dollar money market fund.

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

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

Google introduced Gemini 2.5, its latest experimental artificial intelligence model; it ranked second in a competitive leaderboard for AI-driven web development tools.

On March 25, Google announced that it will allow developers to try out Gemini 2.5 Pro. The company described it as a thinking model capable of reasoning through thoughts before responding.

Google said this improves both accuracy and performance, particularly in coding, science and math tasks. It said Gemini 2.5 can support more context-aware agents. 

Citing self-reported data compiled by the AI benchmarking platform LMArena, Google shared that the new AI model topped the charts in reasoning and knowledge, science and mathematics. Google described Gemini 2.5 as its “most intelligent AI model.” 

Google’s new model ranks second in web dev leaderboard

Google’s new AI model ranked second in LMArena’s WebDev leaderboard, a real-time AI coding competition where models compete in web development challenges created by the AI benchmarking platform. 

The token tied to the crypto gaming giant Immutable surged 15% in the hours after it announced that the US Securities and Exchange Commission closed its investigation into the firm and would take no further action.

The Immutable (IMX) token rose around 15% on March 25 to reach just under $0.74 shortly after the firm announced that the SEC shut its inquiry without any breach of violations, which Immutable said closed “the loop on the Wells notice issued by the SEC last year.” 

IMX matched crypto market downtrend

It is the highest price that IMX has reached since March 3, before a broader market decline — driven by prolonged uncertainty over US President Donald Trump’s tariffs and US interest rates — pushed it down to $0.46 on March 11.

At the time of publication, IMX had retraced back to $0.67, according to CoinMarketCap. A move back toward $0.70 would wipe approximately $449,500 in short positions, according to CoinGlass data.

IMX is up 0.34% over the past 30 days. Source: CoinMarketCap

North Carolina lawmakers have introduced bills in the House and Senate that could see the state’s treasurer allocate up to 5% of various state retirement funds into cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.

The Investment Modernization Act (House Bill 506), introduced by Representative Brenden Jones on March 24, would create an independent investment authority under the state’s Treasury to determine which digital assets could be suitable for inclusion into the state retirement funds.

An identical bill, the State Investment Modernization Act (Senate Bill 709), was introduced into the state’s Senate on March 25.

The bills define a digital asset as a cryptocurrency, stablecoin, non-fungible token (NFT), or any other asset that is electronic in nature that confers economic, proprietary or access rights.

The North Carolina bills don’t set market cap criteria for digital assets, unlike other crypto bills that are working their way into law at the state level.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission will host four more crypto roundtables — focusing on crypto trading, custody, tokenization and decentralized finance (DeFi) — after hosting its first crypto roundtable on March 21.

The series of roundtables, organized by the SEC’s Crypto Task Force, will kick off with a discussion on tailoring regulation for crypto trading on April 11, the SEC said in a March 25 statement.

A roundtable on crypto custody will follow on April 25, with another to discuss tokenization and moving assets onchain on May 12. The fourth roundtable in the series will discuss DeFi on June 6.

A series of four crypto roundtable discussions are scheduled from April through to June. Source: SEC

“The Crypto Task Force roundtables are an opportunity for us to hear a lively discussion among experts about what the regulatory issues are and what the Commission can do to solve them,” said SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, the task force lead.

The crypto-friendly Custodia Bank has worked with Vantage Bank to complete what the two firms say is “America’s first-ever bank-issued stablecoin” on a permissionless blockchain.

Custodia said on March 25 that it tokenized US dollar demand deposits and facilitated the issuance, transfer and redemption of the stablecoin “Avit” on Ethereum via the ERC-20 token standard.

“A new US dollar payment rail has now been activated inside the US banking system,” Custodia added.

“We broke ground on the legal/regulatory front, proving that US banks can collaborate to tokenize demand deposits on a permissionless blockchain in a regulatorily-compliant manner,” said Custodia CEO Caitlin Long.

Source: Caitlin Long

Bitcoin and Ethereum are poised to suffer their worst first quarter in years unless they can pull off a huge rally in the next few days.

Ether (ETH) has dropped 37.98% so far over the first quarter of 2025, its worst Q1 decline since 2018, when it plunged 46.61%, according to CoinGlass data. Meanwhile, Bitcoin (BTC) is down 6.49% so far over the quarter, which is slated to end on March 31 — marking its worst Q1 performance since 2020, when it saw a 10.83% decline. 

Crypto market unlikely to flash green before end quarter

Swyftx lead analyst Pav Hundal told Cointelegraph that a “vertical swing up into the end of the quarter looks unlikely.” 

Ether has posted an average return of 78.23% in the first quarter of every year since 2017. Source: CoinGlass

Hundal said that the crypto market will be “flying a little blind” until the middle of April when the broader market should have better clarity on US President Donald Trump’s tariff plans.

Crusoe Energy, a company that captures waste gas from oil to power high-performance compute, is selling its Bitcoin mining business to New York Digital Investment Group (NYDIG) to focus on artificial intelligence. 

In a March 25 announcement, Crusoe said it plans to sell its Bitcoin (BTC) mining operation,  including its digital flare mitigation business, to NYDIG, subject to regulatory approvals and other consents. 

The deal includes Crusoe’s 270 megawatts of power generation technology from more than 425 modular data centers across the United States and Argentina, along with 135 Crusoe employees who will join NYDIG, as no roles will be eliminated as a result of the transaction. 

Crusoe was founded in 2018 and pioneered technology that captures waste gas created during oil extraction and refinement that would be normally burned off in a process called gas flaring in order to power Bitcoin miners.

Photo of gas flaring in action. Source: Crusoe Energy

Update (March 26, 6:12 am UTC): This article has been updated to add information on Ben Armstrong’s prior arrest and background.

Crypto influencer Ben Armstrong, also known as “BitBoy,” has been arrested in Florida after disclosing on social media just days ago that a warrant was out for his arrest.

Florida’s Volusia County Division of Corrections listed Armstrong as a fugitive from justice who was taken in custody on March 25 at 7:18 pm local time.

Days prior, Armstrong said in a March 21 X post that he could “confirm that the warrants for my arrest” were due to sending emails to Cobb County, Georgia Superior Court Judge Kimberly Childs while acting as his own attorney.

Source: Ben Armstrong

Artificial intelligence startup Infinite Reality has acquired the music-pirating app turned music streaming service Napster in a $207 million deal and plans to add a music-focused metaverse. 

Infinite Reality said in a March 25 statement that Napster would offer “branded 3D virtual spaces” to allow virtual concerts and “social listening parties” along with the ability to offer virtual merchandise.

“Imagine stepping into a virtual venue to watch an exclusive show with friends, chat with your favorite artist in their own virtual hangout as they drop their new single, and be able to directly buy their exclusive digital and physical merch,” said Napster CEO Jon Vlassopulos, who will continue in his role amid the acquisition.

“The internet has evolved from desktop to mobile, from mobile to social, and now we are entering the immersive era,” he added.

"The most legendary collab?! Infinite Reality has acquired iconic online music brand @Napster.

With this acquisition, we're expanding and reimagining Napster, empowering artists with new audience monetization and engagement capabilities, underpinned by iR’s #immersive… pic.twitter.com/L4Fig7QFct

Bitcoin network economist Timothy Peterson maintains his optimistic outlook for BTC (BTC), suggesting that there is a 75% chance that the asset will hit new highs in the next nine months.

In a March 25 X post, Peterson highlighted BTC’s current position near the lower bound of its historical range. The analyst emphasized that Bitcoin’s current path aligns with the bottom 25% threshold, giving it majority odds for a positive rally.

Bitcoin 10-year seasonality chart. Source: X.com

Peterson said, 

“Here is a 50% chance it will gain 50%+ in the short term.”

Peterson’s statements follow an earlier study that found that most of Bitcoin’s annual bullish performance occurred in April and October, which have averaged 12.98% and 21.98%, respectively, over the past decade.

The US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, an independent agency of the federal government, is reportedly moving to stop using the “reputational risk” category as a way to supervise banks.

According to a letter sent by the agency’s acting chairman, Travis Hill, to Rep. Dan Meuser on March 24, banking regulators should not use “reputational risk” to scrutinize firms.

“While a bank’s reputation is critically important, most activities that could threaten a bank’s reputation do so through traditional risk channels (e.g., credit risk, market risk, etc.) that supervisors already focus on,” notes the letter, first reported by Politico.

According to the document, the FDIC has completed a “review of all mentions of reputational risk” in its regulations and policy documents and has “plans to eradicate this concept from our regulatory approach.”

Reputational risk and debanking

The Federal Reserve defines reputational risk as “the potential that negative publicity regarding an institution’s business practices, whether true or not, will cause a decline in the customer base, costly litigation, or revenue reductions.”

GameStop Corporation (GME), the video game retailer turned memecoin stock, is reportedly moving to invest in Bitcoin after its board unanimously approved a plan to acquire digital assets. 

According to a March 25 CNBC report, the company announced that it would use a portion of its corporate cash or future debt issuances to invest in Bitcoin (BTC) and US-dollar-pegged stablecoins. 

The plan was further corroborated by the company’s fourth-quarter earnings report, which was released on March 25 and showed intent to acquire Bitcoin and stablecoins. 

“[T]he Company’s investment policy permits investments in certain cryptocurrency assets, including Bitcoin and US dollar-denominated stable coins,” the financial statement reads.

GameStop’s cash reserves stood at more than $4.77 billion as of Feb. 1, compared with $921.7 million a year earlier. 

Many Bitcoin (BTC) traders became bullish this week as prices rallied deep into the $88,000 level, but failure to overcome this level in the short term could be a take-profit signal.

Alphractal, a crypto analytics platform, noted that Bitcoin whales have entered short positions at the $88,000 level. 

In a recent X post, the platform highlighted that the “Whale Position Sentiment” metric exhibited a sharp reversal in the chart, indicating that major players with a bearish bias have stepped. The metric defines the relationship between the aggregated open interest and trades larger than $1 million across multiple exchanges.

Bitcoin: Whale position sentiment. Source: X

As illustrated in the chart, the two circled regions are synonymous with Bitcoin price falling to the $88,000 level. Alphractal said,