Decentral Block Post

France-based The Blockchain Group has added another 580 Bitcoin to its Bitcoin treasury, following a 225% surge in its stock price since it began hoarding Bitcoin in November.

This is the largest of the three Bitcoin purchases made by the organization, per a March 26 after-hours statement. At the time of publication, 580 Bitcoin is worth $50.64 million, with Bitcoin’s (BTC) price trading at $87,311, according to CoinMarketCap data.

First purchases at pivotal Bitcoin moments

The Blockchain Group’s first two Bitcoin purchases happened around significant milestones for the Bitcoin industry. It bought 15 BTC on Nov. 5, the same day Donald Trump won the United States presidential election and before Bitcoin went on a month-long rally that saw it reach $100,000 for the first time in December.

Bitcoin is up 24.38% over the past 12 months. Source: CoinMarketCap

The second purchase was 25 Bitcoin on Dec. 4, when Bitcoin was trading at $96,000 during the post-election rally, with anticipation growing about a six-figure price — which happened the next day.

A coalition of crypto firms has urged Congress to press the Department of Justice to amend an “unprecedented and overly expansive” interpretation of laws that were used to charge the developers of the crypto mixer Tornado Cash.

A March 26 letter signed by 34 crypto companies and advocate groups sent to the Senate Banking Committee, House Financial Services Committee and the House and Senate judiciary committees said the DOJ’s take on unlicensed money-transmitting business means “essentially every blockchain developer could be prosecuted as a criminal.”

The letter — led by the DeFi Education Fund and signed by the likes of Kraken and Coinbase — added that the Justice Department’s interpretation “creates confusion and ambiguity” and “threatens the viability of U.S.-based software development in the digital asset industry.”

The group said the DOJ debuted its position “in August 2023 via criminal indictment” — the same time it charged Tornado Cash developers Roman Storm and Roman Semenov with money laundering.

Storm has been released on bail, has pleaded not guilty and wants the charges dropped. Semenov, a Russian national, is at large.

The trader behind recent “suspicious market activity” on Hyperliquid that led to the freeze and delisting of the Jelly my Jelly (JELLY) memecoin is potentially down almost $1 million from their actions. 

Blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence said in a March 26 post to X that the trader attempted to manipulate the system to profit from price movements, withdrawing collateral before Hyperliquid’s liquidation system could catch up.

The trader opened three accounts within five minutes of each other, two with $2.15 million and $1.9 million long positions, and the third a $4.1 million short, to cancel out the long positions, according to Arkham in a post-mortem report. 

“This allowed him to build up leverage in an attempt to drain funds from Hyperliquid,” Arkham said.

Source: Arkham

Update (March 27, 3:03 am UTC): This article has been updated to add background and information on the resolution.

US President Donald Trump is expected to sign a resolution overturning a Biden-era rule that requires decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols to report to the IRS, following the legislation’s passage in the Senate on March 26.

The Senate voted 70-28 to pass a motion repealing the so-called IRS DeFi broker rule that aimed to expand existing IRS reporting requirements to crypto.

The Senate was widely expected to pass the resolution as it passed a version of the resolution in early March, but the House made its own version due to Constitutional rules about where budget measures should originate.

The House passed its copycat version on March 11, which sent it to the Senate for a final vote before it could be sent to Trump.

Nearly 58% of Argentinians said they don’t trust President Javier Milei following his involvement in the $4.6 billion Libra crypto scandal, according to a recent poll. 

“More than a month after the crypto fraud scandal broke out, how much do you trust Milei today?” polling platform Zuban Córdoba asked 1,600 respondents in its recently released March survey, to which 57.6% replied that they disapprove of him, while 36% said Milei still has their trust.

The remaining 6.4% said they weren’t sure, the report stated.

Percentage of trust that Argentines have in Milei after the Libra scandal. Source: Zuban Córdoba

This was the first time the question was asked within a Zuban Córdoba poll. However, several other metrics, such as Milei’s image and the national management approval rating, have plummeted considerably in recent months.

Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon said the state’s proposed stablecoin might be ready to launch by July, with the Wyoming Stable Token Commission announcing interoperability protocol LayerZero as a partner for the token launch.

Speaking at the DC Blockchain Summit on March 26, Gordon praised the speed and efficiency of the Wyoming state government in embracing blockchain technology. Anthony Apollo, the executive director of the Wyoming Stable Token Commission, also confirmed:

Wyoming, which is represented by pro-crypto Senator Cynthia Lummis, has been planning a state-issued stablecoin for years and has a history of embracing innovation in digital assets.

Governor Mark Gordon of Wyoming speaking at the 2025 DC Blockchain Summit. Source: Sei

Related: Yield-bearing stablecoins could kill banking — US Senator Gillibrand

US Securities and Exchange Commissioner (SEC) Hester Peirce offered a few suggestions for longer-lasting changes in crypto regulation between administrations with potentially different views.  

Speaking at the DC Blockchain Summit on March 26, Peirce, who heads the SEC’s crypto task force, said she expected that the commission could create more “durability” for digital asset regulations through rulemaking at the agency and legislation in Congress. Such rulemaking and laws would be in contrast to guidance issued by the agency, such as a recent statement suggesting that memecoins do not qualify as securities. 

“I hope people won’t be sitting around thinking about the Howey test,” said Peirce, referring to a method to determine whether an asset is a security. “Your lawyers have to think about these things, I’m not saying that they’ll not be relevant, but it shouldn’t be the kind of thing that is driving what you decide to build. I want there to be enough clarity on the question of what falls in our jurisdiction and then, if it does, how you can move forward.”

SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce speaking at the DC Blockchain Summit on March 26. Source: Rumble

Peirce’s remarks came as the SEC has dropped several investigations or enforcement actions against major crypto firms, including Coinbase, Ripple, Kraken and Immutable. Some see the commission’s change in policy under acting chair Mark Uyeda as an attempt by US President Donald Trump to have the agency drop cases against firms that supported his 2024 campaign.

GameStop shares jumped nearly 12% on March 26 after the company announced plans to purchase Bitcoin (BTC).

The company plans to finance the purchase through debt financing. After markets closed on March 26, GameStop announced a $1.3 billion convertible notes offering.

The convertible senior notes — debt that can later be converted into equity — will be used for general corporate purposes, including acquiring Bitcoin, according to a company statement.

“GameStop expects to use the net proceeds from the offering for general corporate purposes, including the acquisition of Bitcoin in a manner consistent with GameStop’s Investment Policy,” it said.

The company revealed on March 25 plans to use a portion of its corporate cash or future debt to buy digital assets, including Bitcoin and US-dollar-pegged stablecoins. GameStop’s cash reserves stood at $4.77 billion on Feb. 1 compared to $921.7 million one year earlier.

Gracy Chen, CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Bitget, criticized Hyperliquid’s handling of a March 26 incident on its perpetual exchange, saying it put the network at risk of becoming “FTX 2.0.”

On March 26, Hyperliquid, a blockchain network specializing in trading, said it delisted perpetual futures contracts for the JELLY token and would reimburse users after identifying “evidence of suspicious market activity” tied to the instruments. 

The decision, which was reached by consensus among Hyperliquid’s relatively small number of validators, flagged existing concerns about the popular network’s perceived centralization.

“Despite presenting itself as an innovative decentralized exchange with a bold vision, Hyperliquid operates more like an offshore [centralized exchange],” Chen said, after saying “Hyperliquid may be on track to become FTX 2.0.”

FTX was a cryptocurrency exchange run by Sam Bankman-Fried, who was convicted of fraud in the US after FTX’s abrupt collapse in 2022. 

Despite strong institutional demand, Bitcoin (BTC) has struggled to reclaim the $100,000 level for the past 50 days, leading investors to question the reasons behind the bearishness despite a seemingly positive environment. 

This price weakness is particularly intriguing given the US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve executive order issued by President Donald Trump on March 6, which allows BTC acquisitions as long as they follow “budget-neutral” strategies.

Bitcoin fails to keep up with gold’s returns despite positive news flow

On March 26, GameStop Corporation (GME), the North American video game and consumer electronics retailer, announced plans to allocate a portion of its corporate reserves to Bitcoin. The company, which was on the verge of bankruptcy in 2021, successfully capitalized on a historic short squeeze and managed to secure an impressive $4.77 billion in cash and equivalents by February 2025.

Largest corporate Bitcoin holdings. Source: BitcoinTreasuries.NET

A growing number of US-based and international companies have followed Michael Saylor’s Strategy (MSTR) playbook, including the Japanese firm Metaplanet, which recently appointed Eric Trump, son of US President Donald Trump, to its newly established strategic board of advisers. Similarly, the mining conglomerate MARA Holdings (MARA) adopted a Bitcoin treasury policy to “retain all BTC” and increase its exposure through debt offerings.

Stablecoin issuers should be restricted from providing yield-bearing opportunities to protect the legacy banking system, which issues home mortgages and small business loans, US Senator Kirsten Gillibrand said at a summit in Washington, DC.

Speaking at the 2025 DC Blockchain Summit on March 26, the Democratic senator from New York praised her state for having some of the most robust financial regulations in the world, and said they should be adopted by all financial services sectors.

According to Gillibrand, these regulations need to be applied to stablecoin issuers, whether they are regulated at the state or federal levels, to ensure compliance with existing laws and to protect consumer safety. Gillibrand then turned her attention to protecting the banking industry:

“If there is no deposit, small banks cannot do that anymore; it will collapse the financial services system that people rely on for their businesses and mortgages,” Gillibrand continued.

Senator Gillibrand speaking at a panel during the DC Blockchain Summit. Source: DC Blockchain Summit

Update (March 26 at 8:48 PM UTC): This article has been updated to include commentary from Benchmark stock analyst Mark Palmer.

Bitcoin (BTC) mining stocks are down after tech giant Microsoft reportedly scrapped plans to invest in new artificial intelligence data centers in the US and Europe, citing a potential oversupply, according to a report by Bloomberg and data from Google Finance.

Shares of crypto miners Bitfarms, CleanSpark, Core Scientific, Hut 8, Marathon Digital and Riot dropped between 4% and 12% in tandem with the news, the data showed.

The stock price retrenchments highlight cryptocurrency miners’ increased dependence on business from artificial intelligence models after the Bitcoin network’s April 2024 “halving” cut into mining revenues.

According to Benchmark stock analyst Mark Palmer, investors already anticipated Microsoft’s data center cuts.

Ether (ETH) price reclaimed the $2,000 support on March 24 but remains 18% below the $2,500 level seen three weeks ago. Data shows Ether has underperformed the altcoin market by 14% over the past 30 days, leading traders to question whether the altcoin can regain bullish momentum and which factors might drive a trend reversal.

Ether/USD (left) vs. total altcoin capitalization, USD (right). Source: TradingView / Cointelegraph

Ether appears well-positioned to attract institutional demand and significantly reduce the FUD that has limited its upside potential. Critics have long argued that the Ethereum ecosystem lags behind competitors in overall user experience and still offers limited base-layer scalability, which has negatively impacted network fees and transaction efficiency. 

Will the Ethereum Pectra upgrade impact ETH price?

Many of the Ethereum network’s challenges are expected to be addressed in the upcoming Pectra network upgrade, scheduled for late April or early June. Among the proposed changes is a doubling of the data that can be included in each block, which should help lower fees for rollups and privacy-focused mechanisms. Additionally, the cost of call data will increase, encouraging developers to adopt blobs—a more efficient method for data storage.

Another notable improvement in the upcoming upgrade is the introduction of smart accounts, which allow wallets to function like smart contracts during transactions. This enables gas fee sponsorship, passkey authentication, and batch transactions. Additionally, several other enhancements focus on optimizing staking deposits and withdrawals, providing greater flexibility, and extending block history for smart contracts that rely on past data.

Interactive Brokers, a global brokerage that recorded $9.3 billion in revenue for 2024, is expanding its altcoin offerings to include four new tokens.

According to a March 26 announcement, the platform has added Solana (SOL), Cardano (ADA), XRP (XRP), and Dogecoin (DOGE) for trading. The four coins have a combined market capitalization of $267.2 billion at this writing.

The additions double Interactive’s crypto offerings to traders. Since 2021, it has enabled trading in Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) pairs.

Both trading and custody services will be provided through Paxos Trust Company or Zero Hash LLC. Zero Hash said in a press release that as of June 2024, it had processed $20 billion in transactions across 200 countries.

Financial firms have been expanding crypto token offerings. On March 25, Nubank announced the addition of ADA, Near Protocol (NEAR), Cosmos (ATOM), and Algorand (ALGO) to its over 100 million clients in Latin America. US exchange Kraken has been steadily adding memecoins for a number of months, while Binance introduced a way for community members to vote on the listing and delisting of tokens.

Amidst an increasingly competitive crypto market, Interactive Brokers is promising low transaction fees — 0.12% to 0.18% per transaction value with a minimum of $1.75 per trade. The brokerage still faces competition from exchanges that offer “pro” platforms with similar charges.

XRP (XRP) price continues to underperform the broader crypto market this week, even though multiple altcoins turned green as Bitcoin (BTC) rallied to $88,800.

XRP 1-day chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

The altcoin is down 4.7% over the past seven days, putting a pause to the 11% rally seen on March 19, when the Ripple’s SEC “lawsuit ending” news made headlines. XRP trading volumes have also dropped from around $4 billion to $2.6 billion, i.e., a 35% dip over the past week.

XRP price peers over a steep cliff

In a recent X post, veteran trader Peter Brandt said the presence of a “textbook” head-and-shoulders pattern (H&S) could drop XRP price as low as $1.07.

XRP head-and-shoulders pattern by Peter Brandt. Source: X.com

Several sectors of decentralized finance are poised for growth in 2025, including special-purpose decentralized exchanges (DEXs), stablecoins, and tokenized assets, according to Curve Finance founder Michael Egorov.

Growth in decentralized exchanges will be driven by new purpose-tailored platforms, such as exchanges for stablecoins pegged to different underlying fiat currencies, thus solving the foreign exchange problem in stable tokens, Egorov said in an interview with Cointelegraph. The Curve founder added:

The number of centralized and decentralized stablecoin offerings will also grow as financial institutions and blockchain developers create new alternatives, Egorov said.

However, the regulatory landscape must catch up with the pace of innovation in the DeFi sector, and financial regulators are still using laws designed for the legacy system established in the 20th century, he said.

DEX volume surged to new heights in the first several months of 2025. Source: DeFiLlama

Bitcoin (BTC) bulls have maintained the pressure and are attempting to push the price above the $90,000 resistance. A positive sign in favor of the bulls is that the US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds have witnessed net inflows for eight successive trading days, according to SoSoValue data. That indicates institutional investors are gradually buying again.

In another positive, a Bitcoin whale bought 2,400 Bitcoin — worth over $200 million — on March 24 to increase the total holding to more than 15,000 BTC, blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence said in a post on X.

Crypto market data daily view. Source: Coin360

However, a Bitcoin rally may not be easy as bulls are expected to encounter solid selling near $90,000. Alphractal CEO Joao Wedson highlighted in a post on X that whales had closed long positions and initiated short positions on Bitcoin at $88,000. He added that history says the whales are right.

Could Bitcoin break above the stiff overhead resistance, pulling altcoins higher, or is it time for a short-term correction? Let’s analyze the charts of the top 10 cryptocurrencies to find out.

Crypto and blockchain-focused venture capital is unfazed by recent market volatility and is using the opportunity to uncover hidden gems in an industry that’s only “one decade into a 30-year paradigm shift,” according to Hoolie Tejwani, the head of VC firm Coinbase Ventures. 

Coinbase Ventures will “continue to invest steadily through market conditions” because it sees the “big picture,” Tejwani told Cointelegraph in an interview.

“What we’re seeing as investors is an exponential technology change curve that is transforming the way people interact, how value flows, and how economies are run. And it’s being shaped by the people who are building on crypto infrastructure,” said Tejwani.

Coinbase Ventures’ portfolio of investments includes Arbitrum, Dune, EigenLayer, Etherscan, OpenSea, Optimism and Uniswap, among others. Its mandate is to invest in project founders who share the namesake crypto exchange’s vision of creating more economic freedom through blockchain and Web3 applications.

The company is especially “bullish on stablecoins,” thanks in part to recent crypto-friendly moves in the US Congress and by President Donald Trump, Tejwani said. 

Dogecoin (DOGE) price has rallied 18% over the past three days, and it is currently the best-performing crypto among the top 30 by market capitalization over the past week.

Data also shows DOGE producing its highest weekly returns of 2025, a feat not seen since the final week of 2024.

Dogecoin weekly chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

7% of DOGE supply is clustered around $0.20

According to the onchain data from Glassnode, DOGE’s unrealized price distribution (URPD) shows 7% of the DOGE supply is concentrated at $0.20.

URPD is a metric that reflects the price at which coins were last moved, and it allows investors to identify resistance and support zones based on token clusters.

Tigran Gambaryan, a Binance executive who was held in Nigeria for eight months in 2024 on tax and money laundering charges, provided additional details about his experience and what led to his release.

Speaking at the DC Blockchain Summit on March 26, Gambaryan, the head of financial crime compliance at Binance said the Nigerian government had held him hostage, suggesting the criminal charges were a pretext to “get something” from Binance. Gambaryan said he saw signs suggesting he could be released “around a month” before he was returned to the US.

“It was around the time the [United Nations] General Assembly in 2024 happened is when that pressure really ramped up against the Nigerian government, and it realized that I was more of a liability,” said Gambaryan. “Before that, they kinda saw me as an asset they could use to get their billions out of Binance.”

Tigran Gambaryan speaking at the DC Blockchain Summit on March 26. Source: Rumble

Since his return to the US in October 2024, Gambaryan has made few public statements concerning his detention and release. The Binance executive’s family and reports from Nigeria suggested that his health deteriorated after he was initially placed into custody in February that year, including issues from pneumonia, malaria, and a herniated disc.