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The Arbitrum Foundation announced on its official blog that the Ethereum (ETH) Layer 2 network surpassed 2.1 billion cumulative transactions as of the end of last year. Additionally, more than 1,000 projects have been built on Arbitrum. The foundation added that the total value locked (TVL) on the network has reached approximately $20 billion, with the stablecoin supply approaching $10 billion.

A group of U.S. regional banks is developing a tokenized deposit platform called Cari Network on the Ethereum (ETH) Layer 2 network zkSync, CoinDesk reported. The platform is designed to convert customer deposits into digital tokens, enabling them to be transferred freely between institutions without leaving the banking system. Banks participating in the development include Huntington Bancshares, First Horizon, M&T Bank, KeyCorp, and Old National Bancorp. The Mid-Size Bank Coalition of America has also expressed its support for the project.

Nasdaq-listed company SharpLink (Nasdaq: SBET), which strategically invests in Ethereum, announced on its official X account that it has generated 15,464 ETH in cumulative staking rewards since beginning its strategic accumulation of the asset. This is equivalent to approximately $36 million. The company added that it earned over $1.1 million from staking its ETH holdings last week, highlighting that its ETH continuously generates more ETH, which it described as the unique strength of Ethereum. SharpLink is known to currently hold approximately 863,424 ETH.

Tether, the issuer of the world's largest stablecoin USDT, has announced the launch of the world's first cross-platform LoRA fine-tuning framework for Microsoft's BitNet (1-bit LLM). According to Tether, this feature is part of QVAC Fabric. It significantly reduces memory and computational requirements, enabling the fine-tuning of language models with billions of parameters on general-purpose hardware such as laptops, GPUs, and smartphones. QVAC is Tether's proprietary local AI agent.

Cryptocurrency market maker GSR announced it has acquired Autonomous and Architech for $57 million. Autonomous is a firm that supports the launch, financing, and operations of crypto projects, while Architech is a consulting firm specializing in token issuance and liquidity strategy. GSR explained that the acquisition gives it the ability to support the entire lifecycle of token-based projects, from their inception to expansion. The company added that its enhanced capabilities will allow it to offer tokenized organizations an integrated model covering foundation structure, governance design, token economics, fundraising and exchange strategies, and long-term capital planning. Additionally, GSR will provide institutional trading, derivatives, and asset management services through its existing regulated entities.

The three major U.S. stock indices opened higher today. - S&P 500: +0.66% - Nasdaq: +0.63% - Dow Jones: +0.93%

Injective (INJ), a Layer 1 blockchain focused on DeFi, announced on its official X account the launch of native USDC on the Injective mainnet. The project has also integrated Circle's Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) to support cross-chain USDC transfers.

Decentralized cryptocurrency exchange Aster (ASTER) has announced the launch of its proprietary Layer 1 blockchain, Aster Chain, via its official X account. The team explained that Aster Chain, which is specialized for derivatives trading, will be rolled out in phases. The chain's genesis block was activated today, with partnership announcements expected tomorrow. Public staking for ASTER token holders is set to launch later this week, followed by ecosystem expansion, the Aster Code Partner Program, and brand and UI upgrades. According to the announcement, the new chain features an average block generation time of 50ms and can process 100,000 transactions per second. It also has no gas fees and enables privacy features by default, with all orders encrypted in a zero-knowledge verifiable manner. Aster added that while the blockchain is public, a new era of verifiable privacy has begun.

AI and privacy-focused altcoins are posting significant gains amid a Bitcoin-led market recovery, Decrypt reported. Experts have noted that capital is rotating into narrative coins with tangible utility rather than memecoins. Andri Fauzan Adziima, a senior researcher at Bitrue, said the decline in Bitcoin's market dominance below 59% signals a growing appetite for risk. He pointed to gains over the past week, with TAO up 37%, RENDER up 25%, and FET up 53%. Adziima added that privacy coins like Monero (XMR) and Zcash (ZEC) have also rallied, driven by demand for confidential data processing in AI applications. However, PrimeXBT senior analyst Jonathan Landin cautioned that the recent Bitcoin rally has occurred on declining spot trading volume, suggesting weaker buying momentum than the breakout attempt on March 4.

The crypto-based prediction market Polymarket is pricing in a 30% chance that the U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed) will cut its benchmark interest rate by 25 bp this year, the highest probability among all options. The platform shows a 23% probability for both rates remaining unchanged and a 50 bp cut. A 75 bp cut is seen as having a 12% chance. The total contract volume for this prediction market is currently around $10 million.

Major U.S. bank Citigroup has lowered its 12-month price target for Bitcoin from $143,000 to $112,000. The bank also revised its target for Ethereum (ETH) down from $4,304 to $3,175. According to CoinDesk, a recent Citigroup report cited delays in U.S. legislation, slowing network activity, and diminished expectations for ETF inflows as reasons for the downgrade. The report noted that the likelihood of a U.S. crypto regulation bill passing this year is decreasing and that overall market momentum has weakened since Bitcoin's peak last October. Citigroup said it revised its forecast due to futures liquidations, position fatigue, technical weakness, and reduced ETF buying power. However, the report outlined a bullish scenario where BTC could reach $165,000 and ETH could hit $4,488. In a bearish scenario driven by a recession, BTC could fall to $58,000 and ETH to $1,198. According to CoinMarketCap, BTC is currently trading at $73,705.09, down 0.12%, while ETH is at $2,314.96, up 1.52%.

A surge in realized profits among short-term Bitcoin holders is absorbing upward momentum before a full-scale rebound can begin, according to an analysis by Glassnode. The on-chain analytics firm noted that as the price of BTC surpassed $74,000 this week, the realized profit for these holders soared to $18.4 million per hour, based on a 12-hour moving average. Glassnode added that this aligns with a pattern observed throughout February, when continuous profit-taking by short-term holders around the $70,000 mark similarly dampened upward momentum.

Ethena announced via X that WalletConnect Pay now supports USDe.

The Bhutanese government transferred 377 BTC, valued at $27.87 million, to an external address over the past three hours, according to Lookonchain.

Ripple announced on its official website that it plans to expand its investment in the Brazilian market and apply for a Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) license with the Central Bank of Brazil (BCB). The company emphasized that Brazil is one of the world's fastest-growing financial markets, where Ripple is positioning itself as the sole solution provider for services ranging from cross-border payments and digital asset custody to prime brokerage and treasury management. Through more aggressive investment, Ripple aims to promote regulatory compliance and long-term growth within the Brazilian market, the company added.

Cypherpunk Technologies, a digital asset financial firm backed by the Winklevoss twins, announced a net profit of $4.8 million for 2025, a significant turnaround from the $67.8 million net loss recorded in the previous year. The company attributed the profit to $50.4 million in unrealized fair value gains on its ZEC holdings, which are marked-to-market at year-end, as well as reductions in research, development, and general administrative expenses following staff cuts. As of March 12, Cypherpunk holds 294,743.10 ZEC at an average cost basis of $335.89, representing approximately 1.78% of the total circulating supply on the Zcash network.

Mastercard has announced it will acquire stablecoin infrastructure startup BVNK for up to $1.8 billion. According to Bloomberg, the two companies said in a statement today that the deal includes $300 million in contingent payments. BVNK had previously been in acquisition talks with Coinbase for around $2 billion, but the negotiations were halted last November.

While Ethereum (ETH) has surged in March to outperform the S&P 500 index, the U.S. Federal Reserve's upcoming interest rate decision could be a significant variable, DL News reported. Citing analysis from Adam Saville Brown of crypto asset manager Tesseract Group, the outlet noted that capital flowing into ETH suggests an expanding risk appetite among investors, which is a positive sign. However, Brown cautioned that an unexpected announcement from Fed Chair Jerome Powell could halt ETH's rally. He added that for the broader altcoin rally to gain momentum, the Fed's decision would need to involve more than simply holding rates steady. The Fed is scheduled to announce its interest rate decision at 6:00 p.m. UTC on March 18.

Michael Saylor, founder of MicroStrategy (MSTR), the single largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, announced on X that the company earned approximately $1.2 billion (around 1.789 trillion won) from its BTC investment last week. He noted this profit was equivalent to about 16,622 BTC. According to figures Saylor attached to the post, MicroStrategy has added a total of 88,568 BTC so far this year, generating a profit of roughly $1.6 billion. Meanwhile, data from BitcoinTreasuries.net shows that MicroStrategy currently holds a total of 761,068 BTC.

Israeli blockchain project Orbs (ORBS) announced the launch of Orbs Agentic today, a co-signed oracle-based autonomous execution infrastructure for artificial intelligence (AI) agents. According to an official blog post, the Orbs team believes the next innovation in the DeFi user experience (UX) will shift toward AI agents that monitor markets and execute strategies autonomously. The new infrastructure allows these agents to independently perform DeFi tasks, with transactions verified through a co-signed oracle. Agentic is set to be released in two phases, with the ultimate goal of creating a foundational execution layer for agents that enables safe, verifiable, and efficient operations.

South Korean individual investors in their 40s and 50s are actively buying XRP, leading to a sharp increase in trading volume, DL News reported. Citing data from CoinGecko, the report noted that 24-hour XRP trading volume surged 115% on the South Korean exchange Upbit and 81% on Bithumb. XRP now accounts for 18% of the total trading volume on the two platforms, making it the most traded asset. Ryan Yoon, a senior analyst at Tiger Research, said the surge is being driven by this demographic. He explained that these investors are returning to the crypto market after a recent stock market rally and are now focusing on XRP, with funds from the sale of overseas stocks flowing into digital assets.

BASED, a decentralized perpetual futures exchange and prediction market, announced on its official X account that it plans to conduct the token generation event (TGE) for its native token, BASED, on March 30.

PayPal has expanded its PYUSD stablecoin service to 70 countries, up from its previous availability in just the U.S. and the UK, Fortune reported. According to the report, users can send PYUSD and earn rewards on their holdings, with an annual yield of around 4% currently offered in the U.S. May Zabaneh, PayPal's head of crypto, explained that the company expects the expansion to increase PYUSD accessibility and cross-border transactions in high-demand regions. Fortune also noted that PYUSD allows users to maintain dollar-based assets while reducing the burden of traditional currency exchange and remittance fees. In some countries where funds could previously only be held in bank accounts, users can now hold them as a balance in their PayPal wallets through PYUSD. Meanwhile, PYUSD's market capitalization has grown more than fivefold over the past year to approximately $4.1 billion.

Bitcoin could see a further decline to the $72,000 level after hitting a high of $76,000, its best since Feb. 4, before pulling back to around $73,500, CoinDesk reported. The average Relative Strength Index (RSI) indicates the asset remains in overbought territory. The outlet added, however, that this could be viewed as a consolidation phase following Bitcoin's more than 15% rally from $65,000 since March 8. A rebound in the $72,000 to $74,000 range could establish a new support level and serve as a launchpad for a move toward $80,000.

Newly listed tokens have shown significant strength in the cryptocurrency market this week, LBank Labs said through its official channels. The firm noted that BASED, listed on LBank's pre-market, recorded the highest weekly gain at 483%, while BP also saw a 287% increase. LBank Labs added that the strong performance of newly listed assets this week reflects the market's sustained interest in high-potential projects. The firm explained that listing new assets, when accompanied by strict selection criteria and ecosystem support mechanisms, can still offer opportunities to users and positively impact market liquidity.