This week, two forces dominated markets — and they were deeply intertwined: the Middle East war and Fed caution.

Strikes on energy infrastructure in Qatar and Iran sent oil prices surging, reigniting inflation fears. US 12-month inflation expectations climbed to 5.2% — their highest since March 2023. Powell held rates steady, and markets assign only a 12.4% probability to a hike at the April 29th FOMC meeting. The double signal hit hard: European equities tumbled, the CAC 40 fell, and Bitcoin dropped below $ 71,000 with $ 458M in liquidations.

Then came a pivot: Iranian President Pezeshkian signaled his desire to "end" the conflict. Markets seized on the news:

The tension, however, remains palpable. The conflict is now in its 5th week. Volume and activity are picking up, but conviction is thin. Several major catalysts — US jobs data, Fed signals, regulatory clarity — will rapidly test market resilience.

Data as of April 1st, Source: CoinMarketCap

📈 Market Sentiment: Fear & Greed Index
Current Reading: 33 - "FEAR” 😨

1. 🇬🇧 UK Moves Tokenisation Into Production The UK enters its next phase of digital asset adoption. Regulators and financial institutions are moving tokenisation from pilot to production infrastructure — tokenised funds, on-chain financial indices, programmable compliance, and cross-chain connectivity. The focus is now on the data systems and interoperability needed to integrate blockchain into existing capital markets.

2. 📉 US Inflation Expectations Hit 2-Year High 12-month US inflation expectations reached 5.2% — their highest since March 2023. Yet CME FedWatch gives only a 12.4% probability to a rate hike at the April 29th meeting, reflecting persistent uncertainty about the Fed's direction.

3. 📊 Goldman Sachs Raises Recession Odds to 30% Goldman Sachs raised its US recession probability by 5 percentage points to 30% over the next 12 months. On Polymarket, the probability of a US recession this year has risen to 35%, up from a 12-month low of 22% at the start of the year — driven by Middle East tensions.

4. 💧 Fed to Inject $ 8.07B in Liquidity The Federal Reserve plans to inject $ 8.07 billion into the financial system — as investors await rate decisions amid rising Trump-Powell tensions.

5. 🥇 Gold Hits $ 4,600 — But Bitcoin Decouples Spot gold reached $ 4,600/oz, continuing its upward momentum. Its historical correlation with Bitcoin remains low — confirming the decoupling between the two assets in this market phase. JPMorgan analysts note that Bitcoin showed safe-haven characteristics during the Iran conflict, with capital inflows while gold and silver weakened. Nearly $11B left gold ETFs in March, and crypto usage in Iran surged as citizens turned to Bitcoin to preserve capital.

6. 🪪 EU Digital Identity Wallet — November Deadline By November, EU member states must provide citizens with a European Digital Identity Wallet — a significant infrastructure milestone for digital asset integration at the state level.

7. ☮️ Iran Signals Ceasefire — Markets React Iranian President Pezeshkian expressed willingness to "end" the conflict. Bitcoin briefly crossed $68,000, the Nasdaq jumped 3.8%, and oil fell 3%+. The conflict is in its 5th week — one statement doesn't guarantee resolution, but markets are hungry for good news.

8. ⛏️ Bipartisan Bill to Boost US Bitcoin Mining Senators including Lummis introduced a bipartisan bill to encourage domestic Bitcoin mining, featuring:

1. 🇪🇺 Europe's wCBDC "Pontes" Eyes September 2026 Launch The European wCBDC project Pontes is exiting its pilot phase and preparing for a September 2026 production launch — the first interoperability solution for European wholesale central bank digital money on DLT.

2. 💀 Balancer Labs Shuts Down Corporate Entity Balancer Labs closed its corporate entity following a $128M exploit in November 2025, caused by a flaw in Balancer V2's swap logic. The protocol survives via a lean DAO structure (Balancer OpCo). BAL emissions cease, veBAL is abandoned, and 100% of protocol fees are redirected to the DAO treasury. TVL has collapsed 95% from its $ 3.5B peak — to just $ 157M today.

3. 🔍 Tether Submits to Full Independent Audit For the first time, Tether is submitting to a complete independent audit of its $184B reserves, conducted by an unnamed Big Four firm — covering all assets, liabilities, and internal controls, beyond its previous quarterly attestations.

Meanwhile, Circle suffered a 20% stock drop, with reports of USDC frozen in 16 wallets linked to a US civil proceeding.

4. ⚠️ US Senate Bill Targets Prediction Markets Senators Schiff and Curtis introduced the "Prediction Markets Are Gambling Act", targeting CFTC-registered platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket. Arizona has already filed criminal charges against Kalshi. Kalshi warns that a ban would simply push volumes to unregulated offshore markets.

5. ⚖️ Winklevoss Twins Face Class Action Gemini Space Station (NASDAQ: GEMI) faces a securities class action after its stock collapsed 80% — from 28 to under $6. Plaintiffs allege Gemini concealed a strategic pivot to prediction markets while planning a 30% workforce reduction. Losses reached 582.8M in 2025.

6. 🇦🇺 Australia Passes Digital Assets Framework Bill The Australian Senate's Economics Committee approved the Corporations Amendment (Digital Assets Framework) Bill 2025 without amendment — subjecting crypto exchanges, custodians, and wallet providers to the existing AFSL regime, with a 6-month transition period. Compliance costs estimated at A $ 28.4M/year, against projected gains of up to 1,000 new startups/year.

7. 🏛️ SEC + CFTC Release Historic 68-Page Crypto Classification Framework The most significant US crypto policy decision in years. Classification is now based on transaction structure, not the token itself. Five categories defined:

Classification can evolve over time based on network decentralisation. A complete reversal from the Gensler era.

8. 🇲🇾 Malaysia Lays Groundwork for Crypto ETFs Bursa Malaysia published a consultation to allow digital currency ETFs on its main market, following revised Securities Commission guidelines from March 2. Consultation closes April 10, under the Capital Market Masterplan 2026–2030.

9. 🇧🇷 Brazil Delays Crypto Tax Plans to 2027 New Finance Minister Dario Durigan suspended a consultation that would have classified stablecoin transactions as foreign exchange operations, subject to IOF rates up to 3.5% — citing political risk ahead of the October presidential election.

10. 🇵🇭 Philippines Strengthens Crypto AML Rules Senate Bill No. 1983 would extend AMLA compliance obligations to virtual asset service providers, online gaming operators, and select lawyers and accountants — requiring KYC, transaction monitoring, and reporting. The Philippines was removed from the FATF grey list in February 2025.

11. 🔓 SEC Chair Atkins: Innovation Exemption "Weeks Away" SEC Chair Paul Atkins signalled that an innovation exemption for tokenisation could be implemented within weeks. The SEC also authorised Nasdaq to manage tokenised securities via the DTC Pilot programme.

12. 💥 Coinbase Threatens to Withdraw Support for CLARITY Act Coinbase is opposing the ban on passive returns on stablecoins and threatening to withdraw support for the CLARITY Act — calling the latest rewrite too bank-friendly.

1. 🏛️ NYSE + Securitize: Tokenised Stock Exchange The New York Stock Exchange partnered with Securitize to develop a blockchain platform for issuing and trading tokenised stocks and ETFs — delivering on its January plan for a 24/7 tokenised securities platform. Securitize brings experience from its BlackRock partnership.

2. 🇰🇷 Hana Financial + Standard Chartered: Digital Asset Alliance Hana Financial Group, one of South Korea's largest financial groups, partnered with Standard Chartered to explore joint digital asset initiatives.

3. 📋 Fidelity Pushes SEC for Crypto Broker Clarity Fidelity ($14 trillion AUM) sent a formal letter to the SEC's Crypto Task Force, demanding accelerated regulation to allow brokers to custody, trade, and support crypto assets with real legal certainty — including clear ATS standards for tokenised securities secondary trading.

4. 🏦 Morgan Stanley Files for First Bank-Sponsored Bitcoin Spot ETF Morgan Stanley filed a second S-1 amendment for the Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust (MSBT) on NYSE Arca — with a basket size of 10,000 shares and an initial raise of ~$1M. Strategy's CEO Phong Le estimates the ETF could attract up to $160B in inflows.

5. 💰 ICE Pumps Another $ 600M Into Polymarket Intercontinental Exchange injected an additional 600M into Polymarket, bringing its total commitment to nearly $2 billion (after its first 1B in October 2025). ICE may also acquire $ 40M in shares from existing shareholders.

6. 🪙 Larry Fink's Annual Letter: Tokenisation = Mobile Payments BlackRock CEO Larry Fink highlighted AI and digital assets in his annual shareholder letter. BlackRock now manages $14 trillion AUM — 2025 was its best year for net inflows ( 700B)—andtargets∗∗ 150B in on-chain AUM**. Fink: "Tokenisation can make investing as simple as mobile payments."

7. 📊 BNP Paribas Launches 6 Bitcoin & Ether ETNs BNP Paribas launched six new ETNs tracking Bitcoin and Ether for French retail clients, responding to growing crypto interest.

8. 🇬🇧 Monument Bank: First UK Bank to Tokenise Deposits on Public Blockchain Monument Bank partnered with the Midnight blockchain to tokenise £250M in client deposits — a UK first for public blockchain-based deposit tokenisation.

1. ⚛️ Ethereum's Post-Quantum Clock Is Ticking Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake is treating post-quantum cryptography as an engineering deadline, not a thought experiment. Target: full post-quantum cryptography by 2029 — three years before his estimated arrival of a cryptographically relevant quantum machine. His sharpest warning: a fragmented response where each blockchain builds its own solution would be catastrophic. Bitcoin's slow upgrade pace makes it the most exposed network.

2. 💥 Google Makes the Quantum Threat Real A new Google white paper reduces by 20x the estimated resources needed to break Bitcoin's cryptography — to under 500,000 qubits. A quantum machine could crack a private key in approximately 9 minutes once a transaction hits the mempool, giving attackers a 41% chance of beating Bitcoin's 10-minute block time. Google coordinated the release with the US government, naming Coinbase and the Ethereum Foundation as collaborators — with a full migration deadline of 2029.

3. 🚀 Solana Developer Platform Launches The Solana Developer Platform launched as an API-first toolkit enabling businesses to build on-chain financial products without deep crypto expertise — think Stripe, but for blockchain settlement. Already in production: Mastercard (stablecoin settlement), Worldpay (merchant payments), Western Union (cross-border transfers). 20+ infrastructure partners integrated — including Chainalysis and TRM for compliance. AI integrations via Claude Code and OpenAI Codex. Solana processed 650Binstablecoinvolume∗∗inFebruary,withsupplyreaching∗∗ 15.7B in March.

4. 🤖 Trust Wallet Launches AI Agent Toolkit Trust Wallet (220M+ users, owned by CZ) launched an AI agent toolkit enabling automated crypto transactions — trades, transfers, and recurring purchases — across 25+ blockchains, including cross-chain swaps between Bitcoin and Solana. Users choose between fully autonomous or human-approved agents.

5. 🎲 Binance Enters Prediction Markets Binance is beta-testing a prediction market feature integrated into its app, via a partnership with Predict.Fun on BNB Smart Chain — as prediction markets surpass $20B in monthly volume while facing growing regulatory scrutiny.

1. 📈 Bernstein: Bitcoin Bottom In — $150K Target by End 2026 Bernstein analysts believe Bitcoin has likely bottomed and project a 226% upside for Strategy with a $450 price target. They reiterate a $150,000 Bitcoin target by end of 2026 and a cycle peak of $200,000 in 2027, citing Strategy's resilient balance sheet and its 3.6% of Bitcoin supply.

2. 🏛️ BlackRock: Tokenisation to Democratise Investing In his annual shareholder letter, Larry Fink stated that tokenisation could make investing as simple as mobile payments — improving access, liquidity, and efficiency for asset issuance, trading, and fractionalisation.

3. 🎓 DeFi in the Classroom A coalition of DeFi firms led by 1inch is pushing for DeFi integration into US university curricula — targeting top law and business schools. A campus tour is planned to support the initiative.

4. 💎 Bitmine Crosses $ 10B in ETH Holdings Tom Lee's Bitmine purchased an additional 67,111 ETH (~ $ 145M) from Kraken in approximately 5 hours, bringing total holdings to 4.66M ETH (~ $ 10B) — equivalent to 3.86% of circulating supply. The firm targets 5% via Lee's "Alchemy of 5%" strategy and is building a Made in America Validator Network (MAVAN) for staking yields. Bitmine now controls nearly 4x more ETH than its closest competitor, SharpLink (~863,000 ETH).

5. 🏠 Fannie Mae to Accept Bitcoin and USDC as Mortgage Collateral Fannie Mae is preparing to accept Bitcoin and USDC as collateral for home loans — a first in US housing finance. Developed with Better Home & Finance and Coinbase, borrowers can pledge crypto without selling. Coinbase Prime handles custody, returning assets upon loan repayment. The structure uses an overcollateralised crypto loan for the down payment, isolating the primary mortgage from price volatility.

6. 💳 Visa Deploys CLI for AI Agents Visa deployed a simplified command-line interface for AI agents, enabling direct programmatic card payments without API key constraints — no associated accounts, no predefined credentials, no human intervention required. Designed for agent-to-agent (A2A) execution speed.

7. 🏦 US Labor Dept Proposes Crypto in 401(k) Plans The US Department of Labor proposed a rule allowing crypto and alternative investments in 401(k) retirement plans — a ~** $ 10 trillion market** — further cementing the country's pro-crypto shift.

Notable Partnerships & M&A:

The Noise: Oil at 116.Fedholds.Bitcoindrops5 458M liquidated. Goldman raises recession odds to 30%.

The Signal:

Catch you in the next edition! 👊

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Disclaimer: The information disclosed here does not constitute an investment advice ; it is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. You should do your own research while investing in crypto and only invest money you are ready to lose.