ProCap Financial reported on Monday that it purchased 450 Bitcoin during the latest market pullback, raising its total holdings to 5,457 BTC while lowering its average cost per coin. Over the past 10 days, the Nasdaq-listed Bitcoin treasury firm also repurchased 782,408 shares at prices well below its net asset value in an effort to shrink the discount between market price and underlying assets.

On March 1, 2026, a fire triggered by external impacts at an Amazon Web Services data center in the Middle East led to a full power shutdown in ME-CENTRAL-1 and ME-SOUTH-1, disrupting services such as Claude, ChatGPT and AWS Bedrock. AWS reports that restoration will take many hours as teams await fire department clearance and assess potential storage damage, while investors react to regional military tensions with higher oil and gold prices and renewed gains in major cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana.

Over the weekend, escalating conflict involving the United States, Israel, and Iran coincided with more than 472 million XRP, valued at about $652 million, moving to Binance, according to CryptoQuant data. XRP’s price swung between $1.27 and $1.43 before stabilizing near $1.35, while large inflows and modest ETF subscriptions have raised questions about potential short-term selling pressure and market direction.

Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Michael Selig has appointed former federal prosecutor and private sector litigator David Miller to lead the agency's enforcement division. Miller previously worked at Greenberg Traurig, Morgan Lewis and the U.S. Department of Justice, focusing on commodities, securities, digital assets and national security, and will oversee enforcement as the CFTC takes on a larger role in crypto and prediction markets. His arrival coincides with shifting enforcement priorities and staffing questions at both the CFTC and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

On-chain data over the past week indicate that about 470 million XRP, worth roughly $472 million, have flowed from the XRP Ledger to Binance, raising the risk of a sell-off. During the same period, XRP slipped 1.08% to $1.36 as daily volume dropped 25%, pointing to weaker liquidity. If these inflows trigger selling, analysts see a potential retest of $1.30 support, while sustained market strength could instead push the price toward $1.50.

Bitcoin's price surged from just above $65,000 to nearly $69,000 within about an hour, wiping out roughly $80 million in short positions. Major altcoins also rallied, with ETH reclaiming $2,000, SOL approaching $90, and XRP and BNB gaining over 4% in the same period. The sharp move comes amid rising geopolitical tensions following US and Israeli strikes on Iran and ahead of a March 2, 2026 speech in which US President Trump is set to address the Iran conflict.

A recent technical analysis compares XRP's long-term price structure with Amazon's historic breakout above a major resistance band. XRP has faced a horizontal ceiling for about eight years, with its neckline near $3.60 and a most recent peak at $3.65 in July 2025, while the price now trades around $1.35. The analyst notes a series of higher lows under this resistance, suggesting that if XRP mimics Amazon's prior pattern, a breakout could potentially trigger an extended upside phase.

Strategy expanded its bitcoin treasury by 3,015 BTC, financed through a weekly capital raise combining $7.1M from STRC preferred stock and $229.9M from MSTR common shares. The firm paid about $204.1M at roughly $67,700 per BTC, bringing total holdings to 720,737 BTC at an average purchase price of $75,985.