The U.S. Department of Justice charged 10 executives and employees tied to four crypto market-making firms over alleged schemes to artificially inflate trading volume and token prices. The DOJ said three defendants were arrested in Singapore, extradited to the U.S., and made an initial court appearance in Oakland on Monday. Authorities also reported seizing more than $1 million in cryptocurrency, while BTC was trading in the highs $68k at the time of writing.

Google’s Quantum AI team said in a Tuesday whitepaper and blog post that Bitcoin and Ethereum cryptography tied to ECDLP-256 could be broken with fewer than 500,000 physical qubits and about 1,200 logical qubits. The paper also models a live Bitcoin attack that could steal coins mid-transaction in around 9 minutes, implying a 41% chance of beating Bitcoin’s 10-minute block time.

On-chain trackers showed about $324 million in GameStop-linked BTC moving to Coinbase, prompting speculation the retailer had sold its stack. The company's latest 10-K indicates it still has Bitcoin-linked exposure by pledging 4,709 of 4,710 BTC to Coinbase for a covered-call strategy, receiving about $368 million in cash while limiting gains above roughly $105,000–$110,000 per BTC. On paper, the filing shows GameStop now holds 1 BTC directly.

Hyperliquid Strategies Inc. said Tuesday it has launched options trading for its PURR common shares on the Nasdaq Options Market. The firm said the move is aimed at improving liquidity and price discovery for PURR while giving institutional and retail participants additional ways to hedge and express directional views tied to the Hyperliquid ecosystem.

Hyperliquid’s third-week-of-March recap highlighted three developments: the launch of an officially licensed S&P 500 perpetual contract, USDC support arriving on HyperEVM, and new activity highs across HIP-3 tokenized commodity markets. The update also referenced TradeXYZ figures showing a $5.6 billion 24-hour peak volume and about 45,300 daily unique traders, alongside a community ETHCC Cannes event scheduled for March 31.

Morgan Stanley is proposing the Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust (MSBT), a bitcoin investment vehicle designed to trade like a spot Bitcoin ETF share on NYSE Arca. The filing describes a 50,000-share seed basket funded with roughly $1 million of seed capital intended to acquire spot BTC before trading begins.

BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes reiterated a $150 price target for Hyperliquid’s native token, $HYPE, for August 2026. He pointed to oil perpetuals on Hyperliquid reaching $1.5bn a day and commentary that combined oil, gold, and silver open interest surpassed $1.5 billion, framing $HYPE as a high-beta way to gain exposure to the venue’s 24/7 commodities and macro trading growth.

Crypto asset investment products recorded about $1.06 billion of net inflows last week, extending a three-week streak to roughly $2.2 billion. Bitcoin accounted for around 75% of the weekly total (about $793 million), while on-chain data for March 9–15 showed about $19,200 in Banana Gun bot fees with ETH at roughly 50.5% and BSC near 36%.

In the 2026 election cycle, the crypto industry recorded a major political setback in Illinois as Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton defeated pro-crypto Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi in the Democratic Senate primary. Fairshake, a crypto-aligned super PAC, spent nearly $10 million opposing Stratton and still holds a broader $221 million war chest, while BTC is trading around $72k. The outcome underscores that local political support can outweigh industry money and may shape how digital asset advocates deploy funds in other races.