UPDATE: Empery Digital has sold 370 Bitcoin for $24.7 million, using the proceeds to repay debt and unlock 1,800 BTC that had been pledged as collateral.

Cango, a NYSE-listed Bitcoin mining company, said it has completed two financing transactions. The company closed a $65 million strategic investment through the issuance of 49,242,424 Class A ordinary shares to two entities wholly controlled by Chairman Xin Jin and Director ChangWei Chiu. The transaction was settled on March 31, with the consideration paid in USDT. Cango also signed an agreement with HKEX-listed DL Holdings Group Limited to issue $10 million of convertible notes, together with warrants for up to 370,370 Class A ordinary shares. The warrants carry an exercise price of $2.70 per share.

The U.S. Department of Justice has charged ten executives and employees at four crypto market-making firms over alleged schemes to artificially boost trading volume and token prices. In a statement released Monday, the DOJ said the defendants are affiliated with Gotbit, Vortex, Antier and Contrarian. Three people were arrested in Singapore, extradited to the United States and made their first court appearance Monday before a federal judge in Oakland. The DOJ said two of those extradited were CEOs. The case stems from an undercover operation led by the FBI and the IRS Criminal Investigation division that began in May 2024 and focused on wash trading. According to prosecutors, the FBI created crypto tokens and observed the firms allegedly coordinating trades that produced fabricated volume and sharp price moves. Wash trading refers to transactions that amount to a party trading with itself to manufacture the appearance of liquidity, a tactic often used as a foundation for pump-and-dump manipulation. Prosecutors said the defendants face three separate indictments. The DOJ alleges the group worked to inflate volume and prices and then sold tokens at elevated levels to unsuspecting investors, causing losses that extended beyond the United States. Separately, the DOJ said two co-defendants have already pleaded guilty and were sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín. Authorities have seized more than $1 million in cryptocurrency to date. The DOJ has pursued similar cases before. In October 2024, federal prosecutors in Boston charged 18 individuals and entities in a broad cryptocurrency market manipulation case that included leaders of four crypto companies, four market makers—ZM Quant, CLS Global, MyTrade and Gotbit—and employees at those firms. For traders, the latest charges reinforce that fabricated volume and manufactured liquidity in altcoin markets are being treated as classic fraud rather than as a byproduct of a new asset class. Elevated on-chain or exchange volume in thinly traded tokens is an increasing red flag, especially when linked to lightly documented market-making arrangements. The investigation also points to the likelihood of additional enforcement actions, which could raise legal-risk premia for small-cap tokens, intensify scrutiny on market makers, and result in cleaner but thinner liquidity in the near term. Over time, a sustained crackdown could compress the highest-volatility segment of crypto markets while compliant venues and assets benefit from improved credibility. At the time of writing, Bitcoin was trading in the upper $68,000s.

XRP finished the first quarter of 2026 with a 27% decline, with its market capitalization dropping by $29 billion over the period.

A transfer of 169,837,284 USDT, worth approximately USD 169,771,485, was sent from Bitfinex to an unknown wallet.

Total crypto positions liquidated over the past 24 hours reached $340 million, according to Coinglass data cited by ChainCatcher. Long liquidations totaled $126 million, while shorts came in at $214 million. Bitcoin saw $19.91 million in long liquidations and $89.85 million in shorts. Ethereum recorded $33.16 million in long liquidations and $61.31 million in shorts.

Federal Reserve Governor Michael Barr on Tuesday delivered the Fed's strongest warning yet that stablecoins need strict oversight under the newly enacted GENIUS Act, citing a "long and painful history" of privately issued money that failed without adequate safeguards. His message lands squarely on the biggest players in the roughly $200 billion stablecoin market, including Tether and Circle, and signals a harder-edged enforcement posture than many assumed when the bill passed. Barr acknowledged the GENIUS Act could speed innovation, then focused on the risks regulators must contain. The sequencing underscored a key point for markets: the law's practical meaning will be set in the rulemaking now underway at the Fed and the FDIC. Key points from Barr's remarks and their implications: • Redemption at par is the core test: Barr said stablecoins are only "stable" if they can be redeemed promptly at par across a wide range of conditions, including stress that hits Treasury market liquidity and issuer-specific strain. • GENIUS Act timeline and the implementation gap: The GENIUS Act, signed into law in July 2025, created the first federal framework for stablecoins. Barr's March 31 remarks highlight the areas agencies must now define and enforce through detailed rules. • Reserve-asset incentives are a structural vulnerability: Barr warned issuers have an incentive to maximize returns on reserves, which can weaken reserve quality over time. The point is broadly applicable across the sector and echoes long-running scrutiny of Tether's reserve composition history. • Strict enforcement of backing limits: The law requires monthly reserve reporting and restricts backing assets to high-quality, liquid instruments such as U.S. Treasuries. Barr signaled the Fed intends to police those boundaries tightly. • Spillovers into broader crypto legislation: Disputes over stablecoin regulation are already slowing progress on the separate Clarity Act, suggesting Barr's stance could affect digital-asset policy beyond stablecoins. Why Barr's "long and painful history" matters Barr's reference was not rhetorical. He pointed to episodes where private money failed in ways that harmed holders: the 19th-century free-banking era of discounted bank notes and depositor losses, runs in money market funds in 2008 and 2020, and the 2022 TerraUSD collapse that erased about $40 billion in weeks. He framed stablecoin risk as a monetary and financial-stability issue, not merely a consumer-protection problem. Barr's central warning was explicit: "Stablecoins will be stable only if they can be reliably and promptly redeemed at par in a wide range of conditions, including during stress in the market that can put pressure on the value of otherwise liquid government debt and during episodes of strain on the individual issuer or its related entities." That framing challenges the idea that Treasury-backed reserves are automatically safe. Even U.S. Treasuries can experience liquidity stress, as seen in March 2020. Barr also argued that stretching reserve quality can boost profits in calm markets while raising the risk of a confidence break during inevitable stress. The message reads as an early pushback against any lobbying to broaden the GENIUS Act's permitted reserve-asset list during rulemaking. What the GENIUS Act sets out—and where enforcement will decide the outcome The GENIUS Act lays out a relatively strict baseline: stablecoin issuers must publish monthly reserve reports, hold reserves in safe and liquid assets such as short-term U.S. Treasuries, clearly disclose there is no FDIC insurance, and follow bank-style expectations on capital, liquidity, and anti-money-laundering compliance. Barr is pressing for the next phase to remain tight. He emphasized narrow definitions of "safe" reserves, stronger safeguards against regulatory arbitrage into weaker jurisdictions, capital requirements aligned with real redemption risk, tougher AML expectations, and limits on non-issuance activities to reduce spillover risk. The near-term market question is how strictly regulators define "safe assets" and how aggressively they enforce those limits—because that will determine how much flexibility issuers retain under the GENIUS Act framework.

Blockchain data shows a transfer of 1,794 BTC, valued at $122,794,106, from an unidentified wallet to Gemini.

According to Huo Xing Finance, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Enforcement Director David I. Miller said on April 1 that the agency's enforcement agenda will prioritize five areas: insider trading, market manipulation, market abuse, retail fraud, and breaches of anti-money laundering and KYC rules. The CFTC said prediction markets fall within its insider-trading remit, warning that trades based on material nonpublic information will be deemed illegal and "actively investigated and prosecuted." Miller said the CFTC aims to shift away from an "enforcement as regulation" approach and concentrate on core misconduct such as fraud and manipulation. The agency also plans to roll out a new cooperation policy that could reduce penalties or provide exemption pathways for institutions that voluntarily self-report, assist investigations, and complete remediation. The CFTC added it will deepen coordination with trading venues and judicial authorities to tackle manipulation in energy markets and fraud enabled by emerging technologies, including AI.