In the three months leading up to 9 March 2026, crypto fundraising saw capital raised slump 62%, deal count drop 38%, and average deal size fall to $21.89 million. While 2025 headline figures showed $50.6 billion raised, much of this came from $22.1 billion in M&A, with venture funding at $23.3 billion and deal numbers down 21% year-over-year. Capital is concentrating in large strategic rounds such as Tether's $200 million investment in Whop, as CeFi captures the biggest checks and DeFi faces smaller, compressed valuations.

Toobit, an international cryptocurrency exchange, has launched a 200,000 USDT campaign centered on its integrated TradFi futures and spot markets, running until March 30, 2026. The program features reduced maker and taker fees, a 50,000 USDT protection fund for initial trades, and multiple prize tiers for new, futures, and spot traders. It arrives as on-chain real-world assets exceed $25 billion in volume and tokenized commodities surpass $7.32 billion in market cap over the past year.

Stablecoin-focused banking startup Kast has reportedly closed an $80 million funding round that values the company at $600 million. The capital will be used to scale its payment infrastructure and products across North America, Latin America and the Middle East, while stablecoin transfer volume reached a record $1.8 trillion in February.

Nasdaq has entered a partnership with Kraken's parent company Payward to create an "equities transformation gateway" linking tokenized stocks on regulated markets with decentralized blockchain networks. The gateway will use Kraken's xStocks framework and is expected to support Nasdaq's tokenized equity design and distributed-ledger services starting in the first half of 2027.

In a recent SlateCast episode, Fantium CEO and co-founder Jonathan Ludwig discussed his move back into company building and detailed Fantium's approach to tokenizing athlete prize money as a transparent financing tool. He contrasted this utility-first model with earlier fan tokens, highlighted the $BANK poker bankroll token, and explained why Fantium chose to build on Solana to align with existing liquidity.

Neo X has rolled out TestNet v0.5.2, a patch upgrade to its EVM-compatible blockchain that finalizes its Geth v1.15-style architecture and revises peer-to-peer block broadcasting. The update adds execution-layer blob storage and related APIs for EIP-4844, which may require around 288 GB of disk space, and introduces fixes for snap sync and DKG-related anti-MEV issues. Node operators must upgrade from earlier versions to stay synchronized and update validator configuration flags before MainNet deployment.

R3E Network has introduced the N3Index API indexer for Neo N3, providing structured and raw access to on-chain data via n3index.dev for wallets, explorers, and dApps. Within a two-week period, founder and Neo core developer Jimmy Liao also launched a free, non-expiring .matrix NFT domain system focused on the R3E ecosystem, which is now integrated into the neo3scan.com explorer alongside NeoNS domains.

By March 9, 2026, investor Christopher Harborne had given more than £12 million to Reform UK, with regulatory filings showing a £9 million contribution followed by an additional £3 million in November across 2024 and 2025. The party has promoted lower capital gains tax on crypto, begun accepting digital asset donations, and drawn criticism from lawmakers concerned that cryptocurrency-based funding could obscure the origin of political money.