The Solana Foundation said on Monday it introduced STRIDE, a security auditing and monitoring program for Solana-based DeFi protocols, alongside the Solana Incident Response Network for real-time coordination. STRIDE assesses projects across eight areas such as program security, governance controls, operational security, and incident response, with results intended to be published publicly. The update follows a reported ~$280 million loss at Drift Protocol after a social-engineering attack tied to North Korean-linked actors.

MetaMask developer and security researcher Taylor Monahan said North Korean IT workers have been embedded in crypto companies and DeFi projects for at least seven years, alleging involvement across 40+ DeFi platforms. Her comments followed Drift Protocol's statement of "medium-high confidence" that its recent $280 million exploit was conducted by a North Korea state-affiliated group.

Crypto prices rose as US President Donald Trump issued mixed messages on Iran and the Strait of Hormuz, including a new deadline he suggested runs until Tuesday. Total crypto market capitalization increased about $70 billion to $2.44 trillion, while Bitcoin briefly reached $69,500 on Coinbase. The move triggered roughly $255 million in liquidations over 24 hours, with 73% tied to short positions.

Circle said it will introduce cirBTC, a wrapped Bitcoin token backed 1:1 by BTC, aimed at institutional use cases such as OTC desks, market makers and lending protocols. Announced on Thursday, cirBTC is set to debut on Ethereum and also be made available via Circle's Arc layer-1 and Circle Mint platform.

Alabama has become the second US jurisdiction after Wyoming to grant decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) legal recognition under the Decentralized Unincorporated Nonprofit Association (DUNA) Act. The measure (Senate Bill 277) was introduced in February, passed the Alabama House 82-7 with 16 abstentions on March 17, and has now been signed by Governor Kay Ivey.

Genius Group said Tuesday it sold the rest of its Bitcoin during Q1 to help repay $8.5 million in debt, and said it may rebuild its BTC treasury when market conditions improve. The company had 84 BTC worth about $5.7 million as of March 2026 and reported Q1 revenue of $3.3 million with net profit of $2.7 million, after a loss in Q1 2025.

Fidelity Digital Assets said Bitcoin has fallen about 50% this market cycle, a smaller post-ATH drawdown than the historical 80% to 90% declines seen in past cycles. The firm's analyst Zack Wainwright added that cycle-to-cycle returns have shown "diminishing" moves, while separate analysts suggested a potential bottom window in late September or early October 2026 and noted BTC remains below key moving averages.

Google published research on Monday revising the quantum resources it believes are needed to break 256-bit elliptic-curve cryptography used by Bitcoin and Ethereum. The paper estimates that fewer than 500,000 physical qubits could be sufficient under its current hardware assumptions, and it models an “on-spend” Bitcoin key-recovery window of about 9–12 minutes. It also warns Ethereum’s account model exposes public keys in a way that could enable “at-rest” attacks, estimating the 1,000 richest exposed accounts holding about 20.5 million ETH could be compromised in under nine days.

A federal judge in San Francisco has temporarily blocked the Pentagon's designation of Anthropic as a supply-chain risk and paused a directive that would halt federal use of its Claude chatbot. The order was issued Thursday by Judge Rita Lin and followed Anthropic's March 9 lawsuit challenging the designation, with a 90-minute hearing held March 24 and a ruling dated March 26.