Bitcoin fell nearly $2,000 in under 30 minutes on Sunday after President Donald Trump warned he could strike Iran's power infrastructure unless the Strait of Hormuz is reopened within 48 hours. BTC dropped to $69,141 (down 2.26%), while the total crypto market cap slipped 1.95% to $2.38T and derivatives liquidations hit $232M amid a sharp risk-off move.

Anthony Scaramucci, founder of venture firm SkiBridge, said Polkadot is "quietly rebuilding momentum", citing a recent SEC classification of DOT as a digital commodity and a tokenomics overhaul that caps supply at 2.1 billion. He also pointed to the 21Shares Spot DOT ETF, which has recorded just one inflow day of $544.5K since launch while the rest of March showed zero flows. Separately, Polkadot's usage has weakened, with weekly average active addresses falling from 16K to 5K over the past two years.

Resolv Labs said on Sunday that an exploit enabled an attacker to mint 50 million unbacked USR and forced the team to pause all protocol functions. PeckShield also reported an additional 30 million USR minted, while D2 Finance estimated the attacker extracted about $25 million as USR briefly traded as low as $0.025 on Curve before rebounding.

Bitcoin's hash rate fell to 904.53 EH/s after a 10.24% daily drop, extending an 8% weekly decline from peaks near 1 ZH/s, while difficulty slipped to 133.79 T with another 8–10% reduction expected by April 4. Despite signs of miner stress and longer block times at 10 minutes 40 seconds, BTC traded around $70,650, suggesting miners are reducing risk via shutdowns rather than heavy selling. Miner exchange flows stayed muted, with daily inflows at 450 BTC and miner balances easing from 1.85 million BTC to 1.78 million BTC.

A Nevada state judge issued a 14-day temporary restraining order that blocks Kalshi from offering sports, election and entertainment event contracts in Nevada. The ruling said state regulators are reasonably likely to win their challenge that the contracts violate Nevada gambling laws, and the court set an April 3 hearing on a possible preliminary injunction.

Ethereum is widening its lead in on-chain stablecoin activity, adding $7 billion in stablecoin liquidity over one month and posting $2.3 billion in 24-hour inflows. USDC supply on Ethereum rose about 10% over the past month to above $52 billion, while USDT edged up 0.6% to $80 billion. The piece argues that Circle's Circle Nanopayments and BitMine's growing ETH staking exposure could support a thesis of Ethereum becoming a settlement layer for AI-driven payments.

CFTC staff issued a Friday notice answering FAQs on the agency's crypto-collateral pilot launched last year, outlining how futures commission merchants should begin accepting crypto margin. The guidance says participating firms must notify the Market Participants Division of their start date and, for the first three months, may take only Bitcoin, Ether, or stablecoins, with weekly reporting of total crypto held. It also sets capital charges at 20% for BTC and ETH positions and 2% for stablecoins, while limiting certain stablecoin uses and excluding crypto from uncleared swap collateral.

On March 22, 2026, Bitcoin fell below $69,000 and traded at $68,824 as broader crypto sentiment weakened. Total crypto market cap stood at $2.36 trillion, down 2.45% on the day, while the Fear & Greed Index sank to 10 and the average crypto RSI was 39.03, flagged as oversold. Over the past seven days, BTC was down 3.27% and the top-20 index slipped 2.81%.