Kalshi launched a U.S.-only promotion tied to the 2026 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament, offering $1B for a "perfect bracket" that correctly calls all 63 games, with entries due before the first tip-off on March 19, 2026. Separately on March 19, 2026, MLB named Polymarket its Exclusive Prediction Market Exchange Partner and said it signed an MOU with the CFTC aimed at safeguarding the integrity of baseball-related prediction markets.

On March 19 in Washington, SEC Chair Paul S. Atkins said in prepared remarks that the agency's newly issued crypto-asset interpretation is "a beginning, not an end." Speaking at the SEC Speaks conference, he outlined an "A-C-T" approach to advance, clarify, and transform rules, while signaling continued work on digital-asset policy and a broader rulemaking pipeline.

JPMorgan said Hyperliquid has seen rising activity as some non-crypto traders use its 24/7 perpetual futures to get oil exposure during weekends and off-hours. The bank highlighted the WTI crude CL-USDC perp, where daily volume peaked near $1.7 billion in mid-March and open interest climbed to about $300 million, alongside leverage up to 20x.

Playnance's G Coin began open-market trading on MEXC after the project's Token Generation Event on March 18, with the G Coin/USDT pair shown as live. MEXC said deposits were open and that withdrawals would start on March 19. Playnance also points to early staking activity and public tracker figures, including a fixed 77 billion maximum supply and billions of tokens categorized as locked or in treasury.

The European Central Bank has opened applications for two industry workstreams on how a potential digital euro would operate across ATMs, payment terminals and existing acceptance infrastructure. The effort focuses on offline functionality and interoperability with European payment standards, alongside proposed testing, certification and approval frameworks for digital-euro payment solutions.

On March 1, Bitrefill reported a cyber intrusion that led to the theft of cryptocurrency from certain hot wallets and misuse of its gift card supply flows. The company's investigation has identified indicators consistent with techniques attributed to the North Korea-linked Lazarus/Bluenoroff group, and traced the breach to a compromised employee laptop. Around 18,500 purchase records were accessed, while Bitrefill says financial losses will be covered from operational capital and most services have been restored.

On Wednesday, Fortune reported that prediction platform Polymarket acquired crypto payments startup Brahma for an undisclosed sum. Polymarket expects Brahma's DeFi expertise to enhance user experience and strengthen liquidity for smaller, thinly traded wagers. Brahma, founded in 2021, has processed more than $1 billion in transactions and aims to reduce friction around wallets, deposits and token redemptions on Polymarket.

SBI VC Trade, the digital asset arm of SBI Holdings, will start a USDC lending service in Japan on Thursday, allowing individual users to lend Circle's stablecoin to the platform under fixed-term contracts. Participants can apply to lend up to 5,000 USDC per offering, earning interest while bearing direct counterparty risk as SBI may re-lend the assets and user funds lack bank-style segregation protections.