On April 1, 2026 at 18:36, Franklin Templeton said it agreed to acquire 250 Digital, a liquid crypto investment manager spun out of CoinFund, and place it inside a new division named Franklin Crypto. The transaction is expected to close in Q2 2026 and will be partly paid in BENJI tokens, which represent shares in Franklin Templeton's on-chain U.S. Government Money Fund. After the announcement, Franklin Resources shares rose as much as 1.5% in pre-market trading.

As of Tuesday morning, March 31 (UTC), the crypto market remained cautious, with total market cap near $2.38 trillion and 24-hour trading volume at $95.5 billion. Bitcoin hovered around $67,235 while Ethereum edged up to about $2,050, as traders weighed mixed ETF flows, options-expiry aftereffects, and several event risks including NFP on April 3 and an FTX payout dated March 31.

On April 1, 2026, New Hampshire’s Business Finance Authority said it plans to issue $100 million in taxable Bitcoin-backed bonds, described as the first rated municipal bond secured by cryptocurrency. The deal received a provisional Ba2 rating from Moody’s and uses CleanSpark’s Bitcoin held in BitGo cold storage, with 1.60x initial collateral coverage and a 1.40x loan-to-value trigger for mandatory redemption. The bonds are structured as limited-recourse, with payments sourced solely from collateral proceeds and no taxpayer backing or state guarantee.

CoinShares International Limited started trading on Nasdaq on April 1, 2026 under the ticker CSHR after completing a $1.2 billion SPAC merger with Vine Hill Capital Investment Corp. The transaction created Odysseus Holdings Limited as the new public parent above CoinShares PLC, and the deal had first been disclosed in September 2025.

A senior CFTC official said in remarks delivered on 31 March that insider-trading laws apply to prediction markets and that the agency will step up detection, investigations, and prosecutions. The comments come as total trading volume across platforms including Polymarket and Kalshi reached $75 billion in Q1 2026, versus $330 million in Q1 2024.

XRP finished Q1 2026 down 27% versus its 2025 year-end level, after peaking at $2.40 on Jan. 6 and later trading mostly between $1.30 and $1.50 through March. Over the same period, its market capitalization fell from $112 billion on Jan. 1 to about $83 billion by March 31, putting it 55% below the July 18, 2025, high of $3.66.

The U.S. Department of Justice charged 10 executives and employees tied to four crypto market-making firms over alleged schemes to artificially inflate trading volume and token prices. The DOJ said three defendants were arrested in Singapore, extradited to the U.S., and made an initial court appearance in Oakland on Monday. Authorities also reported seizing more than $1 million in cryptocurrency, while BTC was trading in the highs $68k at the time of writing.

Hong Kong has not issued its first stablecoin licences by the previously expected end-of-March target, and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority said the licensing work is still progressing and announcements will come in due course. The HKMA's public register continued to show no licensed stablecoin issuers at the time of writing.