On Wednesday, South Korea's Kospi and Kosdaq indexes each sank more than 10% in morning trading, forcing the Korean Stock Exchange to trigger circuit breakers and halt trading. Regional equity markets across Japan, Hong Kong, China and Thailand also dropped sharply, while surging oil prices and geopolitical tensions in the Middle East added to investor risk aversion. Crypto markets have fallen this year but showed a milder intraday reaction compared with global stocks.

According to 10x Research on Tuesday, Bitcoin has reclaimed its 20-day moving average near $68,500, with compressed volatility, stronger ETF flows and the disappearance of the Coinbase discount suggesting selling pressure is weakening. Analysts highlighted that support around $62,500 has held multiple times and that bullish divergences in RSI and stochastic indicators point to stabilizing momentum, but they still classify Bitcoin as being in a bear market regime, implying any bullish positions should remain tactical.

On Monday, the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs released the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act (HR 6644), which includes an amendment to the Federal Reserve Act barring the Fed from issuing a US central bank digital currency until December 31, 2030. The measure, which preserves room for dollar-denominated open, permissionless and private stablecoins, advanced in the Senate on an 84-6 cloture vote, while similar past efforts to block a CBDC have stalled even as other countries pilot or launch their own digital currencies.

BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes argued in a Monday blog post that prolonged and costly US efforts in Iran under President Donald Trump could push the Federal Reserve to cut rates and expand the money supply. He cited past conflicts such as the 1990 Gulf War, the post-2001 war on terror and the 2009 Afghanistan surge as examples where the Fed allegedly eased policy, and said he plans to wait for any rate cuts before heavily increasing his Bitcoin and altcoin exposure.

According to Vitalik Buterin in an X post on Saturday, an AI-led experiment “vibe coding” a reference implementation mapped Ethereum’s roadmap to 2030 within weeks after a February bet. He said AI is accelerating development but carries massive caveats, and urged teams to channel gains into security through testing, formal verification, and multiple implementations.

Bitcoin rose to $68,200 on Sunday morning after dropping to $63,000 on Saturday, returning to levels near $67,350 seen on Friday. Roughly 157,000 traders faced $657 million in liquidations over 24 hours, per CoinGlass, while the BBC reported Iran's Supreme National Security Council said Ayatollah Khamenei was killed.

Crypto analyst Willy Woo says recent investor selling in Bitcoin appears largely exhausted, allowing BTC to trade sideways and possibly retest the mid-$70,000 area before facing resistance. He expects the bearish phase to end around the fourth quarter, with other analysts warning of months of range-bound price action between $60,000 and $70,000 after a steep drawdown.

On Thursday, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin detailed updates to the Protocol team's public "Strawmap", a four-year roadmap to speed block production and shrink confirmation times. He targets slot time falling from ~12 seconds to as low as 2 seconds and finality moving from ~16 minutes to between 6 and 16 seconds, with seven forks planned roughly every six months.

Bitcoin adoption accelerated in 2025 across institutions, banks, merchants, public companies, and nation-states, even as BTC remains 50% below its October peak. Institutions amassed 829,000 BTC, U.S. merchant acceptance tripled, global usage rose 74%, and Lightning payments jumped 300% with over $1.1 billion in monthly volume.