US lawmakers are escalating efforts to restrict prediction markets after hundreds of millions of dollars were wagered on Iran-related military and political events. Several Democratic members of Congress are advancing bills to prohibit war and death-linked contracts and to bar senior officials from trading event derivatives, while the CFTC develops a new rulemaking framework. The clash is sharpening the divide between regulated US venues and offshore crypto platforms as institutional interest and trading volumes continue to grow.

Bitcoin briefly traded above $73,000 over the past day, while multiple on-chain indicators from Swissblock and CryptoQuant suggest it may be transitioning out of peak negative momentum. Demand contraction has eased, US spot ETF inflows have turned positive, and selling pressure from both traders and long-term holders has declined, yet resistance zones around $79,000 and $90,000 still define whether this move becomes a lasting regime shift.

On March 4, Kraken said its Wyoming-chartered bank, Kraken Financial, obtained a Federal Reserve master account with Tier 3 status and an initial one-year, limited-purpose term. The approval lets the firm settle US dollar payments directly on Fed rails, positioning it as a live test of the Fed’s emerging payments-only access framework that could reshape how regulated crypto institutions connect to core US payment services.

On Feb. 27, Deloitte issued an independent accountant's report on Anchorage Digital Bank's USAT Reserve Report, covering the US dollar token USAT that the bank issues in collaboration with Tether. As of Jan. 31, 2026, Anchorage reported $17.6 million in reserve assets against $17.5 million in USAT tokens, while Tether's far larger USDT stablecoin, backed by $192.878 billion in assets and $186.540 billion in liabilities as of Dec. 31, 2025, still has no full Big Four audit. The new attestation gives Tether exposure to a federally regulated US stablecoin with a Big Four name, but leaves long-standing questions over USDT's reserves and governance unresolved.

On Feb. 26, the XRPL Foundation detailed a vulnerability in the proposed Batch amendment that was reported on Feb. 19 by researcher Pranamya Keshkamat and Cantina AI tool Apex. XRPL contacted UNL validators to vote against activation and shipped rippled 3.1.1 on Feb. 23 to mark the amendments unsupported, scheduled a Devnet reset for Mar. 3, 2026, and noted no funds were lost.

Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake has unveiled the Strawmap, a long-term coordination plan that envisions seven network forks by 2029 and five core aims across speed, scale, security, and privacy. The framework offers investors a timeline to judge execution as the market debates whether ETH can credibly advance toward a $10,000 valuation.

XRP has drawn about $150 million in new capital this year while Bitcoin and Ethereum saw roughly $1.5 billion in outflows. On Feb. 18, analytics flagged XRP sentiment reaching a five-week high, highlighting rotation away from the majors. Coinbase also began allowing XRP as collateral for up to $100,000 USDC loans.

BlackRock's iShares Staked Ethereum Trust (ETHB) aims to keep 70% to 95% of its ETH staked under normal conditions, while maintaining a 5% to 30% unstaked liquidity sleeve for creations, redemptions, and expenses. The fund's filing outlines that 18% of gross staking rewards will go toward fees shared by the sponsor, Coinbase as prime execution agent, and staking providers, and notes that validator activation and exit queues on Ethereum can delay both reward generation and withdrawals for weeks or longer during congestion.

Bitcoin’s sharp drop toward $60,000 and subsequent rebound acted as a stress test that highlighted contrasting trader behavior on Coinbase and Binance. On Coinbase, Brian Armstrong described retail users steadily accumulating Bitcoin and Ethereum, while on-chain data showed a mostly negative Coinbase Premium Index that pointed to weaker US spot aggression. By contrast, Binance saw heavy short-term holder inflows and mid-sized entity selling, with around 8,700 BTC per day sent to the exchange at the height of volatility and roughly 7,000 BTC reportedly sold at market over two days.