global

Cryptocurrency-friendly bank Revolut has submitted an application for a U.S. banking license to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). If approved, the company will be able to operate in the U.S. in a manner similar to traditional banks, directly accessing core payment networks such as Fedwire and the Automated Clearing House.It is reported that the license will also enable Revolut to launch more banking services, including credit cards and personal loans. Currently, Revolut provides account and payment services in the U.S. through a partnership with Lead Bank but does not hold a banking license itself. Revolut is currently valued at approximately $75 billion, and the company states that the U.S. market is a key region for its global expansion. If it successfully obtains the license, this will become one of its most significant regulatory milestones outside of Europe.

According to market news, due to the conflict in the Middle East, most air traffic in and out of Dubai has been disrupted, severely affecting the flow of gold and silver globally.Traders indicate that this could trigger further volatility in metal prices, which have already been significantly fluctuating this year. Dubai is a key hub for precious metal transportation, accounting for about 20% of the global gold flow last year. Traders and analysts point out that if the transportation of gold and silver goods is hindered for an extended period, it may drive up regional prices in the Asian market.John Reade, senior market strategist at the World Gold Council, stated, "With flights in the Middle East suspended, the availability of gold has become a concerning issue." A gold trader mentioned, "Currently, no goods are moving by air." Typically, gold is transported as cargo on passenger planes, with a single flight capable of carrying up to 5 tons, valued at approximately $830 million at current prices.

According to Jinshi reports, Goldman Sachs equity strategists stated in a report that as tensions in the Middle East escalate, global stock markets face the possibility of a pullback in the short term, but the likelihood of a full-blown bear market remains low. The strategists pointed out that current high valuations make the market more susceptible to pullback shocks, but if a correction occurs, it may also provide buying opportunities. Goldman Sachs recommends broad geographic, factor, and sector diversification to enhance risk-adjusted returns.

According to Jinshi reports, as the conflict in the Middle East has led to the suspension of most air transport to and from Dubai, the circulation of gold and silver globally is facing serious disruptions. Traders indicate that this situation may further exacerbate the already highly volatile precious metal prices this year. Dubai is a significant hub for precious metal transportation, with about 20% of the world's gold circulation passing through the region last year. John Reade, senior market strategist at the World Gold Council, stated that the availability of gold supply has become an issue.

American digital bank SoFi has announced a strategic partnership with Mastercard to integrate SoFi's stablecoin SoFiUSD into Mastercard's global payment network and its digital asset platform, Mastercard Multi-Token Network (MTN). SoFiUSD is built on a public, permissionless blockchain and was first announced by SoFi at the end of last year.Sherri Haymond, Mastercard's Global Digital Commerce Lead, stated that this collaboration aims to expand the global application scale of trusted digital currencies. SoFi had resumed its cryptocurrency trading services last November after previously suspending related operations in 2023 due to regulatory uncertainties.This partnership is also the latest move by Mastercard to continue its blockchain strategy. In June of last year, Mastercard partnered with Chainlink to allow cardholders to purchase cryptocurrencies directly on-chain.

According to official news, Hash Global, a leading digital asset investment management institution in Asia, announced that its newly established BNB Yield Fund institutional version ------ BNB Holdings Fund has received an additional strategic support of $100 million from YZi Labs.This additional investment is a further strategic enhancement following YZi Labs' support for Hash Global in launching the BNB Yield Fund aimed at traditional distribution channels and individual investors.This additional investment not only reflects the continuous deepening of the cooperative relationship between the two parties but also marks the formal entry of BNB's institutionalization process into a stage of structural deepening.

According to CoinGlass data, the market activity of gold (XAUT) and silver (XAG) has significantly increased. Among them, the trading volume of XAUT contracts exceeded $3.684 billion, with an increase of 80.88%; the trading volume of XAG contracts surpassed $3.651 billion, with an increase of 71.05%, and the total open interest across the network is approximately $247 million. Notably, the trading volume of XAUT contracts on the Gate platform exceeded $94.2 million, ranking third globally; the open interest of XAG surpassed $20.45 million, ranking among the top three globally; and the number of XAG contract trades exceeded 455,800, ranking second globally.Gate has pioneered the metal contract trading sector, providing 24/7 uninterrupted trading, which offers users greater strategic flexibility and asset management efficiency in volatile markets. Additionally, Gate TradFi offers XAUUSD (gold) and XAGUSD (silver) contract for difference trading, being the first in the industry to launch a multi-leverage trading mechanism. The first batch includes XAUUSD20 (gold 20x), XAUUSD100 (gold 100x), and XAUUSD200 (gold 200x) contract for difference products, along with new silver products XAGUSD10 (silver 10x), XAGUSD20 (silver 20x), and XAGUSD50 (silver 50x), further optimizing the overall trading experience while enhancing strategic flexibility.

According to SoSoValue data, as of 8:30 AM Eastern Time on March 2, 2026, the total net purchase of Bitcoin by global listed companies (excluding mining companies) for the week was $208.79 million, an increase of 348% compared to last week.Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) announced on March 2 that it invested $204.10 million (an increase of 412.8% compared to last week's purchase) to acquire 3,015 Bitcoins at a price of $67,700, bringing its total holdings to 720,737 Bitcoins.The Japanese listed company Metaplanet did not purchase any Bitcoin last week, marking seven consecutive weeks without purchases.In addition, two other companies purchased Bitcoin last week. The Japanese food brand DayDayCook announced on February 25 that it invested $4.22 million to buy 50 Bitcoins at a price of $84,468, bringing its total holdings to 2,118 Bitcoins; the Brazilian Bitcoin company OrangeBTC announced on March 2 that it invested $470,000 to purchase 0.7 Bitcoins at a price of $67,438.14, bringing its total holdings to 3,723 Bitcoins.As of the time of publication, the total amount of Bitcoin held by the global listed companies (excluding mining companies) in the statistics is 981,150 Bitcoins, an increase of 0.31% compared to last week, with a current market value of approximately $64.26 billion, accounting for 4.9% of the circulating market value of Bitcoin.

Due to the Middle East war driving up oil prices and triggering inflation concerns, the currency markets reduced bets on interest rate cuts in the U.S., U.K., and Eurozone on Monday. According to swap trades linked to policy meeting dates, the likelihood of the Federal Reserve cutting rates three times in 2026 has dropped from nearly 50% last week to 20%. Traders no longer expect the Bank of England to cut rates three times this year, lowering the probability of a rate cut in March from over 80% to 60%.They also halved the probability of the European Central Bank cutting rates this year, pricing in only a 5 basis point rate cut. The rise in two-year yields in the U.S., U.K., and Germany, which are most sensitive to changes in monetary policy, has exceeded that of longer-term yields. This reflects a significant jump in inflation indicators driven by Brent crude oil prices posting their largest increase in four years.Laura Cooper, global investment strategist and head of macro credit at Newven Investment, stated, "The sustained rise in oil prices will have significant spillover effects on the global economy and inflation trajectory. A more persistent energy pulse could complicate the disinflation process and delay further rate cuts."

According to CoinDesk, DoubleZero, a crypto infrastructure startup co-founded by former Solana Foundation executive Austin Federa, will launch the second phase of its delegation program on March 9, reallocating 2.4 million SOL from its 13 million SOL pool to reward validators operating in underrepresented regions such as São Paulo, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Tokyo.Each region will receive up to 600,000 SOL in additional delegated staking incentives, aimed at reducing the increasingly concentrated geographical distribution of Solana validators in Europe and introducing the "multicast" data transmission capabilities widely used in traditional finance.Federa stated that one of the unintended consequences of blockchain acceleration is that validators are more likely to co-locate, similar to how early high-frequency trading on Wall Street competed to place servers close to the New York Stock Exchange.

According to HashKey Global market data, the HSK price has surpassed $0.1774, with a 24-hour increase of 20.02%.HashKey Global is a global flagship virtual asset exchange under HashKey Group, providing licensed virtual asset trading services to users worldwide. HashKey Global has obtained a comprehensive license for the Digital Asset Investor Protection System issued by the Bermuda Monetary Authority (BMA), offering mainstream trading and service products such as LaunchPool, contracts, and leverage.

According to BusinessInsider, the cryptocurrency travel booking platform Travala has announced the launch of a global car rental service, expanding its ecosystem to cover the entire travel process from flights and accommodations to ground transportation, all of which can be completed on the same platform.Travala customers can now instantly access over 50,000 rental locations across more than 150 countries, featuring products and services from over 1,700 top global companies and independent rental suppliers.

According to The Block, Tether-supported crypto payment app Oobit announced that it has partnered with routing infrastructure provider DTR to enable wallet transfers to "any bank account in the world."When users send crypto assets, they can see in real-time the amount of crypto assets leaving their wallet and the amount arriving at the recipient's bank account, with no hidden conversion or unexpected fees. Transactions are settled within seconds through local payment channels. Initially, it supports European SEPA, U.S. ACH, and Mexican SPEI payment channels, with fiat support for USD, EUR, Mexican Peso, and Philippine Peso. On the crypto side, it supports assets such as BTC, ETH, USDT, XRP, BCH, LTC, DOGE, TRX, USDC, ADA, BNB, SOL, XLM, XTZ, SHIB, TON, XAUT, AVAX, BONK, TRUMP, USDR, EURR, KAIA, EURC, and more markets will be opened gradually. This solution allows Oobit transfers to bypass the cross-border correspondent banking system.

According to the latest exchange evaluation report released by CoinDesk, Gate ranked third in the global centralized exchange spot market share in January this year, and fourth in the derivatives market share. Data shows that Gate's spot trading volume reached $74.4 billion that month, with a month-on-month growth of 11.1%. Among AA--A rated exchanges, Gate ranks in the top three by spot trading volume, accounting for approximately 50.2% of the total trading volume when combined with leading platforms.In terms of derivatives, Gate's trading volume market share is 11.2%. The platform ranks among the top three retail exchanges in terms of open contract size, with a share of 10.1%, demonstrating its sustained activity and capital capacity in the market.Additionally, Gate's cumulative TradFi trading volume has surpassed $70 billion, with a single-day peak exceeding $10 billion. The platform has officially ended its public testing phase and launched a web version, achieving full coverage across multiple terminals. Users can trade global contracts for difference (covering foreign exchange, stocks, and precious metals) using USDT as margin under a unified account system, and access the MT5 execution system for unified margin management across asset classes.At the same time, Gate has officially launched GateAI and introduced natural language trading features, supporting the completion of spot and wealth management order operations through conversational commands, further streamlining the AI analysis and multi-terminal trading execution process.

According to Tech in Asia, Crypto.com's latest report shows that the number of global cryptocurrency holders is expected to increase from 659 million in 2024 to 741 million in 2025, a year-on-year growth of 12.4%. The report indicates that this round of growth is primarily driven by increased institutional adoption and pro-crypto policies in the United States, including the establishment of Bitcoin as a strategic reserve.In terms of holder structure, the number of Bitcoin holders has grown by 8.3% to 365 million, accounting for nearly half of the total global holders; Ethereum holders have increased by 22.6% to 175 million, representing about 24%.In a broader market context, stablecoins accounted for 30% of the total cryptocurrency trading volume from January to July 2025, with trading volume exceeding $4 trillion during the same period. The on-chain value of tokenized real-world assets (RWA) surpassed $30 billion in mid-September, a 93% increase since the beginning of the year, with private credit nearing $17 billion and the tokenization of U.S. Treasury bonds exceeding $7 billion.

According to 8 Market data, as Ethereum falls below $1900, its market capitalization has now dropped to $225.6 billion, below Siemens (market cap $227.14 billion), ranking it 89th among global mainstream assets.