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Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken's parent company Payward announced that it will acquire 100% of the digital asset derivatives platform Bitnomial for up to $550 million (cash + stock). The transaction is expected to be completed in the first half of 2026, pending regulatory approval.Bitnomial is the first crypto-native platform to obtain all three U.S. derivatives licenses (designated contract market, derivatives clearing organization, and futures commission merchant). This acquisition will help Payward quickly gain a complete compliant derivatives infrastructure, significantly accelerating its expansion in the U.S. market. After the transaction is completed, Bitnomial's clearing and trading capabilities will be integrated with platforms such as Kraken and NinjaTrader, offering products like spot margin, perpetual contracts, and options to U.S. customers, and will be regulated by the CFTC.This acquisition will also expand Payward Services, allowing banks, fintech companies, and brokerages to access the U.S. compliant derivatives market through a single API. Industry insiders believe that with the market warming up and valuations recovering, merger and acquisition activities in the crypto industry are on the rise, as leading institutions are accelerating their transformation into comprehensive trading platforms for institutional clients by acquiring key capabilities such as compliance, custody, and derivatives.

According to Bloomberg, Flow Capital Partners plans to launch its $150 million private credit fund on a blockchain platform based in Singapore by the end of this month, becoming one of the first asset management firms in Asia to leverage the growing liquidity of stablecoins.The alternative asset management company headquartered in Hong Kong will provide its master fund through DigiFT Tech Pte. and plans to raise an additional $30 million through tokenized shares by the end of this year. The company's Chief Investment Officer Jacky Tian stated that the goal is to expand the fund, which was launched in June, to $250 million by the end of the year.

The Layer 1 blockchain Tempo, developed jointly by Stripe and Paradigm, has launched a privacy feature called Zones. This is a solution for running permissioned parallel blockchains, specifically designed for enterprise-level use cases that require higher confidentiality, such as payroll, fund management, and payment settlement.It is reported that Zones, as a parallel blockchain connected to the Tempo mainnet, provides a private execution environment where internal transactions remain confidential, but assets and funds are fully interoperable with Tempo L1, other Zones, deposit channels, and liquidity pools. Each Zone is managed by trusted entities such as financial institutions or infrastructure providers, allowing operators to view all activities within their environment and implement access controls, but they do not control the underlying assets.

The exchange Zonda stated that its cold wallet holding 4,503 bitcoins (worth approximately $334 million) is currently inaccessible.Zonda CEO Przemysław Kral issued a video statement claiming that the private key for the wallet was never handed over during the company's transition. The private key was supposed to be transferred by Zonda's founder and former CEO Sylwester Suszek, but Sylwester Suszek has been missing since 2022. Przemysław Kral denied allegations of misappropriating funds and stated that an unusual surge in withdrawal requests was triggered by negative media coverage. Zonda plans to take legal action against false statements and is committed to fulfilling its obligations to customers. The exchange was renamed from BitBay to Zonda in 2021.

According to Cointelegraph, after a recent rebound, Ethereum's price has stabilized above $2,300, with ETH futures open interest increasing to $25.4 billion, indicating a rise in demand for leveraged positions.Meanwhile, Ethereum spot ETFs listed in the U.S. have seen a net inflow of $248 million over the past 10 days, and Bitmine Immersion has also disclosed the purchase of $312 million worth of ETH. However, the funding rate for ETH perpetual contracts has failed to remain above 5% and has repeatedly fallen below 0, reflecting limited market confidence in this round of increases. Additionally, Ethereum's weekly DApp revenue has dropped from $24 million in early February to $11 million, and weakened network activity along with intensified competition among public chains may continue to affect ETH's trend.

XRP Ledger announced the integration of zero-knowledge infrastructure provider Boundless to support banks and asset management institutions in executing transactions on the public chain that balance privacy protection and compliance.According to reports, this solution can hide sensitive information such as transaction size, frequency, and counterparties, while still allowing regulatory agencies to conduct audits through selective disclosure and role-based access control, thus achieving a balance between privacy and compliance. This integration will support institutional scenarios such as cross-border B2B payments, fund and capital management, over-the-counter (OTC) trading, tokenized asset issuance, and on-chain trading and lending.Industry insiders believe that the contradiction between the transparency of public chains and the demand for privacy has always been a significant barrier to institutional adoption, and this solution aims to reduce the so-called "transparency tax." Meanwhile, competition in the privacy track continues to heat up. Technologies such as zero-knowledge proofs (ZK) and fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) are accelerating implementation, pushing privacy capabilities from optional features to underlying infrastructure. Data shows that the market size of tokenized assets has reached approximately $29.25 billion, with a monthly increase of about 7.9%.

As AI moves towards the era of autonomous collaborative agents, the B.AI platform has officially launched, dedicated to providing key "financial infrastructure" capabilities for deep participation of AI agents in value exchange, breaking the bottleneck of the industry's shift from model capabilities to underlying support. As the core infrastructure linking agents and the economic system, B.AI will deeply analyze how it reshapes the economic role of agents through a special Space on April 14 at 8 PM. By building seamless financial access and collaboration standards, B.AI is accelerating the realization of the AGI vision with forward-looking technological layouts, opening new opportunities for intelligent productivity for global users.Users are encouraged to follow the official accounts @sunpumpmeme and @Agent_SunGenX, retweet the post, and @ three friends. The official account will randomly select 5 lucky users from the participants to receive a reward of 10 USDT each.

Totalis announced the completion of a $500,000 seed round financing on platform X, with participation from Y Combinator.Totalis is the first company to receive investment from Y Combinator entirely in the form of USDC, with the funds settled through the Solana network and hosted by Ramp. Totalis positions itself as the core derivatives layer of the prediction market, allowing users to build multi-colored combinations across categories, markets, and venues, covering geopolitical, cryptocurrency, and sports assets, aimed at enhancing capital efficiency in trading and market-making.According to Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan, YC will make investment payments in stablecoins in the future, and this new financial track of revolution will not be conducted through ACH or wire transfers.

According to PR Newswire, fintech company Superstate announced the completion of a Series B funding round, with asset management giant Invesco Private Capital, a subsidiary of Invesco, as a new investor, although the amount has not been disclosed.At the same time, Invesco will serve as the investment manager for Superstate's flagship tokenized fund USTB (Short-Term U.S. Treasury Fund) starting in Q2 2026. The fund has a size of approximately $900 million, making it one of the largest tokenized government bond products globally. After the handover, the fund will be renamed, while Superstate will retain the function of digital transfer agency. This move marks Invesco's full entry into the blockchain fund sector.

According to Bloomberg, the Federal Reserve is inquiring in detail with major banks about their risk exposure in the private credit sector, due to a surge in fund redemptions and a continuous rise in non-performing loans. The Treasury is also simultaneously questioning the insurance industry to comprehensively assess the overall pressure on the $1.8 trillion private credit industry and the risks of its spillover into the financial system.BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes commented, "I hope the scale is large enough so that we can welcome money printing to save the market." Implicitly, if this regulatory assessment reveals systemic risks, it may force the Federal Reserve to restart easing and implement large-scale monetary expansion, which could benefit the cryptocurrency market.

According to the latest "March 2026 Private Wealth Management Monthly Report" released by Gate, in March, BTC and ETH overall showed a "decline followed by stabilization" repair structure. Institutional allocation is centered on BTC, with ETH as a supplement. In March, BTC ETF saw a cumulative inflow of approximately $86.8 billion, while ETH ETF saw about $12.6 billion.Gate's private wealth quantitative fund performed steadily, with an average annual return of 5.7% for the USDT strategy. The Xinghe Smart Investment (USDT) had the highest return rate in the past year, reaching 9.5%. The Interstellar Hedge (USDT) achieved a cumulative return rate of 18.0%, with all 21 periods realizing positive returns, resulting in a total win rate of 100%. At the end of March, the situation in the Strait of Hormuz marginally eased, and the market's expectations leaned more towards a short-term disturbance scenario, with oil prices and inflation shocks being controllable, allowing risk assets to maintain moderate performance.

TON Financial Company AlphaTON Capital announced a strategic financing agreement with Vertical Data totaling approximately $43 million.AlphaTON stated that this financing collaboration focuses on AI hardware deployment, which will accelerate its "privacy computing" and sovereign AI infrastructure development, and support the integrated development of AI, digital assets, and confidential computing. It is reported that its AI and privacy computing infrastructure will also provide underlying computing power support for related applications of partners such as Telegram and Animoca Brands.

The DeFi yield protocol Saturn has officially launched its mainnet. In addition, its private testing phase has ended, with companies such as Flowdesk and Galaxy depositing a total of $10 million. Its stablecoin USDat is built on M0, with Galaxy, Securitize, and Clear Street as operational partners.According to a previous report from ChainCatcher, the stablecoin protocol USDat developer Saturn has completed $800,000 in financing, with participation from YZi Labs and others.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the U.S. Department of Justice submitted documents to a federal court on Tuesday, requesting to block Arizona from applying its gambling laws to the prediction market operator Kalshi.Federal regulators argue that contracts linked to sports events, elections, and other real-world events fall under a financial derivative known as "swaps," which should be subject to federal regulation under the Commodity Exchange Act, rather than governed by state gambling laws. Arizona had previously filed criminal charges against Kalshi under state gambling laws, with a hearing scheduled for April 13.The federal appeals court in New Jersey had previously ruled in favor of Kalshi, determining that its sports contracts are presumed legal under federal law in the absence of CFTC intervention, but courts in other jurisdictions have allowed state-level enforcement actions to proceed. If the court ultimately accepts the CFTC's position, prediction markets could operate nationwide under a unified federal framework.

According to BBX data, based on official market announcements and corporate regulatory documents, the latest developments in the compliance infrastructure of global brokerage giants and the financial strategies of mining companies are as follows:Charles Schwab clarifies the spot trading timetable: The Charles Schwab Corporation (NYSE: $SCHW) President and CEO Rick Wurster officially confirmed in a letter to shareholders this Monday that Charles Schwab will launch spot trading services for Bitcoin and Ethereum in the first half of 2026. The plan will undergo a limited rollout in the second quarter (Q2), followed by a full expansion to its large customer base.CME derivatives compliance expansion: CME Group Inc. (NASDAQ: $CME) announced that, given the record average daily nominal trading volume of $8 billion for its crypto derivatives in March this year, the company has decided to further enhance its crypto strategy by officially launching futures contracts for Avalanche (AVAX) and Sui (SUI) on May 4, including standard and micro versions.Core Scientific plans to fully liquidate Bitcoin reserves: Core Scientific, Inc. (NASDAQ: $CORZ) in its latest 10-K annual and quarterly regulatory filings provided Wall Street with extremely clear guidance: during 2026, the company expects to "substantially monetize all" of its Bitcoin reserves to enhance liquidity and fund planned capital expenditures. This means the company will completely transform into a spot seller, liquidating its digital treasury to purchase the hardware needed for AI transformation.

According to analyst Darkfost's data, after the news of a two-week ceasefire between the United States and Iran, Bitcoin saw an active buying volume of $2.7 billion (taker orders) in the Binance derivatives market within two hours.Analysts pointed out that the easing of geopolitical events pushed the price of Bitcoin up to around $71,700, indicating that investors are optimistic about risk assets in the short term, but are still influenced by subsequent geopolitical developments.

The research report on cryptocurrency market share for the first quarter of 2026 published by CoinGlass shows that the total trading volume in the spot market for the first quarter was approximately $1.94 trillion, while the trading volume for derivatives was about $18.63 trillion, totaling around $20.57 trillion, with a ratio of derivatives to spot trading volume of about 9.6 times.In terms of core indicators, Binance's derivatives trading volume reached approximately $4.9 trillion, accounting for about 34.9% of the top ten exchanges; the average daily open interest was approximately $23.9 billion, accounting for about 29.9%; and user asset reserves were approximately $152.9 billion, accounting for about 73.5% of major centralized exchanges.In terms of derivatives trading volume, Binance, OKX, Bybit, Gate, and Bitget ranked in the top five. In the dimension of open interest, the second tier ranking changed to Bybit, Gate, OKX, and Bitget. In terms of user asset reserves, only OKX had reserves exceeding $10 billion after Binance, while Gate, Bitget, and Bybit had reserves ranging from $5 billion to $7 billion.

According to the official website of SOL Strategies, SOL Strategies Inc. has signed a final agreement to acquire the assets of Darklake Labs, a native zero-knowledge technology company on Solana, for $1.2 million. The transaction price consists of $200,000 in cash and $1 million in equivalent common stock.Darklake's core product, Zyga, is a dynamic zero-knowledge proof system native to Solana that provides privacy protection at the transaction execution level and eliminates front-running and sandwich attacks.After the completion of the transaction, the core team of Darklake will join SOL Strategies, including CEO Vitor Py Braga (formerly with Meta and IBM), COO Amber Hales (formerly with Coinbase, with nearly a decade of compliance experience), and zero-knowledge research lead Tiago Alves.

SOL Strategies Inc. has signed a final agreement to acquire the assets of Solana native zero-knowledge technology company Darklake Labs for $1.2 million, with the transaction price consisting of $200,000 in cash and $1 million in equivalent common stock of the company.Darklake's core product Zyga is a dynamic zero-knowledge proof system native to Solana, which can achieve privacy protection at the transaction execution level and eliminate front-running and sandwich attacks. After the closing, Darklake's core team will join SOL Strategies, including CEO Vitor Py Braga (formerly of Meta and IBM), COO Amber Hales (formerly of Coinbase, with nearly a decade of compliance experience), and zero-knowledge research lead Tiago Alves.