Inflation Concerns Strengthen Fed Hawkish Bet, Gold Falls Over 2%

On March 18, OnchainLens data reveals a whale—after a year of inactivity—deposited 5.01 million USDC onto the HyperLiquid platform and opened a 2x-leveraged short position on CL (WTI Crude Oil Futures Contract).

On March 18, Decrypt reported that Canada’s financial intelligence agency—the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC)—launched coordinated enforcement action against 23 Money Services Businesses (MSBs) offering cryptocurrency-related services, revoking their registrations in one fell swoop to further strengthen the country’s anti-money laundering (AML) rules. The registrations were revoked over compliance violations including failure to respond to information requests promptly, non-compliance with registration requirements, and failure to update relevant records in a timely manner.

**Binance’s CZ: Crypto Entrepreneurs Returning to U.S., Policy More Positive Than Expected** On March 18, Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) told the DC Blockchain Summit that crypto entrepreneurs who previously operated offshore are now returning to the U.S.—citing the country’s strong innovation ecosystem, venture capital, Silicon Valley talent, Wall Street financial infrastructure, and funding advantages. He noted U.S. crypto policy is currently far more positive than he anticipated: “I didn’t expect the U.S. to become so crypto-friendly in 2-3 years.” Stressing the U.S. is rooted in free-market capitalism, CZ added competition is the best consumer protection (a view shared by some influential U.S. figures). From a trading platform operator’s perspective, he pointed out U.S. crypto exchanges charge excessively high fees, leaving American consumers with worse prices than international markets. This explains why the U.S. lacks the main crypto liquidity pool—unlike traditiona

March 18th — CoinShares announced a strategic partnership with Kiln to launch the first on-chain asset management strategy leveraging its Railnet protocol. Blending yields from DeFi protocols and tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), the strategy will cover six distinct revenue streams: DeFi lending protocols, institutional collateralized loans, tokenized bond funds, bond ETF yields, and a market-neutral basis trading strategy.

Bitcoin Falls Below $72,000; 24-Hour Decline Widens to 2.17% (HTX Market Data, March 18)

The Trump administration on March 18 temporarily waived the century-old Jones Act — a shipping mandate — to lower U.S. domestic transportation costs for oil, natural gas and other commodities. The move marks its latest effort to address an energy price surge spurred by the Iran conflict. Foreign-flagged vessels will be permitted to transport a range of goods between U.S. ports over the next 60 days, per White House officials. Covered products include coal, crude oil, refined petroleum, natural gas, natural gas liquids, fertilizers, other energy derivatives, and items primarily derived from refined petroleum. Some analysts, however, expect the waiver to have only limited impact given the scale of supply chain disruptions. (FX678)