The United States Will Not Implement an Oil Export Ban

On March 20, X Product Lead Nikita Bier shared a post noting: “X is rolling out an article summary feature. Just click the ‘Summarize’ button to quickly figure out if the piece is worth your time.”

Today, March 20, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York announced that Michael Smith—a Cornelius, North Carolina resident—has pleaded guilty to his role in a streaming royalty fraud scheme. According to the indictment and court filings, Smith leveraged AI to mass-produce hundreds of thousands of songs. He then operated automated bot accounts to artificially stream these tracks billions of times, mimicking real user listening behavior. Affected platforms include Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube Music. Streaming platforms distribute royalties from a shared pool to rights holders based on play counts; large-scale fraudulent traffic siphons legitimate creators’ rightful earnings to fraudsters. To avoid triggering platforms’ abnormal traffic detection, Smith spread bot streams across thousands of tracks, intentionally keeping individual play counts below suspicious peaks. These tactics netted him over $8.09 million in fraudulent royalties. Smith plea

On March 20, numerous vessels remain waiting to transit the Strait of Hormuz, per 24-hour surveillance of the waterway. (Golden Ten)

**Decrypt Report: Prediction Market Platform Myriad Closes Undisclosed Seed Round** Prediction market platform Myriad announced March 20 that it has completed its seed round financing, with the exact amount undisclosed. Institutional investors backing the round include MoonPay Ventures, Auros, EVG, Verda Ventures, Side Door Ventures, Wave Financial, Walrus, and OFR. Individual backers joining the round are Fundstrat co-founder Tom Lee, NFT collector Blondish, and Pudgy Penguins CEO Luca Netz. The funding news comes on the heels of Myriad’s Season 3 launch, where the platform rolled out key upgrades: it migrated its event contracts to BNB Chain, and shifted its liquidity model from an automated market maker (AMM) to a central limit order book (CLOB). The update also adds features like slippage control, limit orders, and dynamic fees.

On March 20, data from Onchain Lens monitoring reveals the WLFI team unlocked its treasury wallet and deposited 135 million WLFI tokens (valued at roughly $12.52 million) into Binance.

March 20th — JPMorgan Chase has cut its year-end target for the S&P 500 Index from 7,500 to 7,200 points, citing elevated economic recession risks tied to the Iran conflict and surging oil prices. The bank warned the market may be underestimating how rising energy costs will impact the economy. While investors are focused on inflation, JPMorgan argues the bigger threat lies in consumer demand — a dynamic that could weaken economic growth. Historically, oil price surges of more than 30% have often triggered demand contraction and frequently precede a recession. In the short term, the S&P 500 could see further declines, especially after breaking below its 200-day moving average — a bearish technical signal. If the selloff persists, the index may find support in the 6,000-6,200 point range. JPMorgan still expects the economy to recover later this year, backed by investments and stimulus measures, but ongoing geopolitical risks mean the recovery will likely be more limited than pr