New York Mellon Bank has announced that it is becoming an early adopter of the lending platform EquiLend 1Source and is receiving a minority equity stake in EquiLend.

On March 18th, according to Decrypt, the Bitcoin mining firm Bitfarms has announced the accomplishment of its acquisition of Stronghold Digital Mining. The deal is valued at $175 million, with $125 million in equity. Bitfarms stated that this acquisition will assist the company in optimizing operations by making use of the newly acquired data centers and will provide computing resources to an AI company, thereby promoting its growth in high-performance computing and AI. This acquisition not only raised Bitfarms' market valuation but also made it more difficult for its competitor, Riot Blockchain, to acquire it. Since 2023, Riot has been trying to acquire Bitfarms, and this transaction may enhance Bitfarms' position in the industry consolidation.

On March 18th, the probability on Polymarket that "The Fed will end quantitative tightening before May" has reached 100%, and the total trading volume has exceeded $6.25 million.

On March 18th, Ripple Labs submitted a trademark application for "Ripple Custody." As per the application documents, this trademark encompasses financial services such as the storage and management of cryptographic assets to fulfill financial management requirements. This trademark application comes shortly after Ripple launched custody services in October 2024, indicating that the company is aiming to expand its revenue sources beyond payment settlement. Furthermore, the trademark application also mentions "downloadable cryptocurrency, fiat currency, virtual currency, and digital currency custody, transfer, and storage software," which may imply that Ripple is contemplating launching an official cryptocurrency wallet. Currently, the company has not offered official wallet services. However, if launched, this product may support XRP and other digital assets, creating a new revenue stream through transaction fees. A spokesperson for Ripple declined to comment on the trademark applicatio

On March 18th, according to HTX market data, Bitcoin rebounded and reached above $84,000, registering a 24-hour gain of 0.60%.

March 18th — The Press Secretary of the Russian President, Dmitry Peskov, declared that the preparations for a phone call between President Putin of Russia and President Trump of the United States are in progress to discuss the main agenda. The primary topic is to mediate the Ukraine issue. When reporters inquired about the duration of the preparations for this call, Peskov mentioned that similar preparatory work for such phone conversations can be completed in a short time. Earlier on that day, Peskov had announced that Putin and Trump would have a phone call on March 18th. Trump had also stated on the evening of March 16th local time that he planned to have a conversation with Putin on the 18th. (FX168)

On March 18th, as monitored by lookonchain, an address transaction involving mubarak achieved a 4860-fold profit. The address only spent 0.4 BNB (approximately $232) to purchase 10.5 million mubarak. After selling a portion of it, it received 576 BNB (approximately $363,500). The remaining 5.16 million mubarak (approximately $764,000) were distributed among 3 wallets.