U.S. CPI: +2.9% YEAR-OVER-YEAR (EST. +2.9%); U.S. CORE CPI: +3.2% YEAR-OVER-YEAR (EST. +3.3%)

**March 23** Swiss private bank Syz Bank is facing a family dispute after Marc Syz—son of founder Eric Syz—resigned alongside business partner Richard Byworth over disagreements about the firm’s direction. The rift centers on whether to add cryptocurrency firm Future Holdings AG to Syz Capital, the bank’s alternative asset division. Marc has pushed for ramping up investment in alternative assets, artificial intelligence, and digital assets, but the bank’s board rejected the plan over risk concerns. Marc is now advancing Future Holdings’ dual listing in Sweden and Switzerland, aiming to turn it into Europe’s largest Bitcoin asset company. Under Marc’s leadership, Syz Capital managed roughly 2 billion Swiss francs (about $2.5 billion) in assets. Some funds have seen outflows since his departure, and the bank has also undergone other executive changes—including the resignation of its chief operating officer (COO) and several other leaders. Marc and Byworth still hold approxi

March 23: BackPack has launched its staking page, official sources confirm. Unstaking is instant in the first 7 days; a 7-day waiting period applies for unstaking afterward.

On March 23, Coinglass data shows that following a recent downturn, funding rates for mainstream CEX and DEX contracts are overall bearish—though some trading pairs on select platforms have returned to neutral. Specifically: - Bitcoin (BTC) funding rates are negative across multiple platforms (including Binance); - Ethereum (ETH)’s bearish trend has eased slightly; - Ripple (XRP) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) funding rates have moved back to neutral. Refer to the attached chart for specific funding rates of major cryptocurrencies. BlockBeats Note: Funding rates are fees set by crypto exchanges to keep perpetual contract prices aligned with underlying asset prices. They facilitate fund transfers between long and short traders—exchanges do not collect these fees. The rate adjusts traders’ holding costs or profits to ensure contract prices track underlying asset values. Key Benchmarks: - 0.01% = baseline rate; - Above 0.01% = generally bullish market; - Below 0.005% = gen

On March 23rd, Onchainlens monitoring shows a whale opened a 2x leveraged short position on 2.65 million LIT tokens at $1.72, with an unrealized profit of approximately $2.07 million.

March 23 — Per HyperInsight’s monitoring, the S&P 500 on Hyperliquid is currently trading at $6,480, with a funding rate of -0.0036%. This marks a slight dip from Friday’s close of $6,506. Amid weakening pre-market signals, a whale with the address starting with 0x935 opened a 10x leveraged short position on the S&P 500 over the past hour. The position totals $1.02 million, with an entry price of $6,478 and a liquidation price of $7,054.

On March 23, Israel’s Jerusalem Post reported that U.S. senior officials recently informed Israel and other countries the U.S. may have no choice but to launch a ground military operation against Iran’s Kharg Island. The report cited two sources as saying the U.S. military is accelerating the deployment of thousands of Marines and Navy personnel to the Middle East. The deployment includes the USS Boxer amphibious assault ship, USS Portland amphibious transport dock, and USS Dubuque dock landing ship—vessels carrying roughly 4,500 Marines and other combat personnel total.