Iran Says It Has Full Control of the Strait of Hormuz, More Than a Dozen Tankers Hit by Shelling

March 4th, Ray Dalio told the Tuesday episode of the All-In Podcast that Bitcoin isn’t a viable long-term store of value or safe-haven asset—citing no central bank backing, ongoing questions about its privacy safeguards and quantum resistance. He argued Bitcoin won’t become “digital gold,” noting “there’s only one kind of gold in the world.” Gold isn’t a speculative precious metal, he said—it’s the “most mature currency” and the second-largest reserve asset held by central banks globally. Dalio added it’s hard to see why central banks would buy and hold Bitcoin long-term. (Per Cointelegraph)

On March 4, Junyang Lin, CTO of Qwen, said goodbye on X and announced his resignation. Another CTO, Binyuan Hui (@huybery), also updated his bio to “Former Alibaba Qwen Team MTS.” Additionally, Kaixin Li—a key contributor behind Qwen3.5, Qwen VL, and Qwen Coder—posted a farewell message earlier this morning. Notably, the Qwen team released its Qwen3.5 Small Model series yesterday, which has been widely praised by the community. Sources indicate that a shift in Alibaba Cloud’s evaluation of the Qwen team directly prompted the exits of these key members.

Per Chainalysis, investment fund Gamma Fund (address: gammafund.eth) withdrew 9,000 ETH worth approximately $17.86 million from Binance 5 hours ago, at an average price of about $1,984.

**Binance Alert: Ethereum (ETH) Wallet Maintenance Scheduled** Per an official announcement, Binance will perform wallet maintenance on the Ethereum (ETH) network on **March 4, 2026, at 14:00 UTC+8**. To facilitate this maintenance, Binance will pause ETH deposits and withdrawals commencing at **13:55 UTC+8 on March 4, 2026**. The maintenance is anticipated to last 1 hour, with deposit and withdrawal services resuming automatically once the work concludes.

March 4th — Per Onchain Lens monitoring, the Pudgy Penguins team transferred 4.5 billion PENGU tokens (valued at $3.12 million) to Binance 7 hours ago.

**March 4: Vitalik Calls for 'Sanctuary Tech' Ecosystem Beyond Ethereum Finance** Vitalik wrote in a post on March 4 that amid growing government and corporate oversight, Ethereum — despite prioritizing freedom and privacy — has failed to meaningfully enhance users’ real-world freedom and privacy. He called for building a "sanctuary tech" ecosystem: open-source tools that boost resilience against external pressures, stressing Ethereum shouldn’t be confined to finance. Vitalik noted: "Cryptocurrencies shouldn’t aim to be the next Apple or Google. Instead, we need to build our own 'sanctuary tech ecosystem' — a shared, ownerless digital space that does more than just enable open finance. We need to actively develop a full-stack ecosystem: expanding upward to wallets and app layers (including AI as an interface) and downward to operating systems, hardware, and even physical/biometric security layers."