Tether CEO to Attend Mar-a-Lago Trump Luncheon and Give Speech

March 17 – Aster has officially launched its mainnet, per lookonchain data. Its official website now hosts a block explorer for the network. Meanwhile, on decentralized derivatives exchange Hyperliquid, the largest ASTER long position holds 25.93 million ASTER tokens (≈$20.4 million), with an unrealized gain of roughly $3.9 million to date.

On March 17th, per OnchainLens monitoring, US-listed crypto fintech firm Antalpha deposited 1,700 XAUT into a Cobo wallet address—with the deposit valued at approximately $8.46 million at current market prices. Tether Gold (XAUT) is a tokenized gold asset issued by Tether, backed by physical gold.

March 17th — Aethir, a decentralized GPU computing infrastructure provider, officially rolled out its managed Kubernetes (K8s) service today—a key strategic expansion into the enterprise AI infrastructure market. Kubernetes, the "gold standard" for open-source container orchestration, automates large-scale server cluster management. Aethir’s move aims to give global AI teams a high-performance, plug-and-play development environment with no need to mess with underlying hardware. Core features of Aethir’s managed K8s service include: - Minute-scale deployment: Spin up GPU-enabled K8s clusters in minutes via a self-service API - High-end GPU support: Latest-gen GPUs including NVIDIA H100, H200, and B200 - Transparent pricing: Starts at $1.45/hour, no egress fees - Enterprise-grade security: Zero-trust access control, RBAC, full audit logs Aethir’s pricing is far cheaper than traditional centralized cloud providers like AWS and Azure. By cutting redundant markup and steep

In a March 17 BlockBeats report, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas urged the U.S. and Israel to end the war on Iran, stressing the bloc is in talks with multiple Middle Eastern nations to de-escalate the ongoing conflict via diplomacy. Kallas noted the EU has been in contact with Gulf states, Jordan, Egypt and others, aiming to facilitate negotiations between all parties to ease tensions and offer a “dignified exit” for the countries involved. Addressing the energy and shipping crisis sparked by Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, Kallas proposed a model similar to the Black Sea Grain Initiative to ensure safe navigation in the strait through an international mechanism. She said she has discussed the proposal with the UN Secretary-General, and the UN is currently advancing talks on the matter.

March 17 — The Israeli military stated Hezbollah has been accelerating its preparations and is planning rocket attacks against Israel in the coming hours. (Jinse)

On March 17th, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) issued a no-action position, stating that self-custody crypto wallet developer Phantom Technologies Inc. is not required to register as a broker under certain conditions. The document notes Phantom’s software is solely used to help users connect to registered futures commission merchants (FCMs), introducing brokers (IBs), and contract markets for trading. Under those specific conditions, the CFTC’s Division of Market Oversight will not recommend enforcement action against the company for failing to register as an introducing broker. Market participants view this statement as further clarifying the regulatory stance on self-custody crypto wallet software.