March 23 — Global financial markets saw sharp volatility on Monday amid escalating Middle East tensions. Asian stocks tumbled across the board: Japan’s Nikkei 225 dropped 5%, South Korea’s KOSPI plunged 6%, Taiwan’s Weighted Index opened down more than 3%, and FTSE China A50 futures weakened in tandem. Safe-haven assets showed mixed performance: Spot gold briefly dipped below $4,370 an ounce, hitting a fresh low since early January, while spot silver tumbled more than 4%. Energy prices, meanwhile, gained ground, with oil prices extending their rise. In currency markets, the South Korean won dropped to a fresh 2009 low against the U.S. dollar, signaling accelerating capital flows into safe-haven assets. Market analysts note that geopolitical risk spillover is triggering a global selloff in risk assets and liquidity tightening, with short-term volatility likely to intensify further.

On March 23, per OnchainLens monitoring, as spot gold prices continue to slide, Sky Mavis co-founder Rune has opened a 20x leveraged long position on gold. He’s also in the process of closing his S&P 500 ($SP500) short position, while maintaining TWAP orders to buy and sell into that position.

On March 23, South Korea’s KOSPI index plunged 6.00% intraday, last trading at 5432.67 points, per Bitget market data.

March 23 — Per disclosures, Fidelity has proposed a regulatory framework in a letter to the SEC that would allow broker-dealers to trade crypto assets on alternative trading systems (ATS). The proposal aims to integrate crypto asset trading into the existing financial system, boosting market compliance and institutional participation.

On March 23, Bitcoin’s mining difficulty dropped by approximately 7.76% to 133.79T—marking the second-largest negative adjustment of 2026 so far. The network’s current hashrate has fallen to roughly 903–948 EH/s, a significant drop from its 2025 peak. Analysts note that with bitcoin prices below production costs and mining revenues under pressure, many miners are shifting their infrastructure to AI and high-performance computing (HPC) operations, driving structural transformation in the industry. Mining firms such as Core Scientific and Bitdeer have accelerated these shifts, which could impact the Bitcoin network’s long-term security and hashrate distribution.

March 23 — A South Korean exchange triggered the KOSPI Index circuit breaker following a 5% drop in KOSPI 200 futures, halting algorithmic trading for five minutes. (FXStreet)