Alphabet-owned Intrinsic will join Google, as the tech giant looks to move further into the realm of physical AI.
The companies revealed on Feb. 25 that Google will fold Intrinsic’s robotics software platform — built to simplify how developers design, build and operate industrial robots — into its AI and cloud ecosystem.
Under the arrangement, Intrinsic will remain a distinct group within Google but will work closely with Google DeepMind and use Google’s Gemini AI models and cloud infrastructure.
“Working closely with Google … we can accelerate the rate of AI going from research to real-world production, in accessible and practical ways,” Intrinsic said in a release.
Intrinsic CEO Wendy Tan White said in the release that the collaboration will “fundamentally shift production” to advanced manufacturing and make intelligent robotics more widely accessible.”
“The Intrinsic team has been working for years to enable access to intelligent robotics through a democratized platform, so more people can build and benefit from robotics applications,” she said. “Combined with Google’s … AI and infrastructure, we’re going to unlock the promise of physical AI for a much broader set of manufacturing businesses and developers.”
Related:New York Robotics Consortium Launches with 160 Startups
The development comes as Google looks to move more actively into physical AI, generally defined as applications that integrate advanced AI capabilities into machines to enable greater autonomy and more human-like perception.
The sector is poised to be the next step in the development of AI across manufacturing industries, with other major players such as Nvidia and Qualcomm looking to build out their physical AI offerings.
“At Google, we see the immense opportunity in bridging the gap between the digital and physical world,” said Hiroshi Lockheimer, Chief Product Officer of Other Bets, another Alphabet unit, which works on the autonomous driving project, Waymo, and other products. “We’re excited to welcome the Intrinsic team to Google, so we can bring breakthrough AI to more businesses and industries, at scale.”
Intrinsic was established as an independent company in 2021 as part of the Other Bets portfolio, after several years of internal development. The unit was created with the aim of supporting physical AI’s applications in manufacturing.
The company’s first product, Flowstate, launched in 2023 as a platform enabling users without deep robotics expertise to build and manage robotic workflows.
U.S. spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds recorded $506.5 million in net inflows on Feb. 25, the largest single-day total in three weeks, reversing a stretch of heavy redemptions that had fueled doubts about institutional demand.
The surge followed $257.7 million in inflows on Feb. 24, bringing the two-day total to more than $750 million. The rebound came after five consecutive weeks of outflows totaling about $3.8 billion. Year to date, net flows are now just under $2 billion in outflows.
BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) led Tuesday’s gains with $297.4 million in inflows, accounting for nearly 60% of the daily total. Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) posted $102.5 million in inflows, marking a rare positive session for the fund, which has seen about $25.9 billion in cumulative net outflows since converting to an ETF structure.
Bitwise Asset Management’s BITB added $39.4 million, while Fidelity Investments’s FBTC brought in $30.1 million. Invesco’s BTCO and VanEck’s HODL also recorded net buying. None of the 11 active spot bitcoin ETFs posted outflows on the day.
Bitcoin rose near $70,000 during the session, climbing more than 7% from its weekly low below $64,000. The move coincided with renewed ETF demand and strength in broader risk assets.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading near $67,000.
Bitcoin’s foundation looks strong
The inflows mark the highest daily total in three weeks and suggest institutional buyers have returned after stepping back through much of late January and February. If inflows persist through the end of the week, spot bitcoin ETFs could post their first weekly net gain in more than a month.
Despite persistent pessimism, BTC’s institutional infrastructure remains intact, unlike in 2022, when FTX, Celsius, and others collapsed.
ETF outflows have largely stabilized, long-term holders’ buying capacity has grown, and major US banks continue building crypto products. With a shrinking tradable supply and solid market plumbing, analysts see current weakness as a temporary confidence crisis, with some projecting BTC could reach $150,000 this year.
BTC pulled back this morning, dropping to around $67,000 after approaching $70,000 yesterday. The decline comes after a strong session for crypto-related stocks, which saw solid gains.
The iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (NASDAQ: IBIT) fell $1.19, or 3.02%, to $38.04 today. IBIT is a financial product that tracks BTC’s price, giving investors exposure to BTC without directly owning it.
Lawyers representing the US government in the case against Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried have two weeks to respond to the former FTX CEO’s motion for a new criminal trial.
In a Wednesday filing in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, Judge Lewis Kaplan said that the US government shall respond by March 11 to SBF’s motion for a new trial. The former FTX CEO, who was convicted of seven felony counts in 2023 and later sentenced to 25 years in prison, requested a new trial earlier this month, claiming that new witness testimony could help bolster his case.
Source: Courtlistener
Bankman-Fried, once revered by many as one of the most prominent faces representing the crypto and blockchain industry, was at the center of the controversy around the collapse of FTX. He stepped down as CEO in November 2022, later facing criminal charges in the US for the misuse of user funds.
After Kaplan ordered the former CEO to serve 25 years in prison in March 2024, SBF’s lawyers filed to appeal the conviction and sentence. As of Thursday, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit had not reached a ruling on the filing.
Related: Kalshi bans US politician over alleged insider trading violation
Former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison, who testified against SBF at trial as part of a plea deal with US authorities, was released in January, having spent 440 days in US custody. Ryan Salame, the former co-CEO of FTX Digital Markets, was sentenced to more than seven years and remains incarcerated at the time of publication.
Is Bankman-Fried angling for a presidential pardon?
Although the former CEO was largely silent on social media for his first year in prison, Bankman-Fried later began posting messages supporting US President Donald Trump and challenging information about the collapse of FTX.
In March 2025, SBF gave an interview to political commentator Tucker Carlson — a move that reportedly led to his transfer to a federal correctional institution — claiming that he had better relationships with Republicans than Democrats.
This year, he has posted several times to X, claiming that there had been “political bias” in his case. Bankman-Fried praised Trump’s actions in “standing up” to such bias, while also criticizing Kaplan for overseeing the civil defamation case brought against the then-presidential candidate in 2023.
Source: Sam Bankman-Fried
However, despite Bankman-Fried’s efforts and speculation by many in the crypto industry, the White House has repeatedly said that Trump is not considering a pardon for the former CEO, both in a January New York Times interview and according to a Tuesday report by Fortune. Trump has pardoned several figures in the crypto and blockchain industry since taking office, including former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao and Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht.
Magazine: Big questions: Should you sell your Bitcoin for nickels for a 43% profit?
Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently. Read our Editorial Policy https://cointelegraph.com/editorial-policy
In an interview with Cointelegraph, CEO Nic Puckrin breaks down the forces behind Bitcoin’s bear market and what could come next in 2026.
In an exclusive Cointelegraph interview, crypto YouTuber and CEO of Coin Bureau Nic Puckrin says he expects 2026 to play out as a “tale of two crypto markets” — institutional conviction on one side, and near-total retail apathy on the other.
While headlines have been dominated by exchange-traded funds, policy shifts and big-money adoption, he argues that the everyday investor isn’t showing up the way they did in previous cycles — and he explains why that matters for what comes next.
He also revisits the debate around Bitcoin’s “four-year cycle.” Many traders declared the old playbook dead after an unusual run-up before the halving and the absence of a classic blow-off top. However, Puckrin outlines why recent price behavior has forced even skeptics to reconsider their views.
The conversation dives into the quantum computing narrative — a risk that has moved from fringe talk to serious discussion among some investors. Puckrin breaks down why quantum computing is being included in more risk frameworks, and why the crypto community is far from unified on the threat’s real urgency.
Finally, he shares where he’s looking for outside crypto this year — and what conditions could set up a meaningful Bitcoin recovery later in the year.
Watch the full interview on Cointelegraph’s channel to hear Puckrin’s complete thesis, the key levels he’s watching, and the catalysts he believes will define Bitcoin’s next move.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Ethereum (ETH) price is up 18% since plunging below the $1,800 mark on Feb. 6, reclaiming the $2,000 support level. Surging price volatility and a low MVRV Z-score value are also signaling a local bottom forming.
Key takeaways:
Ethereum realized volatility on Binance has risen to its highest level since March 2025, hinting at a potential recovery.
Ether’s MVRV Z-Score has dropped into the accumulation zone, suggesting that ETH has bottomed.
Ether’s multiyear trend line around $1,800-$1,900 holds as support.
Ethereum’s volatility hits 12-month highs
Ethereum’s volatility has seen a sudden spike, suggesting that the market is entering a period of intense activity and strong repricing, according to data from CryptoQuant.
Volatility is a metric used to determine how much and how quickly Ether’s price fluctuates over a given period.
Related: ETH options turn bearish as traders prepare for extended Ether price downside
The chart below shows that the realized volatility (30-day) indicator on Binance rose sharply to 0.97 on Thursday from 0.37 in mid-January.
A spike in realized volatility to such high levels indicates that the “market has emerged from a period of relative calm and entered a highly volatile environment,” CryptoQuant analyst Arab Chain said in a Quicktake analysis, adding:
“Past experience has shown that such readings have often preceded a significant upward move in Ethereum’s price.”
Ethereum price volatility on Binance. Source: CryptoQuant
The last time the volatility was this high was between late March and early April 2025 as ETH price formed a bottom range between $1,500 and $1,700.
After that, the ETH/USD pair rallied 77% to $2,700 in less than 30 days. A similar spike in Q4/2024 preceded a 74% rally in Ether’s price.
If history repeats itself, this spike in volatility could mark the end of the downtrend, setting up ETH for a multimonth rally once volatility normalizes and conviction builds.
MVRV Z-Score suggests Ether bottomed below $1,800
Ether’s MVRV Z-Score, one of the most popular onchain metrics used to identify market tops and bottoms, has dropped into the historical accumulation zone (the green line in the chart below), strengthening the argument that ETH may have found its bottom.
The last time Ether’s MVRV Z-Score dipped to the current level around -0.31 was in April 2025, after a 66% price drawdown. This coincided with a price bottom at $1,400 and preceded a multi-month rally, with ETH price rising 258% to its $4,950 all-time high.
This indicates that, from an onchain perspective, Ether is oversold and may continue the ongoing recovery, potentially rising toward liquidity clusters between $2,200 and $2,500 in the short term.
Ether’s 2020 fractal projects an “explosive climb” for ETH price
Ether’s current technical structure closely mirrors the setup that sparked its 2020-2021 price rally.
The monthly chart below suggests that the price is currently holding a multi-year trend line, much like the one that supported the price between December 2018 and April 2020.
“Every time price holds above this ascending support trend line, it launches into a parabolic rally,” as seen in 2020, analyst Trader Tardigrade said in an X post on Thursday, adding:
”Now $ETH is testing the trendline again. If it holds here, history says we’re gearing up for another explosive climb.”
ETH/USD monthly chart. Source: Trader Tardigrade
This trend line lies within the $1,900 and $1,800 support zone, where investors recently acquired 2.9 million ETH, Glassnode’s cost basis distribution heatmap shows.
As Cointelegraph reported, ETH could continue its recovery to retest the 50-day simple moving average (SMA) at $2,540 if bulls manage to push the price above $2,100.
This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision. While we strive to provide accurate and timely information, Cointelegraph does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of any information in this article. This article may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Cointelegraph will not be liable for any loss or damage arising from your reliance on this information.
Maxio Payments offers new digital wallet support to increase payment completion and reduce fraud risk
Maxio, the leading platform for billing automation and revenue management for B2B SaaS and AI companies, today announced Apple Pay support within Maxio Payments, enabling businesses to collect payment faster and more securely.
“We’re thrilled to launch Apple Pay today,” said Jon Cochrane, GM of Payments at Maxio. “Maxio Payments isn’t just payment processing. It’s full back-office automation, from chargeback handling to deposit reconciliation to bank reject recovery.”Share
For most B2B companies, collecting a payment is only the beginning. What happens after is where revenue quietly leaks and finance teams lose hours: reconciling deposits, handling chargebacks, recovering bank rejects, keeping expired cards updated. Traditional payment gateways treat these as someone else’s problem. Maxio Payments was built to automate them.
By adding Apple Pay, Maxio expands the payment methods its customers can support while preserving the automated workflows finance teams rely on. Modern B2B buyers expect the same frictionless experience they have as consumers. Apple Pay enables this with tokenized credentials that increase payment completion rates, reduce fraud risk, and accelerate cash collection. The result is shorter collections cycles, fewer customer follow-ups, and less reconciliation work.
“We’re thrilled to launch Apple Pay today,” said Jon Cochrane, GM of Payments at Maxio. “Maxio Payments isn’t just payment processing. It’s full back-office automation, from chargeback handling to deposit reconciliation to bank reject recovery. With Apple Pay, we’re expanding where our customers can sell without sacrificing any of their financial infrastructure.”
Beyond payments, Maxio tightens the entire billing workflow:
Backdated usage for usage-based billing: Finance teams can now review usage-based invoices before they are finalized, reducing invoice rework and billing fire drills. Teams can validate charges and adjust before invoices reach customers, eliminating costly manual reissues and downstream corrections.
Customizable invoice and billing email branding: Teams can align invoices and billing emails with their brand to deliver a consistent, professional experience that builds trust at the point of payment.
These enhancements reflect Maxio’s approach to reducing friction across the entire quote-to-cash lifecycle. By combining modern payment options with tighter billing controls, Maxio helps B2B companies get paid faster and operate more efficiently.
At Bitcoin Conference 2026, BrainSprout enters the art gallery as a cultural participant. Founded by Bruce Barone and his son, BrainSprout focuses on cultivating creative literacy and narrative intelligence in younger generations — a mission that intersects in unexpected ways with Bitcoin’s emphasis on sovereignty, responsibility, and long-term thinking.
In an era when algorithmic feeds shape what young people see, believe, and value, BrainSprout’s work poses a question that resonates deeply within Bitcoin culture: How do you teach someone to think for themselves? This conversation explores creativity, symbolic language, youth education, and why the Bitcoin Conference art gallery — a space already dedicated to the intersection of value, narrative, and visual culture — provides fertile ground for BrainSprout’s vision of intellectual development.
Creative literacy has become something of a buzzword in education circles, but BrainSprout seems to be operating with a more specific definition. What is BrainSprout at its core, and what does it mean to cultivate “creative confidence” in a generation that has more access to information than any before it—and arguably less capacity to interpret it?
Bruce: BrainSprout is about cultivating creative confidence and critical thinking in young people. We focus on helping students engage with big ideas—narrative, symbolism, ethics, technology—through art and storytelling. It’s less about prescribing belief systems and more about helping people develop intellectual resilience and imagination.
The Bitcoin Conference art gallery has hosted artists exploring how memes and digital culture accumulate symbolic meaning at internet speed, writers and historians situating Bitcoin within broader cultural and intellectual traditions, and everything in between. It’s a space where ideas about value, time, and meaning collide in public. What made this particular venue interesting for BrainSprout to show up?
Bruce: Bitcoin is more than a financial protocol—it’s a cultural moment. It represents self-custody, responsibility, long-term thinking in the face of an immediate, fast-food information culture. Those are ideas we care deeply about in education. The art gallery in particular felt like a space where symbolic thinking and value intersect publicly. You’re not pitching people on a product. You’re inviting them into a conversation about what matters.
In the digital age, icons, symbols, and cultural references accumulate meaning almost instantly — a kind of visual literacy happening organically online, but without anyone teaching the underlying mechanics. Education hasn’t caught up to this faster-paced media consumption. Artists like Nardo, who has exhibited at multiple Bitcoin Conference galleries, make work that engages adult audiences already fluent in that symbolic language. How does BrainSprout think about decoding imagery as a learned ability, and how does that approach differ for younger audiences who don’t yet have that context?
Bruce: We’re living in an era where symbols move at internet speed. Memes, icons, cultural references—they accumulate meaning almost instantly. But education hasn’t caught up. Most curricula still treat visual literacy as optional, an elective rather than a core skill. We try to slow that process down and teach people how to decode imagery, how to understand the structures beneath the surface. For young people especially, the challenge is different than it is for adults. Adults consuming Nardo’s work can appreciate the irony of a hand-painted meme. A twelve-year-old needs to first understand why something is funny, or persuasive, or manipulative—before they can begin to create on those terms themselves.
Bitcoin culture often talks about sovereignty—self-custody of your keys, verification over trust, personal responsibility for your financial future. But sovereignty isn’t just a financial concept. Alternative education models are gaining traction, from Austin’s Alpha School to the broader homeschooling movement, all rooted in a similar instinct: the idea that individuals and families should have more control over how knowledge is transmitted. Do you see a parallel between financial sovereignty and creative sovereignty?
Bruce: Absolutely. Creative literacy is a form of sovereignty. When you can interpret narratives, construct your own frameworks, and think independently, you’re less vulnerable to manipulation. That applies financially and culturally. There’s a reason library checkout data used to be monitored—what people read, what they choose to learn, is a form of power. We’re trying to give young people the tools to be literate not just in text, but in image, narrative, and financial systems. Those literacies reinforce each other.
The questions BrainSprout seems to be pointing to in its content — meaning, purpose, truth, how to live well — are the same questions that religious traditions, philosophy, and literature have grappled with for millennia. How do you navigate that territory, and how do you think about BrainSprout’s relationship to those traditions without being confined by any single one?
Bruce: We’re interested in the universal human questions—meaning, purpose, responsibility, truth. Those questions have been explored through religious traditions, philosophy, literature, and art for thousands of years. We draw from that broad heritage, but our focus is on cultivating thoughtful, grounded individuals who can navigate complexity—and also dream big. We’re not prescribing answers. We’re trying to build the kind of person who can sit with hard questions and not collapse into the first easy narrative that comes along.
Art historian and Bitcoin Magazine contributor Steven Reiss has argued that Bitcoin is the cultural consequence of ideas rehearsed for over a century — from Dada’s attack on institutional authority to the cypherpunks’ insistence on building systems beyond centralized control. There’s a through-line about resisting what you might call corporate flattening — algorithmic systems optimizing everything for speed and engagement at the expense of depth. Young people today are fully immersed in those systems. What role does creativity play in that environment?
Bruce: Creativity is a stabilizing force. When everything around you is optimized for speed and engagement, deep thinking becomes rare—and valuable. We’re trying to give students tools to step back, analyze the systems they’re embedded in, and build their own structures of meaning rather than passively consuming someone else’s. That’s not anti-technology. It’s about having the intellectual foundation to use technology intentionally rather than being used by it.
Much of BrainSprout’s visual content is produced by Bruce’s son Brucie Jr., who uses AI-assisted tools to build the imagery that accompanies the project’s educational mission — a detail that quietly underscores the whole premise. The next generation isn’t waiting to be taught how to create. They’re already building. Explore more of BrainSprout’s work atbrainsproutkids.com and on theirYouTube channel.
Crypto markets are in retreat during U.S. morning hours on Thursday, rapidly reversing yesterday’s strong gains.
Just under $67,000, bitcoin BTC$68,056.93 has pulled back more than 4% after touching $70,000 late on Wednesday. Ether (ETH) and solana (SOL) are showing similar declines.
The selloff comes alongside a 2% decline in the Nasdaq following Nvidia’s (NVDA) earnings last night. While Nvidia didn’t disappoint, investors are selling the news after the stock’s sizable run higher into the earnings event. NVDA is lower by 4.8%, with related names like Broadcom (AVGO), Micron (MU) and Intel (INTC) also sharply lower.
Curiously, the software names are nicely higher today, with the Software Sector ETF (IGV) ahead more than 2%. Bitcoin’s correlation with this embattled group has been well documented, but to BTC bulls’ chagrin, they apparently only move together when IGV heads lower.
A check of stocks finds Coinbase (COIN) down 1%, Strategy (MSTR) down 2.3%, and Galaxy Digital (GLXY) down 3%. Outperforming is stablecoin issuer Circle Financial (CRCL), up another 3.3% today, and bringing its two-day post-earnings advance to about 40%.
Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) extended their rally with a $507 million inflow on Wednesday, while ether added $157 million. XRP and solana also saw strong demand, marking a second consecutive all-green session for crypto ETFs. Crypto ETFs Post Second Straight All-Green Day Momentum returned in force. For the second straight session, capital poured into crypto […]
AXIOM EMPLOYEE ACCUSED OF ALLEGEDLY INSIDER TRAINING BY ZACHXBT: Blockchain sleuth ZachXBT said a senior employee at onchain trading platform Axiom Exchange allegedly abused internal access to user data to track private wallets and potentially trade memecoins using inside information. In a thread posted to X, ZachXBT said Broox Bauer, a New York-based senior business development employee at Axiom, used internal dashboards to look up sensitive user information — including linked wallet addresses — and shared that data with a small group that mapped trades of prominent crypto influencers. Axiom, founded in 2024 by Mist and Cal and a member of Y Combinator’s Winter 2025 cohort, has generated more than $390 million in revenue to date, according to the investigator. ZachXBT said he was retained to investigate allegations that internal tools were being misused. He did not say who retained him. In audio clips shared in the thread, a person said to be Bauer allegedly claims he can track “any Axiom user” by referral code, wallet address or UID and “find out anything to do with that person.” In the same recording, he describes initially researching 10–20 wallets and gradually increasing activity “so it does not look that suspicious.” — Oliver Knight Read more.
EF ‘STRAWMAP’ ROADMAP RELEASED: Ethereum Foundation published a roadmap that reads like it’s building for the next decade, not surviving the current quarter. The document, called the “strawmap” and released Wednesday by EF researcher Justin Drake, lays out a plan for seven hard forks through 2029. Hard forks are network-wide software upgrades that every node must implement or get left behind, making them the highest-stakes type of change Ethereum can make. The plan is organized around five goals described as “north stars.” These include a faster layer 1 with transaction finality in seconds; dramatically higher layer-1 throughput capable of around 10,000 transactions per second (referred to as “gigagas” scale); Layer-2 networks reaching “teragas” levels of throughput, or roughly 10 million TPS; post-quantum cryptography and built-in privacy through shielded ETH transfers. — Shaurya Malwa Read more.
ROBINHOOD CHAIN TESTNET UPDATE: Robinhood’s (HOOD) testnet logged 4 million transactions in the first week its testnet chain went live, the investment platform’s CEO Vlad Tenev said on X. The Robinhood Chain, which focuses on tokenization and trading, comes as centralized exchanges are looking to build their own blockchain infrastructure even as the broader Ethereum ecosystem debates its future. “Developers are already building on our L2, designed for tokenized real world assets and onchain financial services,” Tenev wrote. Testnets are risk-free environments for developers to test code and experimental features before the mainnet goes live. The two stages of a network’s development can be compared to a flight simulator and a commercial flight. The Robinhood Chain’s testnet has arrived against the backdrop of a larger reckoning in the Ethereum world. Earlier this month, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin declared that the protocol’s long-held layer-2 (L2) rollup-centric roadmap “no longer makes sense,” arguing that many rollups have fallen short of full decentralization and that Ethereum’s base layer is scaling faster than expected. — Margaux Nijkerk Read more.
OPENAI DIPS ITS TOES INTO SMART CONTRACTS: OpenAI is stepping deeper into crypto security with the debut of EVMbench, a testing framework designed to measure how well artificial intelligence can understand and potentially secure smart contracts on Ethereum and similar blockchains. Smart contracts, the self-executing code deployed on blockchains like Ethereum, underpin decentralized exchanges, lending protocols and a wide range of onchain financial applications. Because these contracts are typically immutable once deployed, vulnerabilities can be serious. EVMbench is OpenAI’s attempt to see whether modern AI systems are up to the task of helping prevent those issues. Built in collaboration with crypto investment firm Paradigm, the benchmark draws on real-world smart contract vulnerabilities already uncovered through audits and security competitions. The system measures performance across three core abilities: identifying security bugs, exploiting those bugs in a controlled environment and fixing the vulnerable code without breaking the contracts. OpenAI says the goal is to establish a clear standard for evaluating AI systems in blockchain security, especially as decentralized finance continues to secure billions of dollars in user funds. The stakes for smart contracts are only rising. — Margaux Nijkerk Read more.
In Other News
Meta, the U.S. tech giant helmed by Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg, aims to enter the stablecoin space later this year, pending successful integration with a third-party firm to facilitate payments using the dollar-pegged token technology, according to three people familiar with the plans. The tech giant, which owns Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram and has more than 3 billion users, wants to begin its stablecoin integration early in the second half of this year, said one of the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the plans are not public. Meta is planning to integrate a vendor to help administer stablecoin-backed payments and implement a new wallet, the person said. A second person said that Meta has sent out a request for product (RFP) to third-party firms and mentioned Stripe as a likely candidate for piloting the stablecoin. Introducing stablecoins would let Meta open payment rails to its massive user base while bypassing expensive traditional banking fees, and potentially position it as a global leader in “social commerce” and cross-border remittances. — Ian Allison Read more.
American Bitcoin (ABTC), the bitcoin mining company backed by the family of President Donald Trump, said it lost $59 million in the fourth quarter as the plummeting price of the largest cryptocurrency eroded the value of its holdings. The company, which went public in September, less than a month before the largest cryptocurrency hit a record high, is pursuing a dual strategy of mining and purchases, with roughly one-third of its BTC coming from mining operations. The rest comes from open-market purchases and strategic transactions, funded in large part by selling stock. The company, which is 20% owned by Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr, generated $150.5 million through an at-the-market stock offering during the quarter. The capital allowed it to boost its per-share bitcoin exposure by nearly 50%. It now holds more than 6,000 BTC, it said. During the quarter, it mined bitcoin at a 53% gross margin, suggesting production costs were significantly below spot prices even as the price of the cryptocurrency fell. Revenue rose 22% from the third quarter. — Francesco Rodrigues & James Van Straten Read more.
Regulatory and Policy
The Indiana state legislature authorized public retirement and savings plans to gain exposure to digital assets and spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs), while affirming residents’ access to crypto investments. Governor Mike Braun is expected to sign HB 1042 into law within the next 10 days. Indiana joins at least seven other states, including Wyoming, Wisconsin, Michigan and Arizona, that have moved to integrate crypto-linked products into public investment frameworks. Almost half of the state governments in the U.S. are either on a path toward putting some of their money into crypto or already have, with much of this trend developing since President Donald Trump directed his administration to establish a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve. — Olivier Acuna Read more.
The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned a Russian company, Operation Zero, and the individuals behind it, including Sergey Sergeyevich Zelenyuk, after accusing them of buying stolen cyber tools for millions in cryptocurrency and reselling those technologies, which were created for U.S. government use. The tools were said to be originally stolen by an Australian national, Peter Williams, who once worked at the defense contractor that made the national-security focused software “for the exclusive use of the U.S. government and select allies.” Williams pleaded guilty last year to selling trade secrets. “Treasury will continue to work alongside the rest of the Trump Administration to protect sensitive American intellectual property and safeguard our national security,” said Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent in a statement. Zelenyuk and the others are said to be the first people to be sanctioned under the Protecting American Intellectual Property Act. — Jesse Hamilton Read more.
Calendar
Mar. 24-26, 2026: Digital Asset Summit, New York City
Mar. 30-Apr. 2, 2026: EthCC, Cannes
Apr.15-16, 2026: Paris Blockchain Week, Paris
Apr. 29-30, 2026: Token2049, Dubai
May 5-7, 2026: Consensus, Miami
Sept. 29-Oct.1, 2026: Korea Blockchain Week, Seoul
