Bitcoin price traded at $74,000 as investors braced for Jerome Powell’s post-FOMC speech that could see volatile swings toward key BTC price levels. Bitcoin (BTC) traded at $74,000 on Wednesday, 2.6% below its six-week high of $76,000 reached on Tuesday, as traders brace for volatility following the US interest rate decision. Key takeaways: The odds of the US Federal Reserve leaving interest rates unchanged today are 100%. Read more
Ethereum’s FCR aims to reduce bridge times by up to 98%, bringing L1-to-L2 and exchange deposits down to 13 seconds without a hard fork. Ethereum client teams are testing an opt-in fast confirmation mechanism that could cut the time some layer-2 networks and exchanges wait to recognize mainnet deposits to about 13 seconds. The proposed Fast Confirmation Rule (FCR) would reduce “deposit time from Ethereum L1 to L2s or exchanges to about 13 seconds, an 80-98% reduction for most L2s and exchanges,” Ethereum researcher Julian Ma wrote on X. Most users today rely on canonical bridges, where transfers typically wait for multiple block confirmations or full finality, a process that can take around 13 minutes. However, many exchanges and L2s do not wait for finality, instead relying on “k-deep” confirmation rules, which offer no formal guarantees. In k-deep confirmation, a transaction is considered finalized only after k blocks (with k being a specific number). Read more
US spot Bitcoin ETFs draw $1.2 billion over seven days, far short of October 2025’s nine-day $6 billion streak, as XRP ETFs turn green. US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) extended their inflow streak to seven consecutive days, marking the longest run since October 2025. Spot Bitcoin (BTC) ETFs added $199.4 million on Tuesday, bringing their seven-day streak to around $1.2 billion, according to data from SoSoValue. The latest inflows suggest continued institutional interest, though total inflows remain far below the roughly $6 billion seen during the October 2025 run. Total trading volumes fell to $2.6 billion on Tuesday, while total assets under management in Bitcoin ETFs climbed to $96.7 billion. Net year-to-date flows remain negative, following $1.8 billion in cumulative monthly outflows and $1.7 billion in cumulative inflows. Read more
Online shopping was the leading real-world use case for crypto among Australians, followed by paying for services such as freelancing and video game purchases. More Australians reported using cryptocurrency to pay for goods and services in 2026 compared to the year before, but banking friction has continued to weigh on crypto users, according to a new report by crypto exchange Independent Reserve. The annual survey of 2,000 “everyday Australians” was conducted between Jan. 12 and Jan. 30. It found that the share of Australians using crypto to buy goods or pay for services doubled from 6% to 12%, with the report suggesting “more Aussies are viewing crypto as a practical payment method rather than just a speculative bet.” Read more
The Senate Banking Committee has been looking to advance its crypto market structure bill since postponing a markup in January. US Senator Tim Scott says he expects a possible compromise this week on a stablecoin yield payments provision that has stalled a crypto market structure bill in the Senate. “I believe that this week we will have the first proposal in my hands to take a look at,” Scott, the chair of the Senate Banking Committee that is working to advance the bill, said on Tuesday at a crypto lobby event in Washington, D.C. “If that actually happens before the end of this week, and I think that it will [...] I think we’re going to be in much better shape,” he added. Read more
Spikes in large deposits to exchanges have been associated with increased selling pressure, according to analysts at CryptoQuant. Centralized crypto exchanges recorded a spike in hourly Bitcoin inflows on Monday as the crypto market rallied, with one analyst warning it could signal selling pressure. Hourly Bitcoin flows into exchanges spiked to 6,100 BTC on March 16, the highest since Feb. 20, reported head of research at CryptoQuant, Julio Moreno, on Tuesday. He added that the share of large inflows reached 63% of total inflows, which is the highest since mid-October 2025. Read more