Crypto Weekly 3/16/26
Bitcoin Touches $73K as Crypto Moves in Lockstep With Stocks, Prosecutors Plan to Retry Tornado Cash's Roman Storm, and a Crypto Whale Loses $50M to a Bad Swap
PRICE CHANGE: WTD/YTD
- Crypto Market Cap ($2.52T): +6% / -17%
- BTC ($71,743): +6% / -18%
- ETH ($2,131): +8% / -28%
- SOL ($89): +8% / -29%
- UNI ($4.02): +8% / -28%
- OP ($0.13): +9% / -52%
- COIN ($196): -1% / -14%
- Tether Mkt Cap ($184B): 0% / -2%
- USDC Mkt Cap ($79B): +2% / +4%
- BTC / ETH Dominance: 57% / 10%
THIS WEEK IN CRYPTO
- Bitcoin climbed back above $73,000 after a choppy week of trading that saw the cryptocurrency spike, retreat, and spike again, moving closely in step with U.S. equities with a correlation of 0.74, the highest level this year. Link. Link. Link.
- US Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he does expect the Clarity Act to clear the Senate Banking Committee before April. Link.
- A crypto whale lost nearly $50 million trying to swap USDT for Aave tokens, after trying to trade into a highly illiquid pool and facing massive slippage. Link. Link. Tweet.
- The US Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit voted 7-3 to deny Custodia’s Bank’s petition for a Federal Reserve master account, ending the crypto bank’s five-year effort to gain direct access to the federal payments system. Crypto exchange Kraken was recently approved for a limited-purpose master account. Link.
- US prosectors plan to retry Tornado Cash cofounder Roman Storm on money laundering and sanctions charges, after a jury failed to reach a verdict in his initial trial. Link.
- Analysts estimate Circle’s USDC stablecoin has 64% of market share vs Tether’s USDT stablecoin, when adjusting for transactions that appear to be real people or institutions moving money. Link.
- Weekly active crypto developers are down 50% over the past year, with weekly commits to open source repos down 75%. Link. Link.
- An oil-linked perpetual contract on Hyperliquid racked up more than $7.3 billion in trading volume in a few days, coinciding with a more than 30% spike in oil futures on traditional exchanges as escalating conflict in the Middle East rattled global supply chains. Link. Link.
- Bitcoin’s mined supply has surpassed 20 million BTC, with the remaining 1 million BTC to be mined over the next 114 years. Link.
- Dubai’s flagship crypto conference Token2049 scheduled for April has been postponed to 2027 due to the Iran war. Link.
- Hardware security provider Ledger identified a vulnerability in Android firmware that allows attackers to extract a device’s PIN and private keys for several crypto wallets. Link. Link.
- Mastercard launched a global Crypto Partner Program with companies including Binance, Circle, and PayPal to collaborate on future product development and enterprise use cases including cross-border remittances, B2B transfers, payouts, and settlement. Link. Link.
- BlackRock’s iShares Staked Ethereum Trust ETF (ETHB), its first crypto ETF to incorporate staking, received over $15.5 million in trading volume on its first day of trading. Link.
- The Ethereum Foundation brokered an over-the-counter sale of 5,000 ETH, worth approximately $10.2 million, to ethereum treasury company BitMine. Link.
- Nasdaq is working on a token design that gives companies more control over their shares in tokenized form, including proxy-related and corporate actions as well as governance rights. Link. Link.
- Decentralized lending protocol Aave experienced a temporary oracle malfunction, resulting in approximately $26 million worth of wstETH positions being unfairly liquidated. Link.
- Pump.fun became the first platform on Solana to surpass $1 billion in cumulative revenue since launching in early 2024. Link.
- The Ethereum Foundation published a new mandate outlining the organization’s mission of censorship resistance, open source, privacy and security. Link. Mandate.
- Wells Fargo applied for WFUSD trademark, for potential use in stablecoins. Link.
- Fake police officers held a French couple at knifepoint in Versailles for $1 million in bitcoin, the latest wrench attack in France. Link.



The stablecoin + regulation overlap in mid-March was dense. The GENIUS Act passing committee alongside the CFTC/SEC commodity ruling created a two-week window where the regulatory picture actually got clearer, which is unusual. Most of the mainstream coverage missed that the stablecoin bill’s committee vote was more significant than the Bitcoin price action that week. I covered this in my March 19 piece — the institutional positioning shift was the story, not the price.