Indiana Governor Mike Braun signed House Bill 1042 into law on March 3 after the measure cleared both chambers on Feb. 25, authorizing specific state retirement and savings plans to include at least one crypto investment product via a self-directed brokerage option. The law mandates that plan administrators provide access to crypto-linked offerings by July 1, 2027, while also prohibiting special state and local taxes or fees on lawful crypto payments and self-custodied assets.

At the Bitcoin Investor Week Conference in New York in February, former Trump crypto advisor David Bailey argued that the U.S. government must go further than simply supporting Bitcoin in words. He highlighted that, despite Trump signing an executive order for a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve in March 2025 and the U.S. holding 378,372 BTC worth about $22.48 billion, meaningful policy action has lagged. Bailey added that Bitcoin will ultimately succeed with or without U.S. help, but real progress requires political capital and broader voter ownership of BTC.

Analyst Anndy Lian has questioned whether wrapping real-world assets into tokens delivers true crypto benefits or simply introduces extra intermediaries and expenses. Despite these concerns, the tokenized RWA market has reached $26 billion with 657K asset holders, supported by firms such as BlackRock and platforms including Robinhood and Hyperliquid. The sector's resilience during broader crypto weakness suggests continued demand even as critics warn of higher operational friction.

Bitcoin is trading with elevated volatility around the $66,000–$66,800 zone as geopolitical tensions weigh on global risk sentiment. On-chain data indicates roughly 13,500 BTC have flowed out of Binance since February 21, pointing to possible large-holder accumulation while price remains capped below $69,000. Exchange-wide outflows have stayed negative for several days, even as BTC consolidates between resistance at $68,000–$69,000 and support in the $63,000–$64,000 range.

Coinbase's x402 protocol, launched in May 2025, is an open-source web payment standard that lets AI agents and human users pay with stablecoins directly over the internet. By embedding onchain payment requests into HTTP interactions, it enables fast, low-cost micropayments across networks like Base, Solana and Ethereum without traditional processors. Backed by firms including Cloudflare, Circle, Stripe and Amazon Web Services, x402 is already handling hundreds of millions of transactions for use cases ranging from pay-per-inference compute to metered web content.

On Tuesday, major U.S. equity benchmarks recovered from steep intraday declines, with the S&P 500 ending 0.9% lower after an earlier 2.5% plunge as conflict involving Iran and a spike in oil prices unnerved investors. Bitcoin traded around $68,000 after briefly touching $70,000 on Monday, while Brent crude surged above $87 per barrel and rate-cut expectations were pushed further out.

Australia could capture up to 24 billion Australian dollars ($17 billion) in yearly economic benefits from tokenized markets and digital assets if it advances regulation, according to a new report. The Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre projects that, without substantial changes, the country may realize only 1 billion Australian dollars ($710 million) in crypto-related gains by 2030. The report highlights regulatory uncertainty, coordination issues and limited scaling paths for pilots as key obstacles to unlocking this potential.

Large Ethereum holders recently withdrew over $12.5 million in ETH from exchanges and redeployed it into DeFi and leveraged positions, while price trades within a descending channel. Key resistance sits around $2,261, with derivatives open interest and top trader long exposure expanding and potentially amplifying volatility. If buyers can push ETH above this level with strength, leveraged longs and short liquidations could drive a sharper move.