On March 2, 2026, Elliptic reported that crypto outflows from Iran's largest exchange Nobitex surged 700% following US and Israel airstrikes. Elliptic's co-founder Tom Robinson says the spike may signal capital moving out of Iran via crypto channels. Nobitex, which has over 11 million users and handled $7.2 billion in transactions last year, has seen repeated outflow surges in response to protests, internet outages and new US sanctions.

On March 2, 2026, U.S. stock futures fell more than 1% as traders reacted to weekend military strikes by the United States and Israel against Iran and a sharp move in oil. Crude prices jumped about 8%, boosting defense and energy shares while pressuring airlines and cruise lines, and raising concerns that an extended energy shock could undermine expectations for Federal Reserve rate cuts in 2026. Gold advanced and long-term Treasury yields slid to an 11‑month low as investors shifted toward perceived safe‑haven assets.

On March 2, 2026, Nasdaq submitted a proposed rule change to the US SEC to introduce and trade Outcome-Related Options. The contracts would pay a fixed amount between $0.01 and $1.00 depending on whether the underlying settlement price finishes relative to a preset strike, mirroring structures used by prediction markets such as Polymarket and Kalshi. The initiative comes as other derivatives venues explore similar all-or-nothing products and as regulators weigh jurisdictional questions around prediction markets.

Northern Trust Asset Management has introduced a tokenized share class for its NIF Treasury Instruments Portfolio, entering the digital assets arena with a blockchain-based ownership mirror. The fund continues to invest in short-term US Treasurys and seeks to maintain a $1.00 per-share value, while nearly $11 billion in US Treasury debt is now represented on public blockchains. The new share class will initially be available via BNY's LiquidityDirect platform, which runs on Goldman Sachs' Digital Asset Platform.

CME Group reported that with the launch of Cardano, Chainlink and Stellar token futures in February 2025, its crypto derivatives now reference more than 75% of total market capitalization. The firm said average daily open interest in its broader cryptocurrency suite, which also includes BTC, ETH, SOL and XRP contracts, was close to $25 billion in 2025, alongside a record average daily volume of 278,300 contracts worth about $12 billion notionally.

On Monday, Nasdaq was reported to have asked the SEC to approve new yes-or-no binary options contracts tied to the Nasdaq 100 Index and its micro version. The proposed "Outcome Related Options" would trade between $0.01 and $1 in a structure similar to prediction markets such as Polymarket and Kalshi, and could bring event-style products directly into the listed equity index options market if approved.

ProCap Financial reported on Monday that it purchased 450 Bitcoin during the latest market pullback, raising its total holdings to 5,457 BTC while lowering its average cost per coin. Over the past 10 days, the Nasdaq-listed Bitcoin treasury firm also repurchased 782,408 shares at prices well below its net asset value in an effort to shrink the discount between market price and underlying assets.

On March 1, 2026, a fire triggered by external impacts at an Amazon Web Services data center in the Middle East led to a full power shutdown in ME-CENTRAL-1 and ME-SOUTH-1, disrupting services such as Claude, ChatGPT and AWS Bedrock. AWS reports that restoration will take many hours as teams await fire department clearance and assess potential storage damage, while investors react to regional military tensions with higher oil and gold prices and renewed gains in major cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana.