Coindesk

The Strategy (MSTR) bitcoin (BTC) acquisition machine continued to roll on last week.

The company added 22,048 BTC for $1.92 billion, or an average price of $86,969 each, per a Monday morning filing. Total holdings are now 528,185 bitcoin purchased for $35.63 billion, or an average price of $67,458 each.

At the current price around $82,000, those holdings are worth more than $43 billion.

This latest purchase appeared to be funded mostly by additional common share issuance, a total of $1.2 billion worth in the week ended March 30, according to the filing. Strategy also tapped its STRK preferred share ATM for $18.52 million during the week.

The company additionally closed on its STRF preferred share offering last week, raising $711.2 million.

MSTR is lower by 4% premarket alongside bitcoin’s roughly 3% decline in price since the Friday close of the stock market.

Darknet markets are increasingly returning to bitcoin (BTC) as their primary cryptocurrency because of rising liquidity and accessibility challenges associated with privacy-focused coins like monero (XMR), according to Eric Jardine, cybercrime research lead at Chainalysis.

“After major exchanges delisted XMR, we observed a significant increase in bitcoin inflows,” Jardine said in an interview with CoinDesk. “Reduced accessibility is steering users back toward bitcoin.”

Many Western markets on the darknet — a part of the internet hosted within an encrypted network and accessible only through specialized anonymity-providing tools — had either fully moved to monero or operated with it in parallel with bitcoin before the delistings. XMR dropped off after it was removed from major exchanges.

OKX removed XMR and other privacy-focused tokens including dash (DASH) and ZCash (ZCH) at the end of 2023. Binance announced in February 2024 that it planned to de-list monero.

“When a coin or token no longer meets this standard, or the industry changes, we conduct a more in-depth review and potentially delist it,” Binance said at the time.

On-chain data from BitInfoCharts shows that the daily number of monero transactions has halved from this time last year.

“In order to be an effective kind of medium of exchange, you need a certain amount of liquidity and a certain amount of accessibility,” Jardine said.

Jardine emphasized that illicit cryptocurrency transactions represent only a minor share of total crypto activity.

“Typically, illicit transactions constitute at or below 1% of total crypto activities. While addressing these issues is essential, broadly labeling crypto negatively is inaccurate and counterproductive.”

Chainalysis data shows that about 0.14% of all transactions in crypto, some $50 billion, involve illicit activity, with a rise in stablecoins as an illicit payment mechanism.

The stablecoin issuers are fighting back, with the Tron-led T3 Financial Crime Unit, a group comprising of Tron, USDT-issuer Tether and TRM Labs freezing over $100 million in illict funds.

Jardine also noted that law-enforcement agencies prioritize darknet markets primarily based on their scale and involvement in the fentanyl trade.

Its presence significantly escalates the likelihood of a darknet market attracting law enforcement attention, he said, because fighting the drug is a priority for international law enforcement.

“Markets have sort of varying levels of sensitivity to fentanyl-related sales,” he said. “Some claim they don’t do it, then don’t police vendors; some claim they don’t do it, but then they do. Some will be selling precursor products but not finished products.”

Indeed, one of the most recent darknet market busts was the Nemesis online market. The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) specifically cited the market’s role in the fentanyl trade as a reason for the bust.

And, as a result, OFAC sanctioned a number of crypto wallets tied to its operator, Behrouz Parsarad: 44 BTC addresses and 5 XMR wallets.

Archax, a U.K.-regulated crypto exchange and custodian focusing on tokenized assets, has acquired a U.S. broker-dealer in an effort to enter the booming institutional market in the country after recent positive changes on the regulatory environment.

Globacap Private Markets Inc, a broker-dealer and alternative trading system (ATS) regulated by FINRA and the Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC), is being bought by Archax and being renamed to Archax Markets US.

The new entity will serve as the company’s foothold on American soil and serve the institutions and professional investors in the country, two Archax executives told CoinDesk.

Asset tokenization is a fast-growing sector in crypto as global banks, asset managers and digital asset firms are increasingly using blockchain rails to move traditional financial instruments. They do so to achieve operational efficiencies and speedier,around-the-clock settlements.

Just in the past weeks, asset manager Fidelity Investments filed to launch a tokenized money market fund and is reportedly working on issuing a stablecoin.

Derivatives exchange CME Group started tokenization tests with Google Cloud with plans to launch new services next year, while the New York Stock Exchange’s parent company partnered with Circle to explore services built on USDC stablecoin and tokenized fund USYC.

Archax specializes in the issuance, custody, and trading of tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), including money market funds, corporate bonds, carbon credits and uranium. For example, Archax’s recently-issued tokenized Treasury fund on XRP Ledger with asset manager Abrdn saw $45 million in deposits to become a top 10 product by assets under management, rwa.xyz data shows.

Archax has been exploring entering the U.S. market over the past years, but stayed on the sideline due to regulatory uncertainty, Graham Rodford, CEO of Archax, said in an interview with CoinDesk.

“Under this new administration, which seems to be more crypto positive, we are getting more interest from the U.S. as well, which obviously we can’t easily serve from the UK, so it makes sense for us strategically to go there,” Rodford said.

Archax also plans to expand its offerings to tokenized U.S. equities and bonds, building on its existing partnerships across several blockchains including Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, Hedera Hashgraph and XRP Ledger.

The firm’s U.S. entrance follows the recent purchase of a Spanish brokerage firm to expand services to the European Union, pending regulatory approvals.

By James Van Straten (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)

With trade tensions escalating, Asian and European stocks extended last week’s declines. Japan’s Nikkei 225 fell 4%, taking it into correction territory after dropping more than 10% from its record high and European indexes including the FTSE 100, DAX, and CAC 40 opened in the red alongside falling U.S. stock futures.

The backdrop is President Donald Trump’s new tariffs, set to be revealed to the world on April 2 in an event he has dubbed “Liberation Day.” The president plans to impose levies and tariffs on any country deemed to have an unfair trading relationship with the U.S.

“You’d start with all countries, so let’s see what happens,” Trump said, according to the Financial Times. His words suggest that while the tariffs may initially apply broadly, he is open to making concessions for some countries, the FT said.

On Friday, U.S. equities dropped after a hotter-than-expected reading in core PCE inflation, the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge. Market uncertainty may persist with the U.S. jobs report due Friday. Economists forecast the unemployment rate to rise to 4.2%, while nonfarm payrolls are projected at 128,000, down from 151,000 the previous month.

Gold is rallying on the back of this uncertainty, surging past $3,100 per ounce for the first time ever — up 1.2% on the day and nearly 20% year-to-date. Meanwhile, bitcoin (BTC) continues to struggle, hovering just above $80,000. It’s down more than 3% this month and 12% for the quarter, marking its worst performance since fourth-quarter 2022.

Then consider ether (ETH). The second-largest cryptocurrency has performed significantly worse than bitcoin this quarter, losing 46% in a slide that’s the worst since 2018. As a result, the ether-to-bitcoin ratio has dropped to 0.02195, marking its lowest level since May 2020. At that time, bitcoin was trading below $10,000, while ether hovered just above $200. Stay alert!

What to Watch

Crypto:

March 31: The dKargo (DKA) testnet will be going live

March 31: The Keeta (KTA) testnet will be going live.

March 31: PinLink (PIN), a RWA-tokenized DePIN platform, will launch on the Ethereum mainnet.

March 31: Terraform Labs, the firm behind the collapsed LUNA and UST tokens, will open the Crypto Loss Claims Portal. All claims must be submitted by 11:59 p.m. on April 30.

April 1: Metaplanet (3350) 10-for-1 stock split becomes effective.

April 1: ONINO (ONI) will have its mainnet launch.

April 2: XIONMarkets (XION) will have its mainnet launch.

April 5: The alleged birthday of Satoshi Nakamoto.

Macro

April 1, 4:30 a.m.: S&P Global releases (Final) U.K. March producer price index (PPI) data.

Manufacturing PPI Est. 44.6 vs. Prev. 46.9

April 1, 5:00 a.m.: Eurostat releases (Flash) eurozone March consumer price index (CPI) data.

Core Inflation Rate YoY Est. 2.5% vs. Prev. 2.6%

Inflation Rate MoM Prev. 0.4%

Inflation Rate YoY Est. 2.2% vs. Prev. 2.3%

Unemployment Rate Est. 6.2% vs. Prev. 6.2%

April 1, 9:00 a.m.: S&P Global releases Brazil March purchasing managers’ index (PMI) data.

Manufacturing PMI Prev. 53

April 1, 9:30 a.m.: S&P Global releases Canada March purchasing managers’ index (PMI) data.

Manufacturing PMI Prev. 47.8

April 1, 9:45 a.m.: S&P Global releases (Final) U.S. March purchasing managers’ index (PMI) data.

Manufacturing PMI Est. 49.8 vs. Prev. 52.7

April 1, 10:00 a.m.: The U.S. Department of Labor releases February JOLTs report (job openings, hires, and separations).

Job Openings Est. 7.68M vs. Prev. 7.74M

Job Quits Prev. 3.266M

April 1, 10:00 a.m.: The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) releases March U.S. manufacturing sector data.

ISM Manufacturing PMI Est. 50.3 vs. Prev. 50.3

April 2, 12:01 a.m.: The Trump administration’s reciprocal tariffs plan, announced Feb. 13, takes effect alongside a 25% tariff on imported automobiles and certain parts announced March 26.

Earnings (Estimates based on FactSet data)

No earnings due.

Token Events

Governance votes & calls

Arbitrum DAO is voting on converting 15 million ARB into stablecoins to be managed via a “33/33/33 split among Karpatkey, Avantgarde & Myso, and Gauntlet.” It’s also voting on allocating 10 million ARB into “on-chain strategies designed to generate yield while safeguarding the principal.” Voting ends April 3.

Sky DAO is discussing increasing the Smart Burn Engine (SBE) rate after a recent executive proposal “resulted in substantial increase to net revenue.”

March 31: A vote on a burn of 50 million CRO tokens is set to end.

March 31: GMX to hold a Community Call including a Q&A session and the presentation of proposals by potential bridging & messaging partners for GMX multi chain.

Unlocks

April 1: Sui (SUI) to unlock 2.03% of its circulating supply worth $143.15 million.

April 1: ZetaChain (ZETA) to unlock 6.05% of its circulating supply worth $12.85 million.

April 2: Ethena (ENA) to unlock 0.77% of its circulating supply worth $14.07 million.

April 3: Wormhole (W) to unlock 47.64% of its circulating supply worth $112.67 million.

April 9: Movement (MOVE) to unlock 2.04% of its circulating supply worth $20.23 million.

Token Listings

March 31: Kinto (K) to be listed on BingX, Gate.iom MEXC, Kraken, Hotcoin and others.

March 31: Binance to delist USDT, FDUSD, TUSD, USDP, DAI, AEUR, UST, USTC, and PAXG.

Conferences

CoinDesk’s Consensus is taking place in Toronto on May 14-16. Use code DAYBOOK and save 15% on passes.

April 2-3: Southeast Asia Blockchain Week 2025 Main Conference (Bangkok)

April 2-5: ETH Bucharest Conference & Hackathon (Romania)

April 3-6: BitBlockBoom (Dallas)

April 6-9: Hong Kong Web3 Festival

April 8-10: Paris Blockchain Week

April 10: Bitcoin Educators Unconference (Nashville)

April 15-16: BUIDL Asia 2025 (Seoul)

Token Talk

By Francisco Rodrigues

Token launchpad Pump.fun’s trading platform PumpSwap, which allows tokens to be traded on its own platform rather than on decentralized exchange Raydium, has traded a cumulative $2.6 billion since its March 20 debut, Dune data shows.

That makes it the Solana ecosystem’s No. 1 protocol in collected fees over the last 24 hours, bringing in $3.29 million, far above the runner-up, DEX aggregator Jupiter, with $2.47 million.

PumpSwap, Dune’s data shows, has had a total of 710,000 traders on the platform and more than 32.39 million swaps since its introduction, giving it a significant share of the Solana DEX ecosystem.

Yet the protocol faces headwinds with the slowdown of the Solana ecosystem’s activity as the memecoin trading frenzy cools. Artemis data shows daily active addresses on Solana for the year dropped from an 8.1 million peak to 4.2 million on March 29.

Derivatives Positioning

The total open interest on all instruments dropped to $101.3 billion, according to data from Laevitas, continuing its downward trend from last week.

The decline suggests a more cautious stance from market participants as they brace for a volatile week that includes the end of the quarter, anticipated announcements on tariffs from President Trump and the March jobs report on Friday.

In the past 24 hours, total liquidations amounted to $229.3 million, with long positions accounting for 79% of the total. Looking at the BTC/USDT liquidation heatmap on Binance, the largest immediate liquidation cluster lies at $81,200, totaling $27.5 million.

The next key clusters are located at $83,100 and $83,600, with liquidations totaling $25.5 million and $24.7 million, respectively. Both levels align closely with the CME gap created over the weekend.

Among tokens with more than $100 million in open interest, the biggest 24-hour increases were seen in EOS (+13.4%), PEPE (+8.99%), TON (+4.85%), and HYPE (+2.55%). The assets with the largest declines in open interest over the last 24 hours include SUI, TAO and NEAR, falling 10.8%, 8.53% and 7.89%, respectively.

Market Movements:

BTC is down 2.98% from 4 p.m. ET Friday at $81,535.28 (24hrs: -1.27%)

ETH is down 4.96% at $1,792.22 (24hrs: -1.3%)

CoinDesk 20 is down 4.98% at 2,447.78 (24hrs: -3.36%)

Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is down 7 bps at 2.93%

BTC funding rate is at 0.0114% (4.1709% annualized) on Binance

DXY is unchanged at 104.10

Gold is up 1.3% at $3,126.50/oz

Silver is up 0.95% at $34.97/oz

Nikkei 225 closed -4.05% at 35,617.56

Hang Seng closed -1.31% at 23,119.58

FTSE is down 0.92% at 8,579.15

Euro Stoxx 50 is down 1.22% at 5,266.50

DJIA closed on Friday -1.69% at 41,583.90

S&P 500 closed -1.97% at 55,80.94

Nasdaq closed -2.7% at 17,322.99

S&P/TSX Composite Index closed -1.6% at 24,759.20

S&P 40 Latin America closed -1.52% at 2,429.43

U.S. 10-year Treasury rate is down 1 bps at 4.2%

E-mini S&P 500 futures are down 0.97% at 5,568.25

E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are down 1.39% at 19,187.50

E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are down 0.63% at 41,588.00

Bitcoin Stats:

BTC Dominance: 62.36 (0.24%)

Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.02196 (0.09%)

Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 835 EH/s

Hashprice (spot): $45.7

Total Fees: 6.8 BTC / $589,342

CME Futures Open Interest: 142,520 BTC

BTC priced in gold: 26.3 oz

BTC vs gold market cap: 7.45%

Technical Analysis

XRP, one of the year’s better-performing major altcoins, is again nearing a critical support zone between $1.95 and $2.05.

This region has consistently acted as a strong demand area, with buyers stepping in multiple times over the past four months.

Adding to its significance, the zone aligns with the 2021 all-time high and is now further supported by the daily 200 exponential moving average, which is also gradually converging toward this level.

Acceptance below this key level is likely to result in a larger expansion to the downside, given the loss of a key level that has reliably held as support for several months.

Crypto Equities

Strategy (MSTR): closed on Friday at $289.41 (-10.84%), down 3.49% at $279.38 in pre-market

Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $173.93 (-7.77%), down 3.2% at $168.37

Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$16.45 (-5.68%)

MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $12.47 (-8.58%), down 3.69% at $12.01

Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $7.41 (-4.63%), down 2.97% at $7.19

Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $7.48 (+3.28%), down 3.74% at $7.20

CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $7.19 (-8.29%), down 3.62% at $6.93

CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $13.13 (-6.48%), down 2.51% at $12.80

Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $36.86 (-0.16%), down 5.83% at $34.71

Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $47.84 (-8.49%), unchanged in pre-market

ETF Flows

Spot BTC ETFs:

Daily net flow: -$93.2 million

Cumulative net flows: $36.33 billion

Total BTC holdings ~ 1,121 million.

Spot ETH ETFs

Daily net flow: $4.7 million

Cumulative net flows: $2.42 billion

Total ETH holdings ~ 3.409 million.

Source: Farside Investors

Overnight Flows

Chart of the Day

Both bitcoin and ether are on track to post their steepest quarterly slides since second-quarter 2022.

While You Were Sleeping

Japan Mulls Reclassifying Crypto as a ‘Financial Product’ to Curb Insider Trading: Report (CoinDesk): Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) is reportedly planning to submit amendments to the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act to the parliament as early as 2026.

‘No DOGE in D.O.G.E.’, Says Dogecoin Proponent Elon Musk (CoinDesk): Speaking at an America PAC town hall in Wisconsin on Sunday, Musk said there were no plans to use memecoin dogecoin (DOGE) for government operations.

Bitcoin Nears $81K; XRP, ADA Slide as Traders Brace for Tariff War Escalation (CoinDesk): Bitcoin hovered above $81,500 as major cryptocurrencies lost steam; XRP and ADA fell 5%, while SOL, DOGE and ETH dropped 2%-3%.

China’s Big State Banks to Get $71.6 Billion Capital Injection (The Wall Street Journal): The Finance Ministry will directly buy nearly 500 billion yuan ($71.6 billion) in new shares to boost lending amid falling margins and bad loans.

Germany’s Spending Push Drives Up Borrowing Costs Across Eurozone (Financial Times): Higher government bond yields across the euro area are raising debt concerns for countries like France and Italy, despite steady spreads and a firmer euro reflecting lingering investor optimism.

Greenland’s Prime Minister Says the U.S. Will Not ‘Get’ the Island (The New York Times): In a Facebook post on Sunday, Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen rejected President Trump’s Saturday claim in an NBC interview that the U.S. will “get” Greenland.

In the Ether

AUSTRAC, Australia’s anti-money laundering watchdog, put crypto ATM providers on notice for not complying with required standards.

“AUSTRAC’s cryptocurrency taskforce has found that some crypto ATM providers may not have the right anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism (AML/CTF) checks in place,” the financial intelligence agency said in a release on Monday.

Crypto ATM providers need to register with the regulator, monitor transactions and complete know your customer checks to comply with the country’s Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing (AML/CTF) Act 2006.

Australia has the highest numbers of crypto ATMs in the Asia Pacific region, and the number is growing. The nation has some 1,600 in use, up from just 23 in 2019, AUSTRAC said.

A task force set up in December “identified worrying trends and indicators of suspicious activity, including transactions that may be linked to scams or fraud,” CEO Brendan Thomas said.

The watchdog has been following in the footsteps of U.K. regulators in trying to clamp down on illegal crypto ATM activity. In the U.K. only approved crypto ATMS can operate, and none have been. The Financial Conduct Authority last month secured a four year sentence against Olumide Osunkoya, 46, for illegally operating a crypto ATM network.

CoinShares’ Valkyrie Bitcoin Mining (WGMI) exchange-traded fund (ETF) is the worst-performing ETF of 2025, down 43% year-to-date, according to Senior Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas.

The ETF is made up of several publicly traded bitcoin (BTC) miners. IREN (IREN) is the largest holding at 15%, which is down 42%. Core Scientific (CORZ) follows with a 14% weighting and a 48% decline, while Cipher Mining (CIFR), the third-largest holding at 9.6%, is down 52%. Even NVIDIA (NVDA), the sixth-largest holding at 5%, has dropped over 20% this year.

According to its investment strategy, “The ETF will invest in companies that derive at least 50% of their revenue or profits from bitcoin mining operations and/or from providing specialized chips, hardware, software, or other services to companies engaged in bitcoin mining.” WGMI consists of 21 holdings and manages $147.2 million in total assets.

In contrast, metals ETFs have been the top performers of 2025, according to justETF. Several gold mining ETFs rank in the top five, with the Equity World Basic Materials DAXglobal Gold Miners ETF up 38% year-to-date.

Bitcoin miners have faced significant challenges this year, as the network hash rate—representing the computational power required to mine bitcoin—continues to climb, hovering near all-time highs around 832 EH/s. This has created a notable divergence between bitcoin’s price and the hash rate.

As a result, mining difficulty has also remained close to its peak, making it harder for miners to successfully mine new bitcoins. At the same time, transaction fees are extremely low, further squeezing miner profitability as rewards from processing transactions remain minimal.

The Trump family is deepening its involvement in cryptocurrency with a major move into bitcoin (BTC) mining, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. are merging their firm, American Data Centers, with a new mining venture called American Bitcoin, taking a 20% stake in the company. The remaining 80% will be owned by Hut 8, a publicly traded crypto infrastructure firm, which is contributing nearly 61,000 mining machines to the new entity. According to the report, no cash changed hands in the deal.

Eric Trump, who will serve as American Bitcoin’s chief strategy officer, describes the initiative as aligned with the family’s focus on hard assets, likening digital currencies to real estate. He emphasized plans to build a “bitcoin reserve” and potentially take the company public.

Although American Bitcoin is separate from the Trump Organization, it may eventually collaborate with World Liberty Financial—the DeFi project launched by the Trump brothers.

Hut 8 will host the mining operations in its 11 U.S. data centers. CEO Asher Genoot said low energy costs and scalable infrastructure will give American Bitcoin a competitive edge.

The board of directors will include Tinder co-founder Justin Mateen and FabFitFun co-founder Michael Broukhim. Despite criticism over bitcoin mining’s environmental impact, Eric Trump believes lower U.S. energy costs will help American miners outpace global competitors.

Disclaimer: Parts of this article were generated with the assistance from AI tools and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and adherence to our standards. For more information, see CoinDesk’s full AI Policy.

Ether (ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency, has dropped 39% this year relative to bitcoin (BTC), the largest, taking the ratio between the two to the lowest in almost five years.

At the current level, 1 ETH is the equivalent of 0.02191 BTC. That’s the least since May 2020, when ether was trading around $200 and bitcoin just under $10,000. Today the ETH price is about $1,800 and the BTC price around $82,000.

The underperformance is notable because it’s the first time ether has weakened against bitcoin in the 12 months after a BTC reward halving. On April 20, 2024, the payment Bitcoin miners received for confirming blocks on the blockchain was reduced by 50% to 3.125 BTC.

In previous halving cycles, ether outperformed bitcoin in the first year after a halving. This time, the ratio has dropped by more than 50%.

This relative performance also marks one of ether’s worst quarterly performances against bitcoin in several years, according to data from Glassnode. The last time ether underperformed bitcoin to a similar degree was in the third quarter of 2019, when the ratio dropped to 0.0164, a quarterly decline of 46%.

This current slump mirrors the underperformance seen in 2019 and further highlights ether’s relative weakness, especially when compared to other layer-1 assets. The SOLETH ratio — measuring the value of Solana’s SOL relative to ether — is up 24% year-to-date to 0.07007. This indicates that SOL has significantly outperformed ether in 2025, despite the token itself itself being down 35% year-to-date.

Faint hopes of dogecoin (DOGE) being included in the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E.) were dented on Sunday as the department’s figurehead Elon Musk squashed any plans of adding the memecoin.

“There are no plans for the government to use dogecoin or anything,” Musk said during a speech at the America PAC town hall in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

“I was going to call it Government Efficiency Commission, but that’s a super boring name. Then the internet said it needs to be the Department of Government Efficiency. I was like Internet is right,” he added.

DOGE prices are down 3.5% in the past 24 hours, in line with a broader market drop. While there have been no firm plans to include the token in the controversial non-governmental agency, its introduction in August had sparked several namesake tokens and birthed the start of a multi-month rally in dogecoin.

The official site even sported a dogecoin logo for a few hours on the day after Trump’s inauguration, giving more credence to rumors of the joke token playing a role in the new agency.

D.O.G.E seeks to make government spending of taxpayer money more efficient while streamlining departments that handle spending. It has saved an estimated $130 billion after a formal start in January, data shows, with an average $840 saving for taxpayers.

Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) plans to reclassify cryptocurrencies as financial products under new rules, aimed at curbing insider trading in the digital asset market, per a Nikkei report on Sunday.

The move comes as part of a broader effort to strengthen oversight in Japan’s crypto ecosystem, which has witnessed growing adoption alongside a rise in fraudulent activities.

The FSA intends to submit amendments to the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act (FIEA) to Japan’s parliament as early as 2026, following a detailed review conducted by experts behind closed doors.

Cryptocurrencies are currently categorized as a “means of settlement” under the Payment Services Act, a designation that has governed their use primarily as a payment tool rather than as investment vehicles.

However, this existing classification has left gaps in regulatory oversight, particularly concerning activities like insider trading.

As such, specific details about the insider trading rules — such as what constitutes insider information in the crypto context or the penalties for violations — have not yet been disclosed, leaving room for further clarification as the proposal takes shape.