Blorgg Honklorph Malfonxia (2025), a tokenised work by the artist duo LoVid But figures across the landscape of blockchain art argue that more than meets the eye is happening in this niche—it just takes a radical reorientation of perspective. The owners of Nifty Gateway, a once-popular NFT exchange launched in 2020, announced early this year that the platform would shut down for good on 23 February. Surrounding Nifty Gateway's closure, meanwhile, was the most severe sell-off in cryptocurrency history. None of this is good news for the blockchain art trade. “Galleries close and open over the years, and while most of these marketplaces and platforms did not operate as a gallery per se, the analogy is indicative of my expectation that changes happen within an active industry,” says Adam Heft Berninger, the founder of New York's technologically progressive Heft Gallery. Other experts chalk up Nifty Gateway's demise to more than just the organic churn of an evolving market. Muriel Quancard, an appraiser and consultant with a speciality in digital art, suggests the platform alienated many true believers in crypto art with its policies, such as muddying the on-chain provenance of NFTs minted there and discouraging users from moving their digital assets elsewhere. Complicating the reaction to Nifty Gateway's closure is what some insiders see as a larger, more fundamental misread. “People still talk about NFTs as if they're a single category,” Quancard says. Multiple experts agree that these works have value, including as markers of a particular cultural moment in historical and art-historical time. But they do not represent the totality of crypto-based art. Tali Hinkis and Kyle Lapidus, the artist duo known as LoVid, are one case in point. “With very few exceptions, the model of marketplaces and platforms doesn't work for us,” they say. “Recently, we also have been including NFTs as certificates of authenticity combined with paintings, photographs and video,” they write. Quancard also notes that several other “ecosystems” for NFTs and generative art are not only still active but “more artist-friendly” than Nifty Gateway, including OpenSea, Feral File and Tezos. With lessons learnt from NFTs, expert calls for legal guardrails to allow “trinity” of blockchain, responsible AI and smart contracts to launch an “automated economy” Hirst launches the Palm platform with a drop of 10,000 works on paper linked to NFTs that “explore the boundaries of art and currency”

Bloomberg Intelligence senior commodity strategist Mike McGlone, who previously said bitcoin could drop to $10,000, is reiterating his call that bitcoin could still fall below that level, an outlook several market analysts said would require an extreme macroeconomic shock. In an interview with EllioTrades, McGlone said the crypto bear market may not be over and warned that bitcoin could remain vulnerable if global risk assets reprice sharply. McGlone's forecast was met with rebuttals from several market analysts who said that while they agree a further downside for bitcoin BTC$70,841.48 is possible, a drop to $10,000 would likely require an extraordinary global liquidity event. BTC's price rise appeared to coincide with oil quickly reversing most of its session's large gains, dropping $3 per barrel in minutes. Other crypto assets, including ether (ETH), solana (SOL) and XRP, also saw upward moves. He believes bitcoin has increasingly traded in tandem with other speculative assets as institutional participation in crypto markets has grown, weakening the narrative that crypto serves as an uncorrelated hedge against traditional markets. According to McGlone, the crypto sector remains trapped in a broader macroeconomic unwind driven by deflationary pressures, excess speculative supply and what he sees as an unfinished correction in traditional risk markets. Jonatan Randin, senior market analyst at PrimeXBT, also said bitcoin could see further downside but described the $10,000 prediction as highly improbable. “There will always be analysts calling for extreme price targets during a bear market,” Randin said. “You're going to remain in a bear market until the primary trend shifts.” In the shorter term, however, he expects bitcoin to remain largely range-bound between $60,000 and $70,000, warning that even a rally toward $80,000 could prove temporary if broader macro pressures persist. Greenspan said identifying an exact market bottom is difficult, but he noted that bitcoin may have already completed its major bear-market correction. “Trying to pick an exact bottom is a fool's errand,” he said. We're currently looking at roughly a 50% retracement from the all-time high, which is not unusual for bitcoin.” Read more: Next week could spice things up for bitcoin as seven central banks face an inflation test Wednesday morning's U.S. inflation data was in line with forecasts, and markets continue to price out any chance of a Fed rate cut at either the March or April meetings. Disclosure & Polices: CoinDesk is an award-winning media outlet that covers the cryptocurrency industry. CoinDesk is part of Bullish (NYSE:BLSH), an institutionally focused global digital asset platform that provides market infrastructure and information services.

Global payments giant Mastercard has launched a new Crypto Partner Program. It brings together more than 85 companies across the digital asset ecosystem as the firm expands efforts to integrate blockchain technology into global payment infrastructure. The initiative aims to create a collaboration platform for crypto-native firms, payment providers, and financial institutions working on digital asset products. Through the program, participants will engage with Mastercard teams to help shape future blockchain-based payment solutions and explore ways to integrate digital assets with existing financial rails. Mastercard said the program is designed to support the next phase of digital asset adoption, as crypto technologies increasingly move from experimental use cases toward practical financial applications. Participants will work with Mastercard on potential products designed to support use cases such as digital asset payments, settlement services, and cross-border transactions. Mastercard executives said the program reflects the growing need for coordination between traditional financial institutions and companies building blockchain-based financial services. The firm has spent several years expanding its presence in the digital asset sector through partnerships, pilot programs, and startup initiatives focused on blockchain infrastructure. Mastercard's announcement comes as stablecoins play a growing role in global crypto payment infrastructure. Data from DefiLlama shows the total stablecoin market capitalization has climbed to more than $314 billion as of March 2026. Stablecoins are increasingly used for cross-border payments, trading settlement, and on-chain financial transactions. The expansion of the stablecoin market has drawn increasing attention from traditional financial institutions seeking to integrate blockchain-based settlement into existing payment networks. As stablecoin usage expands across financial applications, payment providers are exploring ways to combine blockchain infrastructure with established financial systems. Mastercard's latest initiative reflects a broader shift among major payment networks and financial technology firms toward integrating blockchain-based payment solutions. Industry players, including Visa, PayPal, and Stripe, have also launched digital asset initiatives to support crypto payments, stablecoin settlements, and blockchain-based financial services. By launching the Crypto Partner Program, Mastercard is positioning itself to collaborate more closely with companies building digital asset infrastructure while helping shape how blockchain technology integrates with global commerce. Stay on top of your crypto game with our easy-to-use calculators. Unlock the future with our AI-powered coin prediction tool! AMBCrypto was founded in 2018 with a mission to simplify and bring the latest blockchain and cryptocurrency news to our readers. We have quickly grown into the digital news source for an emerging generation of cryptocurrency enthusiasts, reaching more than a million readers on a monthly basis, across the globe. Trading, buying or selling cryptocurrencies should be considered a high-risk investment and every reader is advised to do their own research before making any decisions.

Mastercard has launched an initiative aimed at exploring the future of cryptocurrency payments. The company's Crypto Partner Program, announced Wednesday (March 11), brings together 85 different digital asset and payments companies, including high-profile players like Binance, Circle, Gemini, PayPal and Ripple. “Recognizing how much there is to learn from the innovators building on chain every day, the program will allow expertise and insights to flow both ways as we shape the future together,” Mastercard said in its announcement. The goal here is to meld innovation, consistent standards and responsible growth via a shared framework for collaboration, Mastercard said. “The focus is practical execution: translating technical innovation into scalable, compliant use cases that can operate across markets and integrate seamlessly into everyday commerce,” the company added. In related news, PYMNTS spoke recently with Mastercard Executive Vice President of Blockchain and Digital Assets Raj Dhamodharan about the question of whether stablecoins and crypto posed a threat to his company. Mastercard and the card networks, that report noted, have spent decades building an answer to the “last mile” problem in payments, with solutions like global acceptance, identity verification, fraud prevention, dispute resolution and compliance frameworks covering 210 countries. Dhamodharan's argument to PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster during an episode of the “From the Block” podcast is that stablecoins arrive without any of that institutional infrastructure. That means the last mile isn't a problem for Mastercard, but rather an opening. We're always on the lookout for opportunities to partner with innovators and disruptors. Mastercard Teams With Crypto Giants on Blockchain Payment Program Inflation Holds Steady as Consumers Use Installments for Everyday Spending How CFOs Convert Payments Data Into Growth Signals Using AI

Synchronizing a new node to the network tip involves several distinct stages: Header synchronization, block downloads and script verification can all occur concurrently on different threads. Bitcoin's “don't trust, verify” culture requires that the ledger can be rebuilt by anyone from scratch. This reproducibility is at the heart of Bitcoin's trust-minimized design, but it comes at a significant cost: after almost 17 years, this ever-growing database forces newcomers to do more work than ever before they can join the Bitcoin network. When bootstrapping a new node it has to download, verify, and persist every block from genesis to the current chain tip – a resource-intensive synchronization process called Initial Block Download (IBD). Valid-but-minor optimizations are often rejected as too risky relative to their benefit. We have a significant suite of micro-benchmarks to ensure existing functionality doesn't degrade in performance. These are useful for catching regressions, i.e. performance backslides in individual pieces of code, but aren't necessarily representative of overall IBD performance. Contributors proposing optimizations provide reproducers and measurements across different environments: operating systems, compilers, storage types (SSD vs HDD), network speeds, dbcache sizes, node configurations (pruned vs archival), and index combinations. We write single-use benchmarks and use compiler explorers for validating which setup would perform better in that specific scenario (e.g. intra-block duplicate transaction checking with Hash Set vs Sorted Set vs Sorted vector). This can be done by reindexing the chainstate and optionally the block index from local block files, or doing a full IBD either from local peers (to avoid slow peers affecting timings) or from the wider p2p network itself. IBD benchmarks often show smaller improvements than micro-benchmarks since network bandwidth or other I/O is often the bottleneck; downloading the blockchain alone takes ~16 hours with average global internet speeds. Early Bitcoin Core versions were designed for a much smaller blockchain. Originally the block index stored every historic transaction and whether they were spent, but in 2012, “Ultraprune” (PR #1677) created a dedicated database for tracking unspent transaction outputs, forming the UTXO set, which pre-caches the latest state of all spendable coins, providing a unified view for validation. Combined with a database migration from Berkeley DB to LevelDB validation speeds were significantly improved. However, this database migration caused the BIP50[1] chain fork when a block with many transaction inputs was accepted by upgraded nodes but rejected by older versions as being too complicated. This highlights how Bitcoin Core development differs from typical software engineering: even pure performance optimizations have the potential to result in unintended chain splits. Besides accelerating IBD it also eliminated wasted bandwidth on blocks that would be orphaned as they were not in the main chain. Today, with differential fuzzing, broad coverage, and stricter review discipline, Bitcoin Core surfaces and resolves issues far more quickly, with no comparable consensus hazards reported since. In 2017 -assumevalid (PR #9484) separated general block validity checks from the expensive signature verification, making the latter optional for most of IBD, cutting its time roughly in half. By designing specifically for Bitcoin's allocation patterns, it reduced memory waste and improved cache efficiency, delivering ~21% faster IBD while fitting more coins in the same memory footprint. While code itself doesn't rot, the system it operates within constantly evolves. Every 10 minutes Bitcoin's state changes – usage patterns shift, bottlenecks migrate. Maintenance and optimization aren't optional; without constant adaptation, Bitcoin would accumulate vulnerabilities faster than a static codebase could defend against, and IBD performance would steadily regress despite advances in hardware. Tasks that were once CPU-bound (like signature verification) are now often Input/Output (IO)-bound due to heavier chainstate access (having to check the UTXO set on disk). This shift has driven new priorities: improving memory caching, reducing LevelDB flush frequency, and parallelizing disk reads to keep modern multi-core CPUs busy. Bitcoin's deterministic workload allows us to measure actual behavior and course correct later, ensuring performance keeps pace with the network's growth. We're constantly adjusting defaults to better fit real-world usage patterns. Similarly, we can now flush the cache more frequently to disk (PR #30611), ensuring nodes never lose more than one hour of validation work in case of crashes. The modest overhead was acceptable because earlier optimizations had already made IBD significantly faster. PR #32043 currently serves as a tracker for IBD-related performance improvements. It groups a dozen ongoing efforts, from disk and cache tuning to concurrency enhancements, and provides a framework for measuring how each change affects real-world performance. This approach encourages contributors to present not only code but also reproducible benchmarks, profiling data, and cross-hardware comparisons. Currently, each input is fetched from the UTXO set sequentially – cache misses require disk round trips, creating an IO bottleneck. The PR introduces parallel fetching across multiple worker threads, achieving up to ~30% faster -reindex-chainstate (~10 hours on a Raspberry Pi 5 with 450MB dbcache). Besides IBD, PR #26966 parallelizes block filter and transaction index construction using configurable worker threads. Keeping the persisted UTXO set compact is critical for node accessibility. PR #33817 experiments with reducing it slightly by removing an optional LevelDB feature that might not be needed for Bitcoin's specific use case. SwiftSync[3] is an experimental approach leveraging our hindsight about historical blocks. Knowing the actual outcome, we can categorize every encountered coin by its final state at the target height: those still unspent (which we store) and those spent by that height (which we can ignore, merely verifying they appear in matching create/spend pairs anywhere). Pre-generated hints encode this classification, allowing nodes to skip UTXO operations for short-lived coins entirely. Beyond synthetic benchmarks, a recent experiment[4] ran the SwiftSync prototype on an underclocked Raspberry Pi 5 powered by a battery pack over WiFi, completing -reindex-chainstate of 888,888 blocks in 3h 14m. Measurements with equivalent configurations show a 250% full validation speedup[5] across recent Bitcoin Core versions. Years of accumulated work translate to genuine impact: fully validating nearly a million blocks can now be done in less than a day on cheap hardware, maintaining accessibility despite continuous blockchain growth. Don't miss your chance to own The Core Issue — featuring articles written by many Core Developers explaining the projects they work on themselves! All Pull Requests (PR) listed in this article can be looked up by number here: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pulls Bitcoin Magazine is published by BTC Inc., a subsidiary of Nakamoto Inc. (NASDAQ: NAKA).

The document lists several potential services tied to digital assets. The trademark also covers software capabilities linked to blockchain ecosystems. Registering a brand name gives companies the ability to develop services under a protected identity while internal development or regulatory discussions continue. The application mentions financial data feeds that could supply price information to smart contracts, along with systems that verify blockchain transactions and transmit data across decentralized networks. Authentication tools and blockchain-based data transmission services are also listed, indicating that the scope extends beyond simple trading interfaces. Such filings allow banks to secure branding for digital asset services while keeping flexibility over what products eventually reach the market. The trademark application arrives during a period when large financial institutions are paying closer attention to stablecoins and blockchain-based settlement systems. Several major US banks — including JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo — reportedly held discussions in 2025 about a possible joint stablecoin initiative. Stablecoins have gained traction in both crypto-native trading and cross-border payments because they allow digital transfers that remain linked to fiat currency values. As regulators develop frameworks for dollar-backed tokens, traditional financial institutions have begun exploring whether they should offer similar products or infrastructure. In many cases, these filings appear well before public product announcements. Rather than focusing solely on custody or trading, many institutions are reviewing payment rails, tokenization platforms and blockchain-based financial data systems. Earlier this year, Fidelity Digital Assets introduced the Fidelity Digital Dollar (FIDD), a US dollar-pegged stablecoin on Ethereum that is described as fully collateralized and redeemable at a one-to-one value with the dollar. Large banks operate under heavier regulatory requirements than most crypto-native companies, which means product development tends to move slowly and often begins with legal groundwork such as trademark filings. Even so, the number of filings tied to digital currencies suggests that banks expect blockchain-based financial infrastructure to remain part of the future payments and trading landscape. For now, the WFUSD filing offers a view into the categories of services Wells Fargo is preparing to protect from a branding standpoint. Whether those services reach the market will depend on regulatory developments, internal product strategy and broader adoption of blockchain-based financial systems.

A fresh cluster of on-chain and fund-flow data is feeding a familiar XRP market question: are buyers using the recent weakness to accumulate? New figures highlighted by CryptoQuant contributor Darkfost suggest that Binance withdrawal activity has surged just as spot XRP ETFs continue to absorb capital despite the token's pullback. Darkfost framed the move against a broader altcoin backdrop that still looks selective rather than expansive. “Despite a period of uncertainty that has been quite detrimental to the cryptocurrency market, altcoins are starting to show some early signs of resilience,” he wrote. That matters because his XRP read is not based on a broad-based altcoin revival. As Darkfost put it, “despite a complicated macroeconomic environment and still limited market liquidity, a portion of capital remains positioned in altcoins.” But with liquidity still constrained and the listed universe of tokens continuing to expand, he argued that “asset selection is becoming increasingly important.” A CryptoQuant chart tracking XRP Ledger exchange withdrawal transactions from Binance shows several sharp spikes in recent weeks, with the most notable move exceeding 14,000 transactions on March 6. Those bursts came while XRP's USD price remained under pressure, a pattern some traders often read as coins leaving exchange inventory rather than moving onto venues for sale. “At the moment, a few positive signals are emerging around XRP,” he wrote. This type of movement may indicate that some investors are accumulating and then choosing to transfer their tokens to private wallets rather than keeping them on the exchange.” A Bloomberg Intelligence chart shared by Seyffart shows flows rising from about $150 million on Nov. 13, 2025 to $1.44 billion by March 4, 2026, suggesting that allocations continued even as market conditions became less forgiving. Seyffart also pointed to the limited visibility around who exactly is buying. “Well we only know a small portion of them because the vast majority don't file 13Fs. Millennium Management follows with $23.1 million and 12.5 million XRP, while smaller positions appear across firms including Citadel Advisors, Jane Street, DRW Securities and others. That combination is what gives the current XRP setup its edge. On one side, there is exchange-withdrawal activity that may point to coins moving off Binance and into private wallets. On the other, there is steady ETF absorption and at least some evidence of institutional exposure building through traditional reporting channels. CUSIP Database provided by FactSet Research Systems Inc. All rights reserved.

Cryptanalyze, crack the code. Cryptanalyze, crack the code. Cryptanalyze, crack the code. Play-to-Earn, Then What? The Market Forces Behind GameFi's Sudden Collapse Cryptanalyze, crack the code. Cryptanalyze Apr 08, 2025 Cryptanalyze Mar 11, 2026 Cryptanalyze Mar 11, 2026 KuCoin Community Chain May 28, 2022 Pocket Arena Jun 05, 2022 Learn Repo Dec 05, 2023 Cryptanalyze Apr 08, 2025 Cryptanalyze Mar 11, 2026 Cryptanalyze Mar 11, 2026 KuCoin Community Chain May 28, 2022 Pocket Arena Jun 05, 2022 Learn Repo Dec 05, 2023

The government has launched a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC)-based ‘Digital Food Currency' pilot to distribute food subsidies under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY) through the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) system in Puducherry, marking a new step in the digital transformation of India's public distribution system. The pilot was inaugurated on February 26 in Puducherry by Pralhad Joshi in the presence of K Kailashnathan and N Rangasamy, according to an official statement. Under the pilot project, food subsidy will be credited directly into beneficiaries' CBDC wallets as programmable digital currency or e₹, instead of being transferred to conventional bank accounts. These tokens can be redeemed exclusively for purchasing entitled foodgrains at Fair Price Shops (FPS) or authorised merchant outlets. According to the statement, the system will ensure secure, traceable and real-time transactions, while also addressing operational challenges such as biometric authentication issues and e-POS device failures that sometimes affect PDS transactions. “The integration of CBDC into PDS will enhance transparency, efficiency and beneficiary empowerment, ensuring that over 80 crore beneficiaries receive their entitlements with greater clarity and accountability," he said. Joshi described the initiative as aligned with the vision of ‘Every grain, Every rupee, Every entitlement', adding that programmable digital currency will strengthen awareness about entitlements and deepen the Digital India ecosystem in welfare delivery. He said international organisations have noted that around 25 crore people have moved out of multidimensional poverty over the past 11 years, while surveys suggest that household spending on food has declined significantly due to free foodgrain distribution. According to him, savings generated from the scheme are increasingly being used by households to purchase other nutritious items such as milk and vegetables, improving overall nutrition levels. The government said the CBDC-based food subsidy pilot has begun with a limited number of beneficiaries and will gradually be expanded across Puducherry. The government said the initiative builds on several digital reforms already implemented in India's food distribution system, including nationwide portability of ration cards under the One Nation One Ration Card framework, Aadhaar-enabled authentication through e-POS devices, and digital supply-chain monitoring systems. The CBDC-based digital food currency is expected to further strengthen transparency in subsidy delivery by ensuring that the funds are used only for purchasing entitled foodgrains, thereby making the welfare system more targeted and accountable.

Our investigation found that Police Scotland extracted the entire contents of a person's mobile phone after they reported an alleged crime, without ensuring there were sufficient safeguards to prevent access to irrelevant personal information. As a result, officers collected a substantial volume of highly sensitive information, much of which had no bearing on the investigation. Police Scotland subsequently included the full unredacted content into a misconduct disclosure bundle and shared it with a third party who should not have received it. We determined that appropriate review, redaction and security procedures were not in place, and that staff were neither adequately guided nor supported by effective organisational controls. “At its heart, data protection is about people, and this incident is a stark example of the devastating consequences of poor data protection practices on individuals. “Police Scotland failed in its obligation to safeguard the personal information of someone who had reached out to them for help. “People should be able to trust that organisations will treat their personal information with care, fairness and respect. When organisations fail to do so, they can expect enforcement action from us.” We also considered Police Scotland's status as a public body and reduced the penalty accordingly to avoid disproportionate impact on public services. All text content is available under the Open Government Licence v3.0, except where otherwise stated.

Bitcoin's adventure above $70,000 didn't last long as the asset was rejected at $71,800 and now sits over two grand below that local peak. ICP and PI are among the few exceptions with notable gains today. However, it couldn't keep marching forward, and the subsequent retracement drove it south to $68,000 over the weekend. BTC climbed toward $70,000, and even though that resistance was too strong at first, the asset managed to reclaim it yesterday. Its dominance over the altcoins has also declined, and it's now below 57%. BNB is down to $640 after a minor decline, while XRP has lost the $1.40 support. More losses are evident from ZEC, TAO, SKY, and UNI, while ICP has defied the overall market trend with a notable 12% surge to $2.7 after a listing by Upbit. Pi Network's PI token is the other impressive gainer today, as a 6% increase has driven it to almost $0.23 as of now. The total crypto market cap has decreased by around $50 billion daily to $2.450 trillion as of press time. Jordan got into crypto in 2016 by trading and investing. He began writing about blockchain technology in 2017 and now serves as CryptoPotato's Assistant Editor-in-Chief. He has managed numerous crypto-related projects and is passionate about all things blockchain. Information found on CryptoPotato is those of writers quoted. It does not represent the opinions of CryptoPotato on whether to buy, sell, or hold any investments. You are advised to conduct your own research before making any investment decisions.

Rainfall around a quarter of an inch.. Rain early...then remaining cloudy with showers overnight. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch. London, United Kingdom Mar 10, 2026 (Issuewire.com) Colle AI, an AI-driven multichain NFT platform, has developed a context-aware NFT creation framework designed to improve how digital assets are generated, structured, and deployed across decentralized blockchain ecosystems. The framework integrates adaptive intelligence into the NFT creation process, enabling assets to interpret creative intent and contextual inputs during development. The context-aware system enhances how creators produce and manage NFTs by embedding intelligent design assistance throughout the asset lifecycle. By analyzing contextual parameters such as artistic direction, metadata requirements, and deployment environments, the framework helps creators streamline digital asset production while ensuring compatibility across multiple blockchain networks. Colle AIs infrastructure supports multichain ecosystems including Ethereum, Solana, Bitcoin, BNB Chain, and the XRP Ledger. Through its AI-powered design and automation tools, the platform enables artists, developers, and brands to generate NFTs and distribute them across different chains while maintaining structural integrity and deployment efficiency. King Kasr, Chief Scientist at KaJ Labs, noted that embedding contextual intelligence into NFT creation systems allows creators to focus on design and storytelling while the platform manages the technical requirements needed for multichain deployment. By integrating context-aware intelligence into NFT creation pipelines, Colle AI contributes to the transition from Web3 platforms toward Web4 infrastructure, where intelligent automation, adaptive design systems, and interoperable creative tools form the foundation for decentralized digital economies. Colle AI is an AI-powered multichain NFT platform that simplifies digital asset creation through intelligent design tools, automation systems, and cross-chain deployment capabilities. This article was originally published by IssueWire. Your browser is out of date and potentially vulnerable to security risks.We recommend switching to one of the following browsers: