Market Update - Thursday, March 19

- Gold has dropped to $4,800, while Bitcoin is down to $70,000 - $71,000. Altcoins are also declining amid macroeconomic news and rising tensions.
- The Federal Reserve has kept interest rates unchanged as expected, maintaining a forecast of only one rate cut in 2026.
- The Pentagon is requesting an additional $200 billion budget for the Iran conflict, adding to its arsenal after three weeks of airstrikes.

ETF Spot Update as of March 18:
- Bitcoin is down $129.6 million, with Fidelity selling $103.8 million. BlackRock has no data available.
- Ethereum is down $55.5 million, with BlackRock also lacking data.
- Solana is down $0.3 million.

- U.S. Producer Price Index (PPI) for February exceeded expectations, marking the highest level since February 2025.
- The SEC has approved Nasdaq to pilot tokenized stock payments, starting with the Russell 1000 and several major ETFs.
- Bhutan has sold over 973 BTC (approximately $72 million) in the past 24 hours, retaining around 4,400 BTC (approximately $322 million).
- SBI has launched a USDC interest-earning service for individual users in Japan, allowing deposits of up to 5,000 USDC at a time.
- FTX will distribute $2.2 billion to creditors on March 31, bringing the total repaid to approximately $10 billion.
- S&P Dow Jones has approved the launch of the first S&P 500 derivatives contract on Hyperliquid.