Weekly: crypto market under pressure: from the attack on Drift Protocol to regulatory problems in the US

Bitcoin formally closed March in the green, but that did not give the market a sense of strength. Ethereum once again existed in several storylines at once: from accumulation to security concerns. Regulation in the US did not bring clarity, the topic of hacks once again moved back to the center of attention, and alongside crypto, AI, big companies, and new signals from the traditional market were moving in a separate stream.

Bitcoin closed the month in the green, but the market did not believe it

Bitcoin ended March with a 1.8% gain after five consecutive months of decline. Over the month, BTC traded in a range from $65,000 to $76,000, but at the beginning of April it went down again after new statements by Donald Trump regarding Iran. Against this backdrop, the markets declined, and Bitcoin at one point dropped below $66,000. CryptoQuant separately noted a risk-off regime: investors are reducing risk, and the market has not yet shown real capitulation. 

At the same time, Peter Brandt expressed skepticism about a new high in 2026 and allowed for a decline toward the $60,000 area by autumn. This is another telling point: excluding Strategy, corporate BTC purchases have almost disappeared, and against this backdrop even the idea of directing up to $30 billion of Taiwan’s reserves into Bitcoin no longer looks so exotic.

Ethereum and altcoins: accumulation, buyback, TWT, and old security questions

Ethereum: this week the market sent several different signals at once. Santiment recorded a new surge in discussions about network security risks, particularly because of quantum computing, while Nexo reported that the volume of ETH on exchanges had fallen to its lowest level since 2016. 

Lido DAO is considering a $20 million LDO buyback after the token’s deep decline. Vitalik Buterin stated that even for Binance, a 51% attack on Ethereum would make no economic sense because it could cost $48 billion. 

At the same time, the Ethereum team is promoting the Ethereum Economic Zone model, which is supposed to reduce fragmentation between L2 solutions. A separate nervous storyline was the 30–35% drop in TWT amid talk of a major token sale and the team’s prolonged silence.

CLARITY Act is stalling, and regulation once again gives the market no support

In the US, there was a lot of discussion this week about the CLARITY Act. Anthony Scaramucci effectively declared the bill dead, while TD Cowen estimated the chances of the Senate version advancing by August 2026 at one in three. At the same time, the US introduced the Mined in America Act to develop domestic production of mining equipment, and the Department of Labor published draft rules on including crypto assets in pension plans. 

In Canada, a complete ban on crypto donations to political parties was proposed, while a court in the US approved an agreement that effectively bans KuCoin’s operator from working with American users without a license and предусматривает a $500,000 fine. So the market once again sees the same old picture: there are many rules, but that does not make things any more predictable.

AI is moving forward at its own pace and is not asking whether everyone is ready yet

While the crypto market was living in its usual mode of tension, the AI sector was not standing still either. This week, the news here came from several directions at once – from Ukrainian initiatives to new business models and discussions about how far artificial intelligence has already advanced.

In Ukraine, they chose a name for the first large language model – Syayvo. In the US, a survey showed that only 15% of Americans are ready to work under AI management, while the majority still treat this idea with caution. 

At the same time, startup Mantis Biotech is developing digital human twins to train surgical robots and test medicines, the adult content industry is actively launching AI clones as a new monetization tool, and Anthropic stated that Claude demonstrates internal states similar to human emotions. In the end, we get a familiar picture: society is only beginning to get used to the new reality, while technology and business are already moving much faster.

Drift Protocol, X, Uranium Finance, and another bad week for security

The loudest story was the $280 million hack of Drift Protocol: one of the biggest blows to a DeFi project in the entire history of the industry, but it did not stop there. CertiK recorded 46 incidents in March with total losses of about $39.8 million excluding phishing – the highest figure since November 2024. 

X is preparing automatic blocking of accounts that publish crypto content for the first time, followed by verification. In the US, charges were filed in the case of the $53 million Uranium Finance hack, and ZachXBT accused Circle of systemic problems with freezing suspicious funds and named an amount of over $420 million. When such events pile up in a single week, the market once again returns to a basic question: who actually knows how to work with risk properly?

The Ukrainian case involving the declaration also made it into the top discussions

Separately, the market was actively discussing the story involving Roman Danylyshyn, an employee of the Sviatoshyn TCC in Kyiv. After he came into the spotlight as one of the largest ETH holders in Ukrainian declarations, 4716 ETH in the document was replaced with 4716 USDT. In the original declaration, this amount of Ethereum at the rate of March 20 was valued at approximately $10.13 million. The story took off not only because of the large numbers. It once again showed that crypto in official documents has long ceased to be a niche topic, and any inaccuracy here immediately becomes major news.

Bitfarms, Aave, Meta, and SpaceX showed where the big market is moving

Bitfarms reported a net loss of $284.5 million for 2025 and announced a complete departure from mining in favor of AI infrastructure. 

Aave launched V4 on the Ethereum mainnet with the Hub and Spoke architecture. Meta lost about $310 billion in market capitalization in March amid lawsuits, a market decline, and AI spending. And SpaceX, according to Bloomberg, confidentially filed for an IPO with a potential valuation of over $1.75 trillion. Altogether, this shows that even in a weak market, big players are not standing still: they are either restructuring or already preparing a new phase of growth.

Kursoff’s opinion

This week was about tension building up at several points at once. Bitcoin is not giving the market support, Ethereum is living between development and old risks, regulation is stalling, and security is once again hitting trust harder than an ordinary drop in charts. And alongside this, big companies, AI, and infrastructure projects are already reshaping the game for the longer term.