The US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit has declined to hear Custodia Bank’s final appeal over its denied Federal Reserve master account, ending the crypto-focused bank’s five-year legal effort to gain direct access to the central bank’s payment system. Judges upheld the view that the Federal Reserve has discretion over which institutions can obtain master accounts, even as other fintech and crypto firms, including Kraken and Revolut, pursue their own routes to US banking access. The ruling drew a strong dissent from Judge Timothy Tymkovich, who warned that refusal of a master account can be “indispensable” and potentially fatal for a bank.

In an interview with Morgan Stanley recorded on January 30 and released Friday, billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller said blockchain-based stablecoins could underpin the global payments system within 10 to 15 years. He argued that tokenized payment rails offer faster and cheaper settlement than traditional systems, even as he remains skeptical of Bitcoin as a long-term store of value and continues to favor gold. Druckenmiller's comments come as stablecoin transaction volumes reach tens of trillions of dollars and new legislation such as the GENIUS Act encourages financial firms to test blockchain settlement.

On Friday, the Florida Senate passed Senate Bill 314, which would require stablecoin issuers serving state residents to secure a license from the Florida Office of Financial Regulation. The bill is designed to align Florida's oversight with the federal Genius Act and will make the state the first in the US with a dedicated stablecoin framework if Governor Ron DeSantis signs it into law.

On March 6, 2026, US President Donald Trump released a National Cyber Strategy that pledges federal backing for securing cryptocurrencies and blockchain networks against future quantum threats. The plan promotes post-quantum cryptography, coincides with an executive order targeting cybercrime, and follows earlier actions such as creating a federal Bitcoin reserve and banning a US CBDC.

On March 6, 2026, former Washington CFO Nevin Shetty received a two-year federal prison sentence for secretly diverting $35 million in company funds into a DeFi investment tied to his side project HighTower Treasury. The crypto strategy, launched after he learned his job would be terminated in April 2022, collapsed during the 2022 downturn, nearly wiping out the entire investment and forcing layoffs of about 60 employees. Shetty was also ordered to pay $35,000,100 in restitution and will face three years of supervised release with restrictions on future corporate officer roles.

Prediction platform Kalshi is facing a class action filed in the US District Court for the Central District of California over how it settled a market on whether Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei would leave office by March 1. Plaintiffs say a "death carveout" rule applied after reports of Khamenei's death on Feb. 28 led to partial payouts based on the final traded price instead of the full $1 per winning contract, while Kalshi argues the clause was meant to stop users from profiting directly from a person's death and later reimbursed fees and net losses.

Vitalik Buterin said on February 28, 2026 that Ethereum’s account abstraction, enabled by EIP-8141 and the Hegota upgrade, could be deployed within a year. The design would let wallets act like programmable apps, with recoverable keys, batch operations, and fee payments in non-ETH tokens. He also backed an anti-censorship proposal planned for the 2026 Hegota hard fork.

Bitcoin briefly dropped to nearly $63,000 following US-Israeli air strikes on Iran before rebounding to about $67,000–$68,000 within 24 hours. The sharp move coincided with roughly $657 million in liquidations affecting around 157,000 traders and left markets focused on whether the Middle East conflict will intensify or settle.

Former Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpelès has proposed a Bitcoin hard fork to move 79,956 BTC, valued at over $5.2 billion, tied to the exchange's historic hack. His GitHub plan would enable transfers to a recovery address without the original private key, potentially aiding creditor payouts. The idea has drawn sharp pushback from users concerned it could weaken Bitcoin's immutability.