Betting companies have reportedly asked regulators to pause the operations of 
prediction market platforms, such as Polymarket and Kalshi, in Brazil. The 
betting lobby argues that prediction market contracts constitute bets and 
should be blocked, as these platforms are unlicensed in the country. Betting 
Lobby Attacks Prediction Markets in Brazil Betting companies have taken action 
[…]

Big Bet Takes Action to Block Prediction Markets in Brazil

Goldman Sachs has quietly built one of the largest known institutional 
positions in XRP, holding close to $154 million through various exchange- 
traded fund products — a figure that places the Wall Street giant ahead of 
hedge funds and trading firms that have also begun staking out exposure to the 
digital asset. Related Reading: Ghana’s Crypto Push Begins As 11 Companies 
Enter SEC Sandbox Institutions Move In As Retail Pulls Coins Off Exchanges The 
Goldman position was disclosed alongside smaller holdings from Millennium 
Management, which reported about $23 million in XRP ETF exposure, and Citadel 
Advisors, which holds roughly $4.50 million. Companies including Jane Street 
and DRW Trading Group also reported positions. The breadth of names involved 
points to growing institutional acceptance of XRP as a regulated investment 
vehicle, even as the coin&#8217;s price has declined sharply since the funds 
launched. The XRP ETFs have actually held up pretty well despite the massive 
pullback in price. They&#8217;ve taken in a cumulative $1.4 billion since launch. 
pic.twitter.com/Bjtmb0y40D — James Seyffart (@JSeyff) March 10, 2026 XRP was 
trading near $2.50 when spot ETFs began trading in November 2025. It has since 
dropped to around $1.38 — a fall of 44%. Despite that slide, cumulative 
inflows into XRP ETFs have reached $1.4 billion, according to Bloomberg ETF 
analyst James Seyffart. The continued buying has raised questions about who 
exactly is behind the money flowing in and what their time horizon looks like. 
On-chain data from CryptoQuant shows a spike in XRP withdrawals from Binance. 
Between February 21 and March 7, the exchange recorded between 12,500 and 
20,000 withdrawal transactions. Each surge was followed by a sharp drop in 
activity before picking back up again — a pattern analysts say may reflect 
investors moving coins off trading platforms and into longer-term storage. 
Supply On Exchanges Tightens As ETF Demand Holds Steady When large amounts of 
any asset are pulled from exchanges, the pool of coins available for immediate 
trading shrinks. Combined with steady ETF inflows, some market observers see 
the trend as a signal that available supply is being absorbed from multiple 
directions at once. Whether that dynamic will push prices higher remains to be 
seen. XRP has been consolidating between $1.31 and $1.42. Broader crypto 
market sentiment has stayed bearish, and analysts say that is likely keeping a 
lid on any near-term price movement. Related Reading: Bitcoin Crosses 20 
Million Coins Mined — And Only 1 In 20 Remains Away from price action, 
activity on the XRP Ledger has been climbing. Daily transactions on the 
network have reached roughly 2.7 million, driven in part by real-world asset 
tokenization projects building on the chain. The total value of tokenized 
assets on the network has approached $461 million. Network Activity Climbs 
Even As Price Stays Flat The contrast between rising network usage and a 
stagnant price has been a recurring theme for XRP. Supporters point to the on- 
chain growth as evidence of real utility developing beneath the surface. 
Critics note that activity metrics and price do not always move in the same 
direction, at least not right away. Featured image from Vecteezy, chart from 
TradingView

Is XRP’s Supply Tightening? Exchange Outflows, ETF Demand Suggest It Might Be

BlackRock launched a staked Ether exchange-traded fund on Thursday, expanding 
its crypto offerings beyond its flagship spot Bitcoin and Ether ETFs that 
launched in 2024.

BlackRock says ‘exotic’ ETF structures not part of its crypto strategy

Lekker Capital CIO Quinn Thompson argues on X that collapsing mining 
economics, combined with a growing shift by public miners toward AI and high- 
performance compute, could turn corporate BTC treasuries into a fresh source 
of market supply. “A large underappreciated headwind for Bitcoin is the 
disaster that which is mining economics. The only way this heals is through a 
decline in hashrate, which is being spearheaded by the AI compute first movers 
like CORZ, WULF, CIFR, IREN, etc.,” Thompson wrote. The chart Thompson shared, 
frames the problem visually. It shows aggregate bitcoin holdings across major 
listed miners climbing sharply through 2024 and 2025 before rolling over in 
2026. Thompson’s argument is not that the AI pivot is bearish in structural 
terms. Related Reading: Bitcoin Bull Score Surges To 30, Exits ‘Extra Bearish’ 
Zone On the contrary, lower hashrate and less uneconomic competition could 
improve mining industry health over time. His point is that the transition 
itself is expensive, and that capex-heavy AI buildouts may force miners to 
liquidate BTC that had previously been treated as strategic treasury. “While 
helpful to long-term health and sustainability of the network economics, it 
presents a dilemma for prices in the near-term as Bitcoin miners hold almost 
80,000 Bitcoin on their balance sheets. As these companies pivot away from BTC 
mining, they 1) need capital to fund the AI buildout capex requirements and 2) 
have no reason to hold any BTC on their balance sheet (not that they should 
have before either),” he argued. Bitcoin Miners Pivot To AI The 2025 filings 
and public data make that argument more concrete. Core Scientific’s fourth- 
quarter results showed the business mix tilting away from mining and toward 
AI-related infrastructure: self-mining revenue fell to $42.2 million from 
$79.9 million a year earlier, while colocation revenue rose to $31.3 million 
from $8.5 million. Management said the decline in hosted mining reflected the 
“continued strategic shift” to high-density colocation. For full-year 2025, 
Core generated $402.5 million of proceeds from selling digital assets and 
ended the year with 2,537 BTC on its balance sheet. TeraWulf offers an even 
cleaner read-through. The company said that in 2025 it “solidified HPC hosting 
as its primary growth engine,” signed more than $12.8 billion in long-term 
customer contracts, and built a platform with 522 critical IT megawatts under 
contract. Yet the legacy mining business was still being monetized as that 
buildout took shape: fourth-quarter digital asset revenue was $26.1 million, 
versus $9.7 million in HPC lease revenue, and the company’s year-end digital 
asset rollforward shows 1,496 BTC mined, 1,500 BTC disposed of, and only 3 BTC 
left on the balance sheet at Dec. 31, 2025. Related Reading: Bitcoin May Still 
Fall Under $10,000, Bloomberg’s McGlone Warns Cipher and IREN show two other 
versions of the same trend. Cipher said it increased its focus on HPC in 2025 
and signed two HPC tenants for a combined 600 MW of data center capacity. It 
also sold bitcoin for approximately $214.7 million during the year. By year- 
end, Cipher had classified $94.9 million of Black Pearl mining rigs as held 
for sale after signing a sublease to transition the site to an HPC tenant. 
IREN, by contrast, has already taken the treasury issue largely off the table: 
with roughly 99,900 GPUs installed or on order as of Dec. 31, 2025, it said it 
“typically liquidate[s] all the Bitcoin we mine daily” and therefore held no 
bitcoin on its balance sheet at year-end. MARA matters for a different reason. 
It is not yet as far along as Core, TeraWulf, Cipher or IREN in converting 
mining sites into a full AI/HPC business, though it had deployed its first ten 
AI racks at Granbury by November 2025 and later announced a Starwood 
partnership for AI and HPC infrastructure. But MARA is the treasury 
heavyweight in the group, and its own 2025 disclosures moved in Thompson’s 
direction: the company said it began selling bitcoin in the second half of 
2025, sold about 4,076 BTC for $413.1 million during the year, and still ended 
2025 with roughly 53,822 BTC. That is the tension in Thompson’s thesis. A 
miner-led shift into AI can reduce hashrate pressure and improve the long-run 
economics of bitcoin mining. But the bridge from mining to AI is capital- 
intensive, and the 2025 filings show that bridge is already being funded with 
BTC sales, miner disposals and site conversions. For bitcoin, that means an 
industry adjustment that may be constructive later can still look like 
overhang now. At press time, Bitcoin traded at $72,322. Featured image created 
with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

Bitcoin Miners’ AI Shift May Create New Overhang, Lekker Capital CIO Warns

The long-term accumulation trend among crypto ETF investors suggests a 
stabilizing influence on the volatile crypto market landscape.
The post BlackRock says over 90% of Bitcoin ETF investors are long-term 
accumulators appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

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