The RWA segment showed an 80% increase in activity in a month
In March, the volume of tokenized stock transfers reached $2.87 billion, setting a new all-time high. This figure has grown by more than 80% over the past 30 days. The total value of these assets approached $942 million (+2.65% month-on-month). The number of holders exceeded 200,000, and the number of active addresses reached 95,755.
Ondo holds the largest market share ($560.9 million), followed by xStocks ($243.5 million) and Securitize ($58.4 million). The tokenized shares of Circle Internet Group ($143.5 million), Exodus Movement, and Tesla xStock are in the highest demand. The total RWA market has grown to $27.5 billion. More than half of the assets are issued on Ethereum (56%, $15.4 billion), followed by BNB Chain (12.7%, $3.5 billion) and Solana (7.27%, $2 billion).
Circle launched cirBTC
Circle, the company that issues USDC, has unveiled a wrapped Bitcoin called cirBTC. The token will be fully backed by BTC at a 1:1 ratio and is designed to expand the use of the world's first cryptocurrency in blockchain ecosystems. Waiting list registration is now open.
cirBTC will be integrated into Circle's proprietary infrastructure—the Arc blockchain and the Circle Mint platform, through which stablecoins are issued and redeemed. Initially, the asset will be available on the Arc and Ethereum networks.
This product will be one of the company's few areas of focus outside of stablecoins. Circle previously launched a tokenized money market fund, USYC, and is reportedly developing a native token for Arc.
The company previously worked with BTC: the Circle Pay payment service was shut down in 2019 when the company focused on stablecoins. Currently, the largest wrapped version of Bitcoin on the market remains BitGo's WBTC, with a market capitalization of over $7.9 billion.
Whales are selling off BTC after a period of accumulation
Large Bitcoin holders have shifted from accumulating to distributing coins, and this process is becoming sustainable, according to CryptoQuant analysts. Over the past year, addresses with balances between 1,000 and 10,000 BTC have reduced their holdings by 188,000 BTC. By comparison, in 2024, the same group increased their positions by approximately 200,000 BTC. The reversal of the yearly trend indicates increasing selling pressure.
While institutional players continue to buy—for example, Strategy is increasing its holdings—retail investors and some of the market are taking profits. At the end of March, "apparent demand" remained negative at minus 63,000 BTC, indicating an ongoing distribution phase.
An additional signal was weakening demand in the US: the Coinbase Premium Index fell into negative territory, indicating a decline in American buying activity. Bitcoin nevertheless rose 2.2% in March, breaking a five-month losing streak despite pressure from macroeconomic factors. However, the asset's price remains approximately 45% below its October high of around $126,000. Bitcoin is currently trading near $66,400.
Solana project Drift Protocol reported a loss of $280 million
On April 1, the Solana-based DeFi platform Drift Protocol was hacked, with the attacker withdrawing at least $280 million. According to the team, preparations began as early as March 23: the hacker created four wallets with a delayed transaction mechanism. Two were associated with Drift Security Council members, and two were under their control. At least two of the five signatories approved the transactions, likely the victims of sophisticated social engineering.
After a scheduled Council rotation on March 30, the attacker prepared a new wallet for the updated multisig. On April 1, immediately after a test withdrawal of funds from the insurance fund, they activated two pre-signed transactions—one transferring control rights, the other allowing the withdrawal of funds.
The attack affected user deposits and trading assets, but insurance fund funds and DSOL tokens outside the Drift ecosystem were unaffected. The protocol suspended some functions, updated the multisig, and deleted the compromised wallet.
The team is currently working with cyber experts, exchanges, and law enforcement agencies to track down the stolen assets. These include wrapped BTC, Jito tokens, the Fartcoin meme coin, and several stablecoins. The incident could become one of the largest hacks in the industry.
A solo miner mined a BTC block and received $210,000
A solo miner with a hashrate of approximately 230 TH/s mined block #943,411 on the Bitcoin network and received a reward of 3,139 BTC—approximately $210,000, according to data from mempool.space. The CKPool administrator noted that with such hashrate, the probability of finding a block is approximately 1 in 28,000 per day. Such occurrences are rare: for example, at the end of February, a solo miner mined block #938,092 with a reward of 3,125 BTC, and in January, another participant received 3,131 BTC.
Over the past year, solo miners have found only 20 blocks, earning a total of approximately 63 BTC—an average of one successful hit about every 19 days. The longest interval between such hits was 58 days. At the same time, competition on the network is growing: after a recent decrease, mining difficulty has again increased by 3.87% and reached 138.97 T.
Google revised its estimate of quantum computing power required to hack Bitcoin
Google researchers believe that cracking Bitcoin and Ethereum cryptography could require fewer than 500,000 physical qubits for a quantum computer—approximately 20 times fewer than previous estimates.
In the experiment, the researchers tested two computational schemes on a hypothetical cryptographically relevant quantum device. According to their calculations, the operation would take approximately 9–12 minutes—comparable to the Bitcoin block creation time and theoretically allowing for a "spend attack" by extracting a private key from a public key.
For Ethereum, the risk is higher due to its account model: public keys remain on the blockchain after transactions are sent, making "data at rest attacks" possible. Google estimates that cracking the 1,000 largest vulnerable addresses, containing approximately 20.5 million ETH, would take less than nine days. The researchers called for accelerating the transition to post-quantum cryptography and, as a temporary measure, eliminating address reuse.
