Core Scientific Plans to Sell About 2,500 Bitcoins in Q1 to Support AI Transformation

March 3: Bitfinex released a report noting that despite intense selling pressure on BTC, the $60k-$62k range remains solid. This signals forced selling is gradually shifting to market absorption rather than a new round of capitulation. Derivatives positioning confirms leverage has fully reset: futures open interest has dropped over 50% from its October peak. Following the escalation of the Iran situation, funding rates briefly turned sharply negative—indicating market sentiment has bottomed out and short positions are relatively large. Historically, such extreme conditions set the stage for a short squeeze rebound if spot demand follows. However, the options market tells a more nuanced story: recent option skew still reflects a defensive stance, with strong demand for downside protection. Meanwhile, quarterly positions for late March show a clear bullish bias, concentrated in the $80k-$90k range.

On March 3, data from HyperInsight shows a whale with the address starting with 0x7c9 incurred two-way losses in its risk-hedging portfolio, withdrawing over $500,000 in funds. As of now, the account’s net value stands at roughly $1.88 million, while its total position size remains elevated at $14.07 million. Previously, the whale held a large long position (~$8 million) in GOLD (Gold Mapping Contract) and SILVR (Silver Mapping Contract), paired with a $6 million “short basket” covering 102 cryptocurrencies—including mainstream assets like BTC and ETH, plus a range of altcoins—in an attempt to hedge extreme risks via arbitrage. However, market trends that day diverged completely from the whale’s projected trajectory: precious metals plunged, while the crypto market staged a partial recovery. Both long and short positions came under simultaneous pressure, erasing all prior gains entirely.

March 3 — Bitget market data shows South Korea’s KOSPI index plummeted 7.25% today, marking its biggest single-day drop since August 5, 2024. Analysts cite U.S. military action against Iran as triggering Middle East tensions. South Korea imports 70% of its oil via the Strait of Hormuz; the surge in oil prices has amplified energy risks and capital outflows. Separately, Upbit — South Korea’s largest crypto exchange — has seen a sharp rebound in trading volume. Its 24-hour turnover today exceeded $1.6 billion, up 29.2% on the day.

March 3 — Lido announced in a tweet that Stage 3 of its V3 upgrade is now live. All stVaults can now mint stETH permissionlessly, and minting limits for identified node operators have been raised. Lido V3’s initial deployment is fully complete.

Per 1M AI News, Ollama has announced support for one-click Pi launches via the `ollama launch pi` command. Pi is a minimalist AI programming agent toolkit developed by Mario Zechner, featuring a built-in plugin extension system—even allowing users to have Pi draft extensions for themselves. It’s globally available via npm, with its configuration file located in the ~/.pi/agent/ directory, and supports integration with Ollama local models (like qwen3-coder) and multiple cloud service providers. Ollama founder Jeffrey Morgan praised Pi for its elegant design and high customizability, noting it performs well even with small-parameter models (including local Qwen 3.5 series models). The `ollama launch` command was introduced on January 23 this year, supporting zero-configuration startup of programming tools such as Claude Code, OpenCode, Codex, and Droid. With Pi’s addition, the available agent ecosystem has expanded further.

March 3rd Per Arkham monitoring, a crypto whale address previously contributed $8,000 worth of PUNCH tokens (10% of its holdings) — peaking at an unrealized gain of over $3 million. During the token’s uptrend, the whale cashed out $550,000 and transferred the funds to Binance. The address still holds $1 million in PUNCH tokens as of now. At press time, PUNCH’s market cap is reported at $14.31 million, with a 22.7% 24-hour gain.