Insider: Polish Central Bank Considers Selling Gold Reserves to Fund Defense Plan

March 5 — U.S. initial jobless claims totaled 213,000 for the week ended Feb. 28, per Labor Department data released Tuesday. The figure topped the prior week’s 212,000 but fell short of economists’ 215,000 forecast, signaling the labor market remains in a low-layoff environment. The data shows initial claims have rebounded to near last year’s lows after holiday and winter weather disruptions. Meanwhile, continuing jobless claims climbed to 1.87 million—marking the biggest jump so far this year. The Federal Reserve’s Beige Book noted employment levels stayed generally stable, with hiring activity largely unchanged in seven of the 12 Fed districts. Some businesses cited higher non-labor costs, soft demand, and economic uncertainty as constraints on hiring. Markets are now awaiting Friday’s nonfarm payrolls report. A broad consensus expects February job gains will slow following January’s strong reading, while the unemployment rate is seen holding steady.

On March 5th, HyperInsight monitoring (via https://t.me/HyperInsight) revealed that "Brother Whale" Huang Licheng’s address deposited 100,000 USDC into HyperLiquid to boost his 25x leveraged ETH long position. Currently, the position’s unrealized gain has topped $250,000, and its size has expanded to 6,975 ETH.

March 5 — Morgan Stanley has extended a $500 million 364-day loan facility to Core Scientific, with an accordion feature allowing the total facility to grow to up to $1 billion later. The loan carries an interest rate of SOFR plus 250 basis points. Core Scientific says the funding will support land acquisition, pre-development expenses, securing additional power contracts, and equipment purchases to upgrade its mining infrastructure in Texas, Georgia, and North Carolina into compute centers for high-density AI calculations. The company previously announced plans to sell nearly all its Bitcoin reserves by 2026 to back its shift to an AI-focused business. As of the end of 2025, Core Scientific held roughly 2,537 bitcoins (fair market value ~$222 million); in January 2026, it sold around 1,900 bitcoins for ~$175 million, leaving ~630 bitcoins currently. CEO Adam Sullivan noted the Bitcoin mining business is now essentially in a “natural winding-down phase,” adding the company wil

On March 5th, U.S. equity markets opened lower: the Dow Jones Industrial Average (Dow) dropped 0.74%, the S&P 500 declined 0.47%, and the Nasdaq Composite slid 0.44%. Among cryptocurrency-related stocks, MicroStrategy (MSTR) fell 0.81%, Coinbase Global (COIN) gained 0.63%, Circle Internet Financial (CRCL) advanced 2.52%, SBET dropped 1.72%, and BMNR was down 0.38%.

On March 5, the World Gold Council reported that global gold ETF net inflows totaled $5.3 billion in February—marking nine straight months of inflows and the strongest year-to-date (YTD) start on record. Fueled by gold price gains lifting valuations, global gold assets under management (AUM) hit an all-time high of $701 billion, with total global holdings reaching 4,171 tons. North America and Asia led inflows, while Europe posted outflows early in the month following a late-January sell-off. Global average daily trading volume (ADTV) fell to $478 billion but remained well above 2025 levels. (Source: Golden Finance)

March 5 — Sources familiar with the matter told The Information that Alibaba, ByteDance and Tencent are shifting to domestic chip manufacturers to ease the impact of the worsening global semiconductor shortage.