The number of US troops stationed in the Middle East has exceeded 50,000.

March 30th — Bitcoin has continued to climb after dipping to $65,000 in morning trading, per HTX market data. It’s now trading at $67,083.68, with a 24-hour gain of 0.83%.

As of March 30, France’s second-largest lender BNP Paribas is offering retail customers six Bitcoin and Ethereum ETN products through standard securities accounts, per Cointelegraph — a move that simplifies access to crypto asset investments.

March 30—Ethereum Layer 2 project Linea announced it will transition to the RISC-V architecture. The primary driver: Every Ethereum hard fork required a complete rewrite of its constraint module, forcing the team to prioritize long-term complexity management over pushing cutting-edge performance. RISC-V features just 32 registers and roughly 40 instructions. For proof systems, this translates to a narrower tracking scope, real-time construction, and the ability for provers to start processing proof segments immediately. Additionally, RISC-V offers a slimmer execution trace and Type-1 compatibility, while Linea will retain zkC (Constraint Native Language), Vortex and Arcane (its Proof/Aggregation Stack), and formal verification. Linea noted the move aligns closely with the RISC-V roadmap the Ethereum Foundation is advancing, with more technical details set to be shared in the coming weeks.

March 30: Bitcoin long positions on Bitfinex have climbed to roughly 79,343 contracts, hitting a new high not seen since November 2023. While rising long positions are typically viewed as a bullish signal, historical data shows this indicator often has an inverse relationship with price trends—long position concentration frequently occurs at price tops or just ahead of downturns. Per CoinDesk analysis, this latest surge in long positions, paired with macroeconomic uncertainties, may signal downside risk to Bitcoin’s current range-bound movement between $65,000 and $75,000.

March 30: Pendle co-founder @tn_pendle met with Vietnam’s Vice Premier last week in New York alongside representatives from Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, BlackRock, Franklin Templeton and Anchorage Digital to lobby for the establishment of Vietnam’s International Financial Center. During the meeting, the Pendle co-founder discussed Vietnam’s potential as a hub for tokenized bonds, ETFs and private credit markets, and enthusiastically highlighted the country’s deep talent pool.

**March 30 – U.S. President Donald Trump, when asked about Iran’s plan to impose tolls for transit through the Strait of Hormuz, said Wednesday he first needs to verify the report—but emphasized the U.S. can “terminate this action very quickly. We can do the job in two minutes. We can do it so fast that you’ll feel dizzy.”** He also noted Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain are pushing back against Iran. “I was very surprised they’re being attacked, but once attacks happen, their counterattacks are very good,” he said. “We have very strong communication with them, but people in all these countries are saying they’ve been fighting.” (Source: Al Jazeera)