Mastercard plans to acquire BVNK, a stablecoin infrastructure startup, for approximately up to 1.8 billion dollars, aiming to strengthen its position in crypto payments and stablecoin settlement. This transaction will support Mastercard's cooperation network with over 85 digital asset companies.

Gate News report: On March 17, according to sources within Tencent, Tencent's QClaw will launch a public beta in the near future, and a new version will be released on March 18.

Gate News bot message, the Crypto Fear & Greed Index climbed to 28 today, up from 23 yesterday and 13 last week, transitioning from Extreme Fear into Fear territory. Market sentiment demonstrates early signs of recovery, while participants maintain a cautious stance with limited risk appetite.

Cathie Wood stated that artificial intelligence has improved labor productivity and will significantly boost growth to 6% annually over the next decade. The application of large language models has surprised many skeptics, with frontier AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI experiencing significant revenue growth, with projected future revenues expected to reach 10 trillion to 12 trillion dollars, creating a major impact on GDP.

On March 17, a short-term interest rate options trade betting on the Federal Reserve maintaining higher rates for an extended period closed for a profit of approximately $10 million, exiting ahead of the Federal Reserve's policy meeting. The core thesis of the trade predicted that U.S. interest rates in 2028 would be higher than market expectations. Driven by inflation concerns, the market has downward-revised its expectations for rate cuts.

Gate News, on March 17, PayPal announced that it will expand the wallet holding scope of its stablecoin PYUSD to 68 additional countries and regions, bringing the total number of eligible markets to 70, a significant expansion from the previous limitation to only the United States and United Kingdom. The newly added markets include Uganda, Colombia, Peru, and others, covering more regions across South America, Africa, and Asia.

On March 17, Polymarket prediction market data showed that a new account bet $150,000 that Netanyahu would step down before March 31. Despite a clarification video posted from his official account, the unusual activity raised questions, with the current prediction probability at 4%. The account had previously been active in NFT trading.

On March 17th, DefiLlama data showed that decentralized perpetual futures trading platform trading volume rebounded, with Hyperliquid open interest up 27.8% since the beginning of this month. Both trading volume and open interest on major Perp DEXs increased.

On March 17, affected by spot gold price breaking below $5,000 per ounce, the GOLD contract price on a certain decentralized derivatives platform declined, with the largest short address achieving unrealized gains of $620,000. Another address simultaneously opened short positions in both GOLD and SILVER contracts, with cumulative position size of $6.3 million, both of which have recorded unrealized gains.

Gate News reports that on March 17, according to Onchain Lens monitoring, asset management firm BlackRock deposited 567 BTC to a certain CEX, valued at approximately $41.78 million, while simultaneously transferring in 22,657 ETH, valued at approximately $52.40 million. The total value of both transfers exceeded $94 million.