Today's top news highlights:
1. US March non-farm payroll data exceeded expectations, and the unemployment rate fell slightly.
2. Charles Schwab will launch its own cryptocurrency trading account.
3. Anthropic updated its terms of service, prohibiting OpenClaw from accessing Claude for free.
4. The HypurrFi domain was hijacked; the team has migrated to a new domain.
5. Bitcoin mining difficulty increased by 3.87% to 138.97 T.
6. Report: Total cryptocurrency trading volume in Q1 2026 was approximately $20.57 trillion, with derivatives trading volume being about 9.6 times that of spot trading.
Regulation & Macro
US March non-farm payroll data exceeded expectations, and the unemployment rate fell slightly.
U.S. nonfarm payrolls increased by 178,000 in March, far exceeding the market expectation of 60,000 and reaching the highest level since December 2024. This represents a significant improvement from the negative employment growth in the previous month. The previous figure was revised from -92,000 to -133,000. The U.S. unemployment rate fell slightly to 4.3% in March, compared to market expectations of no change at 4.4% and a previous reading of 4.40%.
Charles Schwab will launch its proprietary crypto trading account.
According to Crowdfund Insider, traditional brokerage Charles Schwab will launch a new "Schwab Crypto" account on its platform, allowing users to directly trade Bitcoin and Ethereum. The account is provided by a system built by Charles Schwab Premier Bank, SSB, and will be available nationwide except for New York and Louisiana. Previously, Schwab only offered SEC-approved crypto-related ETFs. The report also mentions that Schwab is one of the co-sponsors of the institutional-grade crypto exchange EDX Markets, with other investors including Citadel Securities and Fidelity Digital Assets.
Anthropic updated its terms of service to prohibit OpenClaw from accessing Claude.
Artificial intelligence company Anthropic has updated its terms of service. Effective 3:00 PM ET on April 4th (3:00 AM Beijing time on April 5th), users will no longer be able to use their Claude subscription credits to run third-party integration tools, including OpenClaw. If users still wish to use OpenClaw on Claude, they must choose a pay-as-you-go plan, with the associated costs billed separately from their Claude subscription fees.
Nevada court extends injunction against prediction platform Kalshi
Judge Jason Woodbury of the First Judicial District of Nevada extended the temporary injunction against prediction market platform Kalshi and granted a preliminary injunction application filed by the Nevada Gaming Control Board, prohibiting Kalshi from offering sports, entertainment, and election-related prediction contracts in the state until a broader lawsuit is concluded. The judge stated that buying baseball contracts on the Kalshi platform is "indistinguishable" from betting on a state betting platform, constituting unlicensed gambling activity.
Trump: US warplane crash will not affect negotiations with Iran
According to Jinshi News, in a brief phone interview, US President Trump stated that the downing of the US warplane would not affect negotiations with Iran. Trump declined to discuss the specifics of the ongoing search and rescue operation following the crash in Iran, but he expressed displeasure with some reports about the military operation, which he described as clearly a tense and sensitive matter. When asked whether today's events would affect negotiations with Iran, Trump stated that they would not. He said, "No, absolutely not. No, this is war, we are at war."
Cambodia's National Assembly has passed its first law specifically targeting cybercrime in online fraud centers, aiming to support a nationwide "clean-up operation" and prevent the resurgence of these fraud rings. The new law stipulates imprisonment of 2 to 5 years and fines of up to US$125,000 for those involved in online fraud. For organized crimes or those involving a large number of victims, the maximum sentence can be 10 years and fines up to US$250,000. The law also explicitly sets penalties for money laundering, collecting victim data, and recruiting fraudsters. Previously, Cambodia primarily handled related cases under charges of labor exploitation, aggravated fraud, and money laundering. This legislation is seen as the latest measure under international pressure on fraud rings in Southeast Asia and complements recent arrests of high-ranking figures involved and extradition attempts to China.
Project Updates
Binance Futures will launch two USDⓈ-based perpetual equity contracts on April 7th: MUUSDT and SNDKUSDT. Both support up to 10x leverage and 24/7 trading. The MUUSDT contract tracks Micron Technology common stock (NASDAQ: MU), and the SNDKUSDT contract tracks Sandisk Corporation common stock (NASDAQ: SNDK). The settlement asset is USDT.
The HypurrFi domain has been hijacked; the team has migrated to a new domain.
DeFi lending protocol HypurrFi tweeted that the hypurr.fi domain was hijacked. The team has migrated its infrastructure to hypurrfi.com, and the protocol itself, user funds, and team infrastructure are unaffected. The team has regained control of the hypur(dot)fi domain through its registrar. The new DNS resolution will take some time (up to 24 hours in some regions). Currently, the domain still resolves to the attacker. Do not use hypur(dot)fi.
According to on-chain analyst Yu Jin, Chainlink completed its quarterly unlocking one hour ago, with a total of 19 million LINK (approximately $165 million) transferred from three non-circulating supply addresses. Of these, 14.375 million LINK (approximately $125 million) were transferred to Binance, and 4.625 million LINK (approximately $40.1 million) were transferred to the 0xD50...8Af multisignature address.
Every three months, Chainlink's non-circular supply address unlocks approximately 10 to 20 million LINK tokens. Most of these are transferred to Binance, while a small portion is transferred to the 0xD50...8Af address (the LINK transferred to this address enters the LINK staking reward distribution contract, which is used to distribute rewards to LINK staking users).
edgeX has initiated a buyback and burn mechanism, with over 2.52 million EDGE tokens already burned.
EdgeX announced that it has permanently burned approximately 2.5284 million EDGE tokens, which came from tokens previously acquired through buybacks. The project team stated that the burning of EDGE obtained through buybacks has officially begun, and regular burning will be carried out every 24 hours thereafter, with the transaction hashes made public on-chain for querying.
Opinions & Analysis
Cathie Wood: Bitcoin's "85% crash cycle" is over
Cathie Wood, CEO of Ark Invest, told CNBC that the price crashes of around 85% that have been common in Bitcoin in the past "are over." She stated that Bitcoin has become a "proven technology," a "proven monetary system," and views it as a new asset class.
According to the "Circle USDC File" compiled by blockchain detective ZachXBT, since 2022, Circle has been suspected of inaction or slow action in compliance handling in multiple incidents involving theft, hacking, or sanctioned entities, with the total amount involved exceeding $420 million. These include the failure to promptly freeze tens of millions of USDC in the $110 million Mango Markets hack and the $190 million Nomad Bridge hack; the freezing of addresses related to Lazarus Group was approximately 4.5 months later than other stablecoin issuers; and in the Ledger supply chain attack, stolen assets containing USDC remained in addresses for over 3 hours without being frozen.
According to Blockworks, the perpetual contract infrastructure, which was originally used for trading crypto assets, is increasingly being used for perpetual contract trading of traditional financial (TradFi) assets. In 2025, almost 100% of the notional open interest in perpetual contracts came from crypto assets. Now, in less than 16 months, the proportion of crypto assets in the total open interest of perpetual contracts has dropped to below 80%, indicating a significant increase in the proportion of TradeFi assets in the perpetual contract market.
Important data
Bitcoin mining difficulty increased by 3.87% to 138.97 T.
According to data from CloverPool, the Bitcoin mining difficulty was adjusted at block height 943,488 at 17:28 today, with the mining difficulty increasing by 3.87% to 138.97 T. The average hashrate of the entire network over the past seven days is currently 986.74 EH/s.
According to a cryptocurrency market share research report released by CoinGlass, the total global cryptocurrency trading volume in the first quarter of 2026 was approximately $20.57 trillion, of which spot trading accounted for approximately $1.94 trillion and derivatives for approximately $18.63 trillion, with a derivatives-to-spot trading ratio of approximately 9.6 times. Binance's derivatives trading volume was approximately $4.90 trillion, accounting for approximately 34.9% of the top ten exchanges, and its average open interest (OI) was approximately $23.9 billion, accounting for approximately 29.9%, both ranking first. Its spot trading volume was approximately $639.9 billion, accounting for approximately 34.3% of the top ten spot platforms. Binance ranked first in both ±1% depth for BTC and ETH spot and futures trading. In terms of user asset accumulation, Binance's daily average assets under custody were approximately $152.9 billion, accounting for approximately 73.5% of major centralized exchanges, approximately 9.6 times that of OKX, and it is considered a platform at the level of "systemic infrastructure" in the market.
The report notes that decentralized derivatives platforms have entered the mainstream comparative landscape. Hyperliquid, for example, saw derivatives trading volume reach approximately $492.7 billion in Q1 2026, placing it among the top ten global exchanges. Its average daily open interest was around $6 billion, peaking at nearly $9.7 billion, making it comparable in size to Bitget and surpassing platforms like WhiteBIT and BingX. In contrast, its overall scale remains significantly smaller than leading centralized platforms such as Binance, OKX, Bybit, and Gate, but it poses substantial competition to the market share of second-tier CEXs, validating the trend of "decentralized derivatives moving from proof-of-concept to actual market share competition."
FTX/Alameda urgently sold 6.94 million DRIFT tokens after the Drift Protocol was hacked.
According to on-chain analyst Ember, following the $285 million theft from Drift Protocol, FTX/Alameda sold 6.94 million DRIFT tokens ($320,000) via Wintertermute six hours ago.
Alameda, an investor in Drift Protocol, acquired 8.33 million DRIFT tokens a year ago through vesting, which were then worth $6.22 million. Today, those tokens are worth only $380,000.
A new wallet, suspected to belong to Bitmine, received 40,000 ETH from FalconX.
According to Onchain Lens monitoring, a newly created wallet received 40,000 ETH ($82.12 million) from FalconX, which likely belongs to Bitmine.
