“They Want to Make a Deal”

Find out our latest reports, listed below:

• Block Scholes x Panoptic: Bridging The Onchain Convexity Gap

• Volatility Report: February 2026

• 2026 – the year of RWA perps?
  

• Bybit x Block Scholes: “2026: It's Different This Time?”

Market Snapshot: Overnight Moves

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Daily Updates:

• Bitcoin followed US equity futures lower late Sunday night, briefly falling before $65,000. Since then, risk-assets have marginally recovered their losses and BTC is now trading back above $67,000 while SPX futures are up 0.42%. 
• With the US-Iran conflict now in its fifth week, risk-assets have taken a beating with a number of major US equity benchmarks now in or close to ‘correction territory’ (10% below ATH). Brent crude oil is up 3.52% on the day, firmly trading above $110 per barrel. 
• The S&P 500 lost 1.67% on Friday, closing lower for a fifth straight week — its longest losing streak since 2022 and its worst week since the war began. That has pushed the index nearly 9% below its January all-time high. 
• Meanwhile, the Nasdaq-100 and Dow Jones are already in a correction zone as both ended Friday’s session more than 10% below their record highs. 

• The large risk-off moves contrast the start of last week when President Trump announced he would pause military strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure for five days, citing productive conversations between the two sides — the US president even extended that truce later in the week. 
• On Friday Trump reiterated that Iran is seeking a deal — “They want to make a deal. Very simply, our military is the greatest in the world, by far. Iran is being decimated.”
• Speaking to reporters on Air Force One yesterday he said that Iran “gave” the US most of the 15 demands it sent in its 15-point peace plan. 
• Trump said “They gave us most of the points. Why wouldn’t they? We’re going to be asking for a couple of other things.”
• Publicly however, Iranian officials have continued to reject the peace proposal from the US and have countered with five conditions of their own. 

• Despite claims of a potential deal from Trump, all three major parties in the war have continued to launch missiles at one another, showing few signs of easing tensions. 
• Last Friday the US and Israel bombed Iranian nuclear and steel facilities, while Iran retaliated with strikes across the Persian Gulf. 
• Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi blamed Israel for the strikes and claimed that Trump had violated his extended pledge to avoid striking energy facilities. 
• On Saturday, Iranian-backed Houthi militants officially entered the war, launching ballistic missiles at Israel. The militants claimed that they would continue to strike the country until it stopped its attacks on Iran and its proxy militant groups such as the Hezbollah in Lebanon. They also threatened, though fell short of officially closing the Bab el‑Mandeb Strait — another critical shipping corridor that carries millions of barrels of oil shipments daily. 
• US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, told reporters on Friday that the war will take “weeks not months” and that the US “can achieve all of our objectives without ground troops”. 
• Nonetheless, it was reported that the US military sent an additional 3,500 marine soldiers into the region over the weekend and that the Pentagon was preparing plans that would involve weeks of ground operations in Iran. 

• Consumer sentiment in the US fell to a three-month low according to the University of Michigan’s March survey. The final March sentiment index fell to 53.3 from a preliminary reading of 55.5, while year-ahead inflation expectations show consumers expect prices to rise at a 3.8% annual pace, up from 3.4% in the last survey — the biggest increase since April 2025.
• Joanne Hsu, director of the Michigan survey said that “The persistence of high prices continues to be the dominant factor for consumer views of the economy, with 47% of consumers spontaneously noting that prices are currently eroding their personal finances”. 

• The Ethereum Foundation has increased its treasury deployment strategy, staking 22,517 ETH, worth roughly $46M, in its largest single-day staking allocation to date.

• Lido DAO is considering a one-off $20M LDO buyback as the token trades close to record lows, framing the move as an opportunistic use of treasury capital rather than a routine intervention.
• The proposal, published on Friday, would allow the DAO to deploy up to 10,000 stETH to repurchase LDO, potentially absorbing a meaningful share of the circulating supply at current prices.
• The initiative is separate from Lido’s planned NEST buyback framework and reflects the DAO’s view that the recent decline in LDO materially understates the protocol’s underlying fundamentals.

• Aave has launched on X Layer, OKX’s Ethereum Layer 2, giving OKX Wallet users direct access to onchain lending within the wallet, according to OKX’s post on X.
• The integration allows users to supply assets such as USDT0, xBTC and xETH to earn yield, or borrow against collateral without leaving the OKX Wallet interface. 
• Six dedicated eModes also offer loan-to-value ratios of up to 88%, adding more capital-efficient borrowing options for selected asset pairs.

• BNP Paribas is expanding its exchange offering by introducing 6 crypto-asset exchange traded notes (ETNs) indexed to Bitcoin or Ether, to its French retail investment offering, enabling clients to gain exposure without directly holding the assets. 
• These ETNs are available from March 30, 2026, for retail, entrepreneurial, private banking, and Hello bank! clients in France, with plans to extend access to wealth management clients internationally.

This Week’s Calendar:

Charts of the Day: