Gate News reports that on March 18, Polymarket prediction market data shows that the probability of Federal Reserve Chair Powell mentioning "Inflation" more than 40 times during the March press conference (at 2:30 AM) is currently at 80%. Additionally, the probability of mentioning "Gold/Oil" is 93%; the probability of mentioning "Iran" is 62%.

Gate News reports that on March 18, the Linq V2 version was launched on Sui, with settlement times drastically reduced from 60 seconds to 5 seconds. This version introduces native on-ramps and bill pay features, offering stablecoin payment services for users in Nigeria and other regions, and supporting local currencies.

Ethereum will introduce the "Fast Confirmation Rules" (FCR) on March 18, enhancing the efficiency of asset transfers from Layer 1 to Layer 2, with confirmation times reduced to approximately 13 seconds. This mechanism is implemented through "fast confirmation blocks," which enhance network throughput and user experience without compromising security, and is expected to drive the adoption of L2 solutions. No hard fork is required, simplifying the deployment process.

Gate News reported that on March 18, according to the Financial Times of the UK, Microsoft is considering taking legal action against a $50 billion deal between Amazon and OpenAI. Microsoft believes that the deal may violate its exclusive cloud services partnership agreement previously reached with ChatGPT developer OpenAI.

Hyperliquid's HIP-3 market total open interest has reached $1.43 billion, setting a new record high and increasing over 100 times since its launch. The trading platform trade.xyz leads the market, accounting for about 90% of open interest and daily trading volume. The HIP-3 market supports 24/7 trading, enabling traditional assets to break through trading time limitations.

Bitcoin Layer 2 network Stacks implemented SIP-034 upgrade on March 17, enhancing network processing capacity for certain DeFi applications by 30 times. By optimizing transaction processing limits, the upgrade significantly impacts complex DeFi applications and is expected to indirectly increase transactions and fees.

Gate News reports that as of March 17, Bitcoin recorded 8 consecutive trading days of gains since March 9, marking the first occurrence in nearly 4 years. According to Glassnode data, Bitcoin has experienced at least 8 consecutive days of gains 15 times throughout history. Following these streaks, there were 9 instances of continued gains and 6 instances of declines over the next 30 days, with a median gain of approximately 19% over the 30-day period.

On March 17th, BTC pulled back after a brief rally higher. An address experienced three successive large liquidations due to holding highly leveraged long positions, with cumulative losses of approximately $10.7 million. The address still holds long positions totaling as much as $30.3 million, and liquidation risk is intensifying.

Nvidia announced at its GTC conference the launch of the Space-1 space computing module, which integrates 2 Rubin GPUs and 1 Vera CPU, delivering AI inference computing power 25 times that of the H100, and supports on-orbit data processing. Founder Jensen Huang pointed out that thermal dissipation challenges in space remain to be solved. Initial partners include multiple space enterprises, but the launch timeline has not been determined.

Bitcoin mining company HIVE is gradually reducing its mining operations in Sweden due to tax disputes and operational uncertainty. Simultaneously, through BUZZ company, it is expanding its liquid-cooled AI data center capacity in Canada by four times. Despite gaining legal support, Swedish authorities are still requiring it to pay disputed tax deposits.