Trump announces “productive dialogue” with Iran, Iran says it’s not the case. But 15 minutes before the announcement, $1.5 billion futures trades were already in place.
1 | Trump calls for peace, $1.5 billion locked in 15 minutes before he spoke
At 6:49 a.m. on March 23, the New York futures market saw $1.5 billion in S&P 500 contracts and $650 million in crude oil contracts flood in. Sixteen minutes later, Trump posted on Truth Social announcing a five-day pause on bombing Iran’s energy infrastructure, claiming the two sides had a “very good and productive dialogue.” Oil prices plummeted 15%, and the S&P surged by $1.7 trillion.
Iran’s response was three words: “Not the case.” The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps called Trump a “liar-in-chief,” and state media issued statements denying any direct or indirect dialogue. On the same day Trump spoke of “peace,” Tehran and other cities suffered large-scale bombings.
UBS Chief Economist Paul Donovan offered a more cautious view, saying investors are not trading information but social media posts. The market reacts to positive news much faster than it processes negative evidence. This isn’t a peace trade; it’s confirmation bias. What happened in that 15-minute window remains officially unexplained.
(Source: Fortune / CNBC / Al Jazeera / UBS / NPR)
2 | Mattis says “no good options,” war is escalating
Former Defense Secretary James Mattis gave a more honest assessment at CERAWeek in Houston than the Pentagon. “Target lists will never compensate for strategic gaps,” he warned. If Trump now declares victory and withdraws troops, Iran will claim control of the Strait of Hormuz and tax every passing vessel. The U.S. and Israel have destroyed Iran’s air force and navy, but hundreds of miles of anti-ship cruise missiles along Iran’s coast cannot be solved by airstrikes.
On the same day, the AWS Bahrain data center was hit again by Iranian drones, disrupting operations. In early March, three AWS data centers in the UAE and Bahrain were attacked for the first time, causing widespread outages for banking, payments, and delivery services. The IRGC explicitly stated the attacks were in response to Amazon’s support for U.S. military operations. When war reaches data centers from oil fields, “digital neutrality” is no longer optional. Goldman Sachs’ worst-case scenario sees Brent crude at $147 per barrel, and United Airlines’ CEO is preparing for $175.
(Source: Axios / S&P Global / Tom’s Hardware / Al Jazeera / The National / Fortune / Goldman Sachs)
3 | Alibaba builds the world’s strongest open-source CPU with free RISC-V, native support for DeepSeek V3
Alibaba DAMO Academy announced the launch of the Hunyuan C950 in Shanghai, a server-grade CPU built on a 5nm process, running at 3.2GHz. It scored over 70 on the SPECint2006 benchmark, more than three times the performance of the previous C920, setting a new global record for RISC-V. Crucially, the C950 natively supports inference for trillion-parameter large models, capable of running Qwen3 and DeepSeek V3 directly.
RISC-V is an open-source instruction set architecture, avoiding licensing fees like Arm. Against the backdrop of U.S. senators calling for a halt on Nvidia’s AI chip exports to China, Alibaba’s approach is clear: don’t compete on Arm’s turf, rebuild from the ground up with a free architecture. Xiaomi also announced its 2025 financials on the same day, committing over 200 billion yuan in R&D over the next five years, focusing on AI, autonomous driving, and robotics. When Chinese tech companies push on both chip architecture and application layers, “regulation” is turning into a catalyst for “accelerated self-reliance.”
(Source: Reuters / CNBC / 36Kr / Digitimes / Electronics Weekly)
4 | $2.2 trillion asset manager Invesco takes over blockchain government bond fund, tokenization moves from experiment to mass production
Invesco announced it will take over Superstate’s USTB fund, which holds $967 million in U.S. Treasuries. The fund will continue operating on the blockchain under Invesco’s management and rebranding. USTB is the fourth-largest tokenized real-world asset (RWA) fund globally, behind BlackRock’s $1.9 billion BUIDL.
This aligns with the earlier Fink annual letter, where BlackRock CEO Larry Fink described tokenization as “a key tool to expand market access.” On the same day, Invesco, managing $2.2 trillion, took action. The U.S. Treasuries market for tokenized assets has already reached $12 billion, and McKinsey forecasts that by 2030, global tokenized assets will hit $20 trillion. The growth won’t come from native crypto assets but from traditional asset managers building pipelines. Nasdaq is also reportedly exploring integrating cryptocurrencies into Wall Street’s trading infrastructure.
(Source: Fortune / CoinDesk / PR Newswire / Bloomberg / McKinsey)
Worth knowing ↓
Anthropic released the most granular AI usage data to date, revealing that “AI fluency” is creating new class divides. Over six months, Claude users have a 10% higher success rate than beginners, and Washington D.C. has four times the adoption rate of similar cities. Axios analysis suggests the real divide isn’t “using AI” but “knowing how to use AI,” with both parties unprepared for this shift. (Sources: Axios / Anthropic)
China has temporarily adjusted fuel prices for the first time in 13 years, raising prices by about 0.85 yuan per liter. Amid soaring global oil prices, the NDRC intervened beyond the regular pricing mechanism, effectively halving the usual adjustment. The last similar move was in 2013. (Sources: 36Kr / National Development and Reform Commission)
The FCC has banned imports of foreign consumer-grade routers, expanding supply chain controls after last year’s drone restrictions. Devices already FCC-certified are unaffected; new devices require exemptions to be imported. Brands like Chinese TP-Link are among the first affected. (Sources: Bloomberg / The Verge)
Revolut’s profits are projected to jump 57% to $2.3 billion by 2025, with revenues reaching $6 billion. This fintech, friendly to crypto, continues to accelerate growth rather than slow down. (Sources: CoinDesk / Finextra)
Balancer Labs announced it is shutting down its corporate entity, with $110 million lost after a hack, turning the legal structure into debt. The protocol will continue to operate in a decentralized manner, but the corporate entity no longer exists. The “corporatization” experiment in DeFi hits another obstacle. (Sources: CoinDesk / The Block)
SoftBank is betting $30 billion on OpenAI, testing its lending capacity to the limit. FT reports that the deal’s financing structure has attracted attention. (Sources: FT)
SemiAnalysis provides an in-depth breakdown of Nvidia GTC 2026, with rack prices for Vera Rubin NVL72 soaring to $8.8 million. Nvidia unveiled three new systems, shifting from chip sales to complete systems, further squeezing server profit margins. (Sources: SemiAnalysis / Tom’s Hardware)
Delve paused demonstrations over “faked compliance” allegations, and Insight Partners removed an investment article. The whistleblower claims the startup faked audit evidence, prompting the lead investor to delete their explanation of the investment logic. (Sources: TechCrunch)
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