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Top Tech News: Israel–Lebanon talks lifts stocks; Iran-war energy spike looms; Saudi pipeline hit; mortgage rates ~6.4%: Russia/Iran-linked hacks escalation.
Company Watch: Palantir -7% on Burry; Reflection AI eyes $25B; Intel joins TeraFab; Hermeus $350M raise; Portal $50M round; Mariana+Pronto mine automation;
Buzzy Tools: Claude Managed Agents; Anthropic Mythos + Glasswing; Google AI Ads + Chrome vertical tabs; Meta Muse Spark; GLM‑5.1 tops SWE-Bench Pro; Wonderplan
Buzzy Tech: Citi speeds ops with AI; $5.2M DARPA nuclear-battery push; Meta tracks AI usage as perf metric; manure-to-biogas; Grab uses AI to cut costs.
Crypto: WYDE $EAT charity token surge; Iran seeks crypto/Yuan Hormuz fees; SEC admits flaws/drops cases; quantum risk seen as 3–5y upgrade cycle for Bitcoin.
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Stocks Rebound on Israel Talks — Dow +0.6%, S&P +0.6%, Nasdaq +0.8% after Netanyahu agrees to Lebanon talks. Dow turns positive YTD.
CPI Energy Price Spike — CPI inflation data is expected to show energy price spike from Iran war. Core PCE rose 3% annually in February, in line with estimates.
Saudi Pipeline Hit — The crucial Saudi East-West pipeline was struck Wednesday. It carris 4.9M barrels/day to the Red Sea port. Kuwaiti oil infrastructure, power plants, desalination were also hit. A UAE gas complex was on fire in Abu Dhabi.
Cyber War — Russia’s APT28 GRU compromised TP-Link, MikroTik routers via DNS hijacking globally. FBI, CISA, NSA warn Iran APT hit Rockwell PLCs in water, energy, government.
Mortgage Rates Fall — Mortgage rates dropped on ceasefire news but climbed back as truce faltered. Currently around 6.4% after briefly approaching low 6% range.
Iran Crypto Hormuz Tolls — Iran is now charging up to $2M per oil tanker for passage through Strait of Hormuz, accepting cryptocurrency and Chinese yuan. This reduces dollar reliance and bypasses U.S. sanctions.
Tech Buzz Editorial Feature
The Strait of Hormuz has always been a geopolitical pressure point, but Iran just turned it into the world's first sovereign cryptocurrency tollbooth. Here's how it works. Shipping operators email Iranian authorities with cargo manifests. The IRGC assesses the load, confirms you're not hauling weapons, and invoices you roughly $1 per barrel. A fully loaded supertanker carrying 2 million barrels? That's a $2M bill, payable in Bitcoin or Chinese Yuan. You get a few seconds to execute the transfer. Empty tankers pass free.
This is happening at a chokepoint that handles 20% of global seaborne oil. The tolls could generate $20M daily for Tehran. And because Bitcoin settles without touching SWIFT or the correspondent banking system, Western sanctions have no grip on the money. It just moves.
Iran didn't stumble into this. The system is deliberate, sophisticated, and frankly, a masterclass in sanctions circumvention. By forcing global shipping fleets to hold and spend Bitcoin, Tehran is routing around the entire U.S. financial infrastructure. No bank wires. No clearinghouses. No frozen accounts. The funds land in wallets the Treasury Department can't trace or seize. Iran has reportedly been mining and accumulating crypto for some years through this method, as was Venezuela.
Bitcoin rallied from around $68,000 to nearly $73,000 after the announcement. Institutional capital saw the writing on the blockchain. This was proof of concept. If a heavily sanctioned regime can collect sovereign revenue in Bitcoin at one of the world's most critical maritime passages, the technology works. It's not theoretical anymore.
Some crypto intelligence firms are skeptical about the on-chain evidence, waiting to see whale-sized transactions flow into known Iranian wallets. But the precedent alone has rewritten expectations. A government demanding Bitcoin for physical transit is the kind of real-world validation no whitepaper could ever provide.
The timing is brutal for Washington. The 50-year U.S.-Saudi petrodollar agreement expired in June 2024, and now Iran is actively forcing ships to pay in anything but dollars. Oil prices spiked 46% during the early days of the crisis. Supply chains seized up. Energy-dependent economies started sweating.
Catherine Austin Fitts of the Solari Report framed it this way: both the U.S. and Iran are getting squeezed financially, but the nature of the squeeze is different. Iran faces liquidity crunches and currency depreciation after years of brutal sanctions that have affected mostly the citizens. America faces something more existential. A global energy depression that hits not just the U.S. economy, but every ally still tethered to dollar dominance.
Andy Schectman, her guest, pointed to Southeast Asia as the canary in the coal mine. China just enrolled 800 million people across the region into CIPS, the Cross-Border Interbank Payment System. These countries, representing 35% of global GDP, are now trading in local currencies and settling balances in gold. Not dollars. Not Treasuries. In fact, many countries are dumping U.S. Treasuries as fast as they can. If they need to buy crypto to pay the tolls, it’s likely they would prefer to offload treasuries rather than gold. China is especially keen, being a major holder of U.S. debt, and with a stated long-term policy of reducing exposure.
The UAE joined BRICS. Saudi Arabia didn't fully commit, but they're part of mBridge, a cross-border payment system that's 40% backed by gold. These are energy superpowers repositioning themselves for a multipolar financial system.
Schectman's analysis cuts to the bone. If you don't need dollars to settle trades, you don't need to hold as many Treasuries. Chipping away at settlement status erodes reserve currency status. It happens little by little, then all at once.
The Middle East is choosing sides, and while nobody's openly thumbing their nose at Washington yet, the infrastructure for dollar alternatives is operational and growing. Belt and Road vaults. Local currency swaps. Gold settlement. The machinery is in place.
In a move that would have been unthinkable a decade ago, President Trump apparently floated the idea of a joint venture with Iran to administer the tolls. This makes some sense, as Trump campaigned on a pro-Bitcoin platform and many argue there is evidence the administration is laying the groundwork for a Bretton-Woods style reset of the financial system to move to a crypto stablecoin-based dollar.
Iran doesn’t really have any incentive to work with Trump on this at this point, but it may be a part of the negotiations if they ever take place. Ultimately, it may come back to the question of the U.S.’ lack of ability to take and hold the strait in any realistic military scenario (at least using conventional weapons). Iran has little apparent incentive to deal Trump in on this revenue after the damage it has suffered.
Sanctions will bite a little less if Iran can trade oil again and use the revenue to repair decades of sanction-induced damage and the recent war destruction. Incidentally, China and Russia will be the likely recipients of the contracts for that rebuild unlike the Iraq war if this is the final deal. All of this moves us closer to a multipolar world with BRICS members as key players controlling the West Asia region.
This may not be a permanent state of affairs, but regardless, it is a strong validation that decentralized infrastructure has sovereign-grade utility. It's also cementing Bitcoin's role as geopolitical insurance in a multipolar world beyond U.S. and Western hegemony. Iran has turned a two-week ceasefire into a proof-of-concept for every sanctioned nation on Earth. The petrodollar isn't dead yet, but it is certainly looking less healthy than it ever has before.
Latest deals and trending companies
Burry: Anthropic Eating Palantir's Lunch — Palantir stock plunged -7% after Michael Burry said Anthropic jumped from $9B to $30B ARR in months while Palantir took 20 years to reach $5B revenue.
Reflection AI $25B — NVIDIA-backed Korean chip startup raises $2.5B at $25B with JPMorgan. Up from $8B Oct, 46x from $545M. $6.8B Korea AI deal.
Intel & TeraFab — Intel has partnered with Elon Musk's TeraFab to advance silicon fabrication tech, targeting 1 terawatt of computing power p/a for AI and robotics. May develop custom silicon.
Hermeus — The startup developing unmanned hypersonic fighters raised $350M, at $1B valuation. Includes $200M equity led by Khosla Ventures and $150M debt.
Portal Rocket Engines — The aerospace startup secured $50M to develop high-power rocket engines to compete in growing commercial space launch market with innovative propulsion tech.
Mariana x Pronto Copper Mine — Mariana Minerals partners with Pronto to automate copper mining operations with autonomous vehicles, AI-powered systems.
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The Latest News in Crypto & Blockchain
[Open Deal] Feed the Children Partners with WYDE's $EAT Token — FTC becomes exclusive partner for WYDE's $EAT hunger token. 944 holders funded 20,000 meals while token surged 10,000%, with 25% of trading fees auto-funding this verified 501(c)(3).
Iran's Crypto Transit Fees — Iran is charging up to $2 million per oil tanker in transit fees through the Strait of Hormuz, accepting cryptocurrency and Chinese yuan.
SEC's Crypto Shift — The SEC acknowledged flaws in seven past crypto enforcement actions, dismissing them for lack of investor harm.
Quantum Leap for Bitcoin Security — Recent breakthroughs in quantum computing suggest a 3-5 year timeline for Bitcoin's adaptation to post-quantum cryptography.
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