Monday, March twenty-third, and there's a lot to unpack. Bitcoin just whipsawed between sixty-seven five and seventy-one two in a single session after Trump paused Iran strikes, then Iran denied any talks were happening. Four hundred fifteen million dollars in leveraged positions got liquidated. Meanwhile, NVIDIA is teaming up with a nuclear engineering giant to build AI data centers powered by atomic energy. Circle's USDC just overtook Tether in transaction volume for the first time since 2019. And Bhutan is quietly selling off its sovereign Bitcoin stash to fund infrastructure. Let's get into it.
The energy demands of artificial intelligence have become one of the defining infrastructure stories of 2026, and this week it took a very nuclear turn. AtkinsRéalis, one of the world's largest nuclear engineering firms, announced a collaboration with NVIDIA to accelerate the deployment of nuclear-powered AI factories. They're using NVIDIA's Omniverse platform to build digital twins of these facilities, essentially simulating entire nuclear-powered data centers before a single shovel hits the ground. The idea is to pair AtkinsRéalis's CANDU reactor technology with the gigawatt-class power needs of modern AI clusters.
This isn't theoretical. The U.S. Department of Energy just unveiled plans for a ten-gigawatt data center at the former Portsmouth uranium enrichment plant in Piketon, Ohio. SoftBank's SB Energy is partnering with AEP Ohio to build it out, backed by four point two billion dollars in investment as part of a broader U.S.-Japan trade agreement. That's nine point two gigawatts of natural gas capacity alone, plus massive transmission upgrades. For context, ten gigawatts could power roughly seven million homes.
North of the border, Bell Canada announced a three hundred megawatt AI data center in Saskatchewan, its largest project ever in that province. Cerebras and CoreWeave are signed on as tenants, and Saskatchewan's grid could eventually be supplemented by nuclear power. The estimated economic impact is twelve billion dollars.
Investors are paying attention. Nuclear ETFs have posted triple-digit returns over the past year. The Global X Uranium ETF, ticker URA, is up a hundred and twenty percent with seven point six billion in assets. The Range Nuclear Renaissance Index ETF and the Themes Uranium and Nuclear ETF have both delivered over seventy percent annual returns.
The throughline here is clear. AI compute demands are growing so fast that they're reshaping energy policy in real time. Natural gas gets you there quickly, but the long-term bet is nuclear. It's zero-carbon, it runs around the clock, and it scales. The hyperscalers know this. The governments know this. And now the investment flows are reflecting it.
Bitcoin had one of its most volatile single sessions in months. Early Monday in Asia, BTC was sliding toward sixty-seven five hundred after Trump threatened to strike Iranian power plants over the weekend. Crypto, stocks, and risk assets broadly sold off while oil spiked. Then, almost out of nowhere, Trump posted on Truth Social that the U.S. and Iran had held quote very good and productive conversations about a complete and total resolution of hostilities in the Middle East, and that planned strikes would be postponed for five days. Bitcoin rocketed above seventy-one thousand dollars in roughly five minutes. Markets reversed over three trillion dollars in value.
But then Iran denied any communication had taken place, and BTC pulled back to around seventy thousand. In total, four hundred fifteen million dollars in leveraged positions were liquidated across both directions.
Looking at the broader picture, Bitcoin spot volumes have fallen to 2023 lows. The rallies we're seeing are almost entirely news-driven, not sustained by organic spot demand. The weekly close came in below the two hundred week moving average, which has some traders targeting significantly lower levels, with calls as low as forty-six thousand floating around.
But there's a more nuanced story beneath the surface. Gold has crashed for nine consecutive days, down about twenty-two percent from its January highs, now firmly in bear market territory. Meanwhile, Bitcoin ETFs continue to attract inflows. This divergence is unusual. Twenty-one Shares' macro chief argues it reflects a split between central bank behavior, which drives gold, and retail and institutional adoption, which shapes Bitcoin. Some analysts see early signs of Bitcoin outperforming gold, with the BTC-to-gold ratio rebounding toward sixteen ounces.
The key risk this week isn't oil. It's bonds. U.S. and Japanese ten-year yields are spiking, and several analysts argue that bond markets, not crude, will determine Bitcoin's direction. If yields keep rising, risk assets stay under pressure regardless of what happens with Iran.
Despite the volatility, Bitcoin treasury companies are not slowing down. Strategy, formerly MicroStrategy, led by Michael Saylor, added another thousand thirty-one Bitcoin last week for seventy-six point six million dollars, bringing total holdings to seven hundred sixty-two thousand ninety-nine BTC. It was a relatively modest buy by their standards, but the company also expanded its capital-raising plans. Strategy topped up share issuance authorizations and added new Wall Street partners, bringing potential Bitcoin buying power back to forty-two billion dollars. That's firepower they can deploy when they choose.
Meanwhile, in Europe, Sweden's H100 Group signed a letter of intent to acquire two Bitcoin treasury companies, Moonshot and Never Say Die. If completed, the deal would triple H100's holdings to around thirty-five hundred BTC, making it the second-largest Bitcoin treasury company in Europe. This is a Bitcoin-for-Bitcoin acquisition, institutional scale consolidation happening entirely within the Bitcoin economy.
In Asia, Hong Kong's Boyaa Interactive is eyeing a seventy million dollar crypto treasury expansion. They're currently the twenty-third largest corporate Bitcoin holder globally and the third largest in Asia behind Japan's Metaplanet and China's Next Technology Holding.
And in a more unusual development, Coinbase launched a tokenized Bitcoin yield fund on its Base network in partnership with Apex Group. Available to non-U.S. investors, it uses the ERC-3643 standard to embed compliance directly into the tokens. It's part of a broader trend, BlackRock's Larry Fink wrote in his annual letter that tokenized assets could do for Wall Street what the internet did to mail.
On the exchange side, the NYSE removed options position limits on eleven Bitcoin and Ether ETFs, and now allows FLEX options trading on them, which means institutions can customize strike prices and expiration dates. This is quiet but significant plumbing work that increases institutional flexibility in crypto markets.
Two stories that say a lot about where crypto is heading structurally.
First, USDC has overtaken Tether's USDT in transaction volume for the first time since 2019. Circle's stablecoin now accounts for sixty-four percent of all stablecoin transfer volume and holds a twenty-five percent global market share. Circle minted over eight billion dollars in USDC during the recent downturn, bringing total circulation above seventy-eight billion. The broader stablecoin market cap now exceeds three hundred billion dollars.
This isn't just a market share shift. It reflects a structural change. USDT has historically served as a holding tank, the stablecoin you park money in. USDC is becoming the transactional layer, the stablecoin that actually moves. Circle's partnership with Mastercard is integrating USDC and EURC into Mastercard's global payment infrastructure for on-ramp, off-ramp, and merchant acceptance. The Circle Payments Network now has over fifty-five participating institutions with annualized transaction volume around five point seven billion dollars. Circle stock is up forty-five percent this year.
Meanwhile, Deloitte announced plans to integrate a Canadian dollar stablecoin into institutional payment systems, anticipating new regulations from Ottawa on fiat-backed digital assets. The institutional plumbing for stablecoins is being built out in real time.
Now to Bhutan. The country's sovereign wealth fund, Druk Holding and Investments, moved nine hundred seventy-three Bitcoin worth about seventy-two million dollars in the latest round of transfers. Bhutan's holdings have fallen from a peak of over thirteen thousand BTC in October 2024 to around forty-four hundred BTC today. The country began mining Bitcoin in 2019 using cheap hydroelectric power, but appears to have paused mining operations after last year's halving.
What makes Bhutan's story interesting is what they're doing with the proceeds. The funds are reportedly being directed toward infrastructure projects including the Gelephu Mindfulness City development, high-speed rail, renewable energy, and digital identity programs. This is a small nation that used surplus clean energy to mine Bitcoin, accumulated a meaningful treasury, and is now converting it into physical infrastructure. It's a voluntary, transparent liquidation, not a forced sell-off. Some observers see it as a model for developing nations looking to leverage digital assets for tangible development.
Here's the thought to sit with. Bhutan mined Bitcoin with water. It held. It waited. And now it's building railroads and cities with the proceeds. That's the Bitcoin thesis in miniature: convert stranded energy into stored value, then deploy that value when and where it's needed. Whether you're a small Himalayan kingdom or a publicly traded company stacking sats, the logic is the same. The question is always about timing, patience, and knowing what you're building toward. That's all for today. I'm back tomorrow.