Hey friends, here’s a look at what happened in crypto yesterday, March 25, 2026. The space stayed true to form, mixing regulatory headaches, clever innovation, old-school finance dipping its toes in, and one hell of a law enforcement plot twist.
Grab your coffee and let’s dive in.
In Major Thing That Happened in Crypto, the UK Cracks Down on Political Donations
Let’s start with the regulatory side of what happened in crypto, because when governments move, the whole market feels it. A major independent review led by Philip Rycroft, a former top civil servant, recommended a temporary halt to political donations made in crypto assets. The report urges the UK government to push through legislation in the Representation of the People Bill to create a clear moratorium.
Rycroft’s team highlighted that incomplete rules around crypto, the headache of tracing ultimate ownership on some assets, and how easy it is to chop big donations into smaller ones that slip under the radar. Donations below £500 (about $669) often dodge the usual permissibility checks, while party reporting thresholds sit even higher. The worry is foreign money quietly finding its way into British politics through these gaps.
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This review dropped just a week after the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy called for an immediate pause until the Electoral Commission sorts out proper statutory guidance ahead of the next general election.
It’s all part of a broader push detailed in “The Rycroft Review: Report of the independent review into countering foreign financial influence and interference in UK politics.” You can check the full document on gov.uk.
In a Major Win that Happened in Crypto Yesterday, Metaplanet Turns Shopping into Bitcoin Rewards
Now time for something way more fun! Imagine every time you swipe your card for groceries, fuel, or that random coffee run, a slice of it lands back in your wallet as actual Bitcoin. That’s precisely the kind of everyday magic Japan’s leading Bitcoin company, Metaplanet, is rolling out.
The MetaPlanet Card, set to launch this summer, will be available exclusively to Metaplanet shareholders. It offers a 1.6% cashback paid directly in Bitcoin on every purchase with no complicated staking or minimum spend thresholds. It turns owning shares into a daily crypto-earning machine.
Think about it like airline miles, except instead of points that quietly expire or devalue, you’re stacking real sats that sit in your wallet and can grow with Bitcoin’s price. Those tiny fractions might not feel like much at first, but compound them over time and the numbers get interesting.
Someone dropping $3,000 a month on the card could pull in roughly $576 worth of Bitcoin annually at that 1.6% rate before any upside from BTC price appreciation. In a world where most shareholder perks feel like lame discounts or unread reports, this stands out as genuinely different.
It’s the kind of practical innovation that makes you wonder why more companies aren’t doing something similar. This move is classic Metaplanet, always finding fresh ways to get more people involved with Bitcoin.
NYSE Goes All-In on Blockchain Trading
Meanwhile, one of the most traditional pillars of finance just took a serious step toward the future. The New York Stock Exchange has teamed up with Securitize to build a brand-new digital trading platform where stocks and ETFs will be tokenized and traded directly on the blockchain.
Securitize specializes in turning traditional securities into blockchain-based digital tokens, and under a fresh memorandum of understanding, they’ll become the NYSE’s first-ever digital transfer agent. That means they’ll handle minting tokenized versions of real-world assets right on the chain. They’ll also help set the regulatory, operational, and technology standards for the whole platform.
Securitize’s broker-dealer subsidiary is lined up to actually trade on the platform once it goes live, putting them on both sides of the market. This is a serious push toward 24/7 tokenized equity trading.
For years people have talked about bringing Wall Street on-chain, and now one of the biggest players is actively building it. This partnership could reshape how stocks move in the years ahead and shows how deeply what happened in crypto yesterday is influencing even the most established financial institutions.
Irish Police Crack a $35 Million Bitcoin Wallet
And then we have the story that sounds like it came straight out of a thriller: what happened in crypto yesterday. Ireland’s Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB), working closely with Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre, finally gained access to and seized a Bitcoin wallet containing 500 BTC, currently worth over $35 million.
The wallet was one of twelve that once held a combined 6,000 Bitcoin, all bought back in late 2011 and early 2012 by convicted drug dealer Clifton Collins.
He reportedly hid the private keys on a single sheet of paper stuffed inside the aluminum cap of a fishing rod case. After his 2017 arrest and a five-year prison sentence for cannabis cultivation and sales, his landlord cleared out the rental property… and the keys vanished along with everything else.
For years everyone assumed that fortune was lost forever, locked away by “inaccessible” keys. But yesterday the breakthrough happened.
With heavy technical support and decryption muscle from Europol, the authorities cracked it open and secured the funds as proceeds of crime. It’s a wild reminder of how long crypto stories can stay buried and then suddenly resurface in the most unexpected ways.
That’s all that happened in crypto on March 25, 2026. From governments drawing new lines around political funding to clever ways of earning Bitcoin through everyday spending, big finance embracing tokenization, and police pulling off a decade-old heist recovery.
