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AUSTRAC, Australia's anti-money laundering watchdog, put crypto ATM providers on notice for not complying with required standards.
"AUSTRAC’s cryptocurrency taskforce has found that some crypto ATM providers may not have the right anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism (AML/CTF) checks in place," the financial intelligence agency said in a release on Monday.
Crypto ATM providers need to register with the regulator, monitor transactions and complete know your customer checks to comply with the country's Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing (AML/CTF) Act 2006.
Australia has the highest numbers of crypto ATMs in the Asia Pacific region, and the number is growing. The nation has some 1,600 in use, up from just 23 in 2019, AUSTRAC said.
A task force set up in December "identified worrying trends and indicators of suspicious activity, including transactions that may be linked to scams or fraud,” CEO Brendan Thomas said.
The watchdog has been following in the footsteps of U.K. regulators in trying to clamp down on illegal crypto ATM activity. In the U.K. only approved crypto ATMS can operate, and none have been. The Financial Conduct Authority last month secured a four year sentence against Olumide Osunkoya, 46, for illegally operating a crypto ATM network.
CoinShares' Valkyrie Bitcoin Mining (WGMI) exchange-traded fund (ETF) is the worst-performing ETF of 2025, down 43% year-to-date, according to Senior Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas.
The ETF is made up of several publicly traded bitcoin (BTC) miners. IREN (IREN) is the largest holding at 15%, which is down 42%. Core Scientific (CORZ) follows with a 14% weighting and a 48% decline, while Cipher Mining (CIFR), the third-largest holding at 9.6%, is down 52%. Even NVIDIA (NVDA), the sixth-largest holding at 5%, has dropped over 20% this year.
According to its investment strategy, "The ETF will invest in companies that derive at least 50% of their revenue or profits from bitcoin mining operations and/or from providing specialized chips, hardware, software, or other services to companies engaged in bitcoin mining." WGMI consists of 21 holdings and manages $147.2 million in total assets.
In contrast, metals ETFs have been the top performers of 2025, according to justETF. Several gold mining ETFs rank in the top five, with the Equity World Basic Materials DAXglobal Gold Miners ETF up 38% year-to-date.
Bitcoin miners have faced significant challenges this year, as the network hash rate—representing the computational power required to mine bitcoin—continues to climb, hovering near all-time highs around 832 EH/s. This has created a notable divergence between bitcoin’s price and the hash rate.
As a result, mining difficulty has also remained close to its peak, making it harder for miners to successfully mine new bitcoins. At the same time, transaction fees are extremely low, further squeezing miner profitability as rewards from processing transactions remain minimal.
The Trump family is deepening its involvement in cryptocurrency with a major move into bitcoin (BTC) mining, according to a Hut 8 press release.
Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. are merging their firm, American Data Centers, with a new mining venture called American Bitcoin, taking a 20% stake in the company. The remaining 80% will be owned by Hut 8, a publicly traded crypto infrastructure firm, which is contributing nearly 61,000 mining machines to the new entity. According to the release, no cash changed hands in the deal.
Eric Trump, who will serve as American Bitcoin’s chief strategy officer, describes the initiative as aligned with the family’s focus on hard assets, likening digital currencies to real estate. He emphasized plans to build a “bitcoin reserve” and potentially take the company public.
Although American Bitcoin is separate from the Trump Organization, it may eventually collaborate with World Liberty Financial—the DeFi project launched by the Trump brothers.
Hut 8 will host the mining operations in its 11 U.S. data centers. CEO Asher Genoot said low energy costs and scalable infrastructure will give American Bitcoin a competitive edge.
The board of directors will include Tinder co-founder Justin Mateen and FabFitFun co-founder Michael Broukhim. Despite criticism over bitcoin mining’s environmental impact, Eric Trump believes lower U.S. energy costs will help American miners outpace global competitors.
Disclaimer: Parts of this article were generated with the assistance from AI tools and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and adherence to our standards. For more information, see CoinDesk’s full AI Policy.
UPDATE (March 31, 12:50 UTC): Updates story with Hut 8's confirmation.
Ether (ETH) has dropped 39% this year relative to bitcoin (BTC), the largest cryptocurrency, taking the ratio between the two to the lowest in almost five years as a riskier macroeconomic environment weighs on the second-largest cryptocurrency.
At the current level, 1 ETH is the equivalent of 0.02191 BTC. That's the least since May 2020, when ether was trading around $200 and bitcoin just under $10,000. Today the ETH price is about $1,800 and the BTC price around $82,000.
The underperformance is notable because it's the first time ether has weakened against bitcoin in the 12 months after a BTC reward halving. On April 20, 2024, the payment Bitcoin miners received for confirming blocks on the blockchain was reduced by 50% to 3.125 BTC.
In previous halving cycles, ether outperformed bitcoin in the first year after a halving. This time, the ratio has dropped by more than 50%.
That's partly because the threat of a tariff-driven trade war, persistent inflation and elevated bonds yields globally have driven investors to assets seen as more liquid and less risky. Gold, the ultimate haven, has climbed to record highs, and in the cryptocurrency market bitcoin is seen as a safer bet than ether.
This relative performance also marks one of ether’s worst quarterly performances against bitcoin in several years, according to data from Glassnode. The last time ether underperformed bitcoin to a similar degree was in the third quarter of 2019, when the ratio dropped to 0.0164, a quarterly decline of 46%.
This current slump mirrors the underperformance seen in 2019 and further highlights ether's relative weakness, especially when compared to other layer-1 assets. The SOLETH ratio — measuring the value of Solana’s SOL relative to ether — is up 24% year-to-date to 0.07007. This indicates that SOL has significantly outperformed ether in 2025, despite the token itself itself being down 35% year-to-date.
UPDATE (March 31, 9:25 UTC): Adds macroeconomic environment in fifth paragraph.
Faint hopes of dogecoin (DOGE) being included in the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E.) were dented on Sunday as the department’s figurehead Elon Musk squashed any plans of adding the memecoin.
"There are no plans for the government to use dogecoin or anything,” Musk said during a speech at the America PAC town hall in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
“I was going to call it Government Efficiency Commission, but that's a super boring name. Then the internet said it needs to be the Department of Government Efficiency. I was like Internet is right,” he added.
DOGE prices are down 3.5% in the past 24 hours, in line with a broader market drop. While there have been no firm plans to include the token in the controversial non-governmental agency, its introduction in August had sparked several namesake tokens and birthed the start of a multi-month rally in dogecoin.
The official site even sported a dogecoin logo for a few hours on the day after Trump’s inauguration, giving more credence to rumors of the joke token playing a role in the new agency.
D.O.G.E seeks to make government spending of taxpayer money more efficient while streamlining departments that handle spending. It has saved an estimated $130 billion after a formal start in January, data shows, with an average $840 saving for taxpayers.