Gate News bot message, according to the official Gate announcement on March 3, 2026 The Gate Contract Stock Zone will launch RTX (雷神), GD (General Dynamics), NOC (Northrop Grumman), BA (Boeing), TSM (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company), WMT (Walmart), COST (Costco) perpetual contracts for live trading at 12:00 (UTC+8) on March 3, 2026. Settled in USDT, supporting 1-20x long and short positions. Among them, RTX is a top global aerospace and defense conglomerate; GD is an integrated land, sea, air, and space defense group known for nuclear submarines, main battle tanks, Gulfstream business jets, and more; NOC is a giant in aerospace and defense technology, with core strengths in stealth fighters and strategic missiles; BA is the world's largest aerospace and defense group; TSM is the largest and most advanced wafer foundry in the world; WMT is the largest global brick-and-mortar retailer; COST is a leading global membership-based warehouse club retailer. Additionally, the Gate Index Zone will launch GER40 (Germany DAX 40 Index) perpetual contracts for live trading at 12:00 (UTC+8) on the same day. Settled in USDT, supporting 1-20x long and short positions. GER40 is a core blue-chip index of the German stock market and one of the most important stock benchmarks in Europe.

According to Golden Finance, Han Tongli, CEO and chief investment officer of Harvest International, said that the current market response to the subscription of Virtual Money Spot ETF is enthusiastic, even exceeding its expectations. He explained that it was expected that there would be a slow development of the subscription process for the virtual asset Spot ETF in Hong Kong, but in fact, the number of subscriptions on the first day was more long than expected. He believes that Hong Kong's financial and legal systems can be seamlessly integrated with the global market, coupled with the fact that virtual assets can be Spot ETF can be subscribed and redeemed in kind, and the design is advanced, and it is expected that Hong Kong's virtual asset development potential is even higher than that of the United States. He bluntly said that the company's Spot ETF product issuance this time is actually not profitable, and at the same time, it does not plan to make money on this product, and issuance the product is mainly to lay the foundation of the "first brick" for the interconnection of the two different ecosystems of TradFi and encryption finance, and then profit from it, not just make a profit from a product.

With the gold price repeatedly hitting record highs, many shop salespeople in Dubai's traditional gold souk, also known as Dubai's 'Golden Street', have reported a sharp drop in gold purchases. The rising price of gold is turning "Golden Street" shopping into a window shopping experience. Most locals just hang out, and most of their spending comes from tourists who are willing to spend more money on vacation. Some shopkeepers said that the price of gold is very high, so people feel that it is okay to buy small items, but if they want to buy large items or buy a few more grams, they prefer to wait for the gold price to cool down before buying. Although the peak tourist season has helped to alleviate the decline in gold shop sales, residents and locals are spending less and less on gold. The most affected were the Golden Brick stores, where employees in three stores said sales had fallen by half.

PANews news on January 8, according to The Block, citing BTC Map data, the number of physical merchants accepting Bitcoin will nearly triple in 2023, with more than 6,000 merchants worldwide accepting Bitcoin payments, many of which are located in Latin America. This total is almost three times the number of providers accepting Bitcoin at the end of 2022 – when there were only 2,200. Bitcoin merchants are spread all over the world, especially concentrated in Europe, the United States, and Latin America, while East Asia has less acceptance, and China has almost no merchants accepting Bitcoin due to the Crypto Assets ban.

Odaily BTC Map data shows that more than 6,300 brick-and-mortar merchants around the world have accepted BTC payments in the past year, which is almost three times the number of merchants accepting BTC payments at the end of 2022 (about 2,200). （The Block）

According to the BTC Map, the number of brick-and-mortar merchants accepting Bitcoin has nearly tripled in the past year, according to Golden Finance. There are currently more than 6,300 brick-and-mortar merchants accepting Bitcoin worldwide, and only 2,200 brick-and-mortar merchants accepting Bitcoin at the end of 2022. Bitcoin providers are located all over the world, but seem to be concentrated in Europe, the United States, and especially Latin America.