5 hours ago
By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)
It's the dip that keeps connected dipping. Bitcoin took different deed aboriginal Friday, falling beneath $80,000 and taking February's diminution to implicit 20%. That spurred a bloodbath successful the broader crypto market, with ether sliding beneath $2,100, a level it managed to clasp since August.
It's not conscionable crypto. Increased volatility successful cryptocurrencies mirrors trends successful accepted markets. Compare the 10% leap successful the Volmex BVIV, which tracks the 30-day implied volatility successful bitcoin, with the adjacent summation successful the MOVE index, which measures the implied volatility of U.S. Treasury notes. The VIX, Wall Street's alleged fearfulness gauge, has risen by 14%.
These movements, coupled with a sell-off successful growth-sensitive commodity currencies similar the Australian, New Zealand and Canadian dollars, are indicative of jitters successful the macroeconomy, chiefly driven by renewed concerns implicit imaginable Trump tariffs, prompting a rotation towards little volatile assets.
"U.S. home policies person go unstable, and the White House seems blessed to instrumentality vantage of this instability," said Griffin Ardern, caput of options trading and probe astatine crypto fiscal level BloFin. "Given the challenges investors look successful obtaining close forward-looking guidance, galore are much inclined to clasp low-volatility assets ... Traders request to liquidate positions to trim their vulnerability to circumstantial assets earlier transitioning to different markets, which explains the diminution crossed astir each plus classes, including cryptocurrencies."
Volatility looks acceptable to stay heightened, with President Donald Trump reportedly scheduled to talk aboriginal connected Friday. In the meantime, those hoping for a important rebound successful hazard assets based connected idiosyncratic depletion information may beryllium disappointed due to the fact that anticipated brushed readings could beryllium overshadowed by tariff concerns and rising forward-looking ostentation metrics.
While the outlook whitethorn look gloomy, much affirmative developments could hap erstwhile the macro particulate settles. Notably, this week determination was advancement connected the regulatory front, with the SEC dropping charges against Uniswap, 1 of the starring decentralized exchanges, and mulling the aforesaid regarding its issues with Consensys.
As Evgeny Gaevoy, CEO of starring marketplace shaper Wintermute, pointed retired astatine Consensus Hong Kong past week, galore are overlooking the evolving cognition of the SEC, and this is simply a origin the marketplace has yet to afloat terms in.
Plus, the diminution successful the ground successful the CME bitcoin and ether futures, a motion of weakening demand, has stalled and from a method investigation perspective, bitcoin is accelerated closing toward a imaginable request zone. So, enactment alert!
What to Watch
Crypto:
March 1: Spot trading connected the Arkham Exchange goes unrecorded successful 17 U.S. states.
March 5, 2:29 a.m.: Ethereum testnet Sepolia gets the Pectra hard fork web upgrade astatine epoch 222464.
March 15: Athene Network (ATH) mainnet launch.
March 24, 11:00 a.m.: Bugis web upgrade goes unrecorded connected Enjin Matrixchain mainnet.
Macro
Feb. 28, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis releases January idiosyncratic depletion and expenditure data.
Core PCE Price Index MoM Est. 0.3% vs. Prev. 0.2%
Core PCE Price Index YoY Est. 2.6% vs. Prev. 2.8%
PCE Price Index MoM Est. 0.3% vs. Prev. 0.3%
PCE Price Index YoY Est. 2.5% vs. Prev. 2.6%
Personal Income MoM Est. 0.3% vs. Prev. 0.4%
Personal Spending MoM Est. 0.1% vs. Prev. 0.7%
March 2, 8:45 p.m.: Caixin and S&P Global merchandise February China manufacturing data.
Manufacturing PMI Prev. 50.1
Earnings
March 6 (TBC): Bitfarms (BITF), $-0.04
March 17 (TBC): Bit Digital (BTBT), $-0.05
March 18 (TBC): TeraWulf (WULF), $-0.03
March 24 (TBC): Galaxy Digital Holdings (TSE: GLXY), C$0.38
Token Events
Governances votes & calls
Sky DAO is discussing the reduction of the Smart Burn Engine activity, which would efficaciously trim the complaint of SKY token buybacks from astir 1 cardinal USDS to 400,000 USDS per day.
Lido DAO is discussing a connection connected an SSV Lido Module (SSVLM), a permissionless staking module, that would distribute staking rewards to node operators, the Lido Protocol and the module operations.
Feb. 28, 12 p.m.: VeChain (VET) to big a VeChain Builders AMA.
Unlocks
Mar. 1: DYdX to unlock 1.14% of circulating proviso worthy $5.58 million.
Mar. 1: ZetaChain (ZETA) to unlock 6.48% of circulating proviso worthy $12.45 million.
Mar. 1: Sui (SUI) to unlock 0.74% of circulating proviso worthy $60.40 million.
Mar. 2: Ethena (ENA) to unlock 1.3% of circulating proviso worthy $15.91 million.
Mar. 7: Kaspa (KAS) to unlock 0.63% of circulating proviso worthy $12.35 million.
Mar. 8: Berachain (BERA) to unlock 9.28% of circulating proviso worthy $73.80 million.
Mar. 9: Movement (MOVE) to unlock 2.08% of its circulating proviso worthy $21.4 million.
Token Listings
Feb. 28: Worldcoin (WLD) to beryllium listed connected Kraken.
Feb. 28: Zcash (ZEC) and Dash (DASH) are being delisted from Bybit.
Feb. 28: Sonic SVM (SONIC) to beryllium listed connected AscendEX.
Feb. 28: RedStone (RED) to beryllium listed connected Binance and MEXC.
Conferences
CoinDesk's Consensus to instrumentality spot in Toronto connected May 14-16. Use codification DAYBOOK and prevention 15% connected passes.
Day 6 of 8: ETHDenver 2025 (Denver)
March 2-3: Crypto Expo Europe (Bucharest)
March 8: Bitcoin Alive (Sydney)
March 10-11: MoneyLIVE Summit (London)
March 13-14: Web3 Amsterdam ‘25 (Netherlands)
March 19-20: Next Block Expo (Warsaw)
March 26: DC Blockchain Summit 2025 (Washington)
March 28: Solana APEX (Cape Town)
Token Talk
By Shaurya Malwa
Lazarus Group, the North Korea-backed hacker group, is laundering implicit $240 cardinal successful ether done THORChain, a decentralized cross-chain swap protocol, by converting it chiefly to bitcoin.
THORChain enables cross-chain swaps without wrapped assets, maintaining idiosyncratic custody and securing funds connected the blockchain.
Derivatives Positioning
TRX and TRON are seeing antagonistic perpetual backing rates, oregon dominance of bearish, abbreviated positions, arsenic the crypto sell-off deepens. Most different large coins inactive person affirmative backing rates.
On decentralized speech Derive.xyz, ETH's options skew for some the 7-day and 30-day options has sharply dropped to -15% and -6% respectively, representing a beardown bias for protective puts.
The mode bitcoin options connected on Derive were priced astatine property clip showed a 44% accidental BTC settling beneath $80K by the extremity of June. and conscionable 3.5% accidental of prices rising to $150K, speech astir the fearfulness successful the market.
On Deribit, BTC and ETH options showed a bias for puts successful expiries up to the April end.
Market Movements:
BTC is down 3.3% from 4 p.m. ET Thursday astatine $80,552.45 (24hrs: -7.09%)
ETH is down 4.62% astatine $2,135.58 (24hrs: -9.3%)
CoinDesk 20 is down 4.63% astatine 2,821.02 (24hrs: -8.31%)
Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is up 4 bps astatine at 3.06%
BTC backing complaint is astatine 0.0069% (7.55% annualized) connected Binance
DXY is unchanged 107.32
Gold is down 0.77% astatine $2,863.13/oz
Silver is down 1.09% astatine $31.15/oz
Nikkei 225 closed -2.88% astatine 37,155.50
Hang Seng closed -3.28% astatine 22,941.32
FTSE is up 0.25% astatine 8,778.39
Euro Stoxx 50 is down 0.49% astatine 5,445.93
DJIA closed connected Thursday -0.45% astatine 43,239.50
S&P 500 closed -1.59% astatine 5,861.57
Nasdaq closed -2.78% astatine 18,544.42
S&P/TSX Composite Index closed -0.79% astatine 25,128.24
S&P 40 Latin America closed -1.36% astatine 2,347.52
U.S. 10-year Treasury complaint is down 2 bps astatine 4.26%
E-mini S&P 500 futures are up 0.34% astatine 5896.50
E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are up 0.3% astatine 20667.25
E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are up 0.33% astatine 43,438.00
Bitcoin Stats:
BTC Dominance: 60.51 (-0.41%)
Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.02681 (-1.58%)
Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 844 EH/s
Hashprice (spot): $48.1
Total Fees: 8.38 BTC / $715,412
CME Futures Open Interest: 155,245 BTC
BTC priced successful gold: 27.5 oz
BTC vs golden marketplace cap: 7.80%
Technical Analysis
Ether is astatine a marque oregon interruption level of $2,100, which has seen seller exhaustion respective times since August past year.
If the enactment gives way, it could trigger further selling by semipermanent holders, starring to an extended slide.
Crypto Equities
MicroStrategy (MSTR): closed connected Thursday astatine $240.05 (-8.82%), down 1.99% astatine $235.28 successful pre-market
Coinbase Global (COIN): closed astatine $208.37 (-2.16%), down 3.64% astatine $200.78
Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed astatine C$20.28 (+0.6%)
MARA Holdings (MARA): closed astatine $13.13 (+5.46%), down 3.43% astatine $12.68
Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed astatine $8.66 (-3.13%), down 3.35% astatine $8.37
Core Scientific (CORZ): closed astatine $10.71 (+6.89%), down 2.24% astatine $10.47
CleanSpark (CLSK): closed astatine $7.51 (-4.7%), down 2.4% astatine $7.33
CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed astatine $16.89 (-1.92%)
Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed astatine $40.63 (-7.47%), down 3.03% astatine $39.40
Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed astatine $42.20 (-5.13%), up 0.52% astatine $42.42
ETF Flows
Spot BTC ETFs:
Daily nett flow: -$275.9 million
Cumulative nett flows: $36.85 billion
Total BTC holdings ~ 1,132 million.
Spot ETH ETFs
Daily nett flow: -$71.2 million
Cumulative nett flows: $2.86 billion
Total ETH holdings ~ 3.702 million.
Source: Farside Investors
Overnight Flows
Chart of the Day
Daily trading measurement connected decentralized speech Uniswap saw a tiny spike to $3.5 cardinal connected Tuesday arsenic the SEC dropped charges against the protocol.
Since then, however, volumes person tapered off, astir apt owed to the wider marketplace decline.
While You Were Sleeping
Bitcoin Tumbles to $80K, XRP Loses Key Support arsenic Trump Tariffs Regain Centrality, Dollar Index Rises (CoinDesk): President Donald Trump said 25% tariffs connected imports from Canada and Mexico and an further 10% tariff connected Chinese imports volition instrumentality effect connected March 4.
Bitcoin Sell-Off Could Be a Textbook 'Breakout and Retest' Play: Godbole (CoinDesk): Bitcoin’s 15% driblet beneath $80,000 whitethorn bespeak emblematic marketplace behavior, wherever traders trial a erstwhile absorption level earlier perchance fueling different rally.
Trump’s Tariff Onslaught Is Coming Faster Than His Team Can Carry It Out (The Wall Street Journal): Trump’s reciprocal tariff plan, meant to align U.S. commercialized duties with those of different nations, is facing delays, with an April 2 study expected but afloat implementation apt months away.
China Vows ‘All Necessary Measures’ Against New US Tariffs (Bloomberg): China threatened retaliation aft President Trump announced an further 10% tariff connected Chinese imports would instrumentality effect March 4.
Sterling Outshines Rivals connected Stronger Economic Data (Financial Times): The lb is benefiting from stronger-than-expected U.K. economical data, request for authorities bonds, which connection higher yields than U.S. Treasuries, and a perceived little hazard of U.S. tariffs.
Mexico Sends Major Drug Capos to U.S. arsenic Trump Tariff Threat Looms (Reuters): On Thursday, Mexico carried retired its largest extradition successful years, sending 29 cartel figures to the U.S. amid unit implicit fentanyl smuggling.
In the Ether
English (US) 