In Markets
After a rocky start, conditions have begun to improve this week. Crypto markets appear mostly driven by macro news at present, and following a significant decline, the S&P 500 had its best day of the year on March 15. This uplift followed news that a deal had been struck to avert the periodic US Government shutdown. But geopolitical risks and recession fears are still weighing heavily and the effects of President Trump’s tariff war remain unpredictable. The EU has now imposed retaliatory tariffs on A$43.8 billion (US$28B) of US goods. CryptoQuant’s Apparent Demand metric for Bitcoin has dropped to negative 142, while Ethereum is currently trading below its realised price for the first time in two years (the average price people actually bought it for, rather than market price). That said, Bitcoin finishes the week up 6% on seven days ago to trade at A$131,782 (US$84,169), while Ethereum gained 3% to trade at around A$3,033 (US$1,936). XRP got a boost from a new payments license in the UAE and is up 13% while Solana also got a boost from the end of voting on SIMD-228 and is up 8%. Dogecoin gained 11%, and Cardano was up 5%. The Crypto Fear and Greed Index is at 32, or Fear.
From the OTC Desk
Market overview
- Consolidation: Last week ended with significant doom and gloom, but things picked up slightly over the week as BTC/USD traded from lows of US$77,000 to highs of US$84,894. ETH/USD did not perform as well, remaining relatively unchanged at around US$1,900. Some of the selling pressure may have come from the Lazarus Group, a North Korean entity linked to the Bybit hack. On-chain analysis suggests that they converted the hacked Ethereum into 13,518 BTC, worth approximately US$1.1 billion, after converting the ETH.
- Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting: Following significant pain in the macro markets over the past month associated with the tariff situation, markets are looking forward to a more dovish U.S. FOMC press conference. U.S. rates will likely remain unchanged for the upcoming meeting, but Chairman Powell will be asked about quantitative easing in the later part of the year. The Fed’s “dot plot” has moved significantly since the start of the year, with markets expecting no more QT for 2025 and an increase in the number of potential rate cuts, according to futures data from the CME Group.
- Hyperliquid whale: A week ago, a whale wallet on the decentralised exchange (DEX) Hyperliquid stirred interest in the community after the trader took massive leveraged positions of over US$200 million in Ethereum and exited for a US$1.8 million profit, correspondingly causing the liquidity pool in the exchange to lose US$4 million. This trader is now back with an observable 40x leverage short position on Bitcoin, with a total position size of US$423 million. The community seems interested in trying to liquidate this trader by pushing the price of BTC/USD higher, with the founder of TRX, Justin Sun, rumoured to be part of the group. Others have also speculated that the trader may be hedging on exchanges where positions are not as observable.
OTC desk activity
- For Spot, the desk saw participants keen to buy the dip over the week.
- Stablecoin buying was also the dominant flow on the desk.
Key economic calendar events (AEDT)
- Wednesday, 19 Mar, 2:00 p.m.: BoJ Rate Decision (Consensus: Unchanged at 0.5%)
- Thursday, 20 Mar, 5:00 a.m.: U.S. Fed Interest Rate Decision (Consensus: Unchanged at 4.5%)
- Thursday, 20 Mar, 5:30 a.m.: U.S. Fed Press Conference
- Thursday, 20 Mar, 11:00 p.m.: BoE Interest Rate Decision (Consensus: 4.5%)
- Friday, 21 Mar, 1:00 a.m.: U.S. Existing Home Sales (Consensus: 3.92M)
For any further information, please feel free to reach out.
In Headlines
White House wants to acquire more Bitcoin
President Trump disappointed many crypto fans by announcing a Bitcoin Reserve that will simply keep seized Bitcoin and not spend any new money acquiring more. However, Decrypt reports a White House official told a meeting of industry leaders this week that the administration wants to acquire as much Bitcoin as possible “in a budget neutral way that doesn’t cost the taxpayers a dime.” What that means is open to speculation. Hopeful Bitcoiners have suggested the US could sell its stocks of gold or foreign currency for Bitcoin. Bo Hines, executive director of the Presidential Working Group on Digital Assets also said the White House would support Senator Cynthia Lummis’ Strategic Bitcoin Reserve legislation for the US to buy 1 million Bitcoin. Separately, a new bill being introduced to Congress would legislate Trump’s executive order about the Bitcoin Reserve to ensure it could not be dismantled with a future EO.
Bitcoin outperforms
Despite negative sentiment, Messari reports that Bitcoin’s market cap remains 22.3% higher than when Trump was elected. It reports the top 10 alts overall remain up 14.5%, even if Solana is down 11.1% and Ether has fallen by 20.5%. Bitcoin has also outperformed gold (+9.3%) and the SPX (-2.5%).
Ethereum hard fork delayed
Ethereum devs have chosen caution over speed and will launch a third testnet called Hoodi, to trial out the Pectra upgrade. As a result, the hard fork itself has been pushed back to late April, or early May. The decision to launch a new testnet was taken after both the Sepolia and Holesky testnet dress rehearsals encountered problems (though nothing major). Pectra will be tested on Hoodi on March 26, with the hard fork itself going live around one month later if it’s successful. Pectra is the biggest hard fork to date and will double the data blob capacity for L2s and enable all accounts to be upgraded to smart accounts.
Ethereum price target slashed
Standard Chartered has cut its 2025 Ether price target from US$10,000 (A$15.6K) down to US$4,000 (A$6.3K), citing several factors, including the effect of L2’s and Base which it says “extract super profits from the Ethereum ecosystem.” “We estimate that Base (the dominant Layer 2) has removed US$50 billion (A$78.3B) of market cap from Ethereum alone,” global head of digital assets research, Geoffrey Kendrick said. The report “Ethereum — Midlife Crisis” did suggest the scaling roadmap may improve scalability and make fees more competitive “which should lead to more sustainable market share for Ethereum (and potentially increase future GDP and fees).”
Bitcoin ETFs reverse year-to-date gains
The Bitcoin ETFs have reversed all the inflows to date in 2025, dropping nearly 25% from the peak in January. There were just five positive inflow days in February and one so far in March, with the cumulative inflows sitting at US$35.2B (A$55.1B), just US$200M (A$3131M) more than January 2, the first trading day of the year. In other ETF news, the SEC has delayed decisions on approval for a number of different XRP, SOL, LTC and DOGE ETFs. Canary Capital Group has applied to list a SUI ETF and Hashdex has applied to expand its Nasdaq Crypto Index US ETF, which currently holds BTC and ETH, so that it can also hold XRP, SOL, ADA, LINK, AVAX, LTC and UNI. 21 Shares is closing two crypto-related ETFs amid the market downturn. The ARK 21Shares Active On-Chain Bitcoin Strategy ETF (ARKC) and the ARK 21Shares Active Bitcoin Ethereum Strategy ETF (ARKY) will be closed on March 27 and liquidated the following day.
Solana inflation cut proposal fails
A proposal on Solana to cut the inflation rate by 80% has failed after topping out just under the two-thirds majority required. SIMD-228 reportedly failed due to opposition from smaller validators concerned about profitability and/or decentralisation. Inflation currently runs at almost 5% and more than half of all validators rely on subsidies to remain profitable.
DeFi news
The Trump-promoted DeFi project World Liberty Financial has raised a total of US$590 million (A$924M), with US$550 million (A$861M) coming from its public token sale. Overall though, DeFi dominance is down to 3%, which is where it was before 2021’s rally for DEXs and lending protocols saw it surge to 5.9%. DeFi protocol Aave this week announced Horizon, a new platform focused on tokenised real world assets and providing a compliant way for TradFi to access DeFi liquidity. Tokenised US Treasuries have now hit US$4 billion (A$6.26B) and are growing at 408% annually. Meanwhile, BlackRock’s BUIDL token, which is backed by US Treasuries, has surpassed US$1 billion (A$1.56B) in assets. The milestone was reached last week after Ethena tipped US$200 million (A$313M) into the asset. BUIDL serves as a building block for a number of yield-generating offerings.
Until next week, happy trading!
