BTC Price Meltdown Worsens as Macro Jitters Overshadow Positives

By Omkar Godbole (All instances ET until indicated in any other case)

It’s the dip that retains on dipping. Bitcoin took one other hit early Friday, falling under $80,000 and taking February’s decline to over 20%. That spurred a massacre within the broader crypto market, with ether sliding under $2,100, a degree it managed to carry since August.

It’s not simply crypto. Increased volatility in cryptocurrencies mirrors developments in conventional markets. Compare the ten% leap within the Volmex BVIV, which tracks the 30-day implied volatility in bitcoin, with the equal enhance within the MOVE index, which measures the implied volatility of U.S. Treasury notes. The VIX, Wall Street’s so-called concern gauge, has risen by 14%.

These actions, coupled with a sell-off in growth-sensitive commodity currencies just like the Australian, New Zealand and Canadian {dollars}, are indicative of jitters within the macroeconomy, primarily pushed by renewed considerations over potential Trump tariffs, prompting a rotation in direction of much less unstable belongings.

“U.S. domestic policies have become unstable, and the White House seems happy to take advantage of this instability,” mentioned Griffin Ardern, head of choices buying and selling and analysis at crypto monetary platform BloFin. “Given the challenges investors face in obtaining accurate forward-looking guidance, many are more inclined to hold low-volatility assets … Traders need to liquidate positions to reduce their exposure to specific assets before transitioning to other markets, which explains the decline across almost all asset classes, including cryptocurrencies.”

Volatility seems set to stay heightened, with President Donald Trump reportedly scheduled to talk afterward Friday. In the meantime, these hoping for a major rebound in threat belongings based mostly on private consumption information could also be upset as a result of anticipated comfortable readings may very well be overshadowed by tariff considerations and rising forward-looking inflation metrics.

While the outlook could seem gloomy, extra constructive developments may happen as soon as the macro mud settles. Notably, this week there was progress on the regulatory entrance, with the SEC dropping fees in opposition to Uniswap, one of many main decentralized exchanges, and mulling the identical relating to its points with Consensys.

As Evgeny Gaevoy, CEO of main market maker Wintermute, identified at Consensus Hong Kong final week, many are overlooking the evolving perspective of the SEC, and it is a issue the market has but to completely worth in.

Plus, the decline within the foundation within the CME bitcoin and ether futures, an indication of weakening demand, has stalled and from a technical evaluation perspective, bitcoin is quick closing towards a possible demand zone. So, keep alert!

What to Watch

• Crypto:
• Macro
  • Feb. 28, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis releases January private consumption and expenditure information.
    • 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 launch February China manufacturing information.
    • 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 discount of the Smart Burn Engine exercise, which might successfully scale back the speed of SKY token buybacks from round 1 million USDS to 400,000 USDS per day.
  • Lido DAO is discussing a proposal on an SSV Lido Module (SSVLM), a permissionless staking module, that may distribute staking rewards to node operators, the Lido Protocol and the module operations.
  • Feb. 28, 12 p.m.: VeChain (VET) to host a VeChain Builders AMA.
• Unlocks
  • Mar. 1: DYdX to unlock 1.14% of circulating provide price $5.58 million.
  • Mar. 1: ZetaChain (ZETA) to unlock 6.48% of circulating provide price $12.45 million.
  • Mar. 1: Sui (SUI) to unlock 0.74% of circulating provide price $60.40 million.
  • Mar. 2: Ethena (ENA) to unlock 1.3% of circulating provide price $15.91 million.
  • Mar. 7: Kaspa (KAS) to unlock 0.63% of circulating provide price $12.35 million.
  • Mar. 8: Berachain (BERA) to unlock 9.28% of circulating provide price $73.80 million.
  • Mar. 9: Movement (MOVE) to unlock 2.08% of its circulating provide price $21.4 million.
• Token Listings
  • Feb. 28: Worldcoin (WLD) to be listed on Kraken.
  • Feb. 28: Zcash (ZEC) and Dash (DASH) are being delisted from Bybit.
  • Feb. 28: Sonic SVM (SONIC) to be listed on AscendEX.
  • Feb. 28: RedStone (RED) to be listed on Binance and MEXC.

Conferences

Token Talk

By Shaurya Malwa

• Lazarus Group, the North Korea-backed hacker group, is laundering over $240 million in ether by way of THORChain, a decentralized cross-chain swap protocol, by changing it primarily to bitcoin.
• THORChain permits cross-chain swaps with out wrapped belongings, sustaining person custody and securing funds on the blockchain.

Derivatives Positioning

• TRX and TRON are seeing adverse perpetual funding charges, or dominance of bearish, quick positions, as the crypto sell-off deepens. Most different main cash nonetheless have constructive funding charges.
• On decentralized alternate Derive.xyz, ETH’s choices skew for each the 7-day and 30-day choices has sharply dropped to -15% and -6% respectively, representing a powerful bias for protecting places.
• The manner bitcoin choices on on Derive have been priced at press time confirmed a 44% probability BTC settling under $80K by the tip of June. and simply 3.5% probability of costs rising to $150K, speak concerning the concern available in the market.
• On Deribit, BTC and ETH choices confirmed a bias for places in expiries as much as the April finish.

Market Movements:

• BTC is down 3.3% from 4 p.m. ET Thursday at $80,552.45 (24hrs: -7.09%)
• ETH is down 4.62% at $2,135.58 (24hrs: -9.3%)
• CoinDesk 20 is down 4.63% at 2,821.02 (24hrs: -8.31%)
• Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is up 4 bps at at 3.06%
• BTC funding charge is at 0.0069% (7.55% annualized) on Binance

• DXY is unchanged 107.32
• Gold is down 0.77% at $2,863.13/oz
• Silver is down 1.09% at $31.15/oz
• Nikkei 225 closed -2.88% at 37,155.50
• Hang Seng closed -3.28% at 22,941.32
• FTSE is up 0.25% at 8,778.39
• Euro Stoxx 50 is down 0.49% at 5,445.93
• DJIA closed on Thursday -0.45% at 43,239.50
• S&P 500 closed -1.59% at 5,861.57
• Nasdaq closed -2.78% at 18,544.42
• S&P/TSX Composite Index closed -0.79% at 25,128.24
• S&P 40 Latin America closed -1.36% at 2,347.52
• U.S. 10-year Treasury charge is down 2 bps at 4.26%
• E-mini S&P 500 futures are up 0.34% at 5896.50
• E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are up 0.3% at 20667.25
• E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are up 0.33% at 43,438.00

Bitcoin Stats:

• BTC Dominance: 60.51 (-0.41%)
• Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.02681 (-1.58%)
• Hashrate (seven-day shifting common): 844 EH/s
• Hashprice (spot): $48.1
• Total Fees: 8.38 BTC / $715,412
• CME Futures Open Interest: 155,245 BTC
• BTC priced in gold: 27.5 oz
• BTC vs gold market cap: 7.80%

Technical Analysis

• Ether is at a make or break degree of $2,100, which has seen vendor exhaustion a number of instances since August final yr.
• If the help offers manner, it may set off further promoting by long-term holders, resulting in an prolonged slide.

Crypto Equities

• MicroStrategy (MSTR): closed on Thursday at $240.05 (-8.82%), down 1.99% at $235.28 in pre-market
• Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $208.37 (-2.16%), down 3.64% at $200.78
• Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$20.28 (+0.6%)
• MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $13.13 (+5.46%), down 3.43% at $12.68
• Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $8.66 (-3.13%), down 3.35% at $8.37
• Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $10.71 (+6.89%), down 2.24% at $10.47
• CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $7.51 (-4.7%), down 2.4% at $7.33
• CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $16.89 (-1.92%)
• Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $40.63 (-7.47%), down 3.03% at $39.40
• Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $42.20 (-5.13%), up 0.52% at $42.42

ETF Flows

Spot BTC ETFs:

• Daily web circulation: -$275.9 million
• Cumulative web flows: $36.85 billion
• Total BTC holdings ~ 1,132 million.

Spot ETH ETFs

• Daily web circulation: -$71.2 million
• Cumulative web flows: $2.86 billion
• Total ETH holdings ~ 3.702 million.

Source: Farside Investors

Overnight Flows

Chart of the Day

• Daily buying and selling quantity on decentralized alternate Uniswap noticed a small spike to $3.5 billion on Tuesday as the SEC dropped fees in opposition to the protocol.
• Since then, nevertheless, volumes have tapered off, most likely because of the wider market decline.

While You Were Sleeping

• Bitcoin Tumbles to $80K, XRP Loses Key Support as Trump Tariffs Regain Centrality, Dollar Index Rises (CoinDesk): President Donald Trump mentioned 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico and an extra 10% tariff on Chinese imports will take impact on March 4.
• Bitcoin Sell-Off Could Be a Textbook ‘Breakout and Retest’ Play: Godbole (CoinDesk): Bitcoin’s 15% drop under $80,000 might mirror typical market conduct, the place merchants check a former resistance degree earlier than probably fueling one other 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. commerce duties with these of different nations, is dealing with delays, with an April 2 report anticipated however full implementation probably months away.
• China Vows ‘All Necessary Measures’ Against New US Tariffs (Bloomberg): China threatened retaliation after President Trump introduced an extra 10% tariff on Chinese imports would take impact March 4.
• Sterling Outshines Rivals on Stronger Economic Data (Financial Times): The pound is benefiting from stronger-than-expected U.Okay. financial information, demand for presidency bonds, which supply greater yields than U.S. Treasuries, and a perceived decrease threat of U.S. tariffs.
• Mexico Sends Major Drug Capos to U.S. as Trump Tariff Threat Looms (Reuters): On Thursday, Mexico carried out its largest extradition in years, sending 29 cartel figures to the U.S. amid stress over fentanyl smuggling.

In the Ether