Crypto Market

BTC and ETH Market Insight

The macro plan stayed the same with three anticipated rate cuts, and Powell also noted the potential for reducing rates even if inflation surpasses their 2% target. Bitcoin ETFs net outflows were approximately $742 million in three days of trading. The last defense line is the support level at 62-63k that could lead to a higher low and initiate a reversal by the end of the month. Otherwise, the most probable situation is hitting the deeper line by April with significant support at $50 - $53k. There's a substantial increase in activity on the BASE chain, with the TVL approaching $1 billion. Most of the current DEX activities on the chain focused on memecoins.

Options Market

The ETF inflows seemed to take a breather for the week. BTC net outflows streak hits four days totaling $1.8 billion. The bullish momentum is further dampened by miners selling spot ahead of the halving and the exit of speculative positions. Realised volatility remained elevated for both BTC and ETH - above 70%. Implied volatilities are now trading pretty much in line with RV, suggesting a fair pricing of options. The term structure shifted back to contango with front-end IV falling post-FOMC. Put skew continued to tick up in the front end. ETH/BTC conversion rate now presents a good entry point for the long term but the near-term catalyst is still the prospect of ETH spot ETF approval.

Altcoins and Blockchain News

• friend.tech announced on social media that it will distribute points from venture capital firms such as Paradigm to users. Zhu Su also stated on social media that the venture capital firms have relinquished their quotas for friend.tech.

• ether.fi announced on social media that the second season of the StakeRank points campaign has begun. The campaign will run from March 15th to June 30th, and long-term staking users will receive generous rewards, accounting for 5% of the total ETHFI supply.

• According to Cointelegraph, the demand for Bitcoin (BTC) in Argentina has recently reached its highest level in 20 months due to the continuous depreciation of the Argentine peso (ARS).

• Crypto compliance platform Keyring has completed a $6 million seed funding round, with Gumi Cryptos Capital and Greenfield Capital leading the investment. Motier Ventures and Kima Ventures also participated.

• Restaking project Kelp DAO, an Ethereum re-staking platform, has joined the Manta Network ecosystem. It will participate in the Manta Restaking Paradigm campaign, allowing users to stake ETH and receive rsETH, KEP airdrops, and EigenLayer points.

• Bitcoin Layer 2 project BVM has announced the release of the Truly Open AI platform, which enables users to deploy AI models on the blockchain for use in crypto applications. The storage model of this platform is built in collaboration with Filecoin, Near, Avail, Polygon, and Syscoin.

• Data analytics platform Dune has announced a partnership with Colorful Notion to integrate Polkadot ecosystem data into Dune.

• Bill Qi, former Global Head of Fundraising at Binance Labs, stated that traditional Wall Street companies are pushing for the approval of Ethereum ETFs.

   

Macro

The Fed keeps rates unchanged despite expectations of a more hawkish stance due to strong inflation data. Powell downplayed the significance of the recent inflation spikes, calling them seasonal noise. The Fed still projects 3 rate cuts this year but seems unlikely to change its outlook unless there are significant developments.