Crypto Market

BTC and ETH Market Insight

February's CPI inflation dropped to 2.8% and Core CPI to 3.1%, both below expectations, marking the first decline since July 2024. The ETH/BTC pair has reached its lowest level since 2020, with ETH at $1,900 and BTC at $83,500, while Bitcoin dominance has climbed above 62%. Stablecoin yield lows and liquidation spikes hint at a market bottom, but rising Bitcoin supply on exchanges suggests a bearish outlook. Bitcoin wallets holding 100-1,000 BTC have sold 50,625 Bitcoin ($4.07 billion) in the past week.

Options Market

Despite a sharp drop on Monday evening, BTC showed some resilience to close out the week at flattish whereas ETH failed to recoup the decrease as much as BTC - ending at -10% for the week. This pushed ETH/BTC conversion rate to a multiple-year low. Front-end implied volatility initially spiked on the sharp downward move and quickly cooled off as the market chopped after the decline. Skew followed a similar pattern with IV and stayed in favour of puts on the front. Funding rate was persistently negative along the week with BTC being less negative than ETH.

Altcoins and Blockchain News

• Influenced by the news that "Telegram founder Pavel Durov has been granted permission to leave France", TON briefly surged past 3.5 USDT.

   

• BounceBit will launch a physical auction of Yayoi Kusama's works, settled with AUCTION tokens.

   

• Data: Chainlink's quarterly unlock was completed last week, with $200 million worth of LINK transferred to Binance.

   

• The proportion of TVL in Solana's stablecoin ecosystem has surpassed 5%, ranking just behind Ethereum and TRON.

   

• The North Korean hacker group Lazarus Group now holds approximately 13,562 BTC, making it the third-largest holder after the United States and the United Kingdom.

   

• According to DefiLlama data, the current total market value of stablecoins across the network is reported at $229.334 billion, having grown 0.91% in the past week, with USDT holding a market share of 62.72%.

   

• Data: Tokens such as MRS, FTN, and QAI will undergo large unlocks next week, with MRS unlocking an estimated value of around $974 million.

Macro

The major indices continued to decline for the week: the DJIA lost 3.1%, the S&P 500 lost 2.3%, and the Nasdaq lost 2.4%. Chinese equities finished a third consecutive week of solid gains: the Shanghai Composite Index added +1.39%, the CSI 300 +1.59% and the Hang Seng index added +1.09%.