Weekend Review...
Market Price Action
Bitcoin
Despite a sharp rebound from the early February low of $60k, to briefly touch $72k, bitcoin remains range bound within a bear flag pattern. Until we see confirmed support, on the daily candle next week, above $70k - in which case $80k is a very much in play - then we will remain in this zone ($68k-$63k). The more we remain in this range, the more likely it is that we eventually break below the lower trendline, and retest $60k, and potentially into the 50s. March is usually a good month for bitcoin, so let’s see how we fair next week - $70k is the key level. Bitcoin is currently at $66,500.
Bear flag pattern on the daily chart, usually breaks to the downside.
Top Altcoins this week
Ethereum $1,990 +0.7%
BNB $622 -0.2%
Solana $85.50 +0.35%
XRP $137.00 -3%
Dogecoin $0.93 -3.6%
Cardano $0.28 +0.9%
Hyperliquid $30.70 +3.5%
Monero $345.00 +6%
Chainlink $8.90 +0.65%
Litecoin $54.00 -1.36%
News and Developments
Iran Attack: Bitcoin’s price went through some intense volatility on Saturday after the attacks on Iran and the subsequent retaliation, but has returned to essentially its starting point. All eyes will be on the futures markets when they open tonight - a sharp selloff in equities will obviously have a negative effect on crypto.
The GENIUS Act: The U.S. Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act has officially entered its implementation stage. This establishes clear reserve standards and a dual regulatory framework for stablecoin issuers.
SEC “Innovation Exemption”: SEC Chairman Paul Atkins announced a new pilot program allowing tokenized securities to be traded automatically on specific platforms—a major win for the RWA (Real World Asset) sector.
Fed “Debanking” Rule: The Federal Reserve proposed a rule to eliminate “reputation risk” as a factor in bank supervision. This is intended to stop the “debanking” of crypto firms by preventing supervisors from forcing banks to cut ties with legal but politically disfavored businesses.
PNC Bank: The U.S. banking giant announced plans to launch native Bitcoin trading and custody services for its 15 million customers later this year.
ETF Rebound: After five weeks of outflows, spot Bitcoin ETFs saw a reversal on Feb 24, with net inflows of $257.7 million (led by Fidelity and BlackRock).
Hyperscale Data (GPUS): The AI data center firm made headlines by reporting a Bitcoin treasury that now exceeds its own market capitalization, signaling a growing trend of “Bitcoin-first” corporate balance sheets.
Stripe’s big bet: According to a recent report from Bloomberg, the payment processing giant Stripe is exploring a potential acquisition of its long-time rival, PayPal. According to several related personnel, the firm is currently in early talks to buy parts of PayPal’s operations or the company in its entirety. Stripe recently announced that its valuation had leaped to $159B, based on a recent tender offer to provide liquidity to the company’s current and former employees.
World Liberty Staking: Trump-backed DeFi project World Liberty Financial has introduced a new governance proposal to enable staking for its native WLFI token. According to the proposal, users must now stake their unlocked WLFI tokens to participate in any future protocol voting, with a minimum staking period of 180 days. Voting rights will be weighted by the amount of tokens staked and the lockup duration. Additionally, all stakers will receive an annual yield of 2% paid in WLFI, provided they participate in 2 governance votes during their token staking period.
Wall Street dips its toes into DeFi: In its latest foray into DeFi, BlackRock has officially listed its tokenized BUIDL fund on the Uniswap DEX. With collaboration from the tokenization firm Securitize, the integration allows whitelisted institutional investors to trade BUIDL shares on UniswapX, an RFQ platform that sources quotes from approved market makers and settles transactions on-chain. As such, the integration allows clients to trade with 24/7 liquidity and near-instant settlement, bypassing traditional banking hours.
Morgan Stanley Crypto Plans: Wall Street giant Morgan Stanley, which oversees nearly $9 trillion worth of assets on behalf of its clients, plans to build proprietary Bitcoin custody and trading services for clients. Yield and lending services are also under exploration as part of the crypto roadmap.
Cardone Capital to Tokenise: Grant Cardone said his firm is preparing to tokenize its $5 billion real estate portfolio. The move follows Cardone Capital’s bitcoin purchase and wider push into digital assets. While property tokenization is gaining traction and projected to grow quickly, regulatory hurdles and thin secondary market liquidity remain a bottleneck.
Citi to Integrate Bitcoin with Traditional Finance: Citi is preparing to introduce infrastructure that integrates Bitcoin into traditional financial systems, a bank executive said Thursday. The initiative, aims to provide institutional-grade custody, key management, and wallet services for clients holding the cryptocurrency. The rollout will allow clients to manage Bitcoin positions alongside traditional assets. Citi manages roughly $30 trillion in client assets across securities and money market products.
Ethereum to Address Quantum Threat: Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin outlined a roadmap to protect the blockchain from the long-term risks posed by quantum computers. Although practical quantum computers capable of breaking modern cryptography do not yet exist, they could one day crack the digital signatures and cryptographic systems that secure Ethereum.
Thanks for reading…