By James Van Straten (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)

Macroeconomic factors continue to drive bitcoin’s (BTC) short-term price volatility as it holds steady above $80,000, with a wave of significant news emerging over the past 24 hours.

Still, there’s a risk-off feeling in the air as the divergence between bitcoin and the broader crypto market grows. Bitcoin dominance has surged to 62%, approaching a year-to-date high, while the ether-to-bitcoin (ETH-BTC) ratio has turned negative on a four-year compound annual basis, meaning ETH is underperforming.

Meanwhile, Trump’s trade wars persist as another concern reining in optimism in the market. That’s not just with Canada, but also in the form of metal tariffs, prompting retaliatory measures from the European Union.

One of the most intriguing developments comes from Canada, where newly appointed Prime Minister Mark Carney has filed to sell U.S. dollar bonds. While the size of the sale remains undisclosed, it’s worth noting the country is the sixth-largest holder of U.S. Treasuries, possessing $379 billion as of the end of 2024. If the sale proceeds, it could put upward pressure on yields, which is the opposite of what Trump wants.

The Treasury yield narrative is paramount because roughly $9 trillion worth of U.S. debt is set to mature or require refinancing this year alone. This is one of the key reasons why the U.S. administration is eager to bring down Treasury yields.

More immediately, market attention is turning to today’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) report, with risk-asset bulls hoping for a softer inflation print. The S&P 500 is hovering around correction territory, down nearly 10%. If inflation comes in hotter than expected, risk assets could face further downside. Stay Alert!

What to Watch

• Crypto:
• Macro
  • March 12, 8:00 a.m.: The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) releases February consumer price inflation data.
    • Inflation Rate MoM Est. 1.3% vs. Prev. 0.16%
    • Inflation Rate YoY Est. 5% vs. Prev. 4.56%
  • March 12, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases February consumer price inflation data.
    • Core Inflation Rate MoM Est. 0.3% vs. Prev. 0.4%
    • Core Inflation Rate YoY Est. 3.2% vs. Prev. 3.3%
    • Inflation Rate MoM Est. 0.3% vs. Prev. 0.5%
    • Inflation Rate YoY Est. 2.9% vs. Prev. 3%
  • March 12, 9:45 a.m.: The Bank of Canada announces its interest-rate decision followed by a press conference (livestream link) 45 minutes later.
    • Policy Interest Rate Est. 2.75% vs. Prev. 3%
  • March 12, 12:00 p.m.: Russia’s Federal State Statistics Service releases February consumer price inflation data.
    • Inflation Rate MoM Est. 0.8% vs. Prev. 1.2%
    • Inflation Rate YoY Est. 10.1% vs. Prev. 9.9%
  • March 13, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases February producer price inflation data.
    • Core PPI MoM Est. 0.3% vs. Prev. 0.3%
    • Core PPI YoY Est. 3.6% vs. Prev. 3.6%
    • PPI MoM Est. 0.3% vs. Prev. 0.4%
    • PPI YoY Est. 3.3% vs. Prev. 3.5%
• Earnings (Estimates based on FactSet data)
  • March 12 (TBC): TeraWulf (WULF), $-0.03
  • March 14: Bit Digital (BTBT), pre-market, $-0.05
  • March 24 (TBC): Galaxy Digital Holdings (TSE: GLXY), C$0.38

Token Events

• Governance votes & calls
• Unlocks
  • March 12: Aptos (APT) to unlock 1.93% of circulating supply worth $58.26 million.
  • March 14: Starknet (STRK) to unlock 2.33% of its circulating supply worth $10.67 million.
  • March 15: Sei (SEI) to unlock 1.19% of its circulating supply worth $10.35 million.
  • March 16: Arbitrum (ARB) to unlock 2.1% of its circulating supply worth $31.53 million.
  • March 18: Fasttoken (FTN) to unlock 4.66% of its circulating supply worth $79.60 million.
  • March 21: Immutable (IMX) to unlock 1.39% of circulating supply worth $12.70 million.
• Token Listings
  • March 31: Binance to delist USDT, FDUSD, TUSD, USDP, DAI, AEUR, UST, USTC, and PAXG.

Conferences

Token Talk

By Shaurya Malwa

• The freshly issued BMT tokens of Bubblemaps, a crypto transparency and on-chain analysis tool, are down more than 50% since going live on Tuesday.
• Bubblemaps uses clustering to group wallet addresses into bubbles, revealing whale concentrations, insider control or suspicious patterns (e.g. a deployer with 76% of supply), helping investors assess risks through visual ownership maps.
• BMT can be used to access an “Intel Desk” for community-driven scam investigations and premium analytics features, and participate in governance.
• People are slamming BMT for a nearly 90% supply concentration in one wallet, a mintable contract risking inflation, an elitist airdrop excluding many, and unlocked liquidity raising rug-pull fears, which is rather ironic for a transparency-focused project.

Derivatives Positioning

• Cumulative open interest in ETH standard and perpetual futures has risen to 9.75 million ETH, the highest since Feb. 3. The count has increased from 8.4 million ETH four weeks ago, which shows traders have been selling into the falling market.
• Open interest in BTC perp and standard futures remains light, with funding rates marginally positive. SOL, ADA, TRX and LINK still see negative perpetual funding rates.
• Deribit-listed BTC and ETH options continue to exhibit a bias for puts out to May expiry, with meaningful constructive outlook for calls emerging from the third quarter.
• Overnight block flows featured selling higher strike BTC and ETH calls and purchase of short-tenor puts.

Market Movements:

• BTC is down 0.55% from 4 p.m. ET Tuesday at $82,577.14 (24hrs: +0.87%)
• ETH is down 2.6% at $1,892.41 (24hrs: -1.58%)
• CoinDesk 20 is down 1% at 2,556.70 (24hrs: +0.52%)
• Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is up 32 bps at 3.43%
• BTC funding rate is at 0.007% (2.54% annualized) on Binance

• DXY is down 0.31% at 103.52
• Gold is unchanged at $2,914.29/oz
• Silver is up 0.69% at $33.01/oz
• Nikkei 225 closed unchanged at 36,819.09
• Hang Seng closed -0.76 at 23,600.31
• FTSE is up 0.43% at 8,532.17
• Euro Stoxx 50 is up 1.19% at 5,373.08
• DJIA closed on Tuesday -1.14% at 41,433.48
• S&P 500 closed -0.76% at 5,572.07
• Nasdaq closed -0.18% at 17,436.10
• S&P/TSX Composite Index closed -0.54% at 24,248.20
• S&P 40 Latin America closed +0.44% at 2,307.52
• U.S. 10-year Treasury rate is unchanged at 4.28%
• E-mini S&P 500 futures are up 0.54% at 5,607.25
• E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are up 0.67% at 19,529.25
• E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are up 0.37% at 41,627.00

Bitcoin Stats:

• BTC Dominance: 62.13 (-0.16%)
• Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.02290 (-0.06%)
• Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 815 EH/s
• Hashprice (spot): $46.1
• Total Fees: 6.03 BTC / $490,764
• CME Futures Open Interest: 142,725 BTC
• BTC priced in gold: 28.3 oz
• BTC vs gold market cap: 8.04%

Technical Analysis

• The dollar index, which represents the greenback’s exchange rate against a basket of fiat currencies, has dropped below the 61.8% Fibonacci retracement support of the late September to January rally.
• The breakdown means a potential soft U.S. CPI release could easily send the index sliding to 102.31, the 78.6% retracement support.
• A deeper slide in the dollar could bode well for risk assets, including BTC.

Crypto Equities

• Strategy (MSTR): closed on Tuesday at $260.59 (+8.91%), down 0.58% at $259.09 in pre-market
• Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $191.69 (+6.95%), unchanged in pre-market
• Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$17.27 (-1.09%)
• MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $13.32 (-0.67%), down 0.68% at $13.23
• Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $7.72 (+2.12%), down 0.26% at $7.70
• Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $8.63 (+7.74%), down 0.46% at $8.59
• CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $8.26 (+3.51%), down 0.73% at $8.20
• CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $15.08 (+4.14%)
• Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $32.80 (+0.18%)
• Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $24.50 (-0.41%), up 0.94% at $24.73

ETF Flows

Spot BTC ETFs:

• Daily net flow: -$371 million
• Cumulative net flows: $35.47 billion
• Total BTC holdings ~ 1,121 million.

Spot ETH ETFs

• Daily net flow: -$21.6 million
• Cumulative net flows: $2.66 billion
• Total ETH holdings ~ 3.571 million.

Source: Farside Investors

Overnight Flows

Chart of the Day

• The chart shows daily trading volume on Hyperliquid, the leading perpetual-focused decentralized exchange.
• Despite the market swoon, volumes have held remarkably steady, contrasting the sharp slowdown on other avenues like Solana’s Raydium.

While You Were Sleeping

In the Ether

Several U.S. states are getting closer to putting public money into cryptocurrencies effort, spurred by President Donald Trump since he announced plans to do the same on a federal level. And Texas is now among the leading contenders.

On Thursday, the Texas state senate passed the so-called SB 21 bill which would allow the state to invest some of the public’s money into digital assets, specifically bitcoin (BTC).

Bitcoin, according to a statement from Texas Senator Charles Schwertner last week, “has proven itself through multiple boom and bust cycles,” making it a great reserve asset in times of a “devastating national deficit” along with “inflation and uncertainty,” as Schwertner described.

New Hampshire also passed a bill on Wednesday through a state house committee, the House Bill 302 by a 16-1 vote, that would allow the state to invest up to 5% of public funds into bitcoin as well as other precious metals. So, it’s moving forward, though it’s a few votes away from the finish line.

Almost a dozen states have made strong efforts to pass a bill that would allow similar allocations, while at least five states ran into setbacks or no votes that tanked their bills.

Utah has so far been the frontrunner in a variety of efforts and remains just one senate approval away from sending a bill to its governor’s desk. However, the legislative session expires this week, leaving little time to get the senate to join the state house in approving an investment of as much as 5% of certain public accounts in a digital asset with more than $500 billion in assets. (So far, that’s just bitcoin.)

If the Utah senate acts by Friday, the final word goes to its Republican governor, Spencer Cox, who has supported blockchain policy in the past. If not, Utah’s effort gets put off another year, and other states such as Arizona and Texas could take the spotlight.

The recent action comes after President Trump on Sunday again discussed his own plan for a strategic crypto reserve. Trump said that a U.S. strategic crypto reserve could hold XRP, Solana (SOL) and Cardano (ADA) as well as Bitcoin and Ethereum (ETH), though many details of the effort and how it would be executed remain uncertain.

Many industry leaders have criticized Trump’s decision to hold other cryptocurrencies beyond bitcoin, as it is the one that best fits the characteristics of other reserve assets such as gold. The president, however, hasn’t provided clear guidelines on how such a strategy would work — for example, how the government would source the tokens.

Read More: Utah One Vote Away, But Some States Fail to Break Through on Crypto Stakes

Tether has appointed Simon McWilliams as its new Chief Financial Officer (CFO) as the leading stablecoin issuer moves toward the completion of a full financial audit.

McWilliams, a finance executive with over 20 years of experience, is set to lead Tether’s transparency and regulatory engagement efforts.

The appointment, according to the company’s announcement, represents a “firm commitment to completing a full audit, a crucial step in raising industry standards and strengthening regulatory engagement.”

Tether currently publishes quarterly attestations of its reserves verified by accounting firm BDO, but it hasn’t yet undergone a full independent audit. The company has for years faced criticism surrounding its reserves, with various critics suggesting the firm didn’t have enough reserves to fully back the USDT in circulation.

Back in 2021, the New York Attorney General’s office settled with Bitfinex over a 22-month inquiry into whether the exchange covered up a loss of $850 million in customer and corporate funds. That inquiry found that “Tether’s claims that its virtual currency was fulled backed by U.S. dollars at all times was a lie.”

A full audit could provide more detailed insight into Tether’s reserves. Three and a half years ago, the firm’s General Counsel Stuart Hoegner said in an interview that an audit was just “months, not years” away.

The stablecoin giant holds over $113 billion in U.S. Treasury bills, making it one of the largest holders of U.S. government debt, and reported a $13 billion profit for 2024. The company said these holdings contribute to global liquidity and support access to the U.S. dollar, particularly in emerging markets.

“Tether is once in a century company. And we’re laser focused on transparency, doubling down our efforts for a full audit,” Tether’s CEO Paolo Ardoino said on social media. “Simon’s hire is massive, truly a force of nature in the financial world.”

As part of the leadership shift, Giancarlo Devasini, Tether’s longtime CFO, will transition to Chairman of the Group.