Crypto Daybook Americas: BTC Price Meltdown Worsens as Macro Jitters Overshadow Positives

By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)

It's the dip that keeps on dipping. Bitcoin took another hit early Friday, falling below $80,000 and taking February's decline to over 20%. That spurred a bloodbath in the broader crypto market, with ether sliding below $2,100, a level it managed to hold since August.

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It's not just crypto. Increased volatility in cryptocurrencies mirrors trends in traditional markets. Compare the 10% jump in the Volmex BVIV, which tracks the 30-day implied volatility in bitcoin, with the equal increase in the MOVE index, which measures the implied volatility of U.S. Treasury notes. The VIX, Wall Street's so-called fear gauge, has risen by 14%.

These movements, coupled with a sell-off in growth-sensitive commodity currencies like the Australian, New Zealand and Canadian dollars, are indicative of jitters in the macroeconomy, primarily driven by renewed concerns over potential Trump tariffs, prompting a rotation towards less volatile assets.

"U.S. domestic policies have become unstable, and the White House seems happy to take advantage of this instability," said Griffin Ardern, head of options trading and research at crypto financial 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 looks set to remain heightened, with President Donald Trump reportedly scheduled to speak later on Friday. In the meantime, those hoping for a significant rebound in risk assets based on personal consumption data may be disappointed because anticipated soft readings could be overshadowed by tariff concerns and rising forward-looking inflation metrics.

While the outlook may seem gloomy, more positive developments could occur once the macro dust settles. Notably, this week there was progress on the regulatory front, with the SEC dropping charges against Uniswap, one of the leading decentralized exchanges, and mulling the same regarding its issues with Consensys.

As Evgeny Gaevoy, CEO of leading market maker Wintermute, pointed out at Consensus Hong Kong last week, many are overlooking the evolving attitude of the SEC, and this is a factor the market has yet to fully price in.

Plus, the decline in the basis in the CME bitcoin and ether futures, a sign of weakening demand, has stalled and from a technical analysis perspective, bitcoin is fast closing toward a potential demand zone. So, stay alert!

What to Watch

Token Events

Governances votes & calls Sky DAO is discussing the reduction of the Smart Burn Engine activity, which would effectively reduce the rate of SKY token buybacks from around 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 would 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 supply worth $5.58 million. Mar. 1: ZetaChain (ZETA) to unlock 6.48% of circulating supply worth $12.45 million. Mar. 1: Sui (SUI) to unlock 0.74% of circulating supply worth $60.40 million. Mar. 2: Ethena (ENA) to unlock 1.3% of circulating supply worth $15.91 million. Mar. 7: Kaspa (KAS) to unlock 0.63% of circulating supply worth $12.35 million. Mar. 8: Berachain (BERA) to unlock 9.28% of circulating supply worth $73.80 million. Mar. 9: Movement (MOVE) to unlock 2.08% of its circulating supply worth $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 through THORChain, a decentralized cross-chain swap protocol, by converting it mainly to bitcoin.

THORChain enables cross-chain swaps without wrapped assets, maintaining user custody and securing funds on the blockchain.



ALERT: LAZARUS LAUNDERING THROUGH THORCHAIN - MINIMUM $240M SO FAR



Over $240M of ETH has been sent through Thorchain by Lazarus-tagged wallets on Arkham.



These funds have mainly been swapped for native BTC. pic.twitter.com/C1EYtj6aFw — Arkham (@arkham) February 27, 2025

Derivatives Positioning

TRX and TRON are seeing negative perpetual funding rates, or dominance of bearish, short positions, as the crypto sell-off deepens. Most other major coins still have positive funding rates.

On decentralized exchange Derive.xyz, ETH's options skew for both the 7-day and 30-day options has sharply dropped to -15% and -6% respectively, representing a strong bias for protective puts.

The way bitcoin options on on Derive were priced at press time showed a 44% chance BTC settling below $80K by the end of June. and just 3.5% chance of prices rising to $150K, talk about the fear in the market.

On Deribit, BTC and ETH options showed a bias for puts in expiries up to the April end.

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 rate 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 rate 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 moving average): 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

ETH's daily chart. (TradingView/CoinDesk)

Ether is at a make or break level of $2,100, which has seen seller exhaustion several times since August last year.

If the support gives way, it could trigger additional selling by long-term holders, leading to an extended 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 net flow: -$275.9 million

Cumulative net flows: $36.85 billion

Total BTC holdings ~ 1,132 million.

Spot ETH ETFs

Daily net flow: -$71.2 million

Cumulative net flows: $2.86 billion

Total ETH holdings ~ 3.702 million.

Source: Farside Investors

Overnight Flows

Chart of the Day

Uniswap's daily trading volume. (Artemis)

Daily trading volume on decentralized exchange Uniswap saw a small spike to $3.5 billion on Tuesday as the SEC dropped charges against the protocol.

Since then, however, volumes have tapered off, probably due to the wider market decline.

While You Were Sleeping

In the Ether