Crypto Daybook Americas: Buying the Drop or Trying to Catch a Falling Knife? Take Your Pick

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



Two contradictory philosophies jump to mind when considering bitcoin's (BTC) price action of late.

Do you "buy when there is blood in the streets"? Or perhaps "don't catch a falling knife."?

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Which applies in today's market, the day after the largest cryptocurrency posted its steepest three-day decline since the collapse of FTX in 2022? The drop left BTC 25% below January's all-time high, despite the advent of President Donald Trump's pro-crypto administration.

It's no surprise the largest hack in crypto history has shaken investor sentiment. Add to that the memecoin frenzy, which pulled liquidity out of the broader market.

That said, in previous cycles so-called bull-market corrections have sent bitcoin tumbling as much as 35%. Given that BTC hasn't had a meaningful pullback since the yen carry trade unwind last August, the current situation is almost normal.

CoinDesk research showed that bitcoin was trading in an extremely tight range for a meaningful period, and a break in the channel was inevitable. On-chain data tells us that bitcoin recently bounced off its 200-day-moving average or roughly $81,800. While short-term holders are selling — panic sales, perhaps? — at the highest level since August, because they have held BTC for 155 days or less they are usually seen as a signal of some form of capitulation in the market.

BlackRock's IBIT saw record outflows on Wednesday. However, it's not all bad news. A huge expansion deal was made for Core Scientific (CORZ), while MARA Holdings (MARA) reported strong earnings, with both stocks more than 10% before the open. Meanwhile, NVIDIA (NVDA) topped fourth-quarter estimates to calm investors' nerves. Stay alert!

What to Watch

Crypto: Feb. 27: Solana-based L2 Sonic SVM (SONIC) mainnet launch (“Mobius”). March 1: Spot trading on the Arkham Exchange goes live in 17 U.S. states. March 5 (provisional): At epoch 222464, testing of Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade on the Sepolia testnet starts.

Macro Day 2 of 2: 2025’s first G20 finance ministers and central bank governors meeting (Cape Town, South Africa). Feb. 27, 7:00 a.m.: Brazil's Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) releases January employment data. Unemployment Rate Est. 6.6% vs. Prev. 6.2% Feb. 27, 7:00 a.m.: Mexico's National Institute of Statistics and Geography releases January employment data Unemployment Rate Est. 2.7% vs. Prev. 2.4% Feb. 27, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis releases Q4 GDP (2nd estimate). Core PCE Prices QoQ Est. 2.5% vs. Prev. 2.2% PCE Prices QoQ Est. 2.3% vs. Prev. 1.5% GDP Growth Rate QoQ Est. 2.3% vs. Prev. 3.1% Feb. 27, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Department of Labor releases Unemployment Insurance Weekly claims for the week ended Feb. 22. Initial Jobless Claims Est. 221K vs. Prev. 219K Feb. 28, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis releases January personal consumption data. Core PCE Price Index MoM Est. 0.3% vs. Prev. 0.2% Core PCE Price Index YoY Est. 2.6% vs. Prev. 2.8% PCE Price Index MoM Est. 0.3% vs. Prev. 0.3% PCE Price Index YoY Est. 2.5% vs. Prev. 2.6% Personal Income MoM Est. 0.3% vs. Prev. 0.4% Personal Spending MoM Est. 0.1% vs. Prev. 0.7%

Earnings March 6 (TBC): Bitfarms (BITF), $-0.04 March 17 (TBC): Bit Digital (BTBT), $-0.05 March 18 (TBC): TeraWulf (WULF), $-0.03 March 24 (TBC): Galaxy Digital Holdings (TSE: GLXY), C$0.38



Token Events

Governances votes & calls DYdX DAO is voting on distributing $1.5 million in DYDX tokens from the community treasury to qualifying users in trading season 9 as part of its incentives program. Feb. 27, 11 a.m.: IOTA (IOTA) to host an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session with co-founder Dominik Schiener and Thoralf, senior software engineer for its smart contract platform and dev tools. Feb. 27, 2 p.m.: VeChain (VET) to cover its monthly updates in a community call.

Unlocks Feb. 28: Optimism (OP) to unlock 2.32% of circulating supply worth $36.67 million. Mar. 1: DYdX to unlock 1.14% of circulating supply worth $6.13 million. Mar. 1: ZetaChain (ZETA) to unlock 6.48% of circulating supply worth $13.58 million. Mar. 1: Sui (SUI) to unlock 0.74% of circulating supply worth $67.52 million. Mar. 2: Ethena (ENA) to unlock 1.3% of circulating supply worth $17.79 million. Mar. 7: Kaspa (KAS) to unlock 0.63% of circulating supply worth $14.23 million. Mar. 8: Berachain (BERA) to unlock 9.28% of circulating supply worth $77.80 million.

Token Listings Feb. 27: Venice token (VVV) to be listed on Kraken. Feb. 28: Worldcoin (WLD) to be listed on Kraken. Feb. 28: Zcash (ZEC) and Dash (DASH) are being delisted from Bybit



Conferences

Token Talk

By Shaurya Malwa

Pump.fun, a Solana-based memecoin launchpad, has seen a sharp decline in token launches and graduations amid a falling market.

The platform hit a peak in October 2024, creating over 36,000 tokens in a day and generating a record $3 billion market cap for its ecosystem, but activity has since plummeted, with daily token launches dropping more than 60%.

Data from Dune Analytics shows Pump.fun's token graduation rate remains low at around 1%-2%, with many tokens failing to sustain value post-launch, contributing to the downturn.

The decline comes as Solana's SOL has dropped more than 40% since the start of the year.

Derivatives Positioning

Open interest in perceptual futures tied to APT, one of the best-performing coins of the past 24 hours, has increased, but funding rates and the cumulative volume delta are negative. That's a sign of traders hedging downside risks.

SOL and LTC have also seen increases in open interest, but with positive funding rates.

BTC and ETH options on Deribit now indicate downside concerns extending until the end of March, while later expirations continue to show a preference for call options.

Block flows on Paradigm have been mixed, with puts and OTM call spreads lifted. The SOL March 7 expiry put option at the $120 strike was purchased.

Market Movements:

BTC is up 3% from 4 p.m. ET Wednesday at $86,735.19 (24hrs: -2.12%)

ETH is up 1.98% at $2,378.49 (24hrs: -3.49%)

CoinDesk 20 is up 2.98% at 2,821.02 (24hrs: -1.13%)

Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is down 26 bps at 3.02%

BTC funding rate is at 0.0039% (4.26% annualized) on Binance

DXY is up 0.23% 106.66

Gold is down 0.77% at $2,893.59/oz

Silver is down 0.27% at $31.83/oz

Nikkei 225 closed +0.3% at 38,256.17

Hang Seng closed -0.29% at 23,718.29

FTSE is up 0.19% at 8,748.36

Euro Stoxx 50 is down 0.72% at 5,487.97

DJIA closed on Wednesday -0.43% at 43,433.12

S&P 500 closed unchanged at 5,956.06

Nasdaq closed +0.26% at 19,075.26

S&P/TSX Composite Index closed +0.49% at 25,328.36

S&P 40 Latin America closed -0.46% at 2,379.84

U.S. 10-year Treasury rate is up 5 bps at 4.31%

E-mini S&P 500 futures are up 0.57% at 6,005.00

E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are up 0.64% at 21,322.25

E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are up 0.24% at 43,612.00

Bitcoin Stats:

BTC Dominance: 60.77 (0.31%)

Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.02744 (-1.05%)

Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 766 EH/s

Hashprice (spot): $50.5

Total Fees: 10.9 BTC / $915,415

CME Futures Open Interest: 155,270 BTC

BTC priced in gold: 29.6 oz

BTC vs gold market cap: 8.42%

Technical Analysis

BTC's daily chart. (TradingView/CoinDesk)

BTC's double top breakdown has exposed the former resistance-turned-support below $74,000.

On the price chart, there is no other support between $90K and $74K.

Crypto Equities

MicroStrategy (MSTR): closed on Wednesday at $263.27 (+5.09%), up 2.82% at $270.70 in pre-market

Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $212.96 (+0.22%), up 3.22% at $219.81

Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$20.16 (+0.35%)

MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $12.45 (+0.28%), up 12.93% at $14.06

Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $8.94 (-4.08%), up 3.69% at $9.27

Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $10.02 (+2.66%), up 18.46% at $11.87

CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $7.88 (-3.31%), up 3.43% at $8.15

CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $17.22 (+1.06%)

Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $43.91 (+3.51%), up 1.41% at $44.53

Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $44.48 (+11.59%), up 8.48% at $48.25

ETF Flows

Spot BTC ETFs:

Daily net flow: -$754.6 million

Cumulative net flows: $37.13 billion

Total BTC holdings ~ 1,139 million.

Spot ETH ETFs

Daily net flow: -$94.3 million

Cumulative net flows: $2.93 billion

Total ETH holdings ~ 3.714 million.

Source: Farside Investors

Overnight Flows

Chart of the Day

Stablecoin tether: net exchange outflows. (CryptoQuant)

The chart shows a large outflow of the Tether's dollar-pegged stablecoin USDT from centralized exchanges.

It may be a sign of traders preparing for deeper market downturns or rotation of liquidity out of centralized avenues into decentralized platforms.

While You Were Sleeping

In the Ether