Crypto Daybook Americas: Why Is Bitcoin Down? Strategic Reserve Fails to Rouse BTC Bulls as Jobs Data Looms

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

Was it worth the wait? President Donald Trump finally delivered on his electoral promise on Thursday, signing an executive order to establish the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and U.S. Digital Asset Stockpile.

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You'd expect bitcoin (BTC) bulls to rejoice, but the price of the largest cryptocurrency has dropped more than 2% since the news broke. The reaction is eerily similar to when the SEC approved bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) last January. BTC initially fell 20% over the following two weeks. Still, the bulls may be back. The price rallied to an all-time high within a couple of months after the ETFs got the green light.

Dubbed the "Digital Fort Knox," Trump's initiative provides a structured framework for bitcoin accumulation. One of the key takeaways from the order is that the Secretaries of Treasury and Commerce are authorized to develop budget-neutral strategies for acquiring more bitcoin without imposing extra costs on American taxpayers.

This could be achieved through various means, including selling U.S. gold reserves, liquidating other seized by the government cryptocurrencies or issuing bitcoin-bonds similar to the convertible bonds introduced by publicly traded bitcoin companies.

There's more news coming later too, specifically jobs data. Non-farm payrolls are estimated to have increased by 160,000, and the unemployment rate is seen holding at 4%.

Meanwhile, broader macroeconomic uncertainty persists, including tariff-related concerns, rising global bond yields, a strengthening yen and a weakening dollar. Stay alert!

What to Watch

Crypto: March 7, 1:30 p.m.: President Trump will host the inaugural White House Crypto Summit. Attenders include "prominent founders, CEOs, and investors from the crypto industry." March 11: The Bitcoin Policy Institute and U.S. Senator Cynthia Lummis co-host the invitation-only, one-day "Bitcoin for America" in Washington. March 12: Hemi, an L2 blockchain that operates on both Bitcoin and Ethereum, has its mainnet launch. March 14: Pi Network (PI) transitions from enclosed mainnet to open mainnet. March 15: Athene Network (ATH) mainnet launch. March 16, 6:00 p.m.: CME Group’s solana (SOL) futures start trading.

Macro March 7, 7:00 a.m.: Mexico's Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (INEGI) releases February consumer price inflation data. Core Inflation Rate MoM 0.46% vs. Prev. 0.41% Core Inflation Rate YoY Est. 3.62% vs. Prev. 3.66% Inflation Rate MoM Est. 0.27% vs. Prev. 0.29% Inflation Rate YoY Est. 3.77% vs. Prev. 3.59% March 7, 8:30 a.m.: Statistics Canada releases February employment data. Unemployment Rate Est. 6.7% vs. Prev. 6.6% Employment Change Est. 20K vs. Prev. 76K March 7, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Labor Bureau of Statistics (LBS) releases February employment data. Nonfarm Payrolls Est. 160K vs. Prev. 143K Unemployment Rate Est. 4% vs. Prev. 4% March 7, 12:30 p.m.: Fed Chair Jerome Powell will deliver a speech on economic outlook at the 2025 U.S. Monetary Policy Forum in New York. Livestream link. March 8, 8:30 p.m.: The National Bureau of Statistics of China releases consumer price inflation data (CPI) and producer price inflation data (PPI). Inflation Rate MoM Est. -0.1% vs. Prev. 0.7% Inflation Rate YoY Est. -0.5% vs. Prev. 0.5% PPI YoY Est. -21.% vs. Prev. -2.3%

Earnings (Estimates based on FactSet data) March 17 (TBC): Bit Digital (BTBT), $-0.05 March 18 (TBC): TeraWulf (WULF), $-0.04 March 24 (TBC): Galaxy Digital Holdings (TSE: GLXY), C$0.39

(Estimates based on FactSet data)

Token Events

Conferences

Token Talk

By Shaurya Malwa

Someone baited X's AI bot Grok into posting about a hypothetical GrokCoin, spurring the creation of several GROK tokens on Solana and other blockchains.

"As Grok, I'd suggest 'GrokCoin' for a memecoin name—playful, tied to my AI identity, and catchy for crypto enthusiasts," the bot's official X account posted in response to a query on what it would name a memecoin.

One of the GROK tokens zoomed to a $27 million market capitalization with $116 million in trading volumes over five hours, though it has since retracted to an $11 million capitalization.

While xAI, the Grok parent company founded by Elon Musk in 2023, focuses on AI to advance scientific discovery and has no official involvement in cryptocurrency, posts and conversations of AI models like Grok often lead to the creation of memecoins that typically do not last beyond a few days.

Derivatives Positioning

BTC, ETH perpetual funding rates are barely positive as disappointment about the absence of a buying plan for the new U.S. digital asset stockpile restrains the bullish sentiment.

ADA, SOL, SUI are seeing negative funding rates, indicating a bias for shorts.

The cumulative volume delta indicator shows that major tokens, except BCH and CMR, have seen net selling in the past 24 hours.

On Deribit, options show a bias for BTC and ETH puts out to April expiry, with a clear bias for calls in June and subsequent settlements.

Market Movements:

BTC is down 0.49%% from 4 p.m. ET Thursday at $89,310.83 (24hrs: -2.42%)

ETH is down 0.67% at $2,197.46 (24hrs: -4.39%)

CoinDesk 20 is down 0.58% at 2,910.34 (24hrs: -3.22%)

Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is unchanged at 3%

BTC funding rate is at -0.0042% (-4.57% annualized) on Binance

DXY is down 0.37% at 103.68

Gold is up 0.34% at $2,926.6/oz

Silver is up 0.42% at $33.20/oz

Nikkei 225 closed -2.17% at 36,887.17

Hang Seng closed -0.57% at 242,31.30

FTSE is down 0.56% at 8,634.41

Euro Stoxx 50 is down 1% at 5,464.99

DJIA closed on Thursday -0.99% at 42,579.08

S&P 500 closed -1.78% at 5,738.52

Nasdaq closed -2.61% at 18,069.26

S&P/TSX Composite Index closed -1.15% at 24,584.00

S&P 40 Latin America closed +0.11% at 2,344.78

U.S. 10-year Treasury rate is unchanged at 4.27%

E-mini S&P 500 futures are up 0.32% at 5,764.50

E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are up 0.47% at 20,184.50

E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are up 0.17% at 42,687.00

Bitcoin Stats:

BTC Dominance: 61.37 (-0.30%)

Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.02467 (0.73%)

Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 802 EH/s

Hashprice (spot): $52.4

Total Fees: 5.17 BTC / $468,726

CME Futures Open Interest: 144,815 BTC

BTC priced in gold: 30.4 oz

BTC vs gold market cap: 8.64%

Technical Analysis

Ether's daily chart. (TradingView/CoinDesk)

Ether, locked in a downward trending channel, is probing the support zone from August-September last year.

A midnight UTC close under $2,100 would confirm a breakdown, potentially opening doors to October 2023 lows near $1,500.

Crypto Equities

Strategy (MSTR): closed on Thursday at $304.11 (-1.44%), down 1.27% at $300.25 in pre-market

Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $214.17 (-3.72%), up 0.68% at $215.62

Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$18.82 (-7.47%)

MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $15.09 (-0.2%), down 1.66% at $14.84

Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $8.11 (-8.67%), unchanged in pre-market

Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $7.85 (-18.23%), up 2.42% at $8.04

CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $8.15 (-4.68%), down 0.37% at $8.12

CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $15.8 (-8.14%), up 1.27% at $16.00

Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $36.1 (-5.92%), down 0.69% at $35.85

Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $29.30 (+1%), unchanged in pre-market

ETF Flows

Spot BTC ETFs:

Daily net flow: -$134.3 million

Cumulative net flows: $36.62 billion

Total BTC holdings ~ 1,129 million.

Spot ETH ETFs

Daily net flow: -$10 million

Cumulative net flows: $2.75 billion

Total ETH holdings ~ 3.605 million.

Source: Farside Investors

Overnight Flows

Chart of the Day

BTC annualized futures basis on the CME. (Velo)

Annualized basis in CME's bitcoin futures has slightly recovered to 9% from 4% last month, but remains below the December high of 21.55%.

In other words, positioning remains light, showing signs of caution among institutional traders.

While You Were Sleeping

In the Ether