Bitcoin, Ethereum and XRP tumbled sharply on Sunday after Iran responded to President Trump’s 48-hour ultimatum not with concessions but with an escalation, vowing to fully close the Strait of Hormuz and strike energy, technology and water infrastructure across the Middle East. With 33 hours remaining on Trump’s deadline, markets are pricing in the very …
The price of Bitcoin has continued to hover around the $70,000 level this weekend, establishing a choppy structure above this psychological level. According to the latest on-chain data, a significant buy alarm has gone off for BTC, indicating the potential start of a bull market. Has BTC Price Reached Its Cycle Bottom? On Saturday, March 21, popular market analyst Ali Martinez took to the social media platform X to sound a bullish alarm for Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. The crypto pundit posited that the market leader could be at the beginning of a period of extended upward movement. Related Reading: XRP Price Is Maintaining This Multi-Year Trendline, But A Crash Could Be Looming The rationale behind this bullish projection is the recent shift in the Inter-Exchange Flow Pulse (IFP) metric. The Inter-Exchange Flow Pulse is an on-chain indicator that measures BTC flows between spot and derivative exchanges using the Bitcoin exchange flow data. Changes in this on-chain metric are useful in determining whether investor sentiment in the Bitcoin market is bullish or bearish. Typically, the IFP indicator rises when significant amounts of BTC are being moved to derivative exchanges, suggesting a growing risk appetite and the potential imminence of a bullish period. The movement of the IFP (purple line) in relation to its 90-day moving average (broken lines) helps to identify price tops and bottoms while determining the potential long-term trend of the cryptocurrency. When the Inter-Exchange Flow Pulse crosses below its 90-day average, it signals a potential bear market and prolonged price downturn. As observed in the chart above, the IFP trended beneath the 90-day average early last year, suggesting that the current bear market started as far back as the first quarter of 2025. While the Bitcoin price initially ran up to a new all-time high above $126,000, the flagship cryptocurrency has since shaved off nearly 45% in value since the cycle peak. What’s more interesting, the price of Bitcoin appears to have hit its bottom, with the IFP crossing back above the 90-day average in recent weeks. As Martinez mentioned in his post on X, this crossover is a major buy signal that could suggest “big money is getting ready for a rally.” However, investors might want to approach the market with caution, especially considering that the IFP can sometimes be a leading indicator, meaning that the bullish effect on price might not reflect until later. Bitcoin Price At A Glance As of this writing, BTC is valued at around $70,360, reflecting a 0.3% price increase in the past 24 hours. Related Reading: Ethereum Exchange Inflows Signal Shift: Whales Reduce Selling Pressure Featured image by DALL-E, chart from TradingView
Trump’s Iran ultimatum triggers $232M liquidation cascade; crypto market sheds $45B in 30 minutes Bitcoin dropped nearly $2,000 in under 30 minutes on Sunday after President Donald Trump threatened to strike Iran’s power infrastructure unless Tehran reopened the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours, sending shockwaves through global risk assets and triggering one of the …
The Bitcoin market commenced an extended bearish phase in October 2025, after an initial flash crash triggered a 19% decline from the present all-time high at $126,000. In the subsequent months, Bitcoin would experience a steady loss combined with major drawdown moments, eventually pulling its price to a local bottom of $60,000, before entering a mid-term consolidation phase. In the last month, Bitcoin has shown a moderate recovery with a net gain of 4.89%, with prices trading as high as $75,000. While this recent performance may be indicative of a stabilizing market, recent data on the correlation between the premier cryptocurrency and the S&P 500 has presented new bearish concerns. Related Reading: Bitcoin Market Caution Rises After Failed Breakout: Glassnode Data Historical Correlation Coefficient Data Hints At Potential Market Crash In an X post on March 21, market analyst Tony Severino reports that recent developments with the BTC-S&P 500 Correlation Coefficient indicate Bitcoin is in danger of another major downswing. Notably, the Correlation Coefficient is a figure between -1 and +1 that measures how strongly and in what direction two assets, i.e., Bitcoin and the S&P 500 in this case, move relative to each other over time. At +1, the coefficient indicates that the assets move exactly together in the same direction, while at -1, a perfect negative correlation occurs, with the assets moving in opposite directions. At 0, movements are considered unrelated, with no identifiable pattern, as both assets trend independently of each other. Amid the bear market that has persisted since late 2025 and early 2026, the 20-day Bitcoin-S&P Correlation Coefficient dipped to around -0.5 as Bitcoin prices fell while equities rose. However, Severino notes that this coefficient had recently rebounded to around -0.10, creating a market sequence that has previously preceded major Bitcoin downturns. According to the seasoned expert, each time the 20-day BTC S&P 500 correlation dropped to -0.5 before sharply reversing, it has triggered stock market crashes that induced a significant sell-off in the Bitcoin market. However, there is usually an initial price bounce lasting 10-17 weeks before the drawdown commences. Severino’s analysis suggests the limited rebound observed since early February represents this preliminary gain, which is now 8-weeks old. As observed in 2018, 2020, and 2022, the resulting correction from this setup threatens a potential price fall of 70-80% from the peak of this initial price bounce. Related Reading: XRP Price Is Maintaining This Multi-Year Trendline, But A Crash Could Be Looming Bitcoin Market Outlook At the time of writing, Bitcoin trades at $68,584 after a 2.41% decline in the last 24 hours. Meanwhile, the daily trading volume has declined by 41.21%, representing a fall in the traders’ participation as Bitcoin continues to consolidate following its failed breakout above $75,000 in the last week. Featured image from iStock, chart from Tradingview.com
Bitcoin quietly gained ground while gold crumbled. That contrast has become one of the more telling stories to emerge from weeks of escalating conflict in the Middle East, as the two assets — long compared as competing stores of value — have moved in sharply opposite directions since the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran in late February. Related Reading: Bitcoin Gains Ground On Gold Even As Both Assets Slide Bitcoin Climbs As Gold Bleeds Since those first attacks, Bitcoin has risen more than 11% to around $70,650. Gold, meanwhile, has shed over 12% from its peak. Reports indicate the cryptocurrency has held up better than expected under the pressure of a widening war — a performance that has drawn attention in financial markets still trying to make sense of the conflict’s economic fallout. Gold’s losses accelerated this week. The metal dropped 3.4% on Friday alone, closing around $4,480 per ounce. For the full week of March 16-20, the decline reached 10% — the steepest weekly fall since 1983, according to data confirmed by TradingView. It surpassed even the sharp drop seen in late January, when gold shed hundreds of dollars in a matter of days and wiped out more than $2 trillion in market value within weeks of hitting $5,500 per ounce. That January plunge shocked investors. This one may have rattled them more. Fed Signals No Rate Cuts, Adding Pressure On Gold The Federal Reserve is adding to gold’s troubles. Fed Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday that rising energy prices — driven in part by war-related disruptions in the Middle East — are expected to push inflation higher in the near term. Traders have responded by pulling back expectations for rate cuts in 2025. Rates are now widely expected to hold steady through the year. That shift matters for gold. When interest rates stay high, bonds and other yield-bearing instruments become more attractive by comparison. Gold pays no interest. It earns nothing while it sits. Reports note that this dynamic has weighed on demand from institutional investors who might otherwise hold the metal as a hedge. Related Reading: Crypto Adoption No Longer Optional, Survey Finds As 72% Of Finance Leaders Signal Commitment Trump Signals Possible Wind-Down Of Military Push The Iran conflict has also disrupted oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical shipping corridors. That disruption has stoked fears of a prolonged energy crunch, adding more uncertainty to global markets already on edge. US President Donald Trump said Friday he was considering pulling back from military operations in the region. At the same time, the US has deployed thousands of additional troops to the Middle East, and airstrikes have continued. The mixed signals have left markets guessing about what comes next. Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView
According to a recent on-chain data evaluation, the Bitcoin price might not be seeing a start to renewed price expansion in the near-term. Interestingly, this hypothesis seems to align with the multiple recovery attempts by the flagship cryptocurrency over the past few weeks. BTC Net Realized Profit Peak At $17M/hr Before Swift Price Downturn In a March 20 post on the social media platform X, on-chain research firm Glassnode revealed what was behind Bitcoin’s recent reversal from what initially looked like an expansion move. This is based on the Net Realized Profit/Loss (NRPL) (24h Moving Average) metric, which reflects whether the market is predominantly realizing profits or losses, by tracking (and comparing) the amount of either that has been realized by holders over 24 hours. Related Reading: Bitcoin Shark & Whale Wallets Jump Despite Bearish Price Action Glassnode highlighted that readings on the NRPL metric recently reached a high of approximately $17 million/hr before the price of Bitcoin started moving downwards again. This trend was outlined as one of the drivers behind the flagship cryptocurrency’s loss of its $70,000 footing. According to the analytics firm, the heightened profit-taking activity among Bitcoin’s investors has continued to absorb bullish momentum, thereby converting it to bearish pressure. Notably, this pattern has repeated itself at multiple moments in the current cycle, specifically as Bitcoin attempts to rally to the upside. Glassnode further explained that the degree of uncertainty currently in the geopolitical world has caused “demand depth” to compress. As a result, realization events like the last one have become too much for the market to absorb, explaining the recent slip below $70,000. Interestingly, this is not a standalone reason behind BTC’s activity. After Bitcoin fell below the $85,000 support, a surge in on-chain activity was observed due to liquidity repositioning by investors. However, the waning market liquidity in recent weeks suggests that BTC price recovery is buoyed by seller exhaustion rather than by strong and consistent demand. Hence, the life of the recovery is truncated whenever sellers enter the market Short-Term Holders Realize Losses As Price Nears $74K For instance, crypto analyst Darkfost highlighted that Bitcoin’s short-term investors are locking in more losses in recent weeks. This is reflected in readings from the Short-Term Holder P&L to Exchanges Sum metric. In their post on X, Darkfost revealed that more than 28,000 BTC have recently been sent to exchanges, with these investors seemingly cutting their losses. These losses, pointed out the analyst, continued to grow as the Bitcoin price went into a steady decline. For this reason, it is safe to expect more bearish pressure from this investor cohort, as additional panic-driven sales would likely contribute more bearish momentum to the Bitcoin market. Thus, rather than a hopeful story of positive expectations, the Bitcoin price seems to be giving warning signs to investors. As of this writing, Bitcoin holds a valuation of about $70,532, reflecting no significant movement in the past day. Related Reading: Bitcoin Just Got A $1 Million Nudge, But Will Morgan Stanley’s MSBT ETF Really Move The Needle? Featured image from iStock, chart from TradingView
Difficulty is now nearly 10% below where it started the year, despite a sharp 14.7% rebound in February after weather-related disruptions subsided.
The Bitcoin market remains subject to high uncertainty, with bearish sentiments at heightened levels. In the last week, the premier cryptocurrency attempted another failed breakout as prices faced stiff resistance at the $75,000 level. With Bitcoin now back to around $70,000, Glassnode data on the options market shows that traders are pushing for more downside protection alongside expectations of low market volatility. Related Reading: Pundit Shares Everything To Understand About Bitcoin, ‘This Cycle IS Different’ Bitcoin Open Interest Hits New ATH – What Does It Mean? In an X post on March 20, Glassnode provides an update on the Bitcoin options market covering developments on positioning, volatility expectations, and market sentiments. In terms of positioning, the analytics platform reported that Bitcoin options Open Interest (OI) reached a new all-time high value ahead of the expected expiry order on Friday. While a rise in OI typically represents an increase in market participation, Glassnode analysts explain that this recent positioning spike may still be indicative of short-term hedging flows. However, the after-effects of quarterly expiry on March 27 would provide more clarity on the recent positioning spike and the long-term sentiment. Meanwhile, the 1-week Implied Volatility (IV) declined from 70% to 53%, while options with longer maturities are also down by ~10 vols. This indicates that options are anticipating less dramatic price swings, despite the unstable macro environment. Related Reading: Binance Leads XRP Whale Exodus As 530M Tokens Exit In Single-Day Surge Bitcoin Put Options In Demand As Traders Hedge Against Price Fall According to Glassnode, the Bitcoin Options Skew, which measures the demand difference between put options (bearish protection) and call options (bullish bets), has stabilized. However, Bitcoin’s rejection at $75,000 has pushed the 25 Delta Skew into the 15-20% range, indicating increased put option demand. This development suggests a rise in market caution as options traders are paying a premium to protect against any potential downside. This creeping market fear is further confirmed by the 24-hour taker flow chart, which shows that options traders’ positioning has now turned defensive. Puts Bought activity is dominating the flows chart with a 30.7% share, while Calls Bought accounts for around 20.9%. Meanwhile, the Put/Call Ratio had also indicated a potential rejection at $75,000. Put actions dominated flows activity above $72,000, indicating that traders lacked belief in the breakout. Following the pullback, traders attempted to buy the dip with a spike in call options, but it was short-lived. At the time of writing, Bitcoin trades at $70,668 following a minor 0.33% gain in the last day. Meanwhile, daily trading volume has declined by 17.30% and is now valued at $36.67 billion. Featured image from Flickr, chart from Tradingview
Crypto analyst Ardi has pointed to a bear market divergence to explain what has been going on with Bitcoin’s price for a while now. His analysis comes just as BTC continues to struggle to hold above $70,000 amid the U.S.-Iran war and rising oil prices. Analyst Explains What Is Happening With Bitcoin as Price Struggles In an X post, Ardi noted that this is the first time in this bear market that Bitcoin’s price and open interest have diverged on an intermediate timeframe. BTC has climbed over the last six weeks to a low of around $60,000 while its open interest has declined during the same period. He stated that this indicates the recent rally wasn’t driven by new buyers entering, but rather by a large part of it being shorts closing their positions. Related Reading: How Low Can Bitcoin Price Go? Analyst Shares Worst-Case Scenario The analyst further remarked that traders who shorted the Bitcoin top like saw the drop to $60,000 and felt it was a good position to take profits. “They locked profit. They exited. That exit pressure pushed the price up,” he said. However, Ardi added that this development is not the same as fresh demand, which is sufficient for a reversal. He said that open interest typically rises when the Bitcoin rally has real strength, as shorts close and longs open to replace them. Meanwhile, new capital enters, forming the foundation for the bullish reversal in BTC. Ardi declared that none of that has happened in this range, with trading activity one-sided even as the leading crypto climbed to as high as $75,000 last week. Ardi said that the problem is that short covering has a ceiling, and once the last short has closed, the source of upward pressure is gone, leaving no other factor to sustain the move to the upside. How It Could Play Out For BTC In The Near Term Crypto analyst Colin noted that Bitcoin has been tracking inside the channel of a bear flag since the February 6 low. In line with this, he opined that BTC will eventually break down and that it is not a question of if but when. The analyst also questioned how high the leading crypto will rise before it suffers this breakdown. Related Reading: Analyst Says Bitcoin Price Is Showing Dangerous Weakness, Here’s Why Colin opined that the highest price Bitcoin might reach before this projected breakdown is around $80,000. He described this as the best-case scenario at this point and that BTC might not even reach this psychological level. However, the analyst also admitted that there are some outlier outcomes, like BTC rising above $80,000 if the U.S.-Iran war suddenly ends. At the time of writing, the Bitcoin price is trading at around $70,700, up in the last 24 hours, according to data from CoinMarketCap. Featured image from Getty Images, chart from Tradingview.com
Bitcoin is hovering near the $71,000 mark, consolidating after recent swings as the market digests key liquidity zones. While price remains contained, underlying technical signals suggest a larger move may be brewing, with both upside breakouts and downside sweeps on the horizon. A Bounce Back To $71,000 After Channel Support Holds Crypto analyst Columbus highlighted Bitcoin’s resilience following a successful bounce from its channel boundary support. This technical reaction has allowed the price to grind steadily higher, reclaiming the $71,000 level. While the explosive momentum has begun to decelerate after that first reaction, the overall market structure remains decidedly constructive for the bulls as long as this newly reclaimed territory is defended as support. Related Reading: Bitcoin Stalls Near $75K As Traders Move Coins To Exchanges According to the MMT Heatmap, the path toward further upside is clearly defined by a significant stack of liquidity resting just above the current price. A sustained push through the immediate overhead supply would effectively clear the way for a continuation move toward higher liquidity clusters concentrated around the $75,000 to $76,000 region. However, the analysis also cautions that the current level is a precarious battleground for the asset. Should Bitcoin fail to maintain its footing above this support region, the market would likely undergo another sweep into lower liquidity pockets to find sufficient buying interest before any meaningful attempt at higher expansion. Ultimately, the short-term outlook hinges on whether the current support holds or if the slowing momentum leads to a structural failure. For now, this area is key to determining if the market is preparing for a breakout toward the mid-70s or a temporary retreat. Bitcoin Consolidates Mid-Range After Recent Range Breakout BTC is consolidating in the mid-range, according to Lennaert Snyder’s post on X. The market recently experienced a range breakout, which effectively acted as a push-to-fill on Bitcoin, moving the price toward key liquidity zones. Related Reading: Bitcoin Shows Early Trend Reversal Signs After Major Support Hold Snyder is already positioned short, but he is prepared to add to his position on the next weekly candle if the price pushes into the fair value gap (FVG) around $72,400. This level represents a potential trigger zone for further downside, aligning with his bearish strategy. He plans to short the bearish market structure break (MSB) when the conditions above are met, targeting the liquidity around the $65,580 low. While lower prices are possible, he intends to manage risk carefully and will be roughly 80% positioned at that level. For long positions, Snyder cautions that BTC is trading mid-range and is currently exhausted from the recent drop. Thus, he is waiting for significant liquidity to be mitigated at the range low or for higher time frame (HTF) levels to be gained before considering any new long entries. Featured image from Pixabay, chart from Tradingview.com
For the first time in nearly two months, the Bitcoin price had a sustained run above the psychological $70,000 level over the past week. However, the increased likelihood of potential interest rate hikes by the US Federal Reserve on Friday, March 20, seems to have elevated market apprehension. Interestingly, an on-chain evaluation suggests that the Bitcoin price was always destined for another round of downside movement — this time below the $50,000 level. Is BTC Price Preparing For Another Leg Down? In a Friday post on the X platform, crypto analyst Ali Martinez shared an on-chain insight into the potential bottom of the BTC price in the current bear cycle. According to the market pundit, the price of Bitcoin appears to be headed to the $43,000 level before starting the next bull cycle. Related Reading: Bitcoin Holds At $69,000— Glassnode Data Shows What To Expect Through Late March This projection is based on the Market Value to Realized Value (MVRV) pricing bands, which show the different profitability levels of the premier cryptocurrency. These pricing bands also function as dynamic support and resistance levels, as they compare the current market price to the average realized value (average cost basis) of all investors. As shown in the chart above, MVRV pricing bands have proven, in past cycles, to be quite effective in predicting market tops and bottoms. Using the on-chain metric, Martinez has identified the 0.8 MVRV band as the potential bottom of the Bitcoin price in the ongoing bear market. Martinez revealed that over the past decade, the price of BTC has always rebounded from this 0.8 MVRV band, marking the start of a fresh bull cycle. The highlighted chart shows the flagship cryptocurrency bouncing back to a new high after hitting its cycle low — around this band in 2018, 2020, and 2022. According to data from Glassnode, the 0.8 MVRV band currently lies around the $43,647 region, putting the potential bottom of this cycle nearly 40% away from the current price. If history were to repeat itself, this on-chain evaluation suggests that the Bitcoin price could be at risk of further downside in the coming months. It is important to mention that while the 0.8 MVRV band is currently at $43,647, it is liable to change with further movements in price. Bitcoin Price At A Glance As of this writing, the price of BTC stands at around $70,477, reflecting a 0.6% increase in the past 24 hours. Related Reading: Pundit Shares Everything To Understand About Bitcoin, ‘This Cycle IS Different’ Featured image from iStock, chart from TradingView
Bitcoin (BTC) is showing early signs of a prolonged decline after peaking in October 2025. Historical patterns highlighted by a crypto analyst suggest that the world’s largest cryptocurrency has not yet reached its macro bear market bottom, despite recent major declines. Analysis of historical patterns from past cycles suggests the current market crash may persist for many more months, and the analyst urges investors and traders to adjust their expectations accordingly. Related Reading: Bitcoin Gains Ground On Gold Even As Both Assets Slide Bitcoin Historical Correlation Points To Further Crash Crypto market expert Greeny shared a new technical analysis on X, noting that Bitcoin has consistently followed a pattern of peaks and bottoms across every major cycle over the past decade. Historical data from the analyst’s chart shows that from 2013 to 2015, Bitcoin took roughly 410 days to reach a low. Similarly, the 2017 to 2018 cycle lasted about 363 days, while the decline from the 2021 peak extended around 376 days. The average across these three cycles is approximately 383 days, roughly over a year. In this cycle, the analyst notes that the market is about five months past its October peak, suggesting that the current downtrend is far from over. Greeny has also noted that historical drawdowns during past cycles have been severe. In 2011, Bitcoin crashed by a whopping 93% before hitting a bottom. Later in 2015, the cryptocurrency fell from its peak, marking an 85% slump, while it dropped by 77% again in 2022 following the 2021 bull market rally. According to the analyst, Bitcoin is currently trading 42% below its all-time high of over $126,000 in this cycle, further reinforcing his belief that the market still has significant room for more losses. While Greeny acknowledged that institutional demand may prevent a crash as deep as previous cycles, he believes the timing of this bear market’s bottom is consistent with historical trends. Beyond bear market durations and crash depths, Greeny also highlighted Bitcoin’s post-decline accumulation phases for each cycle. He noted that in 2015, Bitcoin spent 15 months trading sideways before a new uptrend emerged. Similarly, both 2018 and 2022 saw roughly 18 months of choppy trading before a market shift occurred. Greeny strongly believes that the current market cycle is mirroring historical patterns. He expects the ongoing market crash to continue, with a meaningful accumulation phase still a long time off. This further supports the view that Bitcoin remains in the early stages of its bear market. What To Expect In The Current Market Cycle Greeny suggested that the average macro bear market bottom has historically appeared around 363 days after its cycle peak, placing a potential bottom near late 2026 or beyond. He explained that while Bitcoin has already started its price dump, its broader weakness is still ongoing. Related Reading: Over Half A Billion Dollars Wiped Out As Bitcoin Locks In At $70,000 The analyst warned that traders hoping for a quick “V-recovery” may be disappointed, as such rebounds have never occurred in Bitcoin’s history. He added that after BTC reaches a price floor, its accumulation phase is expected to last 12 to 16 months before any trend shift is confirmed. Greeny noted that the recent sharp drop in February may slightly shorten this phase, but a full trend shift is unlikely before 2027. Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView
On-chain data shows the Bitcoin sharks and whales have seen their population grow during the last three months, despite the price witnessing an overall downtrend in this window. Bitcoin Sharks & Whales Saw A 3.9% Jump In Address Count Over Last 3 Months In a new post on X, on-chain analytics firm Santiment has discussed the latest trend in the Supply Distribution of the Bitcoin sharks and whales. The “Supply Distribution” here refers to an indicator that tells us, among other things, the number of wallets that belong to a given coin range. For example, the Supply Distribution of the 1 to 10 coins cohort measures the number of addresses that are holding between 1 and 10 tokens of the asset. In the context of the current topic, the range of interest is the 100+ BTC one (with the upper bound at infinity). At the current exchange rate, the cutoff for the range converts to $6.9 million. Thus, only the investors with a significant amount of capital would be able to qualify for it. Such holders are collectively known as the sharks and whales. Related Reading: Bitcoin Bearish Positioning Persists As Funding Rates Hold Negative Traders of this size can carry some degree of influence in the market, so their behavior can often be worth keeping an eye on. It doesn’t always correlate with the asset’s trajectory, but it can still contain information about the sentiment among the key hands. Now, here is the chart shared by Santiment that shows the trend in the Bitcoin Supply Distribution for the sharks and whales over the last few months: As displayed in the above graph, the Bitcoin sharks and whales have seen their Supply Distribution go through a notable rise over the last few months, indicating the number of investors falling inside these groups has gone up. More specifically, sharks and whales have seen their combined count jump by 753 since December 19th, representing an increase of 3.9% over a three-month period. From the chart, it’s visible that this surge in the Supply Distribution of the 100+ BTC holders has come while the cryptocurrency’s spot price has gone through a downtrend. This means that instead of pulling back during the market decline, more big-money investors have joined the network. “This is just one of many bullish divergences showing in our on-chain data currently while short-term prices continue their volatility,” noted the analytics firm. Related Reading: Bitcoin Demand Heats Up: Coinbase Premium Green For 25 Straight Days The indicator has also climbed on the yearly scale, being up 2,148 addresses or 12% compared to March 19th, 2025. During this window, BTC went through a bull run, so large investors had a profitable opportunity to exit, but it seems that they chose to stick around instead. BTC Price Bitcoin has slipped under the $70,000 level following its latest pullback. Featured image from Dall-E, chart from TradingView.com
Bitcoin (BTC) has settled back into the familiar consolidation band between roughly $65,000 and $74,000 after a short-lived attempt to clear higher resistance walls at around $76,000 earlier in the week failed. Trading around $69,000 at the time of writing, on-chain analytics from Glassnode and market commentary from analysts suggest the market is likely to remain in an accumulation phase through the end of March, with several indicators pointing to lower near-term volatility but heightened defensive positioning. Rising Demand For Downside Protection Glassnode’s posts on X (formerly Twitter) highlight record-high positioning in derivatives markets: options open interest reached a new all-time high ahead of the current quarter’s expiry. That elevated positioning may still reflect short-term hedging rather than directional conviction, and the firm noted that the picture of refreshed positioning and sentiment should become clearer after the March 27 expiry. Volatility metrics are showing signs of normalization. At-the-money implied volatility (1‑week ATM IV) has cooled from about 70% to 53%, and longer-dated maturities have fallen roughly 10 vols from recent highs. This drop in implied volatility indicates traders are expecting less dramatic price swings in the immediate term. Related Reading: AI Model Ranks Bitcoin, XRP, And ETH For 2026: Expected Returns And Price Targets Despite falling IV, skew measures have widened back toward the downside. After the failed breakout to $75,000, demand for downside protection reemerged, and 25‑delta skew moved into the 15–20% range. The renewed premium for put options reflects caution among participants who are seeking protection against a reversal. That caution shows up in flow dynamics. Glassnode reported that the put/call ratio flagged limited momentum to sustain a push above $75,000. On the way up, flows were dominated by put buying above $72,000—a classic sign that the market was fading the breakout—while the pullback was accompanied by a brief surge in call purchases. In the most recent 24‑hour tape, put buys led the way with a 30.7% share of activity, and calls lagged at roughly 10%, underscoring a defensive tilt after the rejection at $75,000. Consolidation Rather Than Immediate Breakout Gamma positioning has also been adjusted. For the Q1 expiry, short gamma exposure around the 75,000 strike contracted from $3.9 billion to $2.4 billion in under two days, a $1.5 billion unwind as prices moved away from that level. Lower gamma exposure reduces the need for dealers to dynamically hedge, which in turn can dampen directional flows and help explain part of the pullback. Relatedly, the volatility risk premium (VRP) has reset. Over the past week, short-gamma positions had been profitable because implied volatility exceeded realized volatility, but realized volatility increased during the selloff, compressing the VRP. With VRP near equilibrium, option prices now look more fairly valued—another indicator that the market may be settling into a consolidation range rather than preparing for an immediate breakout. Bitcoin Nears Key Multi‑Year Support When it comes to full price analysis, market expert Ali Martinez recently flagged a longer-term technical backdrop that may be constructive. He noted Bitcoin is approaching a multi-year trendline that has supported major advances in previous cycles. Related Reading: BTQ Unveils First Bitcoin Upgrade Testnet Designed To Thwart Quantum Attacks The expert asserted that every touch of this foundational support over the past nine years has preceded significant rallies: the 2017 parabolic run, the 2020 rebound from the COVID crash, and the 2022 recovery after the FTX collapse. That trendline now lives between roughly $60,000 and $56,000; if it holds, Martinez believes the area could become more than just a bounce zone and serve as a potential launchpad for the next sustained bull phase. Featured image from OpenArt, chart from TradingView.com
Whale wallets quietly shifted to buying mode over the past two weeks — even as the broader crypto market absorbed one of its worst single-day liquidation events in recent memory. Related Reading: Bitcoin Stalls Near $75K As Traders Move Coins To Exchanges A Massive Options Expiry Freezes The Price Friday’s settlement of Deribit’s March options contracts has effectively put Bitcoin on hold. The expiry involves 24,838 contracts with a combined notional value of $1.72 billion, and BTC has landed squarely at the $70,000 strike — the exact level known as “max pain,” where the greatest number of options contracts expire worthless. That pins price in a tight band. Traders expect it to hold between $69,000 and $71,000 until contracts settle later today. Max pain is not a coincidence. It describes the point where option sellers — typically institutional market makers — collect maximum losses from buyers. When open interest is concentrated enough, the market tends to drift toward that level as expiry approaches, and that appears to be exactly what happened this week. Bitcoin fell about 1.4% from midnight Thursday, landing at $70,000 by the time derivatives traders were watching closely. Longs Got Crushed While Shorts Walked Away The damage across the broader market was severe. Data shows 141,810 traders were liquidated over a 24-hour stretch, with total losses reaching $541 million. Long positions — bets that prices would rise — accounted for $443 million of that, or roughly 80% of the total. Short sellers, by contrast, lost only $97 million. Bitcoin led the wreckage at $191 million in liquidations. Ether followed at $165 million. The single largest loss was a $18 million ETH/USDT position on the Aster exchange, wiped out in one move. Open Interest, Futures Down The time breakdown tells the story clearly. The one-hour window showed relatively balanced liquidations at $18 million. But zoom out to four hours and the figure jumps to $126 million — and over 12 hours, it hit $300 million, almost entirely from leveraged buyers who got caught on the wrong side. Related Reading: Bitcoin Gains Ground On Gold Even As Both Assets Slide Futures open interest industry-wide fell 5.6% to close to $107 billion. Ether futures dropped 9% alongside a 6% decline in spot price, a combination that points to capital leaving the market outright, not just prices falling. Funding rates for Bitcoin, Ether, Solana, and BNB have all turned negative, a sign that short positions are back in demand across the board. Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView
A crypto analyst has broken down everything investors and traders need to know about the current Bitcoin (BTC) cycle. In his post, the pundit argued that the present cycle is different. He explained that the widely followed four-year cycle theory is fundamentally flawed, suggesting that a far more reliable framework exists for understanding where the market truly stands. Market expert Sykodelic took to X on March 17, delivering a sharp critique of the four-year cycle theory. He argued that the widely cited model relies on nothing more than two historical data points and anchors itself purely in time rather than in any meaningful economic foundation. Whereas, he noted that the business cycle is supported by virtually every major market chart available, giving it substantially more analytical weight. Why This Bitcoin Cycle Operates By Different Rules Backing his thesis with a chart, Sykodelic laid out a sequence of market behavior he noted has played out consistently across cycles. According to him, Gold’s price rallies during periods of economic contraction and uncertainty, then peaks the moment the ISM Manufacturing Index returns to expansion territory. Related Reading: Bitcoin To Rally 250% This Year? Crypto Founder’s Bullish Prediction Shows New ATHs Once certainty returns to the macro environment, risk assets enter their genuine bull phase, and Bitcoin Dominance (BTC.D) begins its characteristic end-of-cycle decline. Sykodelic stated that each of these fundamental chart indicators lines up. And this is because the market cycle is strictly governed by the business and economic cycle, which is inherently linked to liquidity and economic performance. The analyst further argued that the reason the current business cycle feels so unusual and goes largely unnoticed is that no one has managed to read it correctly. He noted that most people are too focused on the Bitcoin chart and the four-year cycle theory to pay close attention to the actual business cycle. Sykodelic attributed this to human psychology, pointing out that people naturally find it difficult to believe events that have not yet occurred. He said they would rather defend events that have already taken place. The analyst argued that this instinct is why many are likely to be caught off guard in the present market cycle. What The Charts Are Actually Saying In his post, Sykodelic pointed to several observable conditions as direct evidence supporting his thesis. He shared the reason the current cycle is significantly weaker than previous ones and why most altcoins have failed to break higher despite gold experiencing a historic and unprecedented rally. Related Reading: Bitcoin Just Flashed The Most Powerful Fractal In The Market, Here’s What To Expect According to the analyst, all of these trends stem from a common root cause: a prolonged contraction in the business cycle. He noted that this contraction suppressed the conditions necessary for a typical risk-asset explosion. Concluding his analysis, Sykodelic expressed the belief that the market is not heading lower, noting that bearishly positioned traders are still operating under a seemingly faulty four-year cycle framework. Featured image from Pixabay, chart from Tradingview.com
The following article is adapted from The Block’s newsletter, The Daily, which comes out on weekday afternoons.
One of the most turbulent days in the financial calendar has arrived. Quadruple witching, a quarterly event where trillions of dollars in derivatives expire simultaneously, is happening today, and crypto markets are already feeling the pressure. What Is Quadruple Witching? Four times a year, on the third Friday of March, June, September, and December, four …
The Bitcoin price has broken below a legendary support level that had stood strong for 14 years, marking a major moment for the cryptocurrency. Market expert Crypto Tice has released a new analysis detailing the significance of this breach, warning of potential risks and a possible price shift. The recent downturn follows BTC’s latest surge after it cleared previous resistance levels, which pushed its price back toward the $75,000 region. Bitcoin Price Falls Below 14-Year Support Level Sharing a price chart clearly illustrating the 14-year support on X, Crypto Tice emphasized that this trendline was far more than just another technical level, underscoring its strong significance. He explained that this line has historically defined every major Bitcoin bull market, consistently separating periods of robust price growth from phases with sharp declines. Furthermore, he noted, it has never broken without triggering major consequences. Related Reading: Pundit Who Predicted Ethereum Price Bottom Reveals What To Expect Next The analyst went on to highlight that Bitcoin’s recent break below the support signals that the market can no longer rely on the patterns that once guided investor behavior. Once a support level of this magnitude fails, market volatility typically spikes as traders reassess their positions and liquidity shifts in search of new equilibrium zones. He also observed that weaker hands are often forced out as more experienced investors take a patient stance, waiting for stability before making their next move. Crypto Tice further explained that while Bitcoin could eventually reclaim the long-term trendline support, the market remains in risk-management mode until that happens. He warned that ignoring a broken macro-support is not a sign of conviction but a form of denial. Moreover, history shows that overlooking these foundational levels often leads to sharp sell-offs and accelerated Bitcoin repricing. The analyst noted that this reinforces the need to respect these types of structural chart signals rather than merely holding for a price rebound. While the overall implications of Crypto Tice’s analysis point to further declines and increased volatility in Bitcoin, some members of the crypto community view the latest trendline break differently. One market analyst argued that rather than a signal of imminent collapse, breaking a 14-year support mark is an evolution in Bitcoin’s market structure. He explained that when historic levels like this fail, it often reflects the exhaustion of old patterns, not the start of a recession. The analyst concluded that new frameworks tend to emerge from those that have broken. Related Reading: XRP Trend Exhaustion Says Price Is About To Jump, Here’s The Target Bitcoin Sheds Over $5,000 With New Crash In just one day, the Bitcoin price has crashed, losing roughly $5,000 after its recent rebound above $75,000. CoinMarketCap data shows the decline is ongoing, with no immediate signs of stabilizing. Notably, the latest decline has been driven primarily by a hawkish Federal Reserve (FED) outlook amid rising geopolitical tensions. Reports indicate that investor sentiment shifted sharply, turning risk-off following the latest FED warning. In addition, a surge in whale sell-offs and a wave of leveraged long liquidations have put significant pressure on the Bitcoin price. Featured image created with Pixabay, chart from Tradingview.com
Bitcoin investors are buying protection around $50,000 even as the flagship digital asset holds near $70,000 and has recently outperformed gold, the S&P 500, and the US dollar during the ongoing Iran war. According to CryptoSlate’s data, Bitcoin was trading at about $70,688 at press time, which means hedging around the $50,000 level means investors are […]
The post Why are traders still bracing for a drop toward $50k when Bitcoin is beating gold and stocks? appeared first on CryptoSlate.
A global Asian food platform and digital asset firm’s holdings are worth more than twice what the entire company trades for on the stock market — a gap that has quietly widened as the firm keeps buying week after week. Related Reading: XRP Still In Danger Zone Without This Key Breakout: Analyst Reports show DDC Enterprise Limited‘s 2,383 BTC stash is valued at roughly $165 million. Its stock market cap sits at just $66 million. That spread is not a typo. The Bitcoin in DDC’s treasury is worth more than two and a half times the company’s publicly traded value. A Steady Drip Of Weekly Purchases DDC did not get here overnight. Since January 2026, the Hong Kong-based firm has added around 1,200 BTC to its holdings — more than doubling what it owned at the start of the year. Early in January, it was buying about 200 BTC per week. That pace slowed to roughly 100 BTC weekly through February. The latest purchase, announced March 19, adds another 200 BTC at an average price of $79,969 per coin. ???? Scoreboard Update NEW: 200 BTC TOTAL: 2383 BTC #Bitcoin #BTC #BTCTreasuries #DAT $DDC pic.twitter.com/WVclStdKMW — ddcbtc (@ddcbtc_) March 19, 2026 The company’s year-to-date BTC yield — a metric measuring Bitcoin growth per share — stands at close to 50%. It now ranks 32nd among publicly traded companies holding Bitcoin worldwide. CEO and founder Norma Chu has been direct about the strategy. “Every additional Bitcoin we add is a statement about where we think long-term value is heading,” she said in the announcement. Original Target Still Out Of Reach DDC set an ambitious goal of holding 10,000 BTC by the end of 2025. It didn’t come close. The company closed out last year with 1,183 BTC — well short of the mark. To fund purchases, DDC has relied on stock sales and equity raises rather than cash from its food operations. In mid-2025, it filed with the SEC to raise $528 million, most of it earmarked for Bitcoin buying. Bitcoin itself has had a rough stretch recently. The token dropped briefly to $68,800 during early trading Thursday before recovering to around $70,244 — a far cry from its all-time high of $126,000 reached in October 2025. DDC has continued buying through the slide. Related Reading: Bitcoin Stalls Near $75K As Traders Move Coins To Exchanges Company Eyes Long-Term Hold Through Market Swings Chu has described Bitcoin as one of the most valuable assets of the coming decades, one that complements rather than competes with the company’s food business. DDC operates as a global Asian food platform alongside its growing digital asset arm. The purchases are being watched. Corporate Bitcoin accumulation has picked up among smaller listed companies following the playbook made famous by larger holders. DDC is not in that league yet, but at its current rate, the gap between its crypto holdings and its stock price is becoming the more defining number. Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView
TradFi is taking another step into fully embracing bitcoin as an asset. Morgan Stanley is creating its own Bitcoin investment fund that will trade on the stock market like a regular exchange‑traded fund (ETF) share. To get it started, the lender is putting in about $1 million of its own money as seed capital. Related Reading: Legendary Bitcoin Trader Says HYPE Will Soar To $150, Here’s Why A TradFi Bitcoin Trust Morgan Stanley has filed another amended S‑1/A for the Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust (MSBT), confirming ticker MSBT on NYSE Arca. The bank outlined the ticker symbol in a new submission to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, revising the Bitcoin fund proposal it first filed in January. The Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust would be the first spot Bitcoin ETF not just distribute but directly issued by a major U.S. bank. It would also mark the first time that the seed basket cash will be used to acquire spot BTC before trading begins. We are talking about a 50,000‑share seed basket and roughly $1 million in initial capital. The trust is set to hold bitcoin via custodians (Coinbase Custody and BNY Mellon under the broader ETF plan), with assets stored primarily in cold storage, and shares reflecting the underlying BTC held. Once it launches, regular investors (especially Morgan Stanley clients) will be able to buy and sell MSBT through their normal brokerage accounts, getting regulated, brokerage‑account exposure to bitcoin’s price without touching self‑custody or spot exchanges directly. The trust will also to support both cash and in‑kind creations/redemptions, giving authorized participants (APs) flexibility, just like the main spot Bitcoin ETFs that launched in 2024 Trading And Risk Assessment However, it is worth noting custodians are not FDIC‑insured. This means that if something goes wrong (hack, theft, failure), you don’t have the government safety net that protects U.S. bank deposits up to a certain amount. Besides that, insurance is through private policies, and the ETF still faces market, regulatory and operational risk, especially in a crowded field dominated by BlackRock’s IBIT and other early movers. Related Reading: Hyperliquid Breaks Crypto Wall? Fiat On-Ramp Lets Anyone Trade With Bank Card Morgan Stanley already holds hundreds of millions in existing BTC ETFs and is building a broader crypto stack (Ethereum and Solana filings, trust‑bank application for custody, advisor access to BTC products). A bank‑issued MSBT product could normalize bitcoin exposure for traditional wealth‑management clients, strengthen the “Bitcoin as strategic asset” narrative, and extend the institutional ETF cycle. MSBT’s launch timeline, fee level and early inflows will be key sentiment catalysts. Strong demand could reinforce BTC’s ETF‑driven structural bid, while a lukewarm debut would signal saturation in the U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF trade. At the moment of writing, BTC trades on the highs $70k. Source: BTCUSD on Tradingview Cover image from Perplexity, BTCUSD chart from Tradingview
The bitcoin address initially received the 2,100 BTC on July 4, 2012, when that amount was worth just $13,685.
For six straight weeks, Bitcoin was losing the battle against gold. That streak has now reversed — and it has held for two weeks running, with Bitcoin up more than 4% against the precious metal this week alone. Related Reading: Bitcoin Stalls Near $75K As Traders Move Coins To Exchanges A Parallel Decline Reshapes The Debate The timing of that rebound is striking, given that both assets are deep in correction territory right now. Bitcoin dropped from a weekly high of $76,000 to below $70,000, a slide of roughly 8.7%. Gold fared no better, shedding 8.5% in the same period, pushing the price down to around $4,616 per ounce — well below the psychologically watched $5,000 mark. Gold has now posted two straight weeks of losses and is on pace for a third, its worst such run since last November. The back-to-back selloffs have reignited a long-running argument in crypto circles: when gold falls, does the money eventually find its way into Bitcoin? Benjamin Cowen, CEO of Into The Cryptoverse, says no. He has held that view since at least late January, when gold was still riding high and crypto bulls were counting on a rotation trade. He didn’t buy it then. He still doesn’t. Cowen’s Case, And What It’s Based On Cowen’s reasoning draws on something that already played out inside the crypto market. When Bitcoin ran up in prior cycles, many traders expected capital to eventually shift from BTC into smaller altcoins, sparking what the market calls “altcoin season.” According to Cowen, that rotation never really materialized in any meaningful way. He sees the gold-to-Bitcoin narrative following the same pattern. Back on January 28, as gold was trading near its all-time high of $5,597 — a level it hit on January 29 — Cowen posted publicly that no rotation from metals to crypto should be expected. One day after that post, gold dropped 4% and Bitcoin fell by the same amount, almost to the dollar. That co-movement drew attention at the time. The events of this week have brought the argument back to the surface. Not everyone agrees with him. A section of the market has long argued that precious metals and crypto serve different investor profiles, and that a pullback in one naturally redirects money toward the other. So far this cycle, that has not played out in the data. Related Reading: XRP Still In Danger Zone Without This Key Breakout: Analyst The BTC/Gold Ratio Tells A Different Story What complicates the “no rotation” argument is the BTC/gold ratio itself. Even as both assets fall in dollar terms, Bitcoin has been recovering ground relative to gold after bottoming near 12 ounces of gold per BTC earlier this month. It has since climbed back to around 15 ounces. That figure still sits well below the middle Bollinger Band at 18 and far below the upper band at 26, but the direction has shifted. Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView
Data shows the Bitcoin perpetual futures market has seen a negative Funding Rate recently, suggesting a bearish sentiment is dominant. Bitcoin Perpetual Futures Traders Are Betting On The Short Direction As highlighted by Glassnode analyst Chris Beamish in an X post, the Bitcoin perpetual futures Funding Rate has been negative recently. The “Funding Rate” here refers to an indicator that measures the amount of periodic fee that traders on the various centralized derivatives exchanges are paying each other right now. Related Reading: Bitcoin Demand Heats Up: Coinbase Premium Green For 25 Straight Days When the value of the metric is positive, it means the long holders are paying a premium to the short ones in order to hold onto their positions. Such a trend implies a bullish sentiment is shared by the majority. On the other hand, the indicator being under the zero mark implies the shorts outweigh the longs and a bearish mentality is the dominant force in the perpetual futures market. Now, here is the chart shared by Beamish that shows the trend in the 3-day moving average (MA) of the Bitcoin Funding Rate over the past few months: As displayed in the above graph, the 3-day MA of the Bitcoin Funding Rate was positive earlier even as the cryptocurrency’s price went through a bearish shift. This suggests that perpetual futures traders were trying to bet on a market reversal back to a bullish trend. In March so far, BTC has found some stability and made some recovery, but from the chart, it’s visible that the market expectations have now flipped, with shorts instead dominating. This also didn’t change during BTC’s recent rally above $75,000. Generally, the side of the market that’s stronger is more vulnerable to mass liquidation events. As such, while the long investors were getting squeezed during the downtrend, it could be the short ones who might be at risk now. In some other news, Glassnode has revealed in its latest weekly report how a supply gap exists between the $72,000 and $82,000 levels on the UTXO Realized Price Distribution (URPD). The URPD tells us about the total amount of supply that was last moved at the various price levels visited by Bitcoin in its history. From the chart, it’s apparent that this indicator shows a chasm near the recent price levels, implying not a lot of supply has cost basis there. Related Reading: Bitcoin Long-Term MVRV Remains In ‘Opportunity’ Zone: Data Generally, supply walls above the spot price act as resistance levels as investors exit at their break-even level fearing price pullbacks. Though, while there isn’t much in the way of this on-chain resistance until $82,000, BTC’s recent attempt to get through the range still ended up in failure. BTC Price Bitcoin has dropped back to the $70,400 level following its latest retrace. Featured image from Dall-E, chart from TradingView.com
VanEck's latest report noted that the selling pressure among bitcoin miners remained steady despite a decline in profitability.
Despite the crypto market’s renewed weakness on Thursday, a new AI-driven market model produced by Sam Daodu for 24/7 Wall St. projects higher year-end prices for Bitcoin (BTC), XRP, and Ethereum (ETH). AI Model Sees Bitcoin Rising 42% In 2026 Daodu’s analysis, which used ChatGPT as the modeling engine, places Bitcoin at the top of the trio, forecasting a roughly 42% gain from current levels and a year-end target near $105,000. Related Reading: Sen. Lummis Predicts Crypto Market Structure Markup In April, Senate Passage By Year-End The AI model identified institutional demand and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) as the primary catalysts for its Bitcoin prediction. The model also identified BTC’s tightened supply as a potential catalyst. The latest Halving reduced daily issuance from 900 BTC to 450 BTC, cutting the annual inflation rate to 0.83%. This week, combined with ETF buying and large holders, institutional purchases outpaced miner issuance, creating a demand-supply imbalance that the model cited as a main reason for ranking Bitcoin first. XRP To Hit $2 By Year-End XRP ranked second in the AI’s predictions, with an expected return of approximately 32% and a year-end price near $2.00. ChatGPT noted the regulatory clarity provided by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which classified the altcoin as a commodity. This classification is expected to reduce a major barrier to institutional participation. The AI model also interpreted XRP’s most recent price breakout above the key $1.5 level as bullish, noting that sustained gains can move holders toward break-even positions and reduce selling pressure. However, the model highlighted a critical limitation: regulatory clarity has not yet translated into meaningful institutional demand for XRP, as ETF flows experienced $28 million in net outflows last week. In short, substantial institutional buying will be required for XRP to reach its predicted price point by the end of the year. ChatGPT Forecasts Modest ETH Rally Ethereum ranked third, with a comparatively modest forecast of about 20% upside to roughly $2,800 by year-end. ChatGPT argued that, despite Ethereum’s developer ecosystem and extensive infrastructure, the token faces the weakest near-term demand picture among the three major assets. A key reason is migration of activity to layer-2 (L2) networks—Base, Arbitrum (ARB), and Optimism (OP) now handle a large share of user transactions because of lower fees. Related Reading: XRP Price Projections Soar To $15-$30 On CLARITY Act Prospects And Bank Adoption That shift has reportedly compressed fee revenue on Ethereum’s base layer; weekly fees recently averaged about $2.3 million compared with peak weekly fees near $30 million. With fees now close to zero, burning has effectively stalled, and ETH’s supply is growing slightly rather than contracting. ChatGPT concluded that, until fee revenue rebounds or institutional flows reverse, Ethereum’s price will have to prove itself on other fundamentals. At the time of writing, Bitcoin was trading at $70,600, marking a 1% loss within the last 24 hours. XRP has seen a similar decline of 0.9%, but it is still holding onto gains of 6% recorded over the past week while trading at around $1.45 per token. Surprisingly, Ethereum has outperformed Bitcoin during this period as well, with gains of 4.2%. However, over the past 24 hours, the market’s leading altcoin has retraced 2.3%, reaching approximately $2,148, according to CoinGecko data. Featured image from OpenArt, chart from TradingView.com
A price zone that held as a floor throughout all of 2025 is now blocking XRP from recovering. The $1.80 level — once a reliable support — flipped to resistance in January 2026, and the token has not come close to reclaiming it since. Until it does, one analyst says XRP remains “in deep trouble.” Related Reading: Bitcoin Stalls Near $75K As Traders Move Coins To Exchanges A Channel Break That Changed Everything For most of last year, XRP traded inside a large parallel channel with a ceiling near $3.45 and a floor around $1.80. The token stayed within those boundaries even as its price started slipping after hitting an all-time high of $3.60 in July 2025. Lower highs and lower lows piled up through the fourth quarter, but $1.80 held. Then January came. XRP closed the month below that level for the first time, and it has not looked back. The $1.80 floor became a ceiling, and every attempt to push higher has run into that wall. If I zoom out, I still see $XRP in deep trouble. It is clearly downtrending with a series of lower lows and lower highs, and above all, it is still below that key level at $1.80. As long as we don’t break this downtrend, we could expect that “no support zone” to be filled. pic.twitter.com/mNuF8O8LWo — Sjuul | AltCryptoGems (@AltCryptoGems) March 18, 2026 Analyst Sjuul of the AltCryptoGems channel laid out the situation in a recent market breakdown. Zooming out to the daily chart, he pointed to the pattern of lower lows and lower highs that has defined XRP’s price action since the July peak — a structure that leaves the broader downtrend fully intact regardless of short-term bounces. A 15% Rally That Still Went Nowhere XRP did manage a stretch of gains between March 9 and 16 — seven up days out of eight, its best run since September 2025. The token climbed 15% during that window, reclaiming $1.50 and closing at $1.54 on March 16. But the rally stalled almost immediately. A push toward $1.60 ran into resistance at $1.6074 earlier this week, and XRP has since pulled back on three consecutive days, now trading around $1.46. The recovery, impressive as it briefly looked, never came anywhere near $1.80. For context, XRP had dropped to $1.27 on February 28 during the initial market reaction to the Israel-Iran conflict before clawing back above $1.50. The March rally was largely a rebound from that low — not a trend reversal. Related Reading: Ripple’s $500M Raise And Institutional Ties Keep XRP Firmly In Place Two Scenarios, One Number Sjuul sees the path forward as straightforward. XRP either reclaims $1.80 and pushes back inside the parallel channel — invalidating the bearish setup — or it doesn’t, and the downside risk grows sharply. The level he flags on the downside is the $1.20 to $1.30 zone. That area offered no resistance during XRP’s explosive November 2024 rally, which is what analysts call a “no support zone” — a price range the market blew through so fast that few buyers established positions there. Since that rally, the zone has acted as a cushion during dips. If $1.80 continues to hold as resistance, Sjuul suggests XRP could fall back toward that range. Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView
BTQ Technologies moved a key Bitcoin (BTC) security proposal from theory to practice on Thursday, releasing Bitcoin Quantum testnet v0.3.0 with the first working implementation of Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 360 (BIP 360). The upgrade—aimed at making Bitcoin transactions resistant to future quantum-computing attacks—gives developers, miners, and researchers a live environment to test how quantum-resistant transactions would function on a running network. How Bitcoin Could Shield Keys From Quantum Attacks BIP 360, also known as Pay-to-Merkle-Root (P2MR), was merged into Bitcoin’s official BIP repository earlier this year but remains a draft proposal within the broader Bitcoin ecosystem. BTQ’s testnet release delivers the first functional implementation of that proposal, enabling participants to create, fund, sign, and spend P2MR transactions and observe the full lifecycle from mempool acceptance through broadcast and confirmation. Related Reading: Sen. Lummis Predicts Crypto Market Structure Markup In April, Senate Passage By Year-End The importance of BIP 360 stems from a long‑term cryptographic risk: in a future where quantum computers reach sufficient capability, exposed public keys on-chain—an outcome of Taproot’s key-path spend design—could be vulnerable to attacks leveraging Shor’s algorithm. Taproot, activated on Bitcoin back in 2021, underpins many advanced features and scaling efforts for the protocol, but its reliance on on-chain public keys creates a potential attack surface in a quantum-enabled world. P2MR addresses this by committing directly to the Merkle root of a script tree rather than relying on an internal key or tweak, preserving Taproot’s scripting flexibility while removing the key-path mechanism that could expose public keys. Devs Can Now Test Quantum‑Safe BTC Transactions BTQ’s Bitcoin Quantum testnet v0.3.0 implements full P2MR consensus rules, including SegWit version 2 outputs with bc1z (bech32m) address encoding, Merkle root commitment verification, and control block validation. The release also enables all five Dilithium post‑quantum signature opcodes within the P2MR tapscript context, providing real quantum-resistant signature verification inside the script tree. To support developer workflows, BTQ included end-to-end command-line wallet tooling and full RPC wallet support so users can perform the complete P2MR transaction flow on testnet. BTQ And CEO’s Warnings Olivier Roussy Newton, BTQ’s CEO and chairman, framed the launch as a practical advance for industry preparedness. “BIP 360 represents the Bitcoin community’s most significant step toward quantum resistance, and we’ve turned it from a proposal into running code,” he said. The company further said the testnet’s live validation—covering address creation, funding, transaction construction, signing, mempool acceptance, broadcast, and confirmation—gives implementers and auditors the chance to observe how P2MR operates end to end. It also signaled that BIP 360’s implementation is network-activated across Bitcoin Quantum’s testing environments, ensuring the feature is available to anyone participating in the testnet. Related Reading: XRP Price Projections Soar To $15-$30 On CLARITY Act Prospects And Bank Adoption However, the firm warned that waiting until a quantum-capable adversary emerges would be risky, and urged the industry to move beyond purely theoretical discussion. “The industry can’t afford to treat quantum resistance as a theoretical exercise,” Newton said, adding: BIP 360 was a landmark proposal, and we’ve turned it into a landmark implementation. Every developer, researcher, and institution that wants to understand how quantum-safe Bitcoin actually works now has a live network to test against. At the time of writing, BTC was trading at $69,534, having recorded losses of 3% in the past 24 hours after testing the $76,000 resistance wall earlier this week. Featured image from OpenArt, chart from TradingView.com
Bitcoin price started a sharp decline from well above $73,000. BTC is now consolidating and might aim for a fresh increase if it clears $72,400. Bitcoin started a sharp decline below $72,000 and $71,500. The price is trading below $72,500 and the 100 hourly simple moving average. There is a bearish trend line forming with resistance at $71,550 on the hourly chart of the BTC/USD pair (data feed from Kraken). The pair might continue to rise if it clears the $71,500 and $72,400 levels. Bitcoin Price Starts Consolidation Bitcoin price started a sharp decline from well above $73,000. BTC declined below $72,500 and $72,000 to enter a short-term bearish zone. The bears even pushed the price below $71,200. There was a move toward $68,800. A low was formed at $68,782, and the pair is now consolidating losses. There was a minor upward move above $70,000. The price tested the 23.6% Fib retracement level of the recent decline from the $75,998 swing high to the $68,782 low. Bitcoin is now trading below $72,000 and the 100 hourly simple moving average. Besides, there is a bearish trend line forming with resistance at $71,550 on the hourly chart of the BTC/USD pair. If the price remains stable above $69,000, it could attempt a fresh increase. Immediate resistance is near the $70,800 level. The first key resistance is near the $71,500 level and the trend line. A close above the $71,500 resistance might send the price further higher. In the stated case, the price could rise and test the $72,400 resistance or the 50% Fib retracement level of the recent decline from the $75,998 swing high to the $68,782 low. Any more gains might send the price toward the $73,250 level. The next barrier for the bulls could be $74,000. Downside Extension In BTC? If Bitcoin fails to rise above the $72,400 resistance zone, it could start another decline. Immediate support is near the $69,650 level. The first major support is near the $69,000 level. The next support is now near the $68,800 zone. Any more losses might send the price toward the $68,000 support in the near term. The main support now sits at $67,200, below which BTC might struggle to recover in the near term. Technical indicators: Hourly MACD – The MACD is now losing pace in the bearish zone. Hourly RSI (Relative Strength Index) – The RSI for BTC/USD is now below the 50 level. Major Support Levels – $69,650, followed by $68,800. Major Resistance Levels – $71,500 and $72,400.