Bitcoin bulls charge ahead 🚀

Despite the many sell offs in global equities and “risky assets,” Bitcoin (BTC) finally broke out of the $20,000–$25,000 range it was trading in for weeks. It even touched the $28,400 level briefly over the weekend. And the broader crypto market simply followed BTC’s lead.

Will the crypto space manage to counterbalance TradFi’s gloom triggered by banking contagion fears post-SVB and Credit Suisse? Let’s take a closer look at the market developments from the past week to see if we can draw some conclusions.

Last week, crypto decoupled from the traditional financial world as crypto prices rallied despite the banking crisis spreading like wildfire. Many observers see this as a watershed moment in crypto’s evolution as an asset class.

Spirits are so high that Balaji Srinivasan, a well-known personality in the crypto space, even launched an online campaign called BitSignal to bet $1 million on BTC’s price hitting $1 million in the next 90 days.

Last updated 11:00 am, 20th March 2023

All the excitement is understandable, because the crypto market cap rose from $1 trillion to $1.19 trillion last week. BTC’s saw a 22% gain during the period. ETH and BNB, are also up by 10.5% and 16.37%, respectively. BTC’s sharp rise has led to surge in its dominance by three percentage points, taking it to 44.2%. This indicates that investors are more confident when it comes to parking their money with BTC.

However, caution remains the need of the hour as the banking sector news can still impact market sentiments. Also, regulators may forbid banks from processing crypto-related transactions. After all, in the last two weeks, three of the most prominent crypto-friendly banks in the US—Silvergate, SVB, and Signature—have effectively been stifled. And Signature Bank’s closure was reported to be not due to insolvency issues but owing to its crypto connections! 

One big positive for the crypto market is that the banking crisis may drive the Fed to rethink its hawkish stance on rate hikes. Fed’s key rate decision on Wednesday will set the tone for the markets.

Some of the most exciting on-chain activity was in Bitcoin’s corner.

Source: Twitter

Last week, Bitcoin (BTC) recorded a weekly gain of over 35.85%—its strongest in 2023. BTC has recorded a weekly gain this high only four times before. First in 2015 at the end of the bear trend, second during the 2017 bull run, third in 2019, and fourth as part of the 2021 spike.

With so much excitement at the Bitcoin counter, it makes sense to look at the crypto giant’s chart this week.

Since the start of 2023, Bitcoin has been the best-performing crypto in the market. With BTC gaining over 60%year-to-date, it jumped above the $27,000 level for the first time since 12 June 2022.

For the most part of the last week, BTC stayed above the $25,000 level—a very positive development, which gave strength to the entire crypto market. This was crucial because the ongoing banking crisis has left the global equity market battered.

Source: Tradingview

On the daily chart, since the start of 2023, we can see that Bitcoin has broken above all its key resistance levels after consolidating around them and forming a strong support base. At press time, BTC is surging past the ₹23,50,000 level with extreme strength. It is likely that BTC will consolidate around the zone and test for support before moving higher—toward ₹24,60,000 or even $30,000.

The Relative Strength Index (RSI) is in the oversold territory for now. That should not be a concern, though, unless it drops below the 70 mark. Momentum is likely to gather strength in the coming days.

Ethereum Name Service (ENS)

Ethereum announced that its much-anticipated Shanghai hard fork will take place on 12 April.  With Ethereum confirming this date, expect to see some price action at the ENS counter. Last year, the Merge upgrade had a similar impact on the price of such tokens. ENS price saw an upmove—moving from $11.30 to the $16.60 level—at the time. Also, ENS domain registrations skyrocketed during the period. The price of ENS tokens has already risen from its March 10th price of $12.10 to the current $15.

Before we conclude, here’s a quick look at other important news updates from last week in the crypto world.

Layer-2 platform Arbitrum is finally getting a token

Arbitrum, the biggest player in Ethereum’s layer-2 landscape, is finally getting a token. The Arbitrum Foundation said on 16 March that ARB, the new token, will be airdropped to community members in a week’s time on the 23rd. ARB will mark Arbitrum’s successful transition into a Decentralized Autonomous Organization or a DAO. ARB holders can vote on key decisions governing Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova. (Source: Coindesk)

Meta pulls plug on NFT feature 

Despite the initial fanfare, Meta has pulled the plug on its Facebook and Instagram NFT feature 10 months after its debut. Meta’s head of commerce and financial technologies, Stephane Kasriel, tweeted that it is “winding down” its NFT support to “focus on other ways to support creators, people, and businesses.” Last year, its metaverse division suffered its largest-ever loss. (Source: Cointelegraph)

Polygon collaborates with Salesforce for loyalty program

Customer relations management software giant Salesforce is now partnering with Ethereum’s Layer-2 platform, Polygon. The partners will try to create an NFT-based loyalty program. Salesforce will help its client onboard clients and create tokens for the loyalty program. (Source: Coindesk)

Microsoft gets deeper into Web 3.0

With its recent investments, it is no secret that Microsoft is showing interest in the Web 3.0 space. Now it has been discovered that the company added a crypto wallet prototype to its default browser, Edge. Albacore, a pseudonymous Central European researcher, discovered the code, which integrates a non-custodial wallet into Edge. The improvements have already been included in the new browser releases, but they are hidden and inaccessible. (Source: Decrypt)

That’s it for now. Thanks for sticking around.

See you later, folks!

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