Bitcoin as alternate USD

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Bitcoin exits markets at the fastest pace since 2021

Key Points:

• Bitcoin rally has been fueled by massive demand.

• The metrics reveal the bullish run would continue.

News- Bitcoin is approaching its all-time highs and demand shows no signs of slowing down with BTC withdrawals out of crypto exchanges the quickest it has been since mid-2021.

Bitcoin supply on exchanges is dropping - Crypto insights firm CryptoSlate’s researcher and data analyst James Van Straten revealed that $2.3B of Bitcoin flowed out of exchanges on the 1st of March.

“I don’t think I’ve quite seen anything like this before”, he remarked. Binance saw $400M worth of outflow, with Coinbase covering the rest. The Bitcoin ETFs played a major part in the outflows from Coinbase, a U.S.-based crypto exchange. However, Binance does not have a role in the ETF saga, which points toward accumulation by investors.

On March 2nd, Glassnode data showed the total BTC assets available on the trading platforms it monitors at 2,286,347 BTC. This was the lowest figure since March 2018.

The “true bull market” could soon arrive - Data from CryptoQuant showed that the realized cap UTXO (unspent transaction output) ages were shifting.

Coins aged six months or older were beginning to move, but it also pointed toward new investors arriving. This influx of individual investors would lead to the bull market we desire, he stated.

The U.K. government makes it easier to seize crypto assets

Key Points:

• The U.K. government released documentation giving law-enforcement greater power.

• It allows the retrieval of assets directly from exchanges and custodian wallet providers.

News- On the 29th of February, the United Kingdom government gave its law enforcement authorities the power to freeze crypto assets used in crime without requiring a conviction.

Aimed at expanding authorities’ abilities - The amendments made to the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 would enable the National Crime Agency to confiscate and seize crypto assets suspected of being linked to illicit activities without going through laborious legal procedures.

The law will go into effect on the 26th of April. Apart from empowering crypto asset retrieval, the law also gives authorities the option to destroy crypto assets if needed.

Dealing with overseas individuals - One of the provisions of the new law is the recovery of crypto assets used in crimes without making an arrest first. The logic is to circumvent individuals who remain overseas to avoid conviction. However, a British national who lost close to $46,000 to scammers said the authorities might be “ill-equipped to handle crypto crimes against U.K. residents.”

What could come next - The Economic Secretary to the Treasury Bim Afolami revealed that the U.K. government is aiming to pass laws regarding the regulation of stablecoins and crypto staking before the next election. This is set for the 28th of January 2025 at the latest.

Crypto lawyer casts doubts on Ethereum ETF approval within 2024

Key Points:

• Political tussling could see the Ethereum ETFs delayed.

• British multinational bank predicts approval by May.

News - A leading crypto lawyer took to X (formerly Twitter) to express doubts about the approval of an Ethereum exchange-traded fund (ETF). Chief Legal Officer of venture fund Variant is known for his informed takes on legal and regulatory events in the crypto space.

Politics underpins the SEC as much as investor safety - The U.S. SEC faced political blowback even though they were forced by the court to approve Bitcoin ETFs. To satisfy political priorities, the SEC is known to take the wrong legal positions, and they might do so once more regarding the ETH ETF. Despite BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager arguing for approval, the SEC could succeed in making them and other ETH ETF sponsors withdraw, he said on X.

The Bitcoin ETF saw unprecedented amounts of institutional and retail investor interest. The BlackRock iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) alone saw $10B in assets under management in under seven weeks. By contrast, the first U.S. gold-backed ETF took two years to reach the same $10B milestone.

The May 2024 deadline - In January, Standard Chartered had predicted that the Ethereum ETF would be approved by the 23rd of May. This date was set as the final deadline for a decision on the first set of ETF applications. An outcome similar to the Bitcoin ETFs was expected due to the similarities between Bitcoin and Ethereum’s legal and financial status. The deadline day could see multiple ETH ETFs approved, and the post-approval sell-off might be much smaller.

Solana’s massive upgrade could see it live up to its ETH killer moniker

Key Points:

• Solana’s recent on-chain and development activity has been hugely encouraging.

• Despite the large strides forward, flipping Ethereum remained doubtful.

News- Solana has been termed the “Ethereum killer” for good reason. An increasing number of developers are looking to jump from Ethereum to Solana owing to lower development costs and more coding languages to work with, according to Austin Federa, head of strategy at the Solana Foundation.

The breakthrough Solana needs - Federa stated that Solana might be able to flip Ethereum from a massive increase in the consumer-facing apps built on the network. The fact that more projects want to move over to Solana from Ethereum, especially in the past six months, has made him “extremely confident” that a large chunk of consumer-facing apps will be built on Solana over the coming years.

Melbourne-based venture capital firm Apollo Crypto’s chief investment officer Henrik Andersson also expected a similar scenario to unfold. While he doubted that a flippening might occur, one breakthrough is all it might take. Such a breakthrough app in SocialFi, DePIN, or the gaming space could build enough traction for Solana to truly rival Ethereum.

Network outages remain a weak point - Federa insisted that reliability and uptime were of the highest priority for Solana engineers. However, Solana runs on two clients: a Solana Labs client and a Jito Labs client. A bug on the Solana Labs client could bring the network to its knees. This has happened quite frequently, with at least 10 instances over the past few years.

The upcoming Firedancer upgrade could fix this. Firedancer is an independent validator client for the Solana blockchain that could vastly improve the network’s performance. It is scheduled for release later in 2024. Its failure to ship could be a huge blow to Solana proponents cheering for the Ethereum killer.

More stories from the crypto ecosystem

• Shiba Inu pumps hard as whales take center stage

• Dogecoin: As Open Interest crosses a 3-year high, how did DOGE react?

• Of Lido’s new highs, Ethereum’s inputs, and the impact on LDO

• Will XRP’s price reach $10 in 2024? Here’s ChatGPT’s response

• Crypto market’s weekly winners and losers

Did you know?

• The world’s first NFT, Quantum, was minted on the Namecoin blockchain by Kevin McCoy in 2017. We have come a long way since then. The artist Beeple’s NFT Everydays: The First 5000 Days sold for $69.3M in March 2021.

• Liquidation cascades are traders’ worst enemies. This event happens both in crypto and traditional markets. When prices veer emphatically in one direction, it can force a trader to liquidate their positions if they can not meet the margin requirement quickly by posting more capital.

• The Ethereum ICO occurred in 2014 and sold millions of dollars worth of ETH. These funds went to the development of the project, but the blockchain itself only went live on 30th July 2015. Hence, buyers had to wait almost a year before they could move or use their ETH.

Top 3 coins of the day

Pepe (PEPE)

Key Points:

• PEPE saw no noteworthy retracements in recent days.

• The $0.000004-$0.0000044 demand zone was the closest to current prices.

What you should know- PEPE was trading at $0.00000732, gaining 175.6% since the 1st of March. The past ten days saw the meme coin rally 537%, and the Fibonacci extension levels showed that more could come. Even though the RSI has been well above 70 for a week, PEPE might not slow down yet. A reading of over 70 signals overbought conditions, but the bulls don’t care. A reversal was not yet imminent, and traders need to manage risk carefully as volatility is expected. The $0.00000271-$0.00000318 represented a demand zone that could be a good buying opportunity but it is unclear if PEPE would retrace that far south.

Dogecoin (DOGE)

Key Points:

• The high trading volume reflected a bullish market conviction.

• A move below $0.123 would signal a market shift in favor of the sellers.

What you should know - Dogecoin broke above the $0.1065 level on the 28th of February. This resistance has been in place since December 2022. Since then, DOGE has gained another 52.9% to trade at $0.163 at press time. The OBV indicator continued to surge higher as the trading volume soared. The green candles meant the buyers were stronger. Meme coin bull trends are fun for holders but could be risky for futures traders on the lower timeframes if risk management is not respected. The next level of resistance was at $0.194, another 18.95% higher.

Bitcoin Cash (BCH)

Key Points:

• Bitcoin Cash gained 60.5% in a single day on 2nd March

• Large imbalances on the 12-hour chart could see prices retrace toward $400

What you should know - Bitcoin Cash has trended upward since the 9th of February. In that month, BCH could only climb as high as $315 before encountering significant resistance. Things changed dramatically in March, and Bitcoin Cash raced as high as $529.2 before falling. Despite the 15% drop, the token maintained its bullish outlook. The swift surge on Saturday meant a large retracement to find demand zones was possible. Buyers could wait for a retest of the $390 support level to re-enter the market. This level had served as stiff resistance in January and April 2022 but was smashed to smithereens during the latest rally.