Crypto markets cap a strong week and month as BTC leads the surge

Hola folks!

Welcome, onboard our weekly crypto ride. Sit tight as we revisit the history of the cryptography movement, sum up the major happenings of the crypto world, and take a refueling stop at the crypto crossword towards the end of this read. 

The Bitcoin halving event is fast approaching, and the crypto market can feel the heat as BTC heads into the price discovery phase. Read on to learn more about last week's highlights and what to expect this week. 

The crypto market has been abuzz with Bitcoin ETFs, prospective Ethereum ETF approval, the upcoming Ethereum upgrade, and the eagerly awaited Bitcoin halving. While many things are happening in the crypto space, you might wonder how and when all this began. 

What is the genesis of crypto and blockchain technology, and who were the pioneers of this movement? Click on the video link below to learn more about the history of the crypto revolution right from its humble beginnings and also offers a deep dive into the idealogy and motives behind the development.

Crypto markets had one of their strongest surges last week, with the overall market cap ballooning past the $2.5 trillion mark. Bitcoin led the market surge with an eye-popping 20% jump in prices and settling above the $64k price level. 

However, the price witnessed a lot of volatility. After the initial surge beyond $64k, Coinbase went down, resulting in a sudden drop in prices, ending the rally prematurely. All-time highs are in sight and were even breached in local currency terms worldwide, including in Europe, China, and India.

The main reason for the surge is the newly launched spot BTC ETFs and their continued accumulation of BTC AUM, with the pace accelerating dramatically last week. The highest daily trading volume of $7bn and the highest single-day inflow of more than $650 million were witnessed last week, with three constant days of over $500m in BTC buying. 

Blackrock and Fidelity are leaders in the race, with BTC holdings now over $10bn and $6bn, respectively. Blackrock's IBIT has become the fastest ETF in history to accumulate $10bn in AUM. With the halving now less than 50 days away, we are truly in a price discovery phase and can expect a lot of volatility.

Bitcoin is on a roll owing to the ETFs and the upcoming halving. BTC complements like Bitcoin Cash's BCH and Litecoin's LTC have jumped over 25% during the week, while protocols building on top of Bitcoin networks like Layer 2 Stacks' STX and inscription-focused ORDI moved higher in prices.

Although ETH underperformed BTC, it was still up by over 15% last week and traded above $3.3k levels. The focus will continue shifting towards ETH, as the promise of its spot ETF approval and similar price runs like BTC can no longer be ignored. Other Layer 1 tokens or ETH competitors had a great week as well, with Aptos, Near, and Injective jumping by over 20%

For the broader crypto markets, it was a sea of green as most tokens moved much higher in price. There was definite exuberance in the market, which can be tracked by the interest pouring into meme coins, where PEPE led the pack with 120% gains, while DOGE and SHIB pumped by over 50% in prices. 

Solana's SOL pumped by almost 30% over the week, with the main price action in the Solana ecosystem being the surging meme coin interest, rocketing both BONK and WIF prices. 

In another big news, Uniswap announced a proposal that it'd start sharing protocol revenue with UNI token holders, surging prices by more than 50%. 

The only outlier in the Top 100 was Starknet's STRK, which fell by 15% due to profit booking.

• BTC $65,019 ⏫ 27.06%

• ETH $3,518 ⏫ 14.61%

• SOL $132.04 ⏫ 28.84%

• PEPE $0.000007184 ⏫ 421.91%

(All data here is as of 2:50 p.m., 4 March 2024)

Before we conclude, here’s a quick look at some important news from around the crypto world.

• The trading frenzy among US-listed spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds continued on Feb. 29 after attracting their biggest single-day net inflow of $673 million in Wednesday’s busy session. BlackRock’s ETF, known as IBIT, was again among the top 10 most traded ETFs in the US around midday hours on Thursday and posted over $1 billion in trading volume for the fourth consecutive day, according to Barchart data. Read more here. 

• The price of dog-themed token floki (FLOKI) surged by more than 100% in the past 24 hours as a proposal to burn 2% of the token’s supply was passed by the community. Read more here. 

Before you get on with your day, don’t forget to flex those brain muscles with our weekly crypto crossword.

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

See you later, folks! 👋

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