Daily Market Update: March 18, 2024

March 18, 2024

BTC is currently trading around $67,900 and ETH around $3,550.  Notable gainers in the last 24 hours are WIF, JUP, and TAO.  The global crypto market cap is $2.69T, up 1.9% over the last day.  DeFi Total Value Locked is ~$97b and BTC dominance is around 54%.

It was a volatile weekend for Bitcoin, which saw crypto’s apex asset break below $65,000 after spot Bitcoin ETF inflows were particularly light on Thursday and Friday, worries around inflation remaining persistent and delaying Fed cuts have come to the fore, and as high liquidations exacerbated price moves.

Looking ahead, it’s a busy week on the macro front, particularly for central banks.  The Bank of Japan will release its interest rate decision today, where it may raise rates for the first time in 17 years and abolish its yield curve control.  Such a move would mark the beginning of the end of Japan’s decades-long loose monetary policy to combat deflation.  In addition, the Fed will conclude its meeting on Wednesday and will release its Summary of Economic Projections at that time, offering clues around future rate cuts. Central banks in Switzerland, Australia, and the UK will also release interest rate decisions this week.  Lastly, US congress members are working to pass appropriations bills before Friday, when the government will go into partial shutdown with funding for six departments set to lapse.

Notable news includes: Dubai economic zone DIFC passed a new comprehensive digital assets law; Starbucks announced it will end its NFT-enabled customer loyalty program Odyssey; Grayscale amended its regulatory filing for its proposed conversion of its Ethereum Trust into a spot ETF; Marathon Digital purchased a 200 megawatt Bitcoin mining data center in Texas; Solana’s SOL traded above $200 as Solana’s trading volume surpassed that of Ethereum’s on memecoin mania, traders reportedly funneled over $100m of SOL into new Solana-based memecoins over the weekend, and the term “Solana” hit a new high in Google search popularity; new memecoin Book of Meme (BOME) reached a $1b market cap; USDM, the first fully-backed USD-pegged stablecoin on Cardano, went live; and, US federal prosecutors have requested a prison sentence of 40-50 years for SBF.

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Author:
Brian Rudick, Senior Strategist | TwitterTelegramLinkedIn

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