News recap: bitcoin is having its best quarter in two years

Crypto market in numbers

Between the 17th and 26th of March, the crypto market cap fluctuated in the range of $1.130-$1.192 trillion. On 27th March, the market was hit by the news that FDIC sued crypto giant Binance and its founder. As a result, the figure fell by 3.7% to $1.19 trillion. However, it managed to stand above $1 trillion and rose by 6.5% in a few days, gaining a foothold above $1.185 trillion.

In mid-March, trading activity remained high. Average daily trading volumes stood between $55 and $87 billion. Between 24th and 27th March, the indicator fell by 57% to $30 billion. Then it rose again and gained a foothold above $50 billion.

The Cryptocurrency Fear & Greed Index moved into the “Greed” zone. On 21st March, it rose to 68 points, the highest level since November 2021. However, by the end of the month, the indicator fell slightly and currently fluctuates between 57 and 64 points.

The volatility of cryptocurrencies remains at a consistently high level. Between the 17th and 30th of March, Bitcoin’s 30-day volatility index was 3.43-3.55%. A similar indicator for ETH stood in a narrow range of 2.90-3.02%.

Contrary to historical data, the crypto market will close the month in green. Despite deteriorating fundamentals, cryptocurrencies have grown by an average of 15%. Moreover, they have acted as hedge assets amid the banking crisis in the US. However, the market has not yet entered a bull phase and is still in the accumulation zone.

Gainers (17th – 29th March)

Losers (17th – 29th March)

Easily track gainers and losers within the Simple trade section on EXMO.com. Check real-time updates in the last 24 hours, week and month.

Most traded coins (17th – 29th March)

Top crypto market driving factors

Overall crypto market

▲ 17.03.2023 – Messari CEO expects that Bitcoin will reach a price of $100,000 within the next 12 months.

▲ 19.03.2023 – ARK Invest CEO, Cathie Wood, stated that cryptocurrencies have become protective assets amid the banking crisis in the United States.

▲ 20.03.2023 – Flagstar, New York Community Bank’s subsidiary, purchased $38.4 billion in Signature Bank’s assets, a little more than a third of the bank’s total.

▲ 20.03.2023 – A crypto wallet prototype was discovered inside the Microsoft Edge browser.

▲ 21.03.2023 – The Cryptocurrency Fear & Greed index rose to a 16-month high of 68 points.

▼ 22.03.2023 – Fed raised the interest rate by 25 basis points, taking it to a target range of 4.5%-4.75%.

▲ 23.03.2023 – Bank of America: protocols such as Near, Tron, Solana, Polkadot and Cardano are using new approaches to improve the tradeoff between scalability, decentralisation and security.

▲ 23.03.2023 – Luna and TerraUSD founder, Do Kwon, was arrested in Montenegro. He was charged by US prosecutors with orchestrating a cryptocurrency fraud that caused nearly $40 billion in losses to investors.

▲ 24.03.2023 – Tether stated it has around $1.6 billion of reserves in excess to back its USDT stablecoin.

▲ 24.03.2023 – The global stock exchange, Nasdaq, is aiming to launch its crypto custody service in the late second quarter of 2023.

▼ 26.03.2023 – Circle USDC circulation fell by $2.1 billion in the last week.

▲ 27.03.2023 – Bloomberg: several Chinese banks have been seeking to offer services to crypto firms based in Hong Kong.

▼ 27.03.2023 – In a recent interview with the Guardian, the CTO of US chipmaker Nvidia, Michael Kagan, said that cryptocurrencies do not “bring anything useful for society”.

▼ 27.03.2023 – Leaders of G7 countries plan to discuss tightening regulation of digital assets around the world at their next meeting.

▼ 27.03.2023 – The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is suing Binance and its CEO, Changpeng Zhao, for allegedly violating US trading and derivatives laws.

▼ 27.03.2023 – Crypto investment firm, Galaxy Digital, reported a net loss of $1 billion in 2022.

▲ 27.03.2023 – MicroStrategy acquired 6,455 BTC for around $150 million.

▲ 29.03.2023 – U.S. FDIC has informed the clients of the collapsed Signature Bank that they have to close their accounts and move their money by 05th April 2023.

Bitcoin (BTC)

▲ 20.03.2023 – Glassnode data revealed bullish trends for Bitcoin amidst the latest rally.

▲ 21.03.2023 – Bitcoin miners’ income jumped by 37% in a decade.

▼ 21.03.2023 – According to Glassnode, long-term BTC holders are racing to lock in profits as Bitcoin surges past $28,000.

▲ 22.03.2023 – Bitcoin addresses holding more than 10 BTC on their balances saw a surge in activity. They have been consistently accumulating 30,000 BTC per month.

▲ 24.03.2023 – As a result of the latest recalculation, Bitcoin’s mining difficulty has risen by 7.6% to a new all-time high of 46.84 trillion hashes.

▲ 27.03.2023 – Morgan Stanley noted that inflows to BTC will increase if the US authorities keep supporting priority areas of the economy in the coming months.

▲ 28.03.2023 – Bloomberg strategist, Mike McGlone, believes that gold and bitcoin will be the most popular investment tools in 2023.

▼ 29.03.2023 – Bitcoin flows to and from centralised exchanges increased to their highest level in the last ten months.

▲ 30.03.2023 – The percentage of Bitcoin that has not been moved for over a year reached an all-time high of 68%.

Ethereum (ETH)

▲ 22.03.2023 – According to mewWatch, the number of ETH validators now complying with US sanctions decreased to just 28%, down from a record 78% in November 2022.

▲ 23.03.2023 – Santiment: over the past two days, 310,000 ETH worth $558 million were withdrawn from cryptocurrency exchanges.

▲ 24.03.2023 – The maximum bug bounty for identifying a vulnerability in the Shanghai/Capella upgrade has been doubled from $250,000 to $500,000 until the time of the fork.

▲ 24.03.2023 – Matter Labs launches the first ever permissionless zero-knowledge Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution in the form of zkSync Era.

▲ 25.03.2023 – Ethereum co-founder, Joseph Lubin, pushed back on the claim that ether is a security, saying he is “very confident” it isn’t one.

▲ 27.03.2023 – According to Glassnode, the number of profitable ETH addresses reached a new 11-month high of 63.9 million.

▲ 28.03.2023 – Only 10.31% of Ethereum’s supply is now held on exchanges, the lowest ratio since the launch of the ETH token.

▲ 29.03.2023 – According to Delphi Digital, Ethereum’s supply has decreased by more than 70,000 ETH since The Merge.

Ripple (XRP)

▲ 22.03.2023 – XRP is soaring amid anticipations that Ripple will win in a landmark securities case against the SEC.

▲ 22.03.2023 – Messari CEO applauded Ripple for developing the XRPL network despite external pressure from U.S. regulatory authorities.

▲ 26.03.2023 – According to LunarCrush, XRP grew amid heightened social attention.

▲ 28.03.2023 – Santiment noted that open interest in XRP surged considerably to as much as $800 million.

Cardano (ADA)

▲ 29.03.2023 – Addresses holding 10,000 or more ADA have collectively accumulated 1.03 billion ADA coins in the past five months alone.

Litecoin (LTC)

▲ 26.03.2023 – According to IntoTheBlock, the average size of LTC transactions increased by over 600% in March 2023 – from $13,355 to $81,022.

▲ 29.03.2023 – Litecoin’s mining difficulty is hitting new highs.

EOS (EOS)

▲ 20.03.2023 – On 14th April, EOS will launch its Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which will be 25 times faster than that of Ava Labs and 3 times faster than Solana’s EVM.

Tron (TRX)

▼ 22.03.2023 – The SEC sued Tron founder, Justin Sun, and three of his companies for failing to properly register crypto securities and manipulating markets.

Tezos (XTZ)

▲ 30.03.2023 – Tezos has activated the Mumbai upgrade, enabling more than a million transactions per second.

EXMO news

On 3rd April 2023, we will conduct a quarterly burn of our EXMO Coin (EXM) token.