Crypto Daybook Americas: Bitcoin's Bloodbath — Buy the Dip or Panic?

By James Van Straten (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)

Two contradictory philosophies jump to mind when considering bitcoin's (BTC) price action of late.

Do you "buy when there is blood in the streets"? Or perhaps "don't catch a falling knife."?

Which applies in today's market, the day after the largest cryptocurrency posted its steepest three-day decline since the collapse of FTX in 2022? The drop left BTC 25% below January's all-time high, despite the advent of President Donald Trump's pro-crypto administration.

It's no surprise the largest hack in crypto history has shaken investor sentiment. Add to that the memecoin frenzy, which pulled liquidity out of the broader market.

That said, in previous cycles so-called bull-market corrections have sent bitcoin tumbling as much as 35%. Given that BTC hasn't had a meaningful pullback since the yen carry trade unwind last August, the current situation is almost normal.

CoinDesk research showed that bitcoin was trading in an extremely tight range for a meaningful period, and a break in the channel was inevitable. On-chain data tells us that bitcoin recently bounced off its 200-day-moving average or roughly $81,800. While short-term holders are selling — panic sales, perhaps? — at the highest level since August, because they have held BTC for 155 days or less they are usually seen as a signal of some form of capitulation in the market.

BlackRock's IBIT saw record outflows on Wednesday. However, it's not all bad news. A huge expansion deal was made for Core Scientific (CORZ), while MARA Holdings (MARA) reported strong earnings, with both stocks more than 10% before the open. Meanwhile, NVIDIA (NVDA) topped fourth-quarter estimates to calm investors' nerves. Stay alert!

What to Watch

• Crypto:
  • Feb. 27: Solana-based L2 SONIC$0.1223 mainnet launch (“Mobius”).
  • March 1: Spot trading on the Arkham Exchange goes live in 17 U.S. states.
  • March 5 (provisional): At epoch 222464, testing of Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade on the Sepolia testnet starts.
• Macro
  • Day 2 of 2: 2025’s first G20 finance ministers and central bank governors meeting (Cape Town, South Africa).
  • Feb. 27, 7:00 a.m.: Brazil's Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) releases January employment data.
    • Unemployment Rate Est. 6.6% vs. Prev. 6.2%
  • Feb. 27, 7:00 a.m.: Mexico's National Institute of Statistics and Geography releases January employment data
    • Unemployment Rate Est. 2.7% vs. Prev. 2.4%
  • Feb. 27, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis releases Q4 GDP (2nd estimate).
    • Core PCE Prices QoQ Est. 2.5% vs. Prev. 2.2%
    • PCE Prices QoQ Est. 2.3% vs. Prev. 1.5%
    • GDP Growth Rate QoQ Est. 2.3% vs. Prev. 3.1%
  • Feb. 27, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Department of Labor releases Unemployment Insurance Weekly claims for the week ended Feb. 22.
    • Initial Jobless Claims Est. 221K vs. Prev. 219K
  • Feb. 28, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis releases January personal consumption data.
    • Core PCE Price Index MoM Est. 0.3% vs. Prev. 0.2%
    • Core PCE Price Index YoY Est. 2.6% vs. Prev. 2.8%
    • PCE Price Index MoM Est. 0.3% vs. Prev. 0.3%
    • PCE Price Index YoY Est. 2.5% vs. Prev. 2.6%
    • Personal Income MoM Est. 0.3% vs. Prev. 0.4%
    • Personal Spending MoM Est. 0.1% vs. Prev. 0.7%
• Earnings
  • March 6 (TBC): Bitfarms (BITF), $-0.04
  • March 17 (TBC): Bit Digital (BTBT), $-0.05
  • March 18 (TBC): TeraWulf (WULF), $-0.03
  • March 24 (TBC): Galaxy Digital Holdings (TSE: GLXY), C$0.38

Token Events

• Governances votes & calls
  • DYdX DAO is voting on distributing $1.5 million in DYDX tokens from the community treasury to qualifying users in trading season 9 as part of its incentives program.
  • Feb. 27, 11 a.m.: IOTA (IOTA) to host an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session with co-founder Dominik Schiener and Thoralf, senior software engineer for its smart contract platform and dev tools.
  • Feb. 27, 2 p.m.: VET$0.01714 to cover its monthly updates in a community call.
• Unlocks
  • Feb. 28: OP$0.4205 to unlock 2.32% of circulating supply worth $36.67 million.
  • Mar. 1: DYdX to unlock 1.14% of circulating supply worth $6.13 million.
  • Mar. 1: ZETA$0.1101 to unlock 6.48% of circulating supply worth $13.58 million.
  • Mar. 1: SUI$2.4459 to unlock 0.74% of circulating supply worth $67.52 million.
  • Mar. 2: ENA$0.4549 to unlock 1.3% of circulating supply worth $17.79 million.
  • Mar. 7: KAS$0.04931 to unlock 0.63% of circulating supply worth $14.23 million.
  • Mar. 8: BERA$1.7209 to unlock 9.28% of circulating supply worth $77.80 million.
• Token Listings
  • Feb. 27: VVV$1.4649 to be listed on Kraken.
  • Feb. 28: WLD$0.8420 to be listed on Kraken.
  • Feb. 28: ZEC$214.87 and DASH$45.50 are being delisted from Bybit

Conferences

• CoinDesk's Consensus to take place in Toronto on May 14-16. Use code DAYBOOK and save 15% on passes.
• Day 5 of 8: ETHDenver 2025 (Denver)
• March 2-3: Crypto Expo Europe (Bucharest)
• March 8: Bitcoin Alive (Sydney)
• March 10-11: MoneyLIVE Summit (London)
• March 13-14: Web3 Amsterdam ‘25 (Netherlands)
• March 19-20: Next Block Expo (Warsaw)
• March 26: DC Blockchain Summit 2025 (Washington)
• March 28: Solana APEX (Cape Town)

Token Talk

By Shaurya Malwa

• Pump.fun, a Solana-based memecoin launchpad, has seen a sharp decline in token launches and graduations amid a falling market.
• The platform hit a peak in October 2024, creating over 36,000 tokens in a day and generating a record $3 billion market cap for its ecosystem, but activity has since plummeted, with daily token launches dropping more than 60%.
• Data from Dune Analytics shows Pump.fun's token graduation rate remains low at around 1%-2%, with many tokens failing to sustain value post-launch, contributing to the downturn.
• The decline comes as Solana's SOL has dropped more than 40% since the start of the year.

Derivatives Positioning

• Open interest in perceptual futures tied to APT, one of the best-performing coins of the past 24 hours, has increased, but funding rates and the cumulative volume delta are negative. That's a sign of traders hedging downside risks.
• SOL and LTC have also seen increases in open interest, but with positive funding rates.
• BTC and ETH options on Deribit now indicate downside concerns extending until the end of March, while later expirations continue to show a preference for call options.
• Block flows on Paradigm have been mixed, with puts and OTM call spreads lifted. The SOL March 7 expiry put option at the $120 strike was purchased.

Market Movements:

• BTC is up 3% from 4 p.m. ET Wednesday at $86,735.19 (24hrs: -2.12%)
• ETH is up 1.98% at $2,378.49 (24hrs: -3.49%)
• CoinDesk 20 is up 2.98% at 2,821.02 (24hrs: -1.13%)
• Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is down 26 bps at 3.02%
• BTC funding rate is at 0.0039% (4.26% annualized) on Binance

• DXY is up 0.23% 106.66
• Gold is down 0.77% at $2,893.59/oz
• Silver is down 0.27% at $31.83/oz
• Nikkei 225 closed +0.3% at 38,256.17
• Hang Seng closed -0.29% at 23,718.29
• FTSE is up 0.19% at 8,748.36
• Euro Stoxx 50 is down 0.72% at 5,487.97
• DJIA closed on Wednesday -0.43% at 43,433.12
• S&P 500 closed unchanged at 5,956.06
• Nasdaq closed +0.26% at 19,075.26
• S&P/TSX Composite Index closed +0.49% at 25,328.36
• S&P 40 Latin America closed -0.46% at 2,379.84
• U.S. 10-year Treasury rate is up 5 bps at 4.31%
• E-mini S&P 500 futures are up 0.57% at 6,005.00
• E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are up 0.64% at 21,322.25
• E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are up 0.24% at 43,612.00

Bitcoin Stats:

• BTC Dominance: 60.77 (0.31%)
• Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.02744 (-1.05%)
• Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 766 EH/s
• Hashprice (spot): $50.5
• Total Fees: 10.9 BTC / $915,415
• CME Futures Open Interest: 155,270 BTC
• BTC priced in gold: 29.6 oz
• BTC vs gold market cap: 8.42%

Technical Analysis

• BTC's double top breakdown has exposed the former resistance-turned-support below $74,000.
• On the price chart, there is no other support between $90K and $74K.

Crypto Equities

• MicroStrategy (MSTR): closed on Wednesday at $263.27 (+5.09%), up 2.82% at $270.70 in pre-market
• Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $212.96 (+0.22%), up 3.22% at $219.81
• Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$20.16 (+0.35%)
• MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $12.45 (+0.28%), up 12.93% at $14.06
• Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $8.94 (-4.08%), up 3.69% at $9.27
• Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $10.02 (+2.66%), up 18.46% at $11.87
• CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $7.88 (-3.31%), up 3.43% at $8.15
• CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $17.22 (+1.06%)
• Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $43.91 (+3.51%), up 1.41% at $44.53
• Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $44.48 (+11.59%), up 8.48% at $48.25

ETF Flows

Spot BTC ETFs:

• Daily net flow: -$754.6 million
• Cumulative net flows: $37.13 billion
• Total BTC holdings ~ 1,139 million.

Spot ETH ETFs

• Daily net flow: -$94.3 million
• Cumulative net flows: $2.93 billion
• Total ETH holdings ~ 3.714 million.

Source: Farside Investors

Overnight Flows

Chart of the Day

• The chart shows a large outflow of the Tether's dollar-pegged stablecoin USDT from centralized exchanges.
• It may be a sign of traders preparing for deeper market downturns or rotation of liquidity out of centralized avenues into decentralized platforms.

While You Were Sleeping

• Bitcoin Registers Biggest 3-Day Price Slide Since FTX Debacle. What Next? (CoinDesk): The slide was driven by tighter fiat liquidity and weakening institutional demand. Technical analysis shows the price could drop to around $70,000.
• FBI Seeks Crypto Industry Help to Track, Block Laundering of Bybit Hack Funds (CoinDesk): In a public service announcement, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) listed Ethereum addresses tied to crypto assets recently stolen from Bybit.
• Metaplanet Seeks to Raise Over $13M From Bond Sale to Buy More Bitcoin (CoinDesk): Japanese firm Metaplanet Inc (3350) said it is raising another 2 billion yen ($13.3 million) by selling additional ordinary bonds with a 0% interest.
• Investors Bet on Sharpest U.S.-Europe Inflation Divergence Since 2022 (Reuters): Data from inflation swap markets suggests stronger growth and tariff pressures will keep U.S. inflation higher than in the eurozone, where falling energy costs will help keep prices in check.
• Trump Shocks Europe Into Chasing Billions for Military Buildup (Bloomberg): European leaders are overhauling defense funding by revising fiscal rules, enabling joint borrowing and repurposing recovery funds to boost military capabilities amid rising security challenges.
• Trump Axes Chevron’s Venezuela Oil License, Citing Lack of Electoral Reforms (Reuters): President Trump announced on Truth Social that he is reversing a two-year-old Biden-era license that allowed Chevron (CVX) to operate in Venezuela.
• Argentina Memecoin Scandal Dents Milei’s Hunt for Election Allies (Reuters): President Milei's promotion of the LIBRA token — which crashed shortly after launch — and the subsequent investigations have complicated his efforts to build political alliances ahead of midterm elections.

In the Ether