By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)

Risk assets, including cryptocurrencies, perked up Monday on reports that President Donald Trump’s expected reciprocal tariffs scheduled for April 2 may be more measured than initially thought.

The news came days after the Federal Reserve retained forecasts for two interest-rate cuts while downplaying fears of a prolonged inflationary impact from the tariffs.

“Bitcoin is attempting to form a bottom, supported by Trump’s recent shift toward ‘flexibility’ on the upcoming April 2 reciprocal tariffs, softening his earlier rhetoric,” Markus Thielen, founder of 10x Research, said in a note to clients.

Thielen noted the Fed’s recent tone suggested that it will “look past short-term inflationary pressures, laying the groundwork for potential future easing.”

As BTC rose over 1% since midnight UTC to $87,300, AI coins, meme cryptocurrencies and layer-1 tokens posted bigger gains. Ether rose 4% to $2,090 with its supply held on centralized exchanges sliding to the lowest since November 2015.

Mantle Network’s MNT token surged 6%, with Trump-linked WLFI snapping up coins worth millions. Other notable gainers included the TRUMP token, buoyed by the President calling it the «greatest of them all,» fartcoin and sonic, all up over 9%.

Tokenized real-world assets, as a category, rose into the $10 billion total value locked club, with Maker, BlackRock’s BUIDL and Ethena’s USDtb each accounting for more than $1 billion in TVL.

In other news, Andrei Grachev, the head of DWF Labs, announced a $250 million fund focused on established mid-sized and large-cap crypto projects. Bloomberg reported that Coinbase is in talks to acquire Deribit, the world’s leading cryptocurrency options exchange. CoinDesk had the wind of it in February.

Decentralized perpetuals trading platform dYdX announced a program to allocate 25% of the net protocol fees to monthly buybacks starting today.

The week ahead promises to be busy, with the U.S. personal consumption expenditure, the Fed’s preferred inflation measure, due for release Friday. Additionally, SEC nominee Paul Atkins and Comptroller of the Currency nominee Jonathan Gould will testify before the Senate Banking Committee on March 27. Stay alert!

What to Watch

Crypto:

March 24: Berachain (BERA) expands its Proof of Liquidity (PoL) mechanism, enabling more dApps to compete for emissions and incentivize participation

March 24 (before market open): Bitcoin miner CleanSpark (CLSK) will join the S&P SmallCap 600 index.

March 24, 12:00 p.m.: Bugis network upgrade goes live on Enjin Matrixchain mainnet.

March 25: The Mimir upgrade goes live on Chromia (CHR) mainnet.

March 26, 3:37 a.m.: Ethereum’s Hoodi testnet will activate the Pascal hard fork network upgrade at epoch 2048.

March 27: Walrus (WAL) mainnet goes live.

April 1: Metaplanet (TYO: 3350) 10-for-1 stock split becomes effective.

Macro

March 24, 9:45 a.m.: S&P Global releases (Flash) U.S. March producer price index (PPI) data.

Composite PPI Prev. 51.6

Manufacturing PPI Est. 51.9 vs. Prev. 52.7

Services PPI Est. 51.2 vs. Prev. 51

March 24, 2:00 p.m.: Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey will deliver a speech on growth in the U.K. economy.

March 24, 7:50 p.m.: The Bank of Japan releases the minutes of its March 19 monetary policy meeting.

March 26, 3:00 a.m.: The U.K.’s Office for National Statistics releases February consumer price inflation data.

Core Inflation Rate MoM Prev. -0.4%

Core Inflation Rate YoY Est. 3.6% vs. Prev. 3.7%

Inflation Rate MoM Prev. -0.1%

Inflation Rate YoY Est. 2.9% vs. Prev. 3%

March 26: The U.K.’s Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) releases its latest Fiscal and Economic Outlook. Later in the day, the Chancellor of the Exchequer will present her Spring Statement 2025 to the House of Commons.

March 27: The U.S. Senate Banking Committee will hold a hearing on the nomination of Paul Atkins to the chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Livesteam link.

April 2, 12:01 a.m.: The Trump administration’s reciprocal tariffs plan goes live.

Earnings (Estimates based on FactSet data)

March 27: KULR Technology Group (KULR), post-market, $-0.02

March 28: Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY), pre-market, C$0.38

Token Events

Governance votes & calls

Aave DAO is discussing the activation of Aave Umbrella, a system meant to replace the existing Aave Safety Module. It would enable users to stake their Aave aTokens to cover potential bad debt and earn rewards for it.

Compound DAO is discussing the implementation of COMP Staker, a staking mechanism aimed at enhancing governance and participation from COMP holders. It would allow token holders to stake and delegate their votes to earn a share of protocol revenue.

Uniswap DAO is discussing the recognition of the canonical deployment of Uniswap v2 and v3 on Soneium.

March 24, 10 a.m.: Jupiter to hold a livestream to show the community what it’s building and gather feedback.

March 25, 1 a.m.: Crypto.com to hold an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session with its co-founder and CEO Kris Marszalek.

Unlocks

March 31: Optimism (OP) to unlock 1.93% of its circulating supply worth $28.21 million.

April 1: Sui (SUI) to unlock 2.03% of its circulating supply worth $153.43 million.

April 1: ZetaChain (ZETA) to unlock 6.05% of its circulating supply worth $14.14 million.

April 3: Wormhole (W) to unlock 47.64% of its circulating supply worth $147.23 million.

April 7: Kaspa (KAS) to unlock 0.59% of its circulating supply worth $12.5 million.

April 9: Movement (MOVE) to unlock 2.04% of its circulating supply worth $21.53 million.

Token Listings

March 24: Nillion (NIL) to be listed on Binance, Bitget, MEXC, KuCoin, BitMart, Gate.io and HTX.

March 31: Binance to delist USDT, FDUSD, TUSD, USDP, DAI, AEUR, UST, USTC, and PAXG.

Conferences

CoinDesk’s Consensus is taking place in Toronto on May 14-16. Use code DAYBOOK and save 15% on passes.

Day 1 of 3: Merge Buenos Aires

March 25-26: PAY360 2025 (London)

March 25-27: Mining Disrupt (Fort Lauderdale, Fla.)

March 25-28: Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) Annual Conference 2025 (Boao, China)

March 26: Crypto Assets Conference (Frankfurt)

March 26: DC Blockchain Summit 2025 (Washington)

March 26-28: Real World Crypto Symposium 2025 (Sofia, Bulgaria)

March 27: Building Blocks (Tel Aviv)

March 27: Digital Euro Conference 2025 (Frankfurt)

March 27: WIKI Finance EXPO Hong Kong 2025

March 27-28: Money Motion 2025 (Zagreb, Croatia)

Token Talk

By Shaurya Malwa

The newly issued ROUTINE token has become one of the biggest winners for microcap memecoin trades in recent weeks, flying from zero market cap to more than $17 million over the weekend.

The token is a nod to a morning routine tutorial posted by fitness coach Ashton Hall, which bagged over 500 million views across X, Instagram and other social networks.

The video went viral for showing Hall’s 4 a.m. start that includes wiping his face with a banana peel and constantly dipping it in a bowl of sparkling spring water from Saratoga.

Aspects of the video birthed their own memecoins, themed after bottled water, sparkling water and even bananas.

None, however, reached the apparent appeal of ROUTINE — which has captured $34 million in trading volumes over the past 24 hours and holds just over $600,000 in liquidity as of Asian afternoon hours Monday.

The ROUTINE memecoin phenomenon is a textbook example of how internet culture and speculative trading intersect in the crypto space. Hall, known as ASH Fitness, has over 8.7 million Instagram followers, amplifying the video’s reach and contributing to ROUTINE’s rapid adoption among retail traders and the hope for gains in a little-changed crypto market.

Derivatives Positioning

AVAX, SOL and BTC are the top three coins in terms of perpetual futures open interest growth in the past 24 hours. Funding rates held positive for most tokens, except OM.

BTC and ETH 30-day implied volatility indices continue to drop, reaching levels last seen at the end of the February.

Deribit’s BTC options market shows a neutral, wait-and-see stance, with calls trading at par with puts out to the May end expiry. That’s in stark contrast to the bullish call bias seen following Wednesday’s Fed meeting.

ETH’s short- and near-dated puts continue to be pricier than calls, reflecting persistent downside fears in ether and the broader altcoin market.

Market Movements:

BTC is down 3.39% from 4 p.m. ET Friday at $87,241.70 (24hrs: +3.2%)

ETH is up 5.81% at $2,088.28 (24hrs: +3.98%)

CoinDesk 20 is up 4.31% at 2,783.86 (24hrs: +3.78%)

Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is down 6 bps at 2.92%

BTC funding rate is at 0.0003% (0.0986% annualized) on Binance

DXY is down 0.13% at 103.96

Gold is up 0.51% at $3,033.50/oz

Silver is up 1.35% at $33.74/oz

Nikkei 225 closed -0.18% at 37,608.49

Hang Seng closed +0.91% at 23,905.56

FTSE is up 0.5% at 8,690.40

Euro Stoxx 50 is up 0.44% at 5,447.70

DJIA closed on Friday unchanged at 41,985.35

S&P 500 closed unchanged at 5,667.56

Nasdaq closed +0.52% at 17,784.05

S&P/TSX Composite Index closed -0.37% at 24,968.50

S&P 40 Latin America closed unchanged at 2,470.80

U.S. 10-year Treasury rate is up 3 bps at 4.29%

E-mini S&P 500 futures are up 2.86% at 5,778.25

E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are up 3.92% at 20,213.75

E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are up 4.76% at 42,674.00

Bitcoin Stats:

BTC Dominance: 61.55 (-0.35%)

Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.02397 (2.83%)

Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 819 EH/s

Hashprice (spot): $48.31

Total Fees: 5.97 BTC / $506,291

CME Futures Open Interest: 150,100 BTC

BTC priced in gold: 28.7 oz

BTC vs gold market cap: 8.14%

Technical Analysis

Ether’s weekly chart shows the cryptocurrency has bounced up from the trendline drawn off lows in March 2020 and late 2022.

The positive turnaround from the macro bullish trendline may entice more buyers to the market, potentially leading to a sustainable price rise.

Crypto Equities

Strategy (MSTR): closed on Friday at $304.00 (+0.64%), up 5.19% at $319.79 in pre-market

Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $189.86 (-0.27%), up 4.32% at $198.07

Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$17.94 (-1.16%)

MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $12.38 (-0.96%), down 3.96% at $12.87

Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $7.95 (+2.45%), up 4.28% at $8.29

Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $8.51 (-0.93%), up 4.58% at $8.90

CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $7.44 (-4%), up 3.09% at $7.67

CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $14.80 (-1.2%)

Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $39.22 (+1.03%), up 6.91% at $41.93

Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $49.52 (+2.08%), up 0.26% at $49.65

ETF Flows

Spot BTC ETFs:

Daily net flow: $83.1 million

Cumulative net flows: $36.13 billion

Total BTC holdings ~ 1,123 million.

Spot ETH ETFs

Daily net flow: -$18.6 million

Cumulative net flows: $2.43 billion

Total ETH holdings ~ 3.445 million.

Source: Farside Investors

Overnight Flows

Chart of the Day

The dollar value of the total number of crypto assets locked in the tokenized real-world assets protocols has crossed the $10 billion mark for the first time.

Continued adoption could help the so-called RWA tokens outperform major cryptocurrencies as the risk sentiment recovers.

While You Were Sleeping

South Korean Court Reinstates Impeached PM Han Duck-Soo as Acting President (Reuters): The Constitutional Court overturned Han Duck-soo’s suspension in a 7–1 ruling.

Japan Has Not Yet Conquered Deflation, Finance Minister Warns (Financial Times): Katsunobu Kato said deflation remains a risk and a lasting recovery depends on wages rising faster than prices over the long term, especially among smaller firms facing cost pressures.

Bitcoin, XRP and SOL Rise With U.S. Equity Futures as Trump Plans Targeted Action for Tariffs ‘Liberation Day’ (CoinDesk): Financial markets are giving risk-on vibes based on reports that the next round of Trump tariffs due on April 2 could be more measured than initially expected.

Philippines’ Largest Digital Wallet GCash Adds USDC Support (CoinDesk): The country’s most popular personal finance app announced support for USDC, expanding Circle’s stablecoin network to its roughly 100 million users.

Metaplanet Adds 150 Bitcoin to Tally, Days After Eric Trump’s Adviser Appointment (CoinDesk): The investment firm’s purchase took total holdings to 3,350 BTC ($291 million).

Trump Family-Linked World Liberty Snaps Up 3.54M MNT Tokens After Mantle’s Hard Fork (CoinDesk): The decentralized finance project acquired 3.54 million MNT tokens for nearly $3 million, increasing the value of its total crypto holdings to over $340 million.

In the Ether