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Crypto Daybook Americas: Market in Sea of Red, BTC Seen Diving to $80K
By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)
The crypto market is a sea of red, with bitcoin trading at three-month lows under $88,000 and the CoinDesk 20 Index down more than 10% in 24 hours. There are several catalysts for the swoon, including risk-off sentiment in traditional markets and influence from memecoins, especially the recent trading in TRUMP and LIBRA.
As we discussed Monday, market makers attending the Consensus Hong Kong conference last week were worried the memecoin frenzy had sucked liquidity from the productive crypto sub-sectors, leaving the broad market vulnerable.
Another reason is President Donald Trump’s inaction. Although he made significant promises in the lead-up to the elections, concrete action has been scarce. The anticipated strategic BTC reserve remains absent, and even state-level reserves are proving challenging to implement.
«The industry is still waiting for this to manifest in a tangible way in the form of measures such as a mooted Bitcoin Strategic Reserve,» Petr Kozyakov, co-founder and CEO at Mercuryo told CoinDesk. «In the meantime, sentiment has been hit hard by the biggest ever hack at the Bybit exchange, leaking 401,000 ETH, and a memecoin sector plagued with high-profile pump and dump schemes.»
Lastly, renewed concerns about the U.S. economy are zapping demand for riskier assets.
«There is also some concern about the slowdown in U.S. growth since last week’s U.S. Services PMI release, the lowest in 22 months and consistent with GDP growth tracking at 0.6% only,» Nansen’s principal research analyst Aurelie Barthere said. «Our Nansen Risk Barometer also just turned Risk-off from Neutral today.»
Together, they sent BTC diving out of its two-month-long range play between $90,000 and $110,000. Technical analysis theory suggests it could drop to $70,000, though the maximum open interest in BTC put options listed on Deribit sits at the $80,000 strike, indicating that this level could provide some support.
What could stabilize prices? Perhaps an announcement from Trump regarding a strategic reserve or a sharp reversal by the Nasdaq 100. However, that index has fallen below its 50-day SMA, while the yen, a risk-aversion signal, continues to strengthen against G7 currencies, including the dollar.
The next major catalysts for risk assets are Nvidia’s earnings on Feb. 26 and core PCE inflation on Feb. 28. Stay alert!
What to Watch
Crypto:
Feb. 25, 9:00 a.m.: Ethereum Foundation research team AMA on Reddit.
Feb. 25: Pascal hard fork network upgrade goes live on the BNB Smart Chain (BSC) testnet.
Feb. 25, 9:00 a.m. (approximate): Reactive Network mainnet launch, as well as the initial creation and distribution of the REACT token.
Feb. 26, 9:00 a.m. (approximate): Cosmos (ATOM) network upgrade.
Feb. 26: RedStone (RED) farming starts on Binance Launchpool.
Feb. 27, 4:00 a.m.: Alchemy Pay (ACH) community AMA on Discord.
Feb. 27: Solana-based L2 Sonic SVM (SONIC) mainnet launch (“Mobius”).
Macro
Feb. 25, 10:00 a.m.: The Conference Board (CB) releases February’s Consumer Confidence Index.
CB Consumer Confidence Est. 102.5 vs. Prev. 104.1
Feb. 25, 1:00 p.m.: Richmond Fed President Tom Barkin delivers a speech titled “Inflation Then and Now.”
Feb. 25, 7:30 p.m.: The Australian Bureau of Statistics releases January’s Consumer Price Index.
Monthly CPI Indicator Est. 2.6% vs. Prev. 2.5%
Feb. 26, 10:00 a.m.: The U.S. Census Bureau releases January’s New Residential Sales report.
New Home Sales Est. 0.68M vs. Prev. 0.698M
New Home Sales MoM Prev. 3.6%
Feb. 26-27: 2025’s first G20 finance ministers and central bank governors meeting (Cape Town).
Earnings
Feb. 25: Bitdeer Technologies Group (BTDR), pre-market, $-0.17
Feb. 25: Cipher Mining (CIFR), pre-market, $-0.09
Feb. 26: MARA Holdings (MARA), post-market, $-0.13
Feb. 26: NVIDIA (NVDA), post-market
Token Events
Governances votes & calls
Ampleforth DAO is voting on reducing the Flash Mint fee to 0.5% and the Flash Redeem fee to 5% to increase the system’s adaptability.
DYdX DAO is discussing the establishment of a DYDX buyback program. Its initial step would allocate 25% of the dYdX’s protocol net revenue to buy back token.
Frax DAO is discussing upgrading the protocol by renaming FXS to FRAX, making it the gas token on Fraxtal, implementing the Frax North Star Hardfork, and introducing a Tail Emission Plan with gradually decreasing emissions, among other enhancements.
Unlocks
Feb. 28: Optimism (OP) to unlock 2.32% of circulating supply worth $30.21 million.
Mar. 1: DYdX to unlock 1.14% of circulating supply worth $5.36 million.
Mar. 1: ZetaChain (ZETA) to unlock 6.48% of circulating supply worth $11.86 million.
Mar. 1: Sui (SUI) to unlock 0.74% of circulating supply worth $61.32 million.
Mar. 7: Kaspa (KAS) to unlocked 0.63% of circulating supply worth $14.02 million.
Mar. 8: Berachain (BERA) to unlock 9.28% of circulating supply worth $61.6 million.
Mar. 12: Aptos (APT) to unlock 1.93% of circulating supply worth $69.89 million.
Token Listings
Feb. 25: Zoo (ZOO) to be listed on KuCoin.
Feb. 25: Ethena (ENA) to be listed on Bithumb.
Feb. 26: Moonwell (WELL) to be listed on Kraken.
Feb. 27: Venice token (VVV) to be listed on Kraken.
Feb. 28: Worldcoin (WLD) to be listed on Kraken.
Conferences:
CoinDesk’s Consensus to take place in Toronto on May 14-16. Use code DAYBOOK and save 15% on passes.
Day 3 of 8: ETHDenver 2025 (Denver)
Feb. 25: HederaCon 2025 (Denver)
March 2-3: Crypto Expo Europe (Bucharest, Romania)
March 8: Bitcoin Alive (Sydney, Australia)
March 10-11: MoneyLIVE Summit (London)
March 13-14: Web3 Amsterdam ‘25 (Netherlands)
March 19-20: Next Block Expo (Warsaw, Poland)
March 26: DC Blockchain Summit 2025 (Washington)
March 28: Solana APEX (Cape Town, South Africa)
Token Talk
By Shaurya Malwa
A token tied to a fake Sam Bankman-Fried account became the rug-pull of the day.
The scam started with the account “Comune Guardiagrele,” a small Italian city with a verified grey checkmark indicating it’s an official government or organization account, based on web results on identity verification.
Scammers probably hijacked or bought the account and changed the name to “@SBF_Doge» mimicking Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), the disgraced crypto mogul jailed for the FTX fraud.
The account then launched a memecoin, likely tricking unsuspecting traders or bots into thinking it was legitimate due to the verification badge.
The memecoin’s market capitalization rose to $10 million before its creators pulled liquidity, crashing it to a $100,000 capitalization and pocketing fees and proceeds gained from the sale.
Derivatives Positioning
The top 25 cryptocurrencies by market value, excluding stablecoins, have registered price losses in the past 24 hours. At the same time, most have seen increases in open interest in perpetual futures and negative cumulative volume deltas, indicating an influx of bearish short positions. Perhaps there is more pain ahead.
On Deribit, XRP’s February expiry puts trade at a 8 vol premium relative to calls. Talk about sentiment being notably bearish.
BTC, ETH options show downside concerns till mid-to-late March, with subsequent expiries retaining the bullish call bias.
Market Movements:
BTC is down 6.23% from 4 p.m. ET Monday at $88,118.16 (24hrs: -7.7%)
ETH is down 9.4% at $2,393.03 (24hrs: -10.6%)
CoinDesk 20 is down 9.19% at 2,750.01 (24hrs: -11.61%)
Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is unchanged at 2.99%
BTC funding rate is at 0.0008% (0.84% annualized) on Binance
DXY is unchanged at 106.7
Gold is down 0.28% at $2,937.90/oz
Silver is down 0.43% at $32.14/oz
Nikkei 225 closed -1.39% at 38,237.79
Hang Seng closed -1.32% at 23,034.02
FTSE is up 0.34% at 8,688.48
Euro Stoxx 50 is unchanged at 5,449.69
DJIA closed on Monday unchanged at 43,461.21
S&P 500 closed -0.5% at 5,983.25
Nasdaq closed -1.21% at 19,286.93
S&P/TSX Composite Index closed unchanged at 25,151.26
S&P 40 Latin America closed -0.92% at 2,386.34
U.S. 10-year Treasury rate is down 6 bps at 4.35%
E-mini S&P 500 futures are down 0.78% at 5,981.75
E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are down 0.53% at 21,306.25
E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are down 0.13% at 43,479.00
Bitcoin Stats:
BTC Dominance: 61.81% (-0.15%)
Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.02720 (-0.95%)
Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 745 EH/s
Hashprice (spot): $56.8
Total Fees: 7.5 BTC / $1.3 million
CME Futures Open Interest: 166,510 BTC
BTC priced in gold: 29.7 oz
BTC vs gold market cap: 8.42%
Technical Analysis
BTC’s daily chart shows the cryptocurrency has triggered a double top bearish reversal pattern.
The shift in trend supports the case for a protracted weakness to the 200-day simple moving average, presently stationed below $82,000.
Crypto Equities
MicroStrategy (MSTR): closed on Monday at $282.76 (-5.65%), down 6.35% at $264.81 in pre-market
Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $227.07 (-3.53%), down 5.6% at $214.14
Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$21.80 (-4.22%)
MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $13.25 (-4.68%), down 5.76% at $13.09
Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $9.99 (-4.49%), down 5.01% at $9.49
Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $9.86 (-8.7%), down 5.58% at $9.31
CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $8.90 (-3.78%), down 5.39% at $8.42
CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $19.20 (-6.43%), down 5.21% at $18.20
Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $44.38 (-7.04%), down 1.8% at $43.58
Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $41.16 (-13.91%), unchanged in pre-market
ETF Flows
Spot BTC ETFs:
Daily net flow: -$516.4 million
Cumulative net flows: $39.05 billion
Total BTC holdings ~ 1,105 million.
Spot ETH ETFs
Daily net flow: -$78 million
Cumulative net flows: $3.07 billion
Total ETH holdings ~ 3.331 million.
Source: Farside Investors
Overnight Flows
Chart of the Day
Raydium registered a cumulative trading volume of $1.9 billion on Monday, the lowest since Nov. 29, according to Artemis.
The slowdown partly explains the recent decline the value of the RAY token and Solana’s SOL token.
While You Were Sleeping
Bitcoin Slides Below $89K to 3-Month Low as Nasdaq Futures Dip, Yen Sparks Risk-Off Fears (CoinDesk): Bitcoin fell below $89,000 as Nasdaq futures signaled further tech losses and a strong yen raised concerns of risk aversion similar to August 2024.
U.S. Bitcoin ETFs Post Year’s 2nd-Biggest Outflows as Basis Trade Drops Below 5% (CoinDesk): U.S.-listed spot BTC ETFs saw $516 million in outflows on Monday and the bitcoin CME annualized basis fell to 4%, the lowest since the ETFs began trading in January 2024.
USDe Issuer Ethena Labs Integrates Chaos Labs’ Edge Proof of Reserves Oracles to Strengthen Risk Management (CoinDesk): Ethena Labs has enhanced USDe’s risk management by adopting independent data oracles from Chaos Labs.
Forget MAGA, Investors Want MEGA: Make Europe Great Again (The Wall Street Journal): Once lagging behind U.S. markets, Europe is staging a robust comeback, with Euro Stoxx 50 up 12% since Trump’s victory, spurred by record inflows and mounting calls for regulatory reform.
China Learned to Embrace What the U.S. Forgot: The Virtues of Creative Destruction (Bloomberg): Amid rising U.S. tariffs and a faltering property market, China is cutting back on government spending, letting weaker sectors collapse so resources can shift to tech and innovation.
Asian Shares Slide as U.S. Curbs China Investment, Euro Gain Fades (Reuters): Asian shares fell Tuesday amid U.S. restrictions on Chinese investments. MSCI’s Asia-Pacific index dropped 1% and Japan’s Nikkei fell 1.3%.
In the Ether
This is a daily technical analysis by CoinDesk analyst and Chartered Market Technician Omkar Godbole.
Bitcoin’s (BTC) recent range play resolved bullishly early Monday, shifting focus to the $90,000-$92,000 range, which was previously a strong support zone.
The leading cryptocurrency by market value rose past $87,000, convincingly breaking out of a week-long consolidation between $83,000 and $86,000. The renewed willingness among the bulls to lead the price action indicates the resumption of the recovery from the April 7 lows under $75,000.
It also means potential for a continued move higher to the $90,000-$92,000 range, which acted as the floor, arresting price drops from December to early February. The support zone was eventually breached in late February, spurring a rapid decline to under $75,000.
The range breakout is seen on the hourly chart (left).
It follows the recent invalidation of the bearish trendline, characterizing the sell-off from record highs, as seen on the daily chart. BTC has also surpassed the 30-day exponential moving average (EMA) of price highs, indicating a bullish shift in momentum.
The focus, therefore, is on the $90,000-$92,000 range, the former support zone from early this year. Those tracking moving averages should note that the 200-day simple moving average (SMA) is now located at $88,245.
The bullish outlook risks invalidation should prices fall all the way back to $85K by the day’s end (UTC).
Circle, the firm behind the $60 billion USDC stablecoin, is launching a new payments and cross border remittance network on Tuesday — the company’s “next product move” — from its plush New York City headquarters, high on the 87th Floor of One World Trade Center.
The launch event is aimed at banks, fintechs, payment service providers, remittance providers and USDC strategic partners. It will feature Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire sharing his vision for the stablecoin giant’s next move within the payments space, according to an invite seen by CoinDesk.
New and incipient regulations around the globe are opening up the stablecoin space, where Circle has shared the limelight with larger rival Tether. It makes sense then that Circle — a firm that has successfully pivoted during its years in the crypto space — should look to consolidate its position and return to its roots as a payments company.
“Circle is launching a payments network that is initially targeting remittances but is ultimately aiming to rival Mastercard and Visa,» said a person familiar with the plans.
Stablecoins have reached an adoption level where the technology could disrupt global money transfers in a way similar to WhatsApp and international calls, VC firm Andreessen Horowitz said in recent report.
In a recent interview, crypto custody tech specialists Fireblocks pointed to billions being moved around by payments services providers doing things like cross border payments using stablecoins like USDC and USDT.
Circle was in the news most recently, after the firm announced plans to go public in the U.S., only to postpone the date of its IPO thanks to choppy and uncertain market conditions.
Circle did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Surging gold prices and bitcoin’s (BTC) relatively strong price action amid a global market sell-off have some traders revisiting the latter’s role as “digital gold” — a big narrative in bitcoin’s early years but one that has lost steam in recent times.
BTC zoomed above $87,000 in Asian morning hours, with Cardano’s ADA, BNB Chain’s BNB, XRP and ether (ETH) adding as much as 1.5%. The spike reversed all declines since Thursday, with tokens such as Solana’s SOL up 5.2% in the past week.
The tariff-driven trade wars have sparked fears of inflation and currency devaluation, prompting comparisons of the asset to gold’s historical role as a hedge.
“Although bitcoin has had a close correlation with U.S. equities, it seems to be changing with a stronger tie to the rise of the price of gold, which has been a safe haven while equities have plummeted,” Nick Ruck, director at LVRG Research, told CoinDesk in a Telegram message on Monday.
“Bitcoin crossed $87,000 as a sign of renewed investor confidence as the market continues to stabilize after panicking over tariffs. It’s also worth noting that Bitcoin’s digital gold narrative is taking off as both assets have grown in tandem,” Ruck said.
Gold set fresh highs Monday with a push above $3,380 per ounce, bringing year-to-date gains to 25%. Bitcoin has dropped more than 20% from a January peak of $108,000, though Monday’s push over $87,000 sent the asset to its highest level since Donald Trump’s “liberation day” in early April.
Pressure on the greenback has continued to grow as the dollar index (DXY) crashed to a three-year low, with some pointing out that most bad news has been “priced in” and that bitcoin could see upside in the coming days.
“Trump’s inclination to remove Jerome Powell as Fed Chair and force interest rate cuts is causing people to sell the U.S. dollar and U.S. government debt, moving to other safe haven assets such as gold, European bonds, and now, Bitcoin,” Jeff Mei, COO at BTSE, told CoinDesk in a Telegram message Monday.
“After all, when rates are cut, more money flows into the money supply, devaluing the U.S. dollar. In general, downward pressure on the US dollar is growing and this could be a driving catalyst for Bitcoin to become a safe haven asset,” Mei added.
Meanwhile, here’s a machine’s view of the markets today, powered by the CoinDesk Markets AI bot.
ADA Price Analysis
- Cardano’s ADA is above 63 cents with strong technical indicators pointing to continued upward momentum despite macroeconomic headwinds.
- Price action formed a clear ascending channel with strong support at $0.612, which successfully held during multiple retests.
- Notable volume spike occurred on 2025-04-21 00:00 when volume reached 68M (3x average), propelling price through key resistance at $0.630.
- Fibonacci extension levels suggest 64 cents as the next target, with an overall range of 0.031 (5.1%), indicating substantial volatility.
- RSI remains below overbought territory despite the rally, suggesting potential for continued upward momentum.
- Consolidation near previous resistance suggests accumulation rather than distribution.
XRP Price Analysis
- XRP’s decisive breakout signals a potential end to months-long sideways trading, with technical indicators pointing to further gains ahead.
- Fibonacci retracement levels suggest potential continuation toward $2.15, with the 61.8% extension pointing to $2.18 as the next target if bullish momentum persists.
SOL Price Analysis
- SOL breaks decisively above $135 resistance, surging 10.2% to establish new support levels with strong volume confirmation
- Key technical battle emerges between $129 support and $144 resistance zones, with on-chain data showing 5.75% of realized volume concentrated at these critical levels
- Price action formed a clear ascending channel with higher lows and higher highs, particularly evident in the April 19-21 rally.
- Volume significantly increased during upward movements, confirming the strength of the bullish trend.
- The 48-hour momentum indicators show bullish divergence with price maintaining strength above the 20-hour moving average.
BNB Price Action
- BNB breaks $600 barrier with 3.2% surge as large holders accumulate during market volatility.
- Recent quarterly token burn removed 1.57 million BNB worth over $1 billion, supporting price momentum.
- Open interest in BNB rose 3.3% to $760 million despite negative funding rates, with 68% of traders betting on continued price increases.
- BNB broke out of its consolidation range with a 3.2% surge from $592.63 to $601.74.
- Price action shows clear bullish momentum with increasing volume, particularly during the breakout candle where volume spiked to 55,661 units.
- Fibonacci extension targets suggest potential continuation toward the $605-610 zone if current momentum persists.
Bitcoin’s Breakout Signals BTC Potentially Rallying to $90K-$92K: Technical Analysis
Stablecoin Giant Circle Is Launching a New Payments and Remittance Network
BNB, SOL, XRP Spike Higher as Bitcoin ‘Digital Gold’ Narrative Makes a Comeback
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