#Bitcoin's early Friday slide triggered liquidations of longs worth over $62 million in futures market, according to Glassnode. Short liquidations worth just over $500,000 were also observed.

A record 67% of Bitcoin's supply hasn't moved in at least a year — link

The biggest worries of the current bear cycle, which began in 2022, have been decade-high inflation. In January, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) came in hotter than expected, with a 0.2% increase versus the previous month.

There are some additional signs that inflation may remain sticky. Inflation in the housing sector, which commands more than 40% of the weightage in the CPI calculation, has shown no sign of a downturn. - link

In February 2023, Bitcoin demonstrated remarkable price stability, surprising many investors and cryptocurrency enthusiasts . Bitcoin's volatility did not exceed 2.6% throughout the month, indicating that the cryptocurrency was trading in a relatively narrow price range . Data from Coinglass shows how bitcoin's volatility index has fluctuated downward since 2013.

This stability is even more remarkable if one considers that in the last 60 days, the bitcoin volatility index was around 2.5%. The leading cryptocurrency had seen a significant rise in price in January, with many investors fearing that market volatility would continue into February. However, bitcoin managed to maintain relative stability throughout the month. - link

The cryptocurrency market will soon experience another decline

"Technical and on-chain analysis of the crypto market indicates the possibility of price reduction."

Looking at Coinbase volumes, altcoins have risen from 26% of volumes post-FTX to 40% of volumes today, largely at the expense of BTC and ETH — link

ANALYSIS: #Binance saw a 45% drop in BUSD's market capitalization due to concerns over its credibility and trustworthiness.

💧Top DeFi decentralized applications by number of daily active users.

Living in a time when history is being replayed

"...it seems that "long-term holders" will gradually gain control of the market and raise prices “Again”."
― LINK.

The NFT market hit a 3-month high of daily trades for the second consecutive day, with 125,814 trades in a single day — link

In turn, the relatively neutral price action we had recently been seeing was shattered, and $78.24 million in long BTC liquidations occurred on March 3rd after the price slip.

With broadly improving market sentiment since the end of last year, there has been a persistent trend of increased interest in altcoins. Since November 2022, the percentage of altcoin volumes relative to BTC, ETH and stablecoins has increased from 40% to 50%, largely at the expense of ETH, who’s market share has decreased from 25% to just 7% of volumes. Bull markets are often characterized by a rotation of funds out of BTC and ETH and into riskier altcoin alternatives.

According to data from Ripple and FPC, most payment companies believe that merchants globally will use more cryptocurrencies in the near term. As seen in the graph below, the survey results show that 64% of representatives of payment companies in the Middle East believe that more than 50% of merchants will start accepting cryptocurrency payments within the next three years. - source

The volatility spread between Ether and Bitcoin has compressed to below 1. This has only occasionally happened and the spread has traded above 1 in 93% of the observations during the past four years — link

The market is mostly bearish and is betting on further declines, according to funding rates.

"If we have more leverage building and bearish bets in this setup we could have a price recovery driven by cascading shorts liquidations."

89% still trust centralized custodians despite 2022’s collapses: Survey

Fundraising for crypto gaming jumped 79% from January to February of this year to hit $141.4M — link

The Euro's share of volume relative to USD has nearly doubled since the FTX collapse, rising from 9% to 16% for BTC markets — link

ANALYSIS: Open Interest in #BTC futures on the CME exchange plummeted to a 4-month low.

CME Futures Volumes Rise 21.2% Month on Month

Regarding total USD trading volume, CME’s ETH futures reached $10.1bn in February (up 24.4% since January). Meanwhile, CME’s BTC futures volumes rose 20.0% to $25.0bn. On aggregate ETH + BTC futures volumes rose 21.2% to $35.0bn. This does not include Micro Futures.

A combined volume of $4.05bn in BTC and ETH futures was traded on the 21st of February – a maximum for the month, up 25.1% from the intra-month high in January.

Crypto Derivatives On The CME Reach New Milestones Amid Regulatory Uncertainty

Bitcoin also had a big month, with options open interest reaching an all-time high and crossing $1 billion for the first time. Open interest is the total number of outstanding contracts that are yet to settle.

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