CMC Market Pulse delivers actionable market insights, giving you all the key narratives and developments you need in under 5 minutes.
Market Overview 📉
The week kicked off weak with a slow grind down on equities and crypto markets, a continuation of the prior week’s price action. However, the later half of the week saw stronger bullish action as the macroeconomic conditions turned slightly more favorable. Total crypto market cap rose 4.49% from $2.739T to $2.862T as altcoins show some renewed interest alongside Bitcoin strength.
Bitcoin (BTC) finished the week up 3.82%, while Ethereum (ETH) surprisingly outperformed, closing at 6.44% higher from the week before.
Daily liquidations stayed largely muted, with total liquidations on a daily basis barely exceeding $250M. Liquidations spiked on the short side on the 19th with $259M in shorts wiped out after the initial reaction to the FOMC. Funding rates continue to remain largely directionless, with most maintaining in the low positive range. Many still remain negative, showing the market’s risk-off stance to altcoins in general.
📌 Saylor’s Strategy (previously MicroStrategy) announces Strife (STRF), a new 5M perpetual preferred stock offering, which will accumulate dividends at 10% per annum. - Link
📌 Strategy acquires 130 BTC for $10.7M at an average cost of $82,981 per Bitcoin, in one of Strategy’s smallest purchases thus far. - Link
📌 Two Solana futures ETFs by Volatility Shares LLC launch in the US, as the first of its kind. These ETFs are similar to the existing BITX and BITO products for Bitcoin. - Link
Why does it matter?
This week’s market performance was largely tied into the macroeconomic conditions, with the crypto market largely mirroring the traditional markets. A dovish FOMC led to a strong pump for both traditional equities and crypto, although the crypto market failed to see a strong follow-through on the move, possibly due to market participants still taking a more cautious approach for now. The S&P 500 closed the week 1.66% higher while the Nasdaq lagged at 1.15% up.
Bitcoin dominance took a slight hit this week, as market participants found the courage to bid on altcoins again. Bitcoin dominance fell over 0.4% this week to 61.43% across the last week, as altcoin leaders show renewed interest.
With the strong price action from Bitcoin, a variety of altcoins outperformed including DeFi tokens such as LayerZero (ZRO), Frax Share (FXS), and Pendle (PENDLE), while memecoins like Fartcoin (FARTCOIN) and SPX6900 (SPX) also showed tremendous strength. Other notable performers include RWA L1, Plume Network (PLUME) and BNB Chain DEX, PancakeSwap (CAKE).
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Narrative of the Week 📰
Macro takes centre stage again for the week, with the FOMC and the interest rate decision setting the tone for the week.
📌 The Fed leaves rates unchanged while the median forecast predicts two rate cuts this year, worth 50 bps. At the same time, the rate of the Fed’s balance sheet reduction is slowed. - Link
📌 The Fed’s Jerome Powell describes the inflation resulting from Trump’s tariffs to be “transitory”. - Link
📌 Nevertheless, many analysts are still concerned over the lack of market reaction to the upcoming tariffs that will take effect on 2nd April. - Link
Why does it matter?
The focus is back on interest rates and inflation once again with the FOMC and interest rate decision. The slowed pace of quantitative tightening, coupled with the expected 50 bps rate cuts this year were well-received by the market, with both crypto and traditional equities surging in response to the news. However, with the Fed’s acknowledgement of lower GDP growth and higher expected inflation, market participants are hesitant to risk-on, especially with the upcoming tariffs, which largely seem to have been ignored by the markets thus far.
Major Project Updates 🗓️
📌 Offchain Labs, the team behind the Arbitrum L2, introduce Onchain Labs, a program which aims to develop and accelerate the growth of applications building on Arbitrum. - Link
📌 Robinhood announces a prediction markets hub within the Robinhood App, allowing users to bet on significant world events, including target fed funds rate in May and the upcoming College Basketball Tournaments. - Link
📌 Binance Wallet announces a limited-time promotion for zero-fees on all swaps made within the wallet for the next six months until 17 September 2025. - Link
📌 Blockchain infrastructure protocol, Biconomy, introduces Biconomy Network, a universal interface designed to facilitate execution of transactions across chains, roll-ups and off-chain services.- Link
📌 Zero-knowledge rollup, Starknet, introduces Argent Metal, a self-custodied debit card on Starknet with no hidden fees and up to $1,800 in cashbacks on the first year. - Link
📌 Cosmos’ Interchain Foundation has funded the open-sourcing of Evmos, enabling the native deployment of EVM blockchains using the Cosmos SDK. - Link
📌 Sonic (formerly Fantom) introduces Sonic Pay, a virtual debit card powered by crypto payment infrastructure protocol, RedotPay. - Link
Why does it matter?
Offchain Labs’ move to establish a program to develop and support the growth of applications on the Arbitrum L2 is part of a bigger move in crypto where focus is gradually shifting to applications from infrastructure. With so many new chains, the differentiation factor is often not tech, but rather a single killer application on the chain. This is evident with the rise of applications like Hyperliquid and pump.fun, which are killer applications on the chains they reside on. This is further evident in the gradual rerating downwards for infrastructure projects, especially L1s and L2s, while applications rerate upwards to achieve higher valuations.
DeFi Brief 🏦
📌 Ethena introduces Converge, a purpose-built settlement layer designed to bridge traditional finance and DeFi, powered by Ethena and Securitize. Converge will be secured by ENA stakers and powered by USDe. - Link
📌 Aave introduces Project Horizon, a new initiative focused on RWA integration. Its first product will be supporting tokenized money-market funds as collateral for loans on Aave. No new token will be issued. - Link
📌 Hyperliquid introduces Staking Tiers, enabling fee-sensitive traders to stake HYPE tokens in exchange for lowered trading fees, with up to a 40% discount on trading fees. Additionally, spot volume weightage has been doubled for fee tier computation. - Link
📌 Solana-based perpetuals platform, Drift, introduces Swift Protocol, which consolidates liquidity across multiple sources for faster fills, deeper liquidity and better trade execution for their users. - Link
📌 RWA-stablecoin platform, Usual, unveils Usual Vaults. The first vault is ustUSR++ built on Lagoon Finance, which exposes users to Resolv Labs’ stUSR, while staying within the Usual ecosystem. - Link
📌 Centralized exchange, OKX, made the decision to temporarily suspend their DEX aggregator service after an attempt by the Lazarus Group to launder funds through their services. - Link
Why does it matter?
The convergence of traditional finance and DeFi continues to be the focus for many DeFi projects, with focus on the integration of RWAs on-chain. This is evident in both Aave and Ethena’s latest initiatives which focus on reducing friction and improving infrastructure required to support and facilitate the use of RWAs on-chain. As institutional adoption continues to grow, the RWA sector and its intersection with today’s top DeFi applications will, without a doubt, grow in size as well.
Meme Coins 🚀
📌 Solana DEX, Raydium, introduces LaunchLab, its own token launchpad to compete against incumbent launchpad, pump.fun. The new platform seeks to provide a larger range of bonding curves, fee customization and quote tokens for new launches. - Link
📌 The team behind Bitcoin Ordinals project, Taproot Wizards, lead a strategic raise for Bitcoin-based memecoin launchpad, Odin.fun, which is modelled after Solana’s pump.fun. - Link
Fundraises 💰
📌 All-in-one enterprise blockchain solution, Crossmint, raises $23.6M in a funding round led by Ribbit Capital, with support from Franklin Templeton, Lightspeed Faction, HF0 and more. - Link
📌 Workflow protocol, Halliday, raises $20M in a Series A funding round led by a16z Crypto, with participation from Credibly Neutral, SV Angel and Blizzard Fund. - Link
📌 MPC wallet infrastructure protocol, Ultila, raises $18M in a Series A funding round led by Nyca Partners, with other investors including Wing Venture Capital, NFX, Gaingels and more. - Link
📌 Smart wallet infrastructure platform, Privy, raises $15M in a funding round led by Ribbit Capital, with support from Sequoia, Blue Yard, Paradigm, and Coinbase Ventures. - Link
📌 Crypto payment infrastructure protocol, RedotPay, raises $40M in a Series A funding round, led by Lightspeed, with other investors including Hong Shan, Vertex, Accel and Galaxy Ventures. - Link
📌 YZi Labs makes a strategic investment into RWA-focused EVM L1 blockchain, Plume Network. - Link
Airdrops Abound 🎁
📌 Sharding-focused EVM L1, Shardeum, announces the opening of registration for their upcoming SHM token airdrop. Users who register by 21st March will receive their airdrop on genesis, but registration only closes on 13th April. - Link
📌 Liquid staking platform, BedRock, opens claims for the BR token airdrop. The airdrop claim will remain open for the next 90 days. - Link
📌 AI platform, Nillion Network, updates their airdrop checker, fixing prior bugs. - Link
Tweet of the Week 📝
Source: @cobie
Cobie is the last hope for Ethereum holders.
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