Crypto News, March 16: Bitcoin's Brief Breakout

Within hours, the Federal Reserve is set to raise interest rates for the first time in four years. A modest bump of 0.25 percentage points is expected. Such an event has been anticipated — even feared — by the crypto markets for some time. It comes as the U.S. grapples with red-hot inflation, the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, and geopolitical tensions in Ukraine. Analysts believe that today's hike has already been priced in, but uncertainty over how quickly interest rates will rise in the coming year — and by how much — could cast a long shadow over Bitcoin.

Something rather unusual happened to Bitcoin late on Tuesday night. After a day of pretty flat trading, the world's biggest cryptocurrency suddenly surged from $39,000 to $41,500 in the space of 30 minutes. The gains didn't last — and BTC was back down to $39,000 just hours later. Although such a spike may seem insignificant, the sudden move has sparked $110 million in liquidations over the past 24 hours. Trading activity has reduced markedly in recent weeks — and the markets were pretty thin at the time of the surge. It created what's known as a "Bart Simpson" price pattern on the four-hour chart.

Mark Zuckerberg has confirmed that NFTs are coming to Instagram soon. But speaking at the South by Southwest Festival in Texas, the Meta CEO didn't have much detail beyond that. Zuckerberg confirmed that — "over the next several months" — the social network's users will be able to mint non-fungible tokens within the photo-sharing app… and potentially bring in collectibles from other sources. It would be a logical next step given how Zuckerberg is betting big on the metaverse — diversifying his company's activities to look beyond the social networks that helped define the 2010s.

F1 Delta Time is abruptly shutting down — with Animoca Brands announcing that it was unable to renew its license with the sporting giant. The NFT company has vowed to reward current players for their loyalty and support — and those affected will receive replacement cars that can be used in other games. Even though the racing game was backed by one of the biggest brands in motorsports, data from OpenSea suggests just 1,800 wallets actually owned F1 Delta Time NFTs. It was one of the first play-to-earn games to hit the market — and was initially a big hit among NFT enthusiasts. A one-of-a-kind collectible car was purchased back in 2019 for a whopping 416 Wrapped ETH.