Daily Update:

• The past few outsized BTC selloffs have primarily been weekend moves driven by a particular macro event and then amplified by the opening of traditional finance markets each Monday morning. Examples we noted in our January Bybit volatility report included the launch of Deepseek’s LLM, Trump’s tariff program and more.
• However, through yesterday and today, BTC, ETH and the wider crypto market have been on a steady plunge downwards, appearing to be driven by a confluence of factors rather than a single headline data event or news release.
• BTC fell steadily over the course of yesterday following the recent crypto exchange hack, multiple memecoin scandals from high-ranking officials across the world, and a more hawkish macro backdrop which we covered here.

‍

• Those moves down were then accelerated yesterday, when around 9 pm UTC President Trump responded to a question regarding whether the tariffs he delayed until the 4th of March would be effective from next week, stating that “the tariffs are going forward on time, on schedule”.
• That reply further fueled a price drop in BTC, which saw it fall further from $94K to just under $91K.

• Bitcoin is currently trading at $89K (-6.5% on the day) on the back of these events, ETH is down -10.7% at $2.4K, and SOL is down the most amongst the top 10 by market-cap (-13.6%) at $137, down 50% from its all-time high in mid-January of $272. Altcoins across the table are down 20-80% from their highs in December and January post-US election.
• With this move in spot prices, implied vol levels have been rising, and ETH’s implied volatility term structures have notably inverted, while BTC’s trending flat. Additionally, for BTC, futures spot yields at the front end have significantly fallen.
• According to various sources, around $1.3 billion has been liquidated over the past 24 hours.

‍

• Ethereum's upcoming upgrade, Petra, was pushed out onto the Holesky testnet yesterday but failed to finalise. Ethereum developers are currently investigating the issue, though the cause remains unknown.
• The cross-chain DEX Chainflip will deploy an upgrade to prevent the hacked funds from Bybit hackers from being used on its platform. It will screen out any wallet linked to major incidents, rejecting the funds they try to upload.

This Week’s Calendar:

Charts of the Day: