Crypto Market

BTC and ETH Market Insight

Risk-assets surged as Nvidia beat estimates, and the AI narrative continued to heat up. Less than two months until the next Bitcoin halving, BTC struggled to gain momentum after hitting $52k. Ethereum reached $3,000 before slightly pulling back, driven by factors like the Dencun upgrade and spot Ethereum ETF news. The upcoming Ethereum Dencun update, set for March 13, is expected to deliver substantial progress to the Ethereum ecosystem, with a particular emphasis on its impact on Layer-2 platforms.

Options Market

With BTC consolidating around 51k-52k, front-end implied volatility has stabilized at 52 vol range while historical volatility is gradually dropping. On the other hand, ETH’s implied volatility ranges at 60 while historical volatility is rising. Open interests of both markets have shrunk, indicating a lack of direction for the time being.

Altcoins and Blockchain News

• The Blast eco gamefi project Risk (@riskonblast) experienced a rug incident, resulting in a loss of approximately 500 ETH. Currently, their official Twitter account is displaying the message "This account does not exist."
• Uniswap has proposed a new proposal called "Activate Uniswap Protocol Governance," which aims to allow the proportional distribution of any protocol fees to UNI token holders who have staked and delegated their voting rights.
• According to the official website of the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission, Huobi HK has withdrawn its application for a virtual asset trading platform license.
• Curve's official announcement on social media states that their lending protocol has been deployed. Although it has not been formally released, users can already borrow and lend normally.
• The mainnet staking activity for Merlin Chain, a Bitcoin Layer 2 network, has surpassed 1.97 billion USD in Total Value Locked (TVL) within the first 14 days, surpassing Blast.
• Binance Labs has announced its investment in Renzo to support liquidity restaking on the EigenLayer ecosystem.
• According to Bloomberg, crypto venture capital firm a16z has invested 100 million USD in the liquidity restaking protocol EigenLayer.
• OX.FUN, a perpetual contract trading platform, has completed a new round of financing amounting to 4 million USD. Foresight Ventures led this round, with participation from Double Peak Group, EmChain, Genblock Capital, and other institutions.

Macro

The continued the rally for the week: the DJIA added +1.3%, the S&P 500 +1.7%, and the NASDAQ +1.4%. The technology sector boosted the market, with NVIDIA outperming the sector along with its better-than-expected earnings report. The cease of economic recession and rising corporate earnings seemed to pave the way for a rising market.