Crypto Daybook Americas: Risk-Off Vibe Lifts Bitcoin With CPI Data Looming

By James Van Straten (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)

Macroeconomic factors continue to drive bitcoin's (BTC) short-term price volatility as it holds steady above $80,000, with a wave of significant news emerging over the past 24 hours.

Still, there's a risk-off feeling in the air as the divergence between bitcoin and the broader crypto market grows. Bitcoin dominance has surged to 62%, approaching a year-to-date high, while the ether-to-bitcoin (ETH-BTC) ratio has turned negative on a four-year compound annual basis, meaning ETH is underperforming.

Meanwhile, Trump’s trade wars persist as another concern reining in optimism in the market. That's not just with Canada, but also in the form of metal tariffs, prompting retaliatory measures from the European Union.

One of the most intriguing developments comes from Canada, where newly appointed Prime Minister Mark Carney has filed to sell U.S. dollar bonds. While the size of the sale remains undisclosed, it's worth noting the country is the sixth-largest holder of U.S. Treasuries, possessing $379 billion as of the end of 2024. If the sale proceeds, it could put upward pressure on yields, which is the opposite of what Trump wants.

The Treasury yield narrative is paramount because roughly $9 trillion worth of U.S. debt is set to mature or require refinancing this year alone. This is one of the key reasons why the U.S. administration is eager to bring down Treasury yields.

More immediately, market attention is turning to today's Consumer Price Index (CPI) report, with risk-asset bulls hoping for a softer inflation print. The S&P 500 is hovering around correction territory, down nearly 10%. If inflation comes in hotter than expected, risk assets could face further downside. Stay Alert!

What to Watch

Crypto:

March 12: Hemi (HEMI), an L2 blockchain that operates on both Bitcoin and Ethereum, has its mainnet launch.

March 15: Athene Network (ATH) mainnet launch.

March 15: Reploy will close its V1 RAI staking program to new users as it transitions to a fully automated revenue-sharing protocol.

March 17: CME Group launches solana (SOL) futures.

March 18: Zano (ZANO) hard fork network upgrade which activates “ETH Signature support for off-chain signing and asset operations.”

March 20: Pascal hard fork network upgrade goes live on the BNB Smart Chain (BSC) mainnet.

Macro

March 12, 8:00 a.m.: The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) releases February consumer price inflation data.

Inflation Rate MoM Est. 1.3% vs. Prev. 0.16%

Inflation Rate YoY Est. 5% vs. Prev. 4.56%

March 12, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases February consumer price inflation data.

Core Inflation Rate MoM Est. 0.3% vs. Prev. 0.4%

Core Inflation Rate YoY Est. 3.2% vs. Prev. 3.3%

Inflation Rate MoM Est. 0.3% vs. Prev. 0.5%

Inflation Rate YoY Est. 2.9% vs. Prev. 3%

March 12, 9:45 a.m.: The Bank of Canada announces its interest-rate decision followed by a press conference (livestream link) 45 minutes later.

Policy Interest Rate Est. 2.75% vs. Prev. 3%

March 12, 12:00 p.m.: Russia's Federal State Statistics Service releases February consumer price inflation data.

Inflation Rate MoM Est. 0.8% vs. Prev. 1.2%

Inflation Rate YoY Est. 10.1% vs. Prev. 9.9%

March 13, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases February producer price inflation data.

Core PPI MoM Est. 0.3% vs. Prev. 0.3%

Core PPI YoY Est. 3.6% vs. Prev. 3.6%

PPI MoM Est. 0.3% vs. Prev. 0.4%

PPI YoY Est. 3.3% vs. Prev. 3.5%

Earnings (Estimates based on FactSet data)

March 12 (TBC): TeraWulf (WULF), $-0.03

March 14: Bit Digital (BTBT), pre-market, $-0.05

March 24 (TBC): Galaxy Digital Holdings (TSE: GLXY), C$0.38

Token Events

Governance votes & calls

Uniswap DAO is discussing continuing treasury delegation to maintain governance stability and retain active delegates, including a renewed framework and structure expiration and allocation mechanisms.

March 13, 10 a.m.: Mantra to host a Community Connect call with its CEO and Co-Founder to discuss various major updates.

March 13, 10 a.m.: Mantle Network to hold a Surge Ask Me Anything (AMA) session.

March 13, 11:30 a.m.: Jupiter to hold a Planetary Call.

Unlocks

March 12: Aptos (APT) to unlock 1.93% of circulating supply worth $58.26 million.

March 14: Starknet (STRK) to unlock 2.33% of its circulating supply worth $10.67 million.

March 15: Sei (SEI) to unlock 1.19% of its circulating supply worth $10.35 million.

March 16: Arbitrum (ARB) to unlock 2.1% of its circulating supply worth $31.53 million.

March 18: Fasttoken (FTN) to unlock 4.66% of its circulating supply worth $79.60 million.

March 21: Immutable (IMX) to unlock 1.39% of circulating supply worth $12.70 million.

Token Listings

March 31: Binance to delist USDT, FDUSD, TUSD, USDP, DAI, AEUR, UST, USTC, and PAXG.

Conferences

CoinDesk's Consensus is taking place in Toronto on May 14-16. Use code DAYBOOK and save 15% on passes.

Day 3 of 3: AIBC Africa (Cape Town)

Day 2 of 2: VanEck Southern California Blockchain Conference 2025 (Los Angeles)

March 13-14: Web3 Amsterdam ‘25

March 16, 6:00 p.m.: Solana AI Summit (San Jose, Calif.)

March 18-20: Digital Asset Summit 2025 (New York)

March 18-20: Fintech Americas Miami 2025

March 19-20: Next Block Expo (Warsaw)

March 24-26: Merge Buenos Aires

March 25-26: PAY360 2025 (London)

March 25-27: Mining Disrupt (Fort Lauderdale, Fla.)

March 26: Crypto Assets Conference (Frankfurt)

March 26: DC Blockchain Summit 2025 (Washington)

March 26-28: Real World Crypto Symposium 2025 (Sofia, Bulgaria)

March 27: Building Blocks (Tel Aviv)

March 27: Digital Euro Conference 2025 (Frankfurt)

March 27: WIKI Finance EXPO Hong Kong 2025

March 27-28: Money Motion 2025 (Zagreb, Croatia)

March 28: Solana APEX (Cape Town)

Token Talk

By Shaurya Malwa

The freshly issued BMT tokens of Bubblemaps, a crypto transparency and on-chain analysis tool, are down more than 50% since going live on Tuesday.

Bubblemaps uses clustering to group wallet addresses into bubbles, revealing whale concentrations, insider control or suspicious patterns (e.g. a deployer with 76% of supply), helping investors assess risks through visual ownership maps.

BMT can be used to access an "Intel Desk" for community-driven scam investigations and premium analytics features, and participate in governance.

People are slamming BMT for a nearly 90% supply concentration in one wallet, a mintable contract risking inflation, an elitist airdrop excluding many, and unlocked liquidity raising rug-pull fears, which is rather ironic for a transparency-focused project.

Derivatives Positioning

Cumulative open interest in ETH standard and perpetual futures has risen to 9.75 million ETH, the highest since Feb. 3. The count has increased from 8.4 million ETH four weeks ago, which shows traders have been selling into the falling market.

Open interest in BTC perp and standard futures remains light, with funding rates marginally positive. SOL, ADA, TRX and LINK still see negative perpetual funding rates.

Deribit-listed BTC and ETH options continue to exhibit a bias for puts out to May expiry, with meaningful constructive outlook for calls emerging from the third quarter.

Overnight block flows featured selling higher strike BTC and ETH calls and purchase of short-tenor puts.

Market Movements:

BTC is down 0.55% from 4 p.m. ET Tuesday at $82,577.14 (24hrs: +0.87%)

ETH is down 2.6% at $1,892.41 (24hrs: -1.58%)

CoinDesk 20 is down 1% at 2,556.70 (24hrs: +0.52%)

Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is up 32 bps at 3.43%

BTC funding rate is at 0.007% (2.54% annualized) on Binance

DXY is down 0.31% at 103.52

Gold is unchanged at $2,914.29/oz

Silver is up 0.69% at $33.01/oz

Nikkei 225 closed unchanged at 36,819.09

Hang Seng closed -0.76 at 23,600.31

FTSE is up 0.43% at 8,532.17

Euro Stoxx 50 is up 1.19% at 5,373.08

DJIA closed on Tuesday -1.14% at 41,433.48

S&P 500 closed -0.76% at 5,572.07

Nasdaq closed -0.18% at 17,436.10

S&P/TSX Composite Index closed -0.54% at 24,248.20

S&P 40 Latin America closed +0.44% at 2,307.52

U.S. 10-year Treasury rate is unchanged at 4.28%

E-mini S&P 500 futures are up 0.54% at 5,607.25

E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are up 0.67% at 19,529.25

E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are up 0.37% at 41,627.00

Bitcoin Stats:

BTC Dominance: 62.13 (-0.16%)

Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.02290 (-0.06%)

Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 815 EH/s

Hashprice (spot): $46.1

Total Fees: 6.03 BTC / $490,764

CME Futures Open Interest: 142,725 BTC

BTC priced in gold: 28.3 oz

BTC vs gold market cap: 8.04%

Technical Analysis

The dollar index, which represents the greenback's exchange rate against a basket of fiat currencies, has dropped below the 61.8% Fibonacci retracement support of the late September to January rally.

The breakdown means a potential soft U.S. CPI release could easily send the index sliding to 102.31, the 78.6% retracement support.

A deeper slide in the dollar could bode well for risk assets, including BTC.

Crypto Equities

Strategy (MSTR): closed on Tuesday at $260.59 (+8.91%), down 0.58% at $259.09 in pre-market

Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $191.69 (+6.95%), unchanged in pre-market

Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$17.27 (-1.09%)

MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $13.32 (-0.67%), down 0.68% at $13.23

Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $7.72 (+2.12%), down 0.26% at $7.70

Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $8.63 (+7.74%), down 0.46% at $8.59

CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $8.26 (+3.51%), down 0.73% at $8.20

CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $15.08 (+4.14%)

Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $32.80 (+0.18%)

Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $24.50 (-0.41%), up 0.94% at $24.73

ETF Flows

Spot BTC ETFs:

Daily net flow: -$371 million

Cumulative net flows: $35.47 billion

Total BTC holdings ~ 1,121 million.

Spot ETH ETFs

Daily net flow: -$21.6 million

Cumulative net flows: $2.66 billion

Total ETH holdings ~ 3.571 million.

Source: Farside Investors

Overnight Flows

Chart of the Day

The chart shows daily trading volume on Hyperliquid, the leading perpetual-focused decentralized exchange.

Despite the market swoon, volumes have held remarkably steady, contrasting the sharp slowdown on other avenues like Solana's Raydium.

While You Were Sleeping

EU Retaliates After Donald Trump’s Steel and Aluminum Tariffs Take Effect (Financial Times): The European Commission’s initial retaliatory tariffs on whiskey, jeans and motorcycles take effect April 1 with additional levies on industrial and agricultural exports expected by mid-April.

Bitcoin CME Futures Spread Slides to $490, Undoing the 'Trump Bump' in BTC (CoinDesk): Traders are scaling back expectations that Trump's presidency will boost crypto.

BOJ Unfazed by Rising Bond Yields, Signals Resolve to Keep Hiking Rates (Reuters): The governor of the Bank of Japan indicated no plans to intervene as markets expect further rate hikes, driven by wage growth and higher prices.

Franklin Templeton Joins XRP ETF Rush, Files Preliminary Application With SEC (CoinDesk): The American asset management giant filed a registration statement Tuesday for a spot XRP ETF that would trade on the Cboe BZX Exchange.

Metaplanet Increases Bitcoin Holdings With $13.5M Purchase and Bond Issuance (CoinDesk): The Japanese company bought 162 BTC and issued 2 billion yen in zero-interest bonds to expand its bitcoin reserves.

Japanese Tech Giants Sony and LINE Join Forces in Blockchain Deal (CoinDesk): Sony's blockchain division is partnering with the Japanese social media giant to bring four mini-apps to the Soneium blockchain. The aim is to facilitate features like in-game rewards and purchases.

In the Ether