Weekly Rollup - March 25, 2025

Market Highlights

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• U.S. Fed maintains rates but signals two cuts in 2025; crypto funds see first inflows in 5 weeks.
• Trump vows to make U.S. the “bitcoin superpower” in pre-recorded summit address.
• Altcoins bounce as short squeezes fuel sector-wide rally.
• Solana futures ETFs go live on Nasdaq, marking a first for the asset.
• Tokenized real-world assets hit $10.2B TVL, with new launches in China and Singapore.
• SEC floats NFTs as potential fundraising tools; Ripple CEO says SEC lawsuit is ending.

Markets Overview

Macro Market Updates:

This week, the Bank of Japan held its policy rate at <0.5%, while the U.S. Federal Open Market Committee left the federal funds rate at 4.5%. Despite announcing a downgrade in its expectations for economic growth in 2025 (the FOMC expects 1.7% growth), the FOMC said it still sees a further 50 basis points of rate cuts before year-end. With the Fed typically delivering rate cuts in 25-basis-point increments, that means a further two rate cuts may be delivered this year. The U.S. Federal Reserve will also slow its quantitative tightening program, allowing US$5 billion of treasury bonds to roll off its balance sheet each month, down from US$25 billion. The three major US indexes each gained over 1% on the news.

The S&P 500 finished the week down 1.35%, the Dow Jones closed down 1.8%, and the Nasdaq closed down 1.7%. The new week begins with purchasing manager index updates across France, Germany and the U.K., and the U.S. personal consumption expenditures index for February will be released on Friday 28 March.

Crypto Market Sector Performance

This week saw most sectors experience growth. Bridge, bitcoin ecosystem and perpetual decentralised exchanges (DEX) led the way, while decentralised physical infrastructure networks (DePIN) and RWA’s declined. This week’s rebound across most sectors appears to be driven by a combination of short squeezes, speculative momentum, and relief from macro uncertainty following expectations that Trump's upcoming tariff plan may be less severe than initially feared. Gains in BTC and ETH also helped lift the broader market, though overall conditions still reflect caution rather than full bullish conviction.

Crypto Market Sector Performance (7D)

Bitcoin (BTC)

It was another week of small gains for bitcoin. Opening the week at US$82,562, bitcoin declined to a low of US$81,125 before gaining over 5% on Wednesday, 19 March and then retracing. While the FOMC’s statement brought some relief, further ups and downs are expected as bitcoin’s volatility reached a six-month high due to a weakening U.S. economy, geopolitical tension and recent weeks of risk-off investor sentiment. Bitcoin is currently trading at US$88,035, an increase of 4.8% on the week.

A report from CryptoQuant revealed that its Bull Score Index has declined to 20, with only two out of ten metrics bullish. It’s the lowest level in over two years, which can signal a “weak environment” for bitcoin and increase the likelihood of further consolidation and selling pressure. The ten metrics cover network activity, investor behaviour, bitcoin demand, and market liquidity to gauge investor sentiment.

President Trump spoke via pre-recorded video summit at the Blockworks Digital Assets Summit this week. During his speech, he vowed to make the U.S. “the undisputed Bitcoin superpower and the crypto capital of the world”. As part of the plan to make this happen, the President cited ending the Biden administration’s “war on crypto and bitcoin” and said landmark legislation would create a simple legal framework and provide clarity on market structure.

A bitcoin wallet closed its US$521 million short-bitcoin position with 40x leverage this week, netting US$4 million profit. The whale’s next position was a long bet on MELANIA, the official Solana meme coin of Melania Trump.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) delivered clarity on bitcoin mining this week. The agency released a statement outlining that proof-of-work mining operations will not fall under the SEC’s jurisdiction because mining rewards aren’t derived from a “third party’s managerial or entrepreneurial efforts”.

Also this week, BitcoinOS developers completed code to open-source BitSNARK, which is a protocol that enables zero-knowledge verification on bitcoin. By making BitSnark open source, developers can build on the network in new ways without compromising on scale, decentralisation and computational expressivity or modifying bitcoin’s core protocol.

A new Senate bill was introduced in North Carolina. Senate Bill 327 calls for North Carolina’s State Treasurer to allocate up to 10% of public funds to buying bitcoin. The bill also enforces controls around liquidating bitcoin and would require a two-thirds majority in the General Assembly for any of the State’s bitcoin to be sold.

Strategy(formerly MicroStrategy) has surpassed 500,000 bitcoin holdings after its stock sales on Monday, 24 March. The company now holds 506,137 BTC at an average purchase price of US$84,500 per coin. MSTR gained 10.5% on the news. Also this week, Strategy’s “Strife” perpetual stock offering was upped to US$723 million. Strife pays a fixed rate of 10% and has a public offering price of US$85 per share. The sale of preferred stock is expected to settle on 25 March 2025. Unlike previous offerings that allowed investors to convert stocks into common shares, Strife will pay quarterly dividends in cash. The first dividend payment will be due in June, where investors could be owed as much as US$71 million.

Nasdaq-listed Atai Life Sciences, a biopharmaceutical company, is establishing a bitcoin treasury. The company plans to start by acquiring US$5 million of bitcoin, citing valuation pressure and cash reserve erosion as key reasons a bitcoin treasury may be suitable for biotech companies.

Bitcoin asset investment products ended their five-week outflow streak with US$724 million entering funds.

Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results.

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Ethereum (ETH)

This week saw gains for Ethereum. Opening the week at US$1,886, Ethereum traded sideways before gaining over 6.5% on Wednesday, 19 March, to reach US$2,070. Price then declined and consolidated around US$1,990 before starting the new week, gaining over 4%.

Ben Zhou, CEO of Bybit, said that the party responsible for the US$1.4 billion hack of the cryptocurrency exchange has been using crypto mixers to begin decoding the transactions. So far, 7.6% of the stolen funds have “gone dark”, making them unrecoverable. A further 3.5% of funds have been frozen through coordination with exchanges, leaving 86.3% of the funds traceable and recoverable.

Tornado Cash, an Ethereum mixer, is no longer sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury. The department announced that Tornado Cash was removed from its list of parties sanctioned by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) after it was blacklisted in 2022. It follows a November 2024 ruling by a Fifth Circuit judge that the Treasury Department had overstepped its authority in targeting Tornado Cash’s contracts. Tornado Cash’s co-founder Roman Storm is still set to go to trial for allegedly enabling North Korean hackers through the company’s mixer service.

Ethereum asset investment products had another week of outflows, with US$86 million leaving funds.

Ethereum is currently trading at US$2,086, an increase of 7.8% on the week.

Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results.

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Altcoins

DeFi gains

• Orca (ORCA) gained 56.2%. This takes its market cap to US$139.7 million. The automated market maker (AMM) gained over 280%, and its trading volume spiked to 5,000% when it was listed on Upbit.
• VIDT DAO (VIDT) grew by 35.3%, which takes its market cap to almost US$12.7 million. The decentralised autonomous organisation that develops technology to securely timestamp and authenticate documents announced that it will launch an initiative to track carbon tags for transparent carbon emission monitoring. VIDT gained over 65% on the news before retracing.
• Pendle (PENDLE) gained 22.6%, taking its market cap to almost US$457 million. The crypto yield trading platform gained almost 35% before retracing. The gains are presumably due to a range of new updates, including the introduction of Origin Yield Forwarding on SwapX and Pendle listing on Shadow Exchange.

It’s an oracle

• API3 (API3) gained 41.6%, taking its market cap to US$149.9 million. The decentralised network that allows blockchain apps to access real-world data and services saw significant gains this week after weeks of selling off. The gains are presumably due to increasing market share and ease of use, even when switching from another provider. Api3 also has a built-in maximum extractable value (MEV) protection while conducting transparent auctions via its oracle extractable value (OEV) network, allowing 80% of proceeds to be redistributed to the utilising app.

CHEX it out

• CHEX Token (CHEX) gained 27.4% taking its market cap to US$275.2 million. The real-world asset tokenisation network presumably gained on news that RWA protocols have reached a total value locked of US$10.2 billion (more on that below).

Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results.

In Other News

For the first time in five weeks, digital asset investment products saw inflows of US$644 million, signalling fresh optimism following the U.S. Federal Reserve’s statement from its March meeting. Total assets under management have grown by 6.3% since the low on 10 March 2025. With every day last week seeing inflows, it signals a potential shift in investor sentiment following the recent weeks of selling pressure.

Altcoins experienced inflows and outflows. Sui and Polkadot each saw outflows of US$1.3 million, while Tron and Algorand saw outflows of US$0.9 million and US$0.8 million, respectively. Solana saw inflows of US$6.4 million.

Other crypto news

• In stable coins, World Liberty Financial (WLFI), the Trump family’s DeFi platform, reportedly launched its stablecoin USD1 on BNB chain. On-chain data notes interactions between the contract wallet and crypto market marker Wintermute. Though USD1 is not currently tradable, the transactions suggest it may soon be available for use as WLFI prepares to enter the world of stablecoins. And World Network is reportedly in talks with Visa to launch a stablecoin payments wallet, which would make crypto features available to Visa’s global customer base. Worldcoin gained 13% on the news.
• Crypto exchange Bitnomial voluntarily dismissed its case against the U.S. SEC due to the agency’s improvements in providing regulatory clarity. The exchange is preparing to launch the first-ever XRP futures contract that will be regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The futures contracts will allow traders to speculate on or hedge against the future price of XRP, with the asset delivered on contract settlement. XRP gained over 12% on the news.
• In exchange-traded fund (ETF) news, the first Solana futures ETFs began trading on the Nasdaq on Thursday, 20 March. The Volatility Shares Solana ETF (SOLZ) tracks Solana futures, while the Volatility Shares 2x Solana ETF (SOLT) allows investors to gain amplified returns. Opening day saw US$12.3 million in volume. Also this week, Canary Capital filed an application to launch a SUI-based ETF.
• Real-world assets (RWA) have reached a combined US$10.2 billion in total-value locked (TVL) spread across 79 DeFi platforms. The top three RWA protocols hold 36% of TVL — Maker RWA, BlackRock BUIDL and Ethena USDtb, holding US$1.3 billion, US$1.2 billion, and US$1.2 billion, respectively. Also this week in RWAs, China Pacific Insurance (CPIC) rolled out a US$100 million tokenised money market fund on the HashKey chain. The fund invested in U.S. dollar-denominated short-term fixed-income assets and money market instruments. And Apple, Tesla and other stocks will get tokenised via Singapore-based DigiFT’s new on-chain index fund, allowing accredited and institutional investors to undertake portfolio management with smart contracts and stablecoins.

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Regulatory

• Ripple Labs CEO Brad Garlinghouse said that the SEC will drop its appeal in its four-year lawsuit against the company. The company received a partial ruling in its favour in 2023 when a federal New York judge found that Ripple’s sales of XRP didn’t constitute securities transactions. The U.S. SEC filed an appeal to have the decision overturned. The U.S. SEC is yet to make an announcement, but XRP was up 14% on Garlinghouse’s update.
• The U.S. SEC held its first public meeting with industry experts. The meeting focused on how securities laws may apply to digital assets. Attendees included John Reed Stark, former chief of the SEC's Office of Internet Enforcement; Miles Jennings, the general counsel for a16z crypto; and former SEC Commissioner Troy Paredes. A key point of debate at the meeting was whether crypto tokens require a new regulatory framework, emphasising the SEC’s focus on ensuring the agency’s regulatory overhaul is fit for purpose.
• U.S. SEC Crypto Task Force lead Hester Peirce said this week that crypto projects should be able to raise funds using non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Peirce also said that the sale of NFTs as a funding mechanism should be exempt from securities regulations and that the agency may provide clarity on the matter soon.
• The Australian Department of Treasury released a statement about developing an innovative Australian digital asset industry. The Australian Government’s approach to developing a clearer regulatory framework for crypto includes a framework for Digital Asset Platforms such as exchanges, clarity on how stablecoins will be treated, a review of Australia’s Enhanced Regulatory Sandbox, and a suite of initiatives designed to foster innovation in the industry while protecting consumers.
• Following criticism over not being independently audited, stablecoin network Tether has engaged a Big 4 accounting firm to audit what backs its stablecoin. USDT, Tether’s stablecoin, is the most-traded cryptocurrency in the market, and the company says it is backed by U.S. treasuries and other assets. USDT trades on several blockchains, including Ethereum, Solana and Ton. It may also be available on the bitcoin network soon. In 2021, Tether agreed to no longer operate in New York after a two-year investigation found that the company made false statements about what backed USDT.