The BTC price is trading at a three percent loss today, March 21st. In the following, we take a look at some of the most important Bitcoin news of the past couple of days.

Bitcoin and US interest rates: is there a correlation?

Do changes in US interest rates impact Bitcoin’s price and how? According to a recent report by Santiment, it does. Since 2022, aggressive rate hikes have been the reason for increased volatility in both traditional and crypto markets.

For example, back in June 2022, when the US Federal Reserve decided to hike rates for the first time since 2018 in a bid to combat growing post-COVID inflation, the price tanked by 18%. On the other hand, in December 2024, when the opposite happened and the Fed decided to cut rates by 25 basis points, Bitcoin’s price increased by 15%.

In conclusion, the monetary policy of the US Federal Reserve has and will likely continue to impact the price of BTC, and by extension – that of the rest of the market.

BTC price uncertainty in the past 24 hours

Throughout the past 24 hours, Bitcoin’s price went on somewhat of a rollercoaster. It achieved a two-week high at around $87,500 during the early-morning trading session but later declined to below $84,000, where it’s trading at the time of this writing.

Its market capitalization currently stands at roughly $1.7 trillion according to data from CoinGecko. Its dominance – the metric which tracks its share relative to that of the rest of the market – took a minor hit and declined to about 58.4%.

Bitcoin futures open interest takes a hit: what does it mean?

Futures open interest measures the total of all opened futures positions in the derivatives market. According to a recent analysis by the popular research firm Glassnode, it has declined substantially over the past two mnoths – from $57 billion to $37 billion.

This decline is indicative of reduced speculation as investors hedge against the ongoing volatility and hightened uncertainty within the Bitcoin market.

More specifically, this decline is also aligned with a broader contraction in on-chain liquidity, which indicates a sizeable shift towards risk-off behavior.

The controversial Bitcoin whale on Hyperliquid uncovered by ZachXBT

Over the past weekend, a Bitcoin whale made headlines when they famously opened a massive short position through futures contracts on the popular decentralized trading platform Hyperliquid.

According to well-known crypto sleuth ZachXBT, the identity of this whale is no other than William Parker – a UK individual linked to a $1 million casino theft, as well as other hacking scandals.

Recall that he allegedly manipulated the crypto market and profited around $20 million using extremely high leverage to open positions worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Bitcoin’s hot supply craters 50% in three months: should you care?

Have you heard of Bitcoin’s ‘hot supply’? Well, these are coins that are aged one week or less. According to a recent analysis by Glassnode, this supply has decreased by more than 50% in the past three months alone, dropping from 4.9% to 2.8% of the total circulating supply.

What does it mean? Well, it suggests that fewer BTC are being actively traded, potentially indicating that investors are holding.

A trend such as this one could also lead to reduced market volatility and even spark a bullish reversal, should buying pressure amplify.

Unlike the previous trading week, which saw fireworks in the face of massive price crashes to multi-month (and year) lows, this one started a lot calmer and went through fewer fluctuations even though it was just as eventful, if not more.

The weekend was expectedly dull as BTC spent it sitting around $84,000 aside from some volatility experienced on Sunday evening after a whale opened a short position and some community members tried to (unsuccessfully) liquidate them. The first actual breakout attempt came on Tuesday when BTC plunged toward $81,000 but managed to defend that level.

It went on the offensive on Wednesday and especially on Thursday. First, the US Federal Reserve said it will not change the key interest rates, which was expected but brought some fluctuations to the crypto market.

The most important news, which was also anticipated by some, came hours later when Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse announced that the lawsuit against the SEC is now over as the regulator had decided to drop its latest appeal.

Bitcoin reacted with an immediate surge that pushed it beyond $87,000 during the Thursday morning Asian trading session, which became a two-week peak. However, the asset failed to maintain its run and dropped to $84,000 almost immediately.

It has remained there as of press time, with a market cap of $1.650 trillion and dominance over the alts at 58.5%. The weekly scale is slightly in the red for BTC, while SOL, ADA, DOGE, and PI have plunged hard. In contrast, BNB and TRX are with notable gains, while TON has risen by 24% after Durov’s passport retrieval.

Market Data

Market Cap: $2.832T | 24H Vol: $80B | BTC Dominance: 58.5%

BTC: $83,850 (-1.11%) | ETH: $1,957 (+1.85%) | XRP: $2.37 (+0.7%)

This Week’s Crypto Headlines You Can’t Miss

Plunge to $44K or Surge to $112K: Bearish and Bullish Bitcoin Price Predictions. Bitcoin’s price stagnation continues for a few weeks but that just adds more fuel to the fire of analysts expecting a big move ahead. One of them, Ali Martinez, outlined two scenarios – one that sees BTC dumping to $44,000 and another that forecasts a surge beyond $110,000.

They Knew? These Wallets Loaded Up on XRP Before Ripple’s SEC Win. The aforementioned Ripple win against the SEC in their four-year-long legal battle benefited some more than others. It turns out that XRP whales had piled up big time in the past two months, leading to the case’s resolution.

Ripple CEO Pushes for XRP in US Reserves, Keeps IPO Option Alive. After the landmark announcement made on X, Garlinghouse appeared on Bloomberg to provide some details regarding the company’s future. He believes an IPO in the States is not out of the question and asserted that XRP should be added to the US crypto strategic reserve.

How Much Do US Interest Rates Really Matter to Crypto? Although the past few FOMC meetings didn’t bring any changes to the interest rates, previous examples have shown that the central bank’s decisions have profound effects on BTC’s immediate price movements. However, what are the long-term effects? Find out more here.

Has Bitcoin Really Entered a Bear Market? Analyst Weighs In. Big industry names like CryptoQuant’s CEO, Ki Young Ju, asserted earlier this week that the BTC bull run has ended, at least for the foreseeable future. Another analyst outlined his views on whether there’s some merit to this statement and provided metrics supporting his stance.

Binance Maintains Over 100% Reserves for 29 Straight Months. Digital asset reserves became a massive part of crypto exchanges’ transparency policies after the FTX fallout, and Binance seems to be proving that point. According to recent data, the exchange has maintained over 100% reserves for well over two years now.

Charts

This week, we have a chart analysis of Ethereum, Ripple, Cardano, Toncoin, and Solana – click here for the complete price analysis.

SOL’s price performance over the past 24 hours has been in line with that of the rest of the cryptocurrency market and remains largely in red. Let’s check out some of the more important Solana ecosystem news.

Raydium launches Pump.Fun competitor

Raydium – Solana’s most popular decentralized exchange – saw a surge in its token’s price after announcing the launch of its own meme coin launchpad – a move that many took as a direct jab at the popular Pump.Fun.

This followed rumors that the latter was testing its very own automated market maker.

If the reports turn out true, LaunchLab – the meme coin launchpad of Raydium – is supposed to be an upgrade to Pump.Fun’s token-launching product with dynamic bonidng curves, support for multiple tokens and whatnot.

Pump.Fun strikes back

In its turn, Pump.Fun has launched PumpSwap – a decentralized exchange which, by the looks of it, aims to compete for mindshare and market space with Raydium.

According to the original release, PumpSwap will also offer fee-free and instant token migrations, while also planning to introduce revenue sharing for creators later on. What’s the big deal for Raydium, you may ask?

Well, the way Pump.Fun was designed previously, tokens needed to reach a market cap of more than the meme-ish $69,000 and “graduate” to Raydium – a process that costed 6 SOL. Now, they can list directly on PumpSwap without having to pay the fee. Note that 36% of Raydium’s trading volume came from Pump.Fun launches.

The importance of ecosystem projects for Solana

If it’s not obvious by now, Pump.Fun has a huge influence on Solana’s broader ecosystem. And to put this into perspective, consider this: Solana’s network revenue and DEX volume plummeted by 97% in recent months.

This is solely because the hype around meme coins is fading following the scandals with LIBRA, MELANIA, and other sniped insider launches.

As reported by Matthe Haddad, this week, there was a full 24 hours-period without a single token graduating through Pump.Fun. To contrast this – in January, the platform saw over 1.7M tokens launched every single day with roughly 1% of them graduating.

TRX expands to Solana

Justin Sun, the founder of Tron, hinted that there is a possibility of a potential TRX exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the making. At the time of this writing, there’s nothing official.

This comes on the heels of TRX’s recent integration into the ecosystem of Solana’s blockchain, further improving its utility and potential reach.