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XRP tokens surged 8% over the past 24 hours to buck a market-wide decline following a U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filing against prominent crypto exchange Binance.

XRP traded just under 50 cents in Asian morning hours on Tuesday, reaching a five-month high. Its XRP Ledger network has seen fundamental upgrades in the past few months that may have contributed to the rise.

However, a part of the bullish outlook came as some in the community said the classification of major tokens as a commodity in the CFTC filing against Binance could mean XRP tokens were, too, commodities instead of a security, as alleged by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the ongoing Ripple v. SEC case.

Ripple CTO David Schwartz has previously made the case for xrp tokens as a commodity. XRP is a raw good that trades in commerce and one XRP is treated as equivalent to every other XRP. That's pretty much the definition of a "commodity, Schwartz said in a January tweet.

No part of XRP's value comes from anyone else's legal obligations to XRP holders, he said at the time.

Ripple has historically maintained a distance from its relation to XRP, the token that powers some of Ripples products and the XRP Ledger network. Any progression in the case causes XRP price movement, however.

Binance and its CEO Changpeng Zhao were sued Monday as the CFTC alleged Binance offered unregistered crypto derivatives products and directed U.S. customers to evade compliance controls through the use of VPNs.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois on Monday, alleged that Binance operated a derivatives trading operation in the U.S., offering trades for cryptocurrencies including bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), litecoin (LTC), tether (USDT) and Binance USD (BUSD), which the suit referred to as commodities.

Bitcoin fell under $27,000, losing a local support level, while ether briefly dropped under $1,700 before recovering. Overall market capitalization fell nearly 3%, CoinGecko data shows.

Markets slumped almost immediately but some market observers found optimism in the fact that tokens mentioned in the CFTC filing were commodities and not securities.

Alarm bells in the broader crypto community were sounded last month as the SEC was rumored to crack down on staking-as-a-service products, or protocols that pay rewards to users who lock up token holdings for a specified amount of time.

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XRP Surges to Five-Month High as Some Point to Bitcoin Commodities Mention - CoinDesk

ACCRA, Ghana Block CEO Jack Dorsey and his top brass descended on Accra for the inaugural Africa Bitcoin Conference in December to talk about one of the most potentially disruptive and transformative alternatives to the continent's existing financial system: bitcoin.

Since its inception in 2008, this unfamiliar form of money has alternatively been disdained as an absurdly complex toy for libertarian techies, a legalized form of gambling, a speculative bet to get rich quick, and a vehicle for criminals and fraudsters to obscure the origins of their ill-begotten gains.

But this parallel financial system can also serve a tangible social good, offering an onramp to the financial system for people who would otherwise be left out. In countries where the vast majority of the population is unbanked, national currencies are no longer a safe store of value, remittances comprise a hefty portion of GDP, and international sanctions complicate connections to the global economy, a virtual currency that doesn't require an intermediary to approve transactions can be a vital lifeline for survival.

As cryptocurrency continues to rise in prominence and becomes a growing flashpoint for regulators, Dorsey and his deputies are providing an essential counternarrative: Bitcoin brings financial power to people who would otherwise have none.

"It doesn't matter to me if the price goes down or up, because I can still use bitcoin as a vehicle to move money around the world instantaneously," said Mike Brock, the CEO of TBD at Block, a unit which focuses on cryptocurrency and decentralized finance.

"I can exchange dollars for bitcoin and then bitcoin for Brazilian rial. There is a market for bitcoin in every corner of the world today," continued Brock.

Moving money in Africa is an expensive and complicated process.

Commercial bank branch access is limited, especially for people living in remote and rural areas. Digital banking options are also limited. Tack on rampant hyperinflation, widespread government corruption, and capital controls trapping domestic cash in banks, and money can stop making sense altogether.

"If someone wants to move money to the country next door, normally, you'd have to fill up a suitcase full of cash and move it over the border," explains Ray Youssef, CEO of Paxful.

Part of the problem stems from the continent's quasi-colonial payment framework, in which roughly 80% of cross-border payments originating from African banks are processed offshore, mostly in the U.S. or Europe. That translates to higher costs and processing times that are sometimes measured in weeks.

Then there's mobile money, which has been around since the early 2000s. Think of it like an electronic wallet tied to a phone number that does not require a smartphone or data to operate. Users can pay bills and shop with their phone through SMS texting, instead of having to rely on traditional banking options.

Africa's mobile money transactions rose 39% to more than $700 billion in 2021, according to data from the GSM Association, a non-profit representing mobile network operators worldwide. World Bank data shows that account ownership at a financial institution or via a mobile money service provider has more than doubled in the last decade, rising to 55% of adults in Sub-Saharan Africa.

An employee uses a Nokia 1200 mobile phone inside an M-Pesa store in Nairobi, Kenya, on Sunday, April 14, 2013.

Trevor Snap | Bloomberg | Getty Images

But even as adoption proliferates, mobile money users don't get the perks of legacy banking, including earning interest on banked savings and building up a credit score based on a history of spending. Interoperability on the continent also remains a major issue with this alternative way of banking.

"The entire banking system in Africa is completely and utterly broken, even amongst the mobile money providers, the telcos," said Youssef from Paxful, a peer-to-peer crypto marketplace where users can directly buy and sell tokens with one another.

"Two thousand payment networks and only 2% of them talk to each other. That number continues to grow. It's not getting better, it's actually getting worse," continued Youssef.

Companies like Western Union and MoneyGram offer an expansive physical network of storefronts around the world designed to move money for those who are unbanked. That cash network was extraordinarily difficult and expensive to build, which is why there aren't a lot of direct competitors. It is also why those cash transfers often incur substantial fees.

Bitcoin could eliminate all these intermediaries, allowing citizens to send digital payments directly to one another, without relying on credit and without incurring multiple settlement fees along the way.

"We're going to move to a model where we can make payments without IOUs, or credit, or promises, or fiat," said Alex Gladstein, chief strategy officer for the Human Rights Foundation, an organization that works with activists from authoritarian regimes around the world. "It's literally like sending a piece of gold or a $20 bill instantly somewhere else."

"If you can get access to the internet, you can settle bitcoin payments," said Brock. "And the government can't do anything about it."

Dorsey points to the example of what happened in Nigeria during the protests against the brutality of the country's Special Anti-Robbery Squad a movement referred to as #EndSARS.

"The Nigerian government went to various bank corps to stop protesters from receiving money which bitcoin made up for," Dorsey said in Accra. "So our whole reason for being as a company is solving the same problem that bitcoin will ultimately solve for everyone in the world."

Moving money on the bitcoin blockchain at its base layer has its own challenges. At times of peak demand, fees will often spike higher, and if a user is unwilling to pay a premium for the transaction, they may have to wait for more blocks of transactions to get confirmed before their transfer goes through.

Bitcoin's Lightning Network helps alleviate both of those problems by slashing the cost of transactions to virtually zero and enabling nearly instantaneous cash payments around the planet making bitcoin a more effective payment rail. This so-called "layer two" technology is built on top of bitcoin's main chain, in part because bitcoiners are conservative about introducing changes to the base layer, for fear of opening it up to hacks or other mischief.

Yellow Card Africa's largest centralized cryptocurrency exchange run by CEO Chris Maurice is also looking to embed this layer two technology into the platform, in order to drive down the price of transactions to virtually zero. Currently, the exchange doesn't charge a commission for transactions, but network fees can be pretty steep when a lot of trades are happening at once.

"It'll have a pretty big impact to our customers, because a lot of them are very price sensitive," says Justin Poiroux, the co-founder and CTO of Yellow Card.

Yellow Card's plan is still in its infancy, but Poiroux tells CNBC that he thinks the Lightning Network could ultimately provide a lot of value for its retail customers.

Bitnob CEO Bernard Parah and Cash App's crypto product lead, Miles Suter, at the Africa Bitcoin Conference in Accra, Ghana.

Bernard Parah

Because Lightning offers a universal monetary language, money can travel around the world between any Lightning-enabled bitcoin wallet. Someone who uses a platform like Block's Cash App a regulated, American financial product with 51 million monthly transacting users which integrated with the Lightning Network in Feb. 2022 can pay any Lightning invoice in the world instantly.

"It's a new way of doing business. It's a different paradigm entirely," said Gladstein.

The crypto product lead at Cash App, Miles Suter, believes that a big part of bitcoin's utility is how it gets around broken and convoluted payment systems that don't talk to each other.

"At Cash App in particular, we've always been really interested in taking bitcoin beyond just being seen an investment and bringing day-to-day utility to it," Suter told CNBC on the sidelines of the Africa Bitcoin Conference.

"In many ways, the people on the African continent are already doing that with the tools they have," continued Suter.

Bernard Parah is a 30-year-old entrepreneur living in Jos, Nigeria, about a five hour drive from the capital city of Abuja. He's the CEO of Bitnob, an app that lets users across Africa buy, save, and invest in bitcoin. Bitnob is SMS-based and piggybacks on the mobile money system, making it easier for people to send money directly into bank accounts and mobile money wallets in African countries.

Parah recently teamed up with Strike, a Lightning Network payments platform, to launch a feature called "Send Globally" that allows Americans to transfer money to people living in Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya.

It uses local fiat cash on either side of the transaction, but bitcoin is used under the hood as the pipeline to jump money over the border. The end user never touches the cryptocurrency themselves.

"We're able to settle into bank accounts or mobile money accounts, without the recipients having to interact with bitcoin themselves," Parah tells CNBC.

"Over time, we've seen that there are still people who really don't understand how to use bitcoin; who don't care about bitcoin. What they do care about is their problems getting solved," continued Parah.

Bitnob CEO Bernard Parah and Strike CEO Jack Mallers announcing the launch of 'Send Globally' on stage at the Africa Bitcoin Conference in Accra, Ghana.

Bernard Parah

It feels like a wire transfer or a Venmo payment, according to Strike CEO Jack Mallers.

"It's instant. There's no debt. There's no credit. There's no delays," explains Mallers.

The model works because Parah and Mallers are willing to take on the liability associated with the transfer by holding cash in escrow on either end of the exchange.

Once the money is received in Nigeria, Bitnob which is a regulated entity with connections to the local banks will take that bitcoin and turn it into their local currency.

"It's just two regulated entities communicating over the language of bitcoin and cutting out excess fees," said Suter. "I think that's revolutionary."

Mallers says that they offer more competitive foreign exchange rates by using bitcoin as a price-setting intermediary, a sort of new world reserve currency.

"The rate that we got was actually 60% better than the traditional forex market rate," said Mallers. "The way to actually think about how we're achieving forex if we clear through bitcoin is, 'I have dollars. How many bitcoin can I get for my dollars? And then how many naira can I get for my bitcoin?'" said Mallers.

"It's acting as the most liquid, accessible, global instrument for us to clear and settle value amongst each other," he said.

The arrangement also offers a few big ancillary benefits, including interoperability with payment apps around the world that have tens of millions of users.

Block's Suter explained that Cash App could theoretically interoperate with Bitnob.

"We're only live in the U.S. right now, but that doesn't mean we can't speak to Bitnob in Nigeria and transfer value instantly and for free across these borders," Suter said of Cash App.

South African developer Kgothatso Ngako built a custodial lightning wallet called Machankura.

Kgothatso Ngako

South African developer Kgothatso Ngako, who goes by KG, has integrated the Lightning Network into the GSM network, combining the best of a few worlds, in a larger effort to meet customers where they are.

"My focus is giving people without an internet connection the ability to send or receive bitcoin," Ngako said.

KG calls his custodial Lightning wallet "Machankura" South African slang for money. Whereas most Lightning transactions today require a smartphone and data, Ngako's service integrates lightning via Unstructured Supplementary Service Data, or USSD, which is the protocol that mobile money runs on. (It is similar to HTTP, or HyperText Transport Protocol, the protocol on which the web was built.)

Ngako tells CNBC that he currently has around 3,000 users spread across eight countries, with a concentration in South Africa, Uganda, Kenya, and Nigeria. In his home market of South Africa, there are strict rules around currency exchange, which make his product even more appealing to some users looking to move their money abroad.

"The South African Reserve Bank regulates the cross-border flow of capital including the exchange of currency to and from South Africa. You need some form of approval to convert ZAR into foreign currency," said Ernest Marais, partner at Johannesburg law firm, Tabacks.

KG's Machankura is compatible with any Lightning wallet on the planet. In practice, this means that someone with the Cash App in San Francisco, for example, could instantly send bitcoin via Lightning to the phone number of someone with a data-less, basic phone living in a remote part of Uganda.

Ngako's project does face some risks, including regulatory blowback.

Marais tells CNBC that because the South African Reserve Bank cannot regulate the cross-border flow of cryptocurrency, it is considered to be illegal and a criminal offense though crypto regulation largely remains nebulous across most of the continent.

"All African central banks, except for Central African Republic, have made notices stating that they don't issue bitcoin and hence they don't regulate it," counters Ngako, adding that a bitcoin transaction cannot be considered a cross-border exchange as bitcoin transactions aren't regulated within the central bank's institution.

But the rules are confusing for everyone involved.

"The actual location of crypto assets is an anomaly. At what point does it leave the country?" continued Marais.

Ultimately, Ngako believes that once Machankura begins to scale, it will be a major driver of bitcoin adoption across the continent. To that end, Ngako is raising money and building a common refrain among the entrepreneurs on the ground in Accra.

As Dorsey said in Africa, "More and more mass adoption will, in my belief, take away all the oxygen" from governments attempting to control behavior through financial oppression.

"So what do we do? We build, we build, we build, we build, we build, they can't stop us. And that's what's important."

Continue reading here:

Bitcoin is poised to blow up Africa's $86 billion banking system - CNBC

Steve Hanke, professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University, has criticized bitcoin, stating it is not a currency. The economist, known for his vocal opinions about crypto and for the promotion of dollarization initiatives in Latam, blasted bitcoin, saying it has a fundamental value of zero, and that it is a highly speculative asset.

Steve Hanke, professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins, has criticized bitcoin and its value in one of his latest tweets. The economist, known to be very vocal about the negative effect that crypto can have on world economies, contested bitcoins utility, stating:

Bitcoin is not a currency. Its just a highly speculative asset with a fundamental value of zero.

Hanke illustrated his opinion with a cartoon drawn by Robert Rich, as part of his work for Hedgeye Risk Management, where he compares other main fiat currencies including the dollar, the yen, and the euro, with bitcoin.

Responses from the bitcoin community to Hankes opinions came quickly. Digital artist Lucho Poletti, known for his bitcoin-focused work, tweeted a similar cartoon that depicted bitcoin as a better form of money than the fiat currencies that appeared in Robert Richs cartoon.

Others criticized Hankes opinion in writing, like Dr. Julian Hosp, CEO of decentralized finance app Cake Defi, who countered Hankes view, declaring:

Bitcoin has utility. We can argue how much, but it is definitely >0. There are undoubtedly some people who want its utility. Lastly, it is provably rare. Hence, your statement that bitcoin has zero value is 100% incorrect.

Hanke, as a promoter of currency boards and dollarization as a solution for inflation and devaluation problems in countries like Argentina, has criticized the adoption and function of bitcoin several times.

In June 2021, Hanke blasted the adoption of bitcoin in El Salvador as legal tender, saying it could cause the collapse of the countrys economy. At the time, he stated that all the dollars in El Salvador could be vacuumed out of the country, leaving citizens with only bitcoin.

This criticism intensified in October 2021, when he stated that Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, was playing fast and [loose] with El Salvadors tax dollars again, when he announced buying the bitcoin dip while purchasing 150 bitcoin.

What do you think about Steve Hanke and his criticism of bitcoin adoption and its fundamental value? Tell us in the comments section below.

Sergio is a cryptocurrency journalist based in Venezuela. He describes himself as late to the game, entering the cryptosphere when the price rise happened during December 2017. Having a computer engineering background, living in Venezuela, and being impacted by the cryptocurrency boom at a social level, he offers a different point of view about crypto success and how it helps the unbanked and underserved.

Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not a direct offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation or endorsement of any products, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

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Steve Hanke Blasts Bitcoin: It Is 'Not a Currency' and Has a ... - Bitcoin News

Something that people dont normally consider: when someone says BSV or BTC what is it that you think of? Is it the coin which is traded on an exchange? Is it the platform, upon which people develop blockchain applications? Is it the peer-to-peer network of nodes? Or is it the software that runs said nodes?

Well if you are not sure, then rest-assured you are probably part of the vast majority. It is the hope of this article to clear some of this up, as the crypto industry is rife with many misunderstandings and misdirections, of which this is one of the most common. After we have cleared up the differences between these, I wish to turn to the issue of chain splits (sometimes called forks), which may occur when the nodes of the network do not come to majority consensus on what the ledger state should be. Why is this relevant? Well, as we all know, chain splits are very disruptive to blockchains, leading to splitting of the developer community, and battles over which side gets to keep the standing token ticker symbol. Why is understanding chain splits important? Well, because as blockchains in general become integrated into the common law of society, we need to arm ourselves with the knowledge on how the implementation of law will affect the operations of blockchains.

Up until this point, the narrative that has been pandered is that blockchains, due to their decentralized nature, live completely supra-legal, and outside of the reach and understanding of common laws. This cannot be further from the truth, as given enough time, laws has a way of catching up with whatever technology or society can invent. There were no airline safety laws before the time of the Wright brothers, nor were there laws against using radioactive radium in toothpaste at the turn of the century, but would it have been reasonable for scientists to argue that laws surrounding the harm done by invisible forces such as radiation poisoning could never be devised? Well by that same reasoning crypto proponents have been claiming for years that laws could never be enforced against a decentralized network such as those employed by blockchains and people to this day still believe it. And this is relevant and topical considering the upcoming clash between the common wisdom of crypto and the law in the cases surrounding Craig Wrights claim for his stolen bitcoins. But first, lets clear up some terminology.

What is BSV, BTC?

BSV is a ticker symbol that represents a protocol, and the Bitcoin SV node is simply software for a node which is compatible with that protocol. Similarly BTC is a protocol, and BTC-Core is node software that adheres to the BTC protocol. Of the protocols, BSV is the closest to the original Bitcoin protocol as described in the original Bitcoin white paper, as it does not include any of the changes that were pushed into the BTC or BCH protocols in order to support different higher layer protocols and platforms1 such as Lightning Network. The BSV protocol function by function is closest to what Bitcoin was in 2009. With that understanding, Bitcoin SV is just what happens to be the most prevalent node software available presently, but it is by no means the only one. In fact, there are several other node softwares available for those who do not wish to use the official version, including ones implemented in Go, Rust, and an upcoming one called Teranode, which promises to be able to process terabyte sized blocks. No matter the node software you run, however, as long as it adheres to the open protocol of BSV, BTC, or BCH, your node will remain in sync or in consensus with other nodes that run on that protocol.

Seen in this light, chain splits are just a simple matter of some servers falling out of consensus with each other, and not being able to follow the chain. If they fail to upgrade their software to the version that the miners (henceforth referred to as block producers) are running, then they simply never receive any new blocks, and to them, the blockchain will have essentially stopped. They may see plenty of transactions and traffic on their network, but blocks will simply never come. Listening-only nodes have no ability to cause a chain or ledger to split. They have no power whatsoever, as they are listen-only.

A chain split is when the block producing nodes dont all agree on the rules. When a significant proportion of the producing nodes are running incompatible software, with incompatible protocol rulesets, then a potential for chain split exists. This is what happened twice in the pastfirst, when BTC split away from Bitcoin with the introduction of the SegWit change, and then later, when BCH introduced a change to enable tokens which the majority did not accept. In each of these past splits, the protocol which remained the closest to the original ruleset had to change the ticker symbol of their token, due to the fact that the exchanges where tokens were traded were confused over which of the token ledgers would use the existing ticker symbol, and which would be given a new one. However, generally speaking a chain split is unlikely (because it is costly2) to result when a majority of the block producers are in agreement with which version of the node software they will run, and therefore which ruleset they will support.

From the perspective software, BSV, BTC, and BCH node software is simply a set of protocol rules to follow, and different block producers running different software will result in seeing different versions of the ledger. The effect of this is that with every ledger split, a new token is created3 or airdropped. This is how the current situation came to be, with 3 major tokens all claiming to be Bitcoin. But it is only upon the examination of the protocol and ruleset that they enforce that one can start to form an opinion of which is the closest match to what bitcoin truly is. Contrary to popular belief, it is not necessarily the ledger token that the exchanges have decided to award the legacy ticker symbol to. The exchanges, after all, do not get to decide what a product is.

Therefore, if bitcoin is just a protocol, and not the network, or a coin, then the BSV node is just the version of software that you run, and what software you run determines what version of the ledger you see. What this means is when the time comes for law enforcement to effect the freezing of coins, whether it be to stop the proceeds of criminal activity or to recover lost funds, all that is required is for a majority of block producing nodes to be running the version of software that will honor the confiscation of frozen coins. And given that any sort of confiscation transaction cannot be created unless a majority of block producers agree on the status of the coins in question, there will be nary a chance for a chain split. The current method for effecting the freezing and re-issuance of coins by court order while implemented only in the BSV node software, was written to be compatible with BTC node software, so it is conceivable that block producers could contract developers to patch the BTC node software with the necessary changes in order to comply with the asset recovery process. Whether or not authorities will be able to compel a majority of the block producers to upgrade their software, will be a different matter, and an issue that will be played out in the real world, and not on the blockchain. But that, is for the lawyers to worry about. Not the technologists, or the users.

Jerry Chan

WallStreetTechnologist

***

Notes:

[1] Arguably because they were tooted as a solution to the false scaling problem of bitcoin, which BSV solved simply by reverting to the original bitcoin rules.

[2] in order to support a chain split, the minority side must constantly burn cash in producing blocks which may have no future value, perpetually.

[3] although which is the new token and which is the old token is indeterminate and up for endless pointless debate.

Watch: Heres how Bitcoin works as a base layer for other blockchains

New to Bitcoin? Check out CoinGeeksBitcoin for Beginnerssection, the ultimate resource guide to learn more about Bitcoinas originally envisioned by Satoshi Nakamotoand blockchain.

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Difference between Bitcoin software, network, and protocol - CoinGeek

Bitcoin (BTC) enters the last week of March in uncertain territory as a strong weekly close still keeps $30,000 out of reach.

The largest cryptocurrency has sealed seven days of practically flat performance despite some volatility in between as the market seeks fresh direction. Where could it go next?

In what was a week of more surprises from the macroeconomy, BTC/USD spent much time reacting to decisions from the United States Federal Reserve and associated commentary.

Next up, however, is a period of relative calm, followed by a key monthly close, which analysis says could see the start of a new bullish trend.

Bitcoin is currently up 20% for March, meaning that the coming days will decide the strength of the ongoing recovery from multi-year lows.

Cointelegraph takes a look at five key topics to bear in mind during the final week of what has been a volatile month.

Bitcoin managed to close the week with a modest flourish, returning to the $28,000 mark, data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingViewshows.

This meant that BTC/USD stayed practically unmoved versus the weekend prior, delivering some impressive stability despite the periods of volatility which occurred in the intervening period.

Nonetheless, concerns are brewing that the market may struggle to preserve current levels.

In a fresh analysis on March 27, popular Twitter account IncomeSharks flagged on-balance volume (OBV) as a telltale sign of decreasing momentum.

Just hard to ignore the weak OBV at resistance, price at resistance, and the lack of demand at these prices, it commented alongside a chart.

Trader and analyst Rekt Capital agreed that a retracement would be healthy for Bitcoin should it enter.

If BTC continues to struggle to break beyond $28,700 then a healthy dip may need to occur to gain fresh buyer interest at lower levels, he tweeted on the day.

Over the weekend, Rekt Capital had flagged that price point as a critical area to watchwhile remaining upbeat about the longer-term trend.

BTC/USD, he forecast, will confirm a breakout from its bear market at the end of March, provided the monthly close preserves the 200-week moving average (WMA) as support.

The 200WMA currently stands at around $25,500, giving bulls room for a modest dip.

Similarly level-headed, but on shorter timeframes, is trader Crypto Tony, who eyed $27,700 and $26,600 to hold on the day.

We have yet to lose the EQ at $27,700 on a 4 hour time frame, so the doomsday tweets can take a break, he summarized, referring to the point in a range where buy and sell pressure is balanced.

Unlike last week, the final days of March are not slated to deliver surprises from the U.S. macroeconomic realm.

That is not to say that a curveball will not appear, but the rest of the month is comparatively quiet in terms of macro data releases.

The one key exception could be the March 31 release of the Personal Consumption Expenditures Index (PCE), which holds crucial insights into U.S. inflation trends.

US PCE inflation numbers are due this week - last month this data caused a volatile move lower in risk, markets commentator Tedtalksmacro commented.

Should Bitcoin react to PCE data that comes in outside expectations, the results could make for a volatile weekend just a day before the monthly close.

Any new developments in the ongoing banking crisis would add uncertainty into the mix, and the risk is there contagion remains in Europe, while the defunct Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) found a buyer overnight.

Having hiked interest rates despite the crisis, the Fed is on a diverging path when it comes to interest rates, and further hikes could come, it says. In contrast, markets hold the opposite opinion due to the stress already induced by prior rate increases.

Much tighter financial conditions and ongoing signs of bank stress are major reasons why the market thinks the Fed will be forced to abandon their plans, analysis platform Mosaic Asset explained in the latest edition of its updates series, The Market Mosaic, on March 26.

Related:Crypto winter can take a toll on hodlers mental health

Mosaic further warned that historically, risk assets performed worse immediately following news of a rate hike policy pivot.

If the Fed does pause the rate hiking campaign, it will signal growing concerns that the central bank is breaking something in the capital markets. But also consider that the Fed has a track record of adjusting policy only when its too late, it continued.

It added that as a result, in past bear markets the steepest stock market declines happened after the Fed pivots to a pause or outright rate cuts.

Bitcoin hodlers are setting new records under current conditions and laying the foundations for a supply shock in the process.

The latest data from on-chain analytics firm Glassnode shows that the amount of the available BTC supply, which has not left its wallet in two years or longer, is now at all-time highs.

As of March 27, more than 52.5% of all mined BTC has stayed dormant since at least March 2021, with owners not selling or transferring during the ensuing bear market.

Address numbers are also in up only mode, with the number of wallets holding 0.1 BTC or more setting new records on the day.

Likewise, wallets with a non-zero balanceare more plentiful than ever, with 45,388,865 in existence as of March 27.

The numbers feed into an existing narrative over what will happen to BTC price action during the next wave of mainstream consumer interest.

With so much of the supply now ferreted away into cold storage, any rush for BTC could spark the realization that one of the worlds hardest assets is already too scarce.

According to Glassnode, the overall BTC balance held by major exchanges remains near its lowest in five years.

For some, BTC price action is right on track for repeating past cycles, setting a new all-time high in the process.

Among them is Tedtalksmacro, who notes that the timing of the November multi-year lows on BTC/USD was more or less perfect.

Since then, a rally that began in January has stuck, and there have been no signs yet that fresh macro lows will appear to take out the $15,600 floor from November 2022.

~390 days until the next BTC halving, Tedtalksmacro wrote on March 27, referencing a dedicated thread about Bitcoins performance from the end of January.

BTC price is thus sticking to historical precedent by bottoming more than 400 days before its next block subsidy halving.

Tedtalksmacro, meanwhile, is not the only popular commentator taking halving cycle timing into account when it comes to price.

Earlier this month, Rekt Capital estimated that the next all-time high should be in around 18 months.

It takes BTC around 900 days to rally from Downtrend breakout to Bull Market top, he explained.

As with last week, a potential thorn remains in the side of Bitcoins bull run, which comes from investors themselves.

Related:XRP, LTC, XMR and AVAX show bullish signs as Bitcoin battles to hold $28K

Despite the volatility over the Fed rate hike and inability to push closer to $30,000, Bitcoin has seen the kind of sentiment absent since its late 2021 all-time highs.

According to the Crypto Fear & Greed Index, greed presently characterizes market sentiment in crypto more broadly.

On March 21, the Indexs score hit 68/100, the most since November 2021, and has continued to circle the mid-60s since.

While not near extreme levels, the higher the Index rises into greed, the more likely a market correction will occur.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Continued here:

Will BTC ditch the bear market? 5 things to know in Bitcoin this week - Cointelegraph