Market Overview
Traditional risk markets sold off over this past week, as investors continued to weigh in on the escalating violence in Ukraine, as well as more hawkish Fed commentary, while most leading cryptocurrencies also declined for the first time in three weeks
Initially, on Monday, equities rallied driven by the Nasdaq after Tesla CEO Elon Musk purchased a 9.2% stake in social media giant Twitter. The same day, SEC Chair Gensler called for more regulation on stablecoins and crypto firms’ custody as well as market-making arms
Wednesday, all eyes focused on the release of the FOMC meeting minutes, as this was the first release in almost a month following the 25bps rate hike announced on March 16th. The meeting minutes reinforced existing sentiment that the Fed will continue to pursue an aggressive rate hike schedule, while the Fed also announced to prepare so slash its balance sheet by USD95bn a month. The same day, Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey issued a draft of the Stablecoin Transparency of Reserves and Uniform Safe Transactions (TRUST) Act while Terra added USD230m of BTC to push its Bitcoin reserve to USD1.6bn
On Thursday, in an effort to address its economic recession resulting largely from sanctions, the Russian Central Bank lowered its key interest rate from 20% to 17%, making the policy move the "largest cut in two decades”. In the US, the SEC approved the fourth Bitcoin Futures ETF “The Teucrium Bitcoin Futures Fund” while another US federal agency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, issued a note to the banks it supervises warning them against crypto’s “evolving” and “not yet fully understood” risks. Moreover, Robinhood rolled out a crypto wallet to its 2m users while it also announced that it is making plans to add the Bitcoin Lightning Network to its platform for speedier BTC transactions
In economic news, US initial jobless claims came in lower than anticipated (166k act. vs 200k est.) while continuing claims came in slightly higher than expected (1.523m act. vs 1.302m est.)
Equities finished the week in the red across the board as investors prepare for the Fed's next move. Both the 3- and 5-year yields closed higher than the 10-year and 30-year, as the yield curve remains inverted
Digital assets were equally affected by the deteriorating overall sentiment towards wider risk assets with many of the top 30 currencies being down over the week with the overall global market cap falling towards USD2.077 trillion. Besides that, deal flow remained very active as outlined on the next page
Looking at the week ahead, traditional markets will focus on the ECB meeting this Thursday with liquidity expected to materially decrease at the end of the week with the upcoming Easter holiday in Europe
Source: CRTLabs, Bloomberg
VC and Fundraising Deal Flow
Source: CRTLabs
Market and Performance Overview
Fear and Greed Index
Upcoming Key Calendar
Source: CRTLabs, Bloomberg, CoinShares https://alternative.me/crypto/fear-and-greed-index/
Disclaimer
NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE
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