Bitcoin BTC$74,074.35 It briefly reached $75,912 early Tuesday and has since returned to $74,372, but the intraday volatility is not as interesting as the underlying weekly picture.
CoinDesk reported earlier on Tuesday that the rally above $75,000 was driven by derivatives activity rather than new purchases, particularly as the closing of a large $60,000 put position forced market makers to buy spot Bitcoin upon rebalancing.
The rapid fall below the previous support level of $74,400 from April 2025 confirmed that traders are unwilling to move above that level without fundamental catalysts.
All major tokens are up at least 5% in 7 days. Ether rose 13.3% to $2,316. XRP rose 11% to $1.53, while Orana rose 9.7% to $93.92. Dogecoin rose 9.5% to $0.10, trading above 10 cents. BNB rose 5% to $676. This is the broadest sustained rally since before the Iran war began and comes ahead of the most important Fed meeting in months.
But the data on the institutional flows underlying the rise is real and increasingly difficult to ignore. CF Benchmarks analyst Mark Pilipchuk noted in an email that the Spot Bitcoin ETF recorded net inflows of approximately $767 million last week, marking the third consecutive week of positive inflows and a sharp reversal from five consecutive weeks of more than $3 billion in outflows at the beginning of the year.
Gold’s convergence trade is also a signal worth paying attention to. Year-to-date through mid-March, GLD returned about 16%, while IBIT lost about 19%. However, that gap has narrowed rapidly, with Bitcoin outperforming gold by 13.2% since early March. The 90-day correlation between the two changed from -0.27 to +0.29 over six months. The “digital gold” story, which seemed dead in February, is starting to come back to life.
The Fed meeting, which begins today and concludes on Wednesday, will be a key point. This decision itself is not an unusual event, as CME FedWatch still projects a 3.5% to 3.75% hold on the stock more than 95% of the time.
What’s important is the dot plot and Mr. Powell’s press conference. Stagflation is inevitable when oil prices rise above $100, but the labor market is weakening and February’s 92,000 job losses remain fresh. The Fed is caught between two missions moving in contradictory directions, and how Powell describes that tension on Wednesday could determine the direction of risk assets through the end of March.
