In markets
Bitcoin has held up well amid the conflict in the Middle East. While it fell sharply as news broke that the US was bombing Iran, it recovered fast, too. Bitcoin surged 5.9% overnight and is now trading above its pre-conflict levels. Analysts suggest the overnight move may be short covering by options traders rather than a decisive move to the upside. With the conflict set to last weeks, and the Iranians closing the Strait of Hormuz – a vital trade route for around 20% of global oil – risks are piling up.
The weekend’s conflict has highlighted the advantages of “non-custodial, always-on trading infrastructure”, as media began reporting on commodity price moves on Hyperliquid with traditional markets closed.
Prior to the Iran situation, Bitcoin surged 11.5% over a little over a day last week, providing hope that prices could recover as quickly as they had fallen. “Bitcoin is capable of making very big moves, very fast,” analyst Scott Melker observed.
Bitcoin finishes the week up 6.1% to trade around A$96,928 (US$68,753) while Ethereum is up 8.5% to trade around A$2,852 (US$2,021) — but it has just marked six months in a row in the red. XRP gained 2.3%, Solana was up 10.5% and Cardano has overtaken Bitcoin Cash again by market cap, with a 4.1% gain. Both Strategy and BitMine added to their positions this week. The Crypto Fear and Greed Index is at 14, or Extreme Fear.
From the OTC desk
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Key Economic Calendar Events (AEDT)
- Tuesday, Mar 03 2026 – 09:30 PM – EA Inflation Rate YoY Flash (Consensus 1.7%)
- Wednesday, Mar 04 2026 – 11:30 AM – AU GDP Growth Rate QoQ (Consensus 0.6%)
- Wednesday, Mar 04 2026 – 12:45 AM – CN RatingDog Manufacturing PMI (Consensus 50.1)
- Wednesday, Mar 04 2026 – 04:00 PM – JP Consumer Confidence (Consensus 38.2)
- Thursday, Mar 05 2026 – 11:30 AM – AU Balance of Trade (Consensus A$3.9B)
- Friday, Mar 06 2026 – 12:30 AM – US Unemployment Rate (Consensus 4.3%)
- Monday, Mar 09 2026 – 12:30 PM – CN Inflation Rate YoY (Consensus 0.3%)
In headlines
Reasons for optimism
Bitwise CIO Matt Houghan told the Milk Road podcast that crypto’s fundamentals are better than ever despite low prices, which is often a good time to invest. BitMine’s Tom Lee believes markets have bottomed, pointing out ETH has already lost 90% of the bull market’s gains, which is a similar decline to the -83%, -84% and -96% drawdowns of previous retracements. Other potential bottom signals include Strategy becoming the most shorted stock, the longest time spent in Extreme Fear, and the fact that we are 23 months in from breaking the previous ATH, which historically marks the bottom. However, CoinDesk put out a chart suggesting that Bitcoin’s current 47% drawdown is modest by historical standards, and even though each cycle has gradually lessened, that still leaves the potential bottom “somewhere in the 60%-70% range.”
Fundamentals are great: Meta
Meta has announced plans to integrate third-party stablecoin wallets and payments into its platforms in the second half of this year. It could be the start of crypto’s mainstream moment, as Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram have 3 billion users between them. Facebook famously tried to introduce its Libra/Diem stablecoin in 2019, only to get shut down by lawmakers, and it was forced to abandon the project in 2022.
Fundamentals are great: Morgan Stanley
The US$9.3 trillion (A$13.1T) Wall Street investment bank Morgan Stanley has applied for a US national trust bank charter to custody digital assets. The bank plans to use the charter for trading and to facilitate staking for investment clients throughout the US. Morgan Stanley filed for Bitcoin, Ether, and Solana ETFs in January and has partnered with Zerohash to enable crypto trading for ETrade clients.
Bitcoiners debate Jane Street’s impact
A seductive new theory dropped this week, suggesting Bitcoin’s 50% drawdown could be the fault of quant trading firm Jane Street. Last week, the bankruptcy administrator for Terraform Labs sued Jane Street, alleging that it used insider information to pull 85 million TerraUSD from a liquidity pool, contributing to the collapse of Terra Luna in 2022. The following day, the notorious “10 AM dump” didn’t occur, sparking social media speculation that the lawsuit had caused Jane Street to stop manipulating the price. In a viral post, Justin Belcher explained the 10 AM dump theory: “Selling into thin order books at the open would depress the price, trigger liquidation cascades among leveraged traders, and create buying opportunities at lower levels. The firm could then re-enter at the bottom of a move it had manufactured.” While Jane Street is allowed to create and redeem IBIT shares in-kind and does not have to disclose its shorts or derivatives, there’s not much actual evidence to support the claims. BlockTower founder Ari Paul, Glassnode’s James Check and Bitwise’s Matt Houghan have all dismissed the idea as a conspiracy theory.
No Clarity on March 1
The March 1 deadline to resolve differences between banks and crypto over stablecoin yield rules in the Clarity Act has come and gone. Decrypt’s Sander Lutz spoke to a banking source who said, “We’re not close to a bill.” “I think that there’s a very real likelihood that this thing falls apart unless Brian Armstrong comes to the table,” he said. A different banking source told Crypto In America: “There’s agreement in principle that stablecoin balances shouldn’t earn interest, but crypto firms are still trying to backdoor APY on balances through membership programs, rewards, and staking,” the source said. Crypto czar David Sacks said, “Crypto has made major concessions on stablecoin yield; time for banks to reciprocate.” The banks’ position has been strengthened after the OCC’s proposed rulemaking for the Genius Act signalled tighter restrictions on stablecoin rewards than the crypto industry had anticipated.
Vibecoding could massively accelerate ETH’s 2030 roadmap
Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin believes AI coding could massively accelerate ETH’s 2030 roadmap. A developer called YQ bet Buterin he could vibecode the entire 2030 roadmap into a working client, and managed to produce 702,000 lines of code in just two weeks, featuring 65 separate upgrades that could enable the blockchain to run at 10K TPS with post-quantum signatures. Buterin says it’s probably full of bugs and incomplete, but still hugely impressive. He says AI will help enormously with formally verifying everything in Lean Ethereum. “People should be open to the possibility (not certainty! possibility) that the Ethereum roadmap will finish much faster than people expect, at a much higher standard of security than people expect,” he says. Buterin has also detailed plans for native account abstraction and combating toxic MEV.
Bits and pieces
Hong Kong’s new Advisory Committee on Tax Policy will review taxation on cryptocurrencies, stablecoins and tokenised assets. Hong Kong Monetary Authority subsidiary CMU OmniClear Holdings will also build and operate a digital asset platform to support the issuance and settlement of tokenised bonds. Beast Industries CEO Jeff Housenbold dropped more hints that its new financial platform would include DeFi on Ethereum. “We’re big fans of Ethereum,” he said, adding it’s the “backbone” of stablecoins and DeFi. The Netherlands has backflipped on its unpopular 36% capital gains tax on annual unrealised gains.
The Moonshot Dispatch
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