Liquidity pinch
What's being bought and sold*
TOP TRENDING ASSETS
*Trading activity in the past 24 hours on the Uphold platform, as of 8 a.m. 19th March 2025.
The combined total of buy and sell percentages can exceed 100% due to customers who engage in both buying and selling the same asset within the 24-hour time frame.
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What’s up
Bitcoin Tiptoes Into Green While EOS Vaults
Sluggish, sideways Bitcoin has somehow meandered back to the cusp of $84,000, up 1.8% in the past 24 hours, as of Wednesday at 9:15 a.m. (EST), according to CoinGecko.
On a day that will see Fed Chair Jerome Powell make some state-of-policy remarks later this afternoon, potentially spurring some risk-asset volatility, Ethereum embarked on a critical mission to reclaim the psychologically crucial $2K mark. The No. 2 digital asset did get there, gaining roughly 6% since this time yesterday to reach $2,006.
Generally, though, crypto is flat. A significant mover of note: EOS, native token of Eos, a layer-1, Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain. It spiked by more than 30% after developers announced a rebrand to "Vaulta," part of a pivot to "Web3 banking." The transition is set for the end of May, with the EOS token being swapped for the new Vaulta token, EOS said in a statement.
Among Top 20 coins, Toncoin (TON) is the top performer over the past week. TON (No. 15) has gained 32% in the past seven days. The upturn comes amidst reports that Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, the communications network associated with TON, has freely left France where for the past several months he has been detained by authorities in connection with an ongoing legal case, per CoinMarketCap.
What's down
Dry Conditions Observed
Reports of the demise of capital flows into the crypto space have not been exaggerated. Glassnode flags a 54% decline in exchange inflows. The action in Bitcoin-related derivatives is waning too.
At the apex a few months ago, open interest in BTC futures reached $57 billion. That figure has since decreased by more than one third, per Glassnode.
The fact that open interest in BTC futures has been slashed from $57B to $37B signals a "reduction in leverage and speculative activity," Decrypt said.
What's next
Institutions Get Past Commitment Issues
Earlier this week, the CME launched a futures contract tied to Solana (SOL). That's considered a harbinger of institutional adoption to come. SOL is also among a handful of big-cap altcoins viewed as most likely to eventually join BTC and ETH as the object of a U.S.-listed, SEC-approved ETF, according to Cointelegraph, citing Bloomberg Intelligence.
Regulators could be poised to approve more than a dozen proposed ETFs, including products tied to Litecoin and XRP.
According to a new survey-based research report co-published by Coinbase and EY-Parthenon, institutional investors are becoming more receptive to crypto, with 83% of respondents saying they plan to increase crypto allocations in 2025.
Increased interest is driven in part by "the belief that greater regulatory clarity will be the catalyst that unlocks a new wave of opportunities in digital assets, particularly with regard to custody," the report said.
