Invest ideasNews
21 Mar 2026, 08:30
Bitcoin Price Could Visit $43K Before Next Bull Market — Here’s How
For the first time in nearly two months, the Bitcoin price had a sustained run above the psychological $70,000 level over the past week. However, the increased likelihood of potential interest rate hikes by the US Federal Reserve on Friday, March 20, seems to have elevated market apprehension. Interestingly, an on-chain evaluation suggests that the Bitcoin price was always destined for another round of downside movement — this time below the $50,000 level. Is BTC Price Preparing For Another Leg Down? In a Friday post on the X platform, crypto analyst Ali Martinez shared an on-chain insight into the potential bottom of the BTC price in the current bear cycle. According to the market pundit, the price of Bitcoin appears to be headed to the $43,000 level before starting the next bull cycle. Related Reading: Bitcoin Holds At $69,000— Glassnode Data Shows What To Expect Through Late March This projection is based on the Market Value to Realized Value (MVRV) pricing bands, which show the different profitability levels of the premier cryptocurrency. These pricing bands also function as dynamic support and resistance levels, as they compare the current market price to the average realized value (average cost basis) of all investors. As shown in the chart above, MVRV pricing bands have proven, in past cycles, to be quite effective in predicting market tops and bottoms. Using the on-chain metric, Martinez has identified the 0.8 MVRV band as the potential bottom of the Bitcoin price in the ongoing bear market. Martinez revealed that over the past decade, the price of BTC has always rebounded from this 0.8 MVRV band, marking the start of a fresh bull cycle. The highlighted chart shows the flagship cryptocurrency bouncing back to a new high after hitting its cycle low — around this band in 2018, 2020, and 2022. According to data from Glassnode, the 0.8 MVRV band currently lies around the $43,647 region, putting the potential bottom of this cycle nearly 40% away from the current price. If history were to repeat itself, this on-chain evaluation suggests that the Bitcoin price could be at risk of further downside in the coming months. It is important to mention that while the 0.8 MVRV band is currently at $43,647, it is liable to change with further movements in price. Bitcoin Price At A Glance As of this writing, the price of BTC stands at around $70,477, reflecting a 0.6% increase in the past 24 hours. Related Reading: Pundit Shares Everything To Understand About Bitcoin, ‘This Cycle IS Different’ Featured image from iStock, chart from TradingView
21 Mar 2026, 06:22
Bitcoin Runs Straight Into the Biggest Derivatives Expiry in Stock Market History
There are bad days to be sitting on a leveraged crypto position, and then there is quadruple witching Friday, and then there is quadruple witching Friday during a Middle East war, a hawkish Fed and a four-week equity selloff. According to Goldman Sachs, more than $7.1 trillion in notional options exposure expires simultaneously, the largest quarterly derivatives expiry ever recorded, with roughly $5 trillion tied to the S&P 500 index alone and a further $880 billion linked to individual stocks. Bitcoin was holding around $69,800 as those contracts began expiring, with Ethereum at $2,134, XRP at $1.43 and Solana at $88.93, each of those figures sitting well below where they were when the year began and well below where most investors had positioned for them to be by now. The Fear and Greed Index for crypto markets registered 30 going into Friday’s session, firmly in fear territory and barely recovered from the reading of 23 recorded earlier this week following the Federal Reserve’s hawkish rate hold. Quadruple witching matters to crypto investors because Bitcoin no longer operates in a silo separate from traditional finance. The asset increasingly trades alongside equities and other risk assets, meaning institutional liquidations, portfolio rebalancing and derivatives settlement in the stock market create direct ripple effects in digital asset prices, often within the same trading session rather than with any meaningful lag. Cole Kennelly, CEO of Volmex Finance, said the event is already showing up in digital asset volatility metrics: “Quadruple witching could trigger a spike in cross-asset volatility as large derivatives positions expire. This may already be showing up in crypto, with the Bitcoin Volmex Implied Volatility (BVIV) Index trending higher into the event.” The historical pattern from 2025 provides limited comfort for anyone hoping Friday itself will pass quietly. Bitcoin tended to show muted or flat performance on the day of quadruple witching events themselves, but consistently followed with weakness in the days and weeks after, sometimes sharply so. In September 2025, a post-witching decline took Bitcoin from $177,000 all the way to $108,000, while the June event was followed by a local bottom just two days later. Analyst Max Crypto noted on social media that BTC has dropped between seven and eight percent before bouncing during three of the last four quadruple witching events, a pattern that, combined with the current macro backdrop, suggests the path of least resistance remains downward rather than upward in the near term. Today’s derivatives expiry does not even represent the end of the week’s event risk for crypto specifically. A separate $13.5 billion in digital asset derivatives are set to expire on Deribit on March 27, just six days away, and positioning data from that exchange shows traders leaning into volatility strategies rather than building directional bets, which signals a market bracing for continued turbulence rather than any clean directional resolution. Bitcoin ETF outflows over the past two days have compounded the selling pressure, with BlackRock’s IBIT posting $38.25 million in outflows on Thursday, Fidelity’s FBTC shedding $26.02 million and Bitwise contributing $17.18 million to net outflows of $90 million across the day, a continuation of the $163.52 million in net outflows recorded on Wednesday. The combined weight of geopolitical uncertainty, a Fed that has signalled one rate cut for the entirety of 2026, oil above $100 and now the mechanical pressure of the largest derivatives expiry in financial history arriving in the same week is as challenging a set of conditions as the crypto market has navigated since the October 2025 peak.
21 Mar 2026, 05:00
UK Moves To Shut Down Crypto Exchange Tied To Iran’s Military
A blockchain analytics firm found that nearly 90% of money processed by a UK-registered crypto exchange in 2024 was connected to Iran’s most powerful military organization. A Billion Dollars And A Fake Boss TRM Labs, which tracks cryptocurrency flows, reported that Zedxion Exchange and a related platform called Zedcex moved roughly $1 billion tied to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). In 2024, IRGC-linked payments made up about 87% of all transactions the two exchanges handled. Even as that share fell to roughly 48% in 2025, the raw dollar amounts connected to the Iranian military group remained massive. Now the UK is shutting the exchange down. Britain’s Companies House — the government body that registers businesses — has started a compulsory strike-off against Zedxion Exchange Ltd. Authorities say the company filed false information, including listing a director who never existed. Stock Photo, Fake Name, Real Money The fictitious director was registered under the name Elizabeth Newman, listed as a citizen of the Dominican Republic. An investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) found that the woman behind the name was likely manufactured entirely — her image in company marketing videos traced back to a stock photo. Before Newman appeared in company records, a man named Babak Morteza held the director position. His details matched those of Babak Zanjani, an Iranian businessman who had previously been sentenced to death in Iran for stealing state oil funds. That sentence was reduced in 2024, and Zanjani resumed business operations. Morteza was listed as director and the person with significant control of Zedxion from October 2021 to August 2022. Zanjani is also said to head DotOne Holding Group, a conglomerate with operations across cryptocurrency, foreign exchange, logistics, and telecommunications — sectors that have been used in the past to sidestep international sanctions. Washington Acted First The UK crackdown follows US sanctions imposed in January by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). Both Zedxion and Zedcex were named in that action. OFAC said Zanjani helped fund projects supporting the IRGC and the Iranian government more broadly. Company filings for the two exchanges also showed dormant accounts, a detail that stood in sharp contrast to the enormous transaction volumes blockchain analysts traced through them. The UK passed the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act in 2023, giving Companies House new authority to verify the identities of directors and check that registered businesses were set up for lawful purposes. The Zedxion case marks one of the more visible uses of those powers. Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView
21 Mar 2026, 04:55
We Asked 2 AIs: What Must XRP Do to Escape the Ongoing Crisis?
Alongside the rest of the crypto market, Ripple’s cross-border token tried to break out in the middle of the business week, surging to a monthly peak of over $1.60. However, the subsequent rejection pushed it south to under $1.50 as of press time. Even the most recent developments on the Ripple adoption and partnership front cannot truly initiate a notable leg up. As such, we decided to ask what is needed for XRP to finally break out of its current consolidation. ChatGPT’s Take OpenAI’s solution admitted that XRP has been quite sluggish as of late, trading over 60% away from its all-time high marked in July last year. Moreover, it has underperformed quite substantially even after the first spot XRP ETFs went live for trading in the US last November. Nevertheless, it remained above $1.00 even during the most intense sell-offs in early February, which is why ChatGPT said that its bear phase “may be weakening.” To break beyond $1.60, though, the token would have to first flip that level into support, not just briefly wick above it as it has done on a couple of occasions since the February low. “A clean breakout with strong volume would signal that buyers have absorbed the selling pressure at that level.” However, the AI platform also outlined the significance of the broader market’s conditions as XRP “rarely moves in isolation.” It added that a continued BTC and ETH recovery would likely “provide the momentum needed for other larger-cap alts to follow through.” Lastly, it noted that XRP has historically responded strongly to one of the following catalysts: Regulatory clarity or positive legal developments Institutional adoption or partnerships Increased utility in cross-border payments However, these catalysts have failed to impact its most recent price moves, as mentioned above. And Gemini’s View ChatGPT’s rival from Google supports much of what was written above, saying that XRP has failed to materialize on Ripple’s big partnerships and it would need a more sustained revival from bitcoin to chart some gains. The AI solution believes the $2.00 level will remain a mirage for the foreseeable future, especially since riskier assets tend to underperform when the Fed keeps the interest rates high , and uncertainty levels from wars go through the roof. “Right now, XRP isn’t just fighting technical resistance; It’s fighting the Federal Reserve. The post-FOMC hangover from March 18 made it clear: Interest rates are staying higher for longer and speculative capital is hiding out in safe-yielding Treasuries.” It explained that the macro winds “need to shift” for XRP to break past $1.60 and head for $2.00. A cooling in inflation data or an unexpected dovish pivot from the Fed later this year would “instantly inject liquidity back into the crypto markets, lifting all boats – XRP included.” The post We Asked 2 AIs: What Must XRP Do to Escape the Ongoing Crisis? appeared first on CryptoPotato .
21 Mar 2026, 03:00
XRP treasury filing signals institutional push – Can demand sustain the shift?
How will XRP's next phase look like?
21 Mar 2026, 01:00
Here’s Why The Bitcoin Price Fell Below The $70,000 Level Again
With the cryptocurrency market turning extremely bearish again, Bitcoin (BTC) saw a sharp pullback that brought its price below the $70,000 mark, a zone that had previously acted as a strong support. The pullback below the level was no coincidence as recent news about macro events rocked the market, causing BTC to lose its newfound bullish momentum. Bitcoin Bears Back In Charge After $70,000 Loss As the Bitcoin price falls below the crucial $70,000 threshold, the market structure surrounding the flagship cryptocurrency asset has undergone a significant shift. Bearish sentiment is rapidly spreading throughout the market as a result of the breakdown, which has significantly shifted momentum in favor of sellers. In a post on X , Milk Road, a market expert and trader, revealed that the pullback below the $70,000 level was triggered by news regarding the Federal Reserve (Fed) decision to hold rates steady. After the meeting, no cuts were made, no surprises, reinforcing the higher for longer narrative. The market had anticipated rate reductions by the middle of 2026, but the Fed extended that timeline today. However, the cryptocurrency market did not respond well to the meeting’s outcome, resulting in a sudden decline across the sector. Once the news dropped, BTC fell from $72,400 to under $70,000, marking a 3% move that wiped out the week’s gains in just a few hours. Milk Road has outlined the alignment between the Bitcoin price and the macro event. During high rates, money becomes expensive as investors gather capital in bonds and cash, and risky assets like crypto get hit. Meanwhile, when rates drop, money gets cheap as capital hunts for yield. In past scenarios, this trend has been the rocket fuel for BTC. Bitcoin’s pullback on Thursday following the Fed results served as a painful reminder to short-term BTC holders that macro events like these still drive the crypto market. As for long-term BTC holders, they are not new to this kind of move. During the 2022 hiking cycle, Bitcoin dropped below $30,000, but as cut expectations grew in late 2023, it surpassed $70,000. With the next Fed meeting scheduled for May 6 and 7, 2026, a similar move might unfold later in the year, which could trigger an upswing to the previous highs. In the meantime, Iranian tensions and CPI (Consumer Price Index) and PCE (Personal Consumption Expenditures) data will either bury or revive prospects for a rate cut. However, this depends on whether the rate cuts increase, which is bad, or decrease, which is a good sign. More BTC Whales Are Appearing Investors’ activity has improved, particularly among large holders , despite the recent sideways action of Bitcoin. Santiment data shows that the amount of whale wallet addresses holding 100 or more BTC has increased, suggesting renewed conviction among institutional investors. In the past 3 months, there has been an addition +753 whale wallet addresses , representing a +3.9% rise in total. Within the same time frame, Sentiment noted that BTC’s market value has fallen by over 20.2%. According to Santiment, the ongoing confidence displayed by important stakeholders should at the very least cause investors to reevaluate their theory if they genuinely believe that cryptocurrency will reach zero.
