Bitcoin stays calm while other markets panic: key levels to watch

It's solidly within that range at the moment, though. The leading cryptocurrency by market value has risen over 3% since early Asian hours to trade around $68,000. The rally follows a week of back-and-forth action that saw the price rise to nearly $74,000 only to drop back to $67,000 over the weekend. The CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20), ether ($ETH), $XRP ($XRP), solana (SOL) saw similar increases.

This resilience to the war in the Middle East and risk-off sentiment in global stocks likely stems from the earlier outperformance of U.S. equities and the cryptocurrency's oversold status. Nothing reflects the crypto calm better than $BTC's 30-day implied volatility index, BVIV, which remains steady around 60%. Wall Street's volatility indexes, meantime, the equity VIX, the oil VIX and the gold VIX have all surged to multiweek highs, indicating panic in traditional markets.

Bitcoin market makers — those entities tasked with creating order book liquidity and ensuring seamless trading — are "short gamma" at $60,000 and $75,000. This means that if the market moves beyond those levels, they could trade in the direction of the price movement to rebalance their net exposure back to neutral. In other words, they may sell $BTC as its price drops and buy when it rises, accentuating volatility.

"If we look at the Deribit GEX (gamma exposure chart) we see dealers are short a lot of gamma at the $60k level and the $75k levels … essentially the ceiling and floor of the box. Should markets actually trade beyond the box, negative gamma will make things worse from a dealer rebalancing perspective," Amberdata's Director of Derivatives Greg Magadini said in an email.

He added that traders are looking at the same levels and have hedged their own exposure at the ceiling and floor. Stay !

Read more: For analysis of today's activity in altcoins and derivatives, see Crypto Markets Today

What to Watch

For a more comprehensive list of events this week, see CoinDesk's "Crypto Week Ahead".

• Crypto
  • March 9: Solstice and Kamino to announce a new product or feature.
• Macro
  • Nothing scheduled.
• Earnings (Estimates based on FactSet data)
  • March 9: Sharplink (SBET), pre-market, $0.31

Token Events

For a more comprehensive list of events this week, see CoinDesk's "Crypto Week Ahead".

• Governance votes & calls
  • Convex Finance is voting on Curve Ownership DAO Vote ID: 1358, which would onboard GHO as a Pegkeeper with a 3 million crvUSD debt ceiling. Voting ends March 9.
  • Lido DAO is voting to make the delegate incentivization program (DIP 2.0) a permanent governance mechanism. Voting ends March 9.
  • Lido DAO is voting to authorize a one-time $5 million DAO Treasury allocation into the upcoming Lido Earn $ETH and USD Vaults. Voting ends March 9.
  • Lido DAO is voting on whether Stakin (recently acquired by The Tie) should continue operating as a node operator and whether to approve updating Stakin's on-chain name and reward address. Voting ends March 9.
• Unlocks
  • No major unlocks.
• Token Launches
  • March 9: Nexira’s (NEXI) token generation event occurs, token to be listed on KuCoin.

Conferences

For a more comprehensive list of events this week, see CoinDesk's "Crypto Week Ahead".

• Day 1 of 5: Policy Week 2026 (Sydney, Australia)

Market Movements

• $BTC is up 0.68% from 4 p.m. ET Sunday at $67,649.34 (24hrs: -0.36%)
• $ETH is up 1.89% at $1,995.45 (24hrs: +1.12%)
• CoinDesk 20 is up 1.04% at 1,943.48 (24hrs: +0.12%)
• Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is down 9 bps at 2.64%
• $BTC funding rate is at -0.0025% (-5.8613% annualized) on Binance

• DXY is up 0.30% at 99.2812
• Gold futures are down 0.70% at $5,110.00
• Silver futures are up 0.21% at $84.00
• Nikkei 225 closed down 5.20% at 52,728.72
• Hang Seng closed down 1.35% at 25,408.46
• FTSE 100 is down 1.22% at 10,159.26
• Euro Stoxx 50 is down 1.70% at 5,622.84
• DJIA closed on Friday down 0.95% at 47,501.55
• S&P 500 closed down 1.33% at 6,740.02
• Nasdaq Composite closed down 1.59% at 22,387.68
• S&P/TSX Composite closed down 1.57% at 33,083.70
• U.S. 10-Year Treasury rate is up 4 bps at 4.18%
• E-mini S&P 500 futures are down 0.90% at 6,682.75
• E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are down 0.96% at 24,434.00
• E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average futures are down 1.04% at 47,024.00
  

Bitcoin Stats

• $BTC Dominance: 59.04% (0.62%)
• Ether-bitcoin ratio: 0.02951 (0.51%)
• Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 1,005 EH/s
• Hashprice (spot): $29.61
• Total fees: 1.96 $BTC / $131,828
• CME Futures Open Interest: 100,675 $BTC
• $BTC priced in gold: 13.3 oz.
• $BTC vs gold market cap: 4.56%

Technical Analysis

Bitcoin's 30-day implied volatility index, BVIV. (TradingView)

• The chart shows daily swings in bitcoin's 30-day implied volatility index, BVIV, in candlestick format.
• The index is hovering close to the upper end of its recent range.
• A potential breakout would mean higher volatility and risk aversion, leading to losses in bitcoin.
  

Crypto Equities

• Coinbase Global (COIN): closed on Friday at $197.22 (-4.13%), -0.84% at $195.57 in pre-market
• Galaxy Digital (GLXY): closed at $20.56 (-9.57%), -0.17% at $20.52
• MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $8.01 (-8.67%), -0.12% at $8.00
• Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $14.16 (-9.20%), -1.38% at $13.97
• Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $14.86 (-7.13%), -0.54% at $14.78
• CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $9.21 (-7.44%), -0.43% at $9.17
• Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $10.90 (-2.50%)
• CoinShares Bitcoin Mining ETF (WGMI): closed at $36.07 (-8.10%), -0.80% at $35.78
• Circle Internet Group (CRCL): closed at $101.91 (-3.62%), +1.24% at $103.17
• Bullish (BLSH): closed at $34.96 (-0.17%), -1.34% at $34.49

Crypto Treasury Companies

• Strategy (MSTR): closed at $133.53 (-4.49%), +0.25% at $133.86
• Strive Asset Management (ASST): closed at $8.70 (-5.95%), -0.23% at $8.68
• Sharplink (SBET): closed at $7.36 (-7.19%), +2.45% at $7.54
• Upexi (UPXI): closed at $0.90 (-6.44%), +4.44% at $0.94
• Lite Strategy (LITS): closed at $1.14 (+0.88%)

ETF Flows

Spot $BTC ETFs

• Daily net flows: -$348.9 million
• Cumulative net flows: $55.35 billion
• Total $BTC holdings ~ 1.28 million

Spot $ETH ETFs

• Daily net flows: -$82.9 million
• Cumulative net flows: $11.66 billion
• Total $ETH holdings ~ 5.64 million

Source: Farside Investors

While You Were Sleeping

• Oil prices surge to highest since 2022 at over $119 a barrel on Middle East war (Reuters): Oil prices hit levels not seen since mid-2022 as some major producers cut supplies and fears of prolonged shipping disruptions gripped the market due to the war with Iran. The Strait of Hormuz is virtually shut.
• Iran signals a fight to the end with appointment of Khamenei’s son (The Wall Street Journal): The appointment of Mojtaba Khamenei as Iran’s new supreme leader defies President Trump and signals that Tehran has no plans to back down in the war with the U.S. and Israel.
• G7 to discuss discuss joint release of emergency oil reserves (Financial Times): G7 finance ministers are preparing to discuss the release of emergency oil reserves in a call coordinated by the International Energy Agency (IEA).
• Bitflyer volume surges 200% past Binance, Coinbase as oil spike sends Nikkei sliding (CoinDesk): Bitflyer's 24-hour trading volume is up 200% compared with 112% on Coinbase and 75% on Binance. In contrast, trading on Korean exchanges Upbit rose 27.1% and Bithumb, 49.0%.