Macro crypto currency market outlook

Bitcoin remains under pressure into March, as it continues to extend the correction off the record high from back in November 2021. What we’ve seen since November is a series of lower tops and lower lows. After stalling out in February, it looks like the market may have put in that next lower top, which would be confirmed on a break back below the 2022 low. Below the 2022 low would then expose a retest of the critical June 2021 low at $28,800. At this stage, we would need to see a break back above the February high to take the pressure off the downside and suggest we could finally be getting ready to turn back up again. On net, February price action was a non-event, with the market confined to within January’s high-lows.

There wasn’t a whole lot of interesting market activity in February, with both bitcoin and ether closing out the month moderately higher. If there was one interesting takeaway, perhaps it was the fact that crypto assets did manage to outperform stocks, with US equities decidedly lower in February. Though we did see downside pressure on crypto resulting from the profit taking in equities, there were signs of other factors at play towards the end of the month, which reaffirmed our core bias that crypto correlating with risk off is nothing more than a short-term phenomenon.

We believe a lot of this had to do with the move higher in gold and many market participants recognizing what is expected to be a closer correlation with the yellow metal given the similar property as a limited supply asset. This holds especially true with respect to bitcoin, but can else be extended to ether as well. Of course, none of this changes the fact that whatever the driver of crypto right now, it seems to be coming from traditional market forces, with global macroeconomics and geopolitical risk playing their part.

Looking ahead, we suspect this will continue to be the case in March. We think crypto will be looking to these developments around geopolitical risk and central bank outlooks for its cues and will be less reactive to any crypto specific fundamentals. At the same time, we believe we are getting closer to the point in which bitcoin and ether track higher again as medium and longer-term players look to build exposure at more attractive levels.