Bitcoin has erased Sunday’s gains, as traditional markets struggle to cheer progress on U.S. fiscal stimulus efforts.

The cryptocurrency is changing hands just over $50,150 at press time, representing a 1.55% drop on the day, according to CoinDesk 20 data. Prices had jumped from roughly $49,000 to $51,800 on Sunday as the U.S. Senate approved President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus plan. The bill now heads back to the House for clearance.

Traditional markets gave mixed reactions early today, with the U.S. dollar falling against major fiat currencies and Asian stocks and U.S. stock futures initially charting moderate gains. However, with the U.S. 10-year bond yield remaining elevated near 12-month highs reached Friday, the dollar soon regained ground, pushing the Asian equities and bitcoin lower.

The 10-year yield is currently trading just shy of Friday’s high of 1.62%. S&P 500 futures are now nursing losses and futures tied to the tech-heavy Nasdaq index are down nearly 2%.

Movement on stimulus was expected to put upward pressure on yields, and cap progress for risk assets. Hence, bitcoin’s failure to establish a foothold near $52,000 doesn’t come as a surprise.


The cryptocurrency has faced rejection near $52,000 three times this month, making it a level to beat for the bulls. The breakout, however, may remain elusive if yields continue to rise, diluting bitcoin’s appeal as an inflation hedge.

Additionally, developments in the Chinese stock market could be a key driver of bitcoin’s price action, trader and analyst Alex Kruger told CoinDesk over Telegram.

The Shanghai Composite Index fell by over 2% today, while the FTSE China A50 index declined by nearly 4%. The former is down 14% from its February peak, while the S&P 500 is down less than 5% from the record high reached in mid-February.

Although the exact reason for the big drop in Chinese stocks is not known, it could be a harbinger of things to come amid rising fears of an early unwinding of stimulus by the Federal Reserve. According to Gary Biddle, professor of financial accounting at the University of Melbourne, the stock market is collapsing after a last-gasp bull run.

“With monetary easing set to end, it’s a game of chicken as investors see how close they can come to timing the inevitable downturn,” Biddle said in an article for South China Morning Post.

It remains to be seen if the Chinese stock market ends up dragging its global peers and bitcoin lower. The cryptocurrency’s options market data shows some investors are beginning to position for a deeper drawdown. “Puts are being bought today,” Swiss-based data analytics platform Laevitas told CoinDesk.


So far today, more than 300 daily expiry (bearish) put option contracts have been bought at $50,000 and $48,000 strikes on Deribit, the world’s largest crypto options exchange by trading volume and open positions.

According to data provided by Skew, the one-week put-call skew, which measures the value of puts relative to calls, is hovering above zero, indicating increased demand for short-term puts.

While the one-, three- and six-month skews are still negative, reflecting a bullish bias, they are considerably higher than earlier this year.


Bitcoin's Stimulus-Led Rise Fades as Stocks Drop, Dollar Gains
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Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, has taken to Twitter to proudly announce that his basketball team is now the biggest Dogecoin merchant in the world.       

It’s been only a few days since the Mavs started accepting the red-hot meme cryptocurrency, but they’ve already received over 20,000 DOGE (roughly $1,000).

Dogecoin to $1?
While the amount might not seem impressive in dollar terms, Dogecoin is so far more popular than Bitcoin with Dallas Mavericks fans.

Last year, Cuban revealed that the largest cryptocurrency had brought in a measly $130 to underscore its lack of mainstream appeal:

Now we’re taking Bitcoin—please, go buy everything in Bitcoin. I’m fine with that, right? I think we’ve brought in $130. That’s all the Bitcoin I own right now.

Cuban has facetiously predicted that the Shiba Inu-inspired cryptocurrency will “definitely” hit $1 if it gets 6.56 billion more DOGE coins for its merch. Dogecoin would need to rally another 1,860 percent from there to reach the target.       

6695_1
"Because we can"
After Elon Musk’s non-stop Dogecoin tweets reportedly got him in trouble with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the joke cryptocurrency has gained yet another billionaire proponent.

The Shark Tank host made his unorthodox decision to accept Dogecoin for his team’s tickets and merchandise simply “because they can”:

The Mavericks have decided to accept Dogecoin as payment for Mavs tickets and merchandise for one very important, earth-shattering reason, because we can! Because we can, we have chosen to do so. 

Galaxy Mike Novogratz has rebuked Cuban’s endorsement of the meme cryptocurrency, calling it a “mistake”:

I think Mark's making a mistake there. He'd be better off with 15 other ways to pay for his tickets.

Dogecoin at $1? Mark Cuban Becomes Meme Coin's New Billionaire Cheerleader
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Deeper Network has officially announced its membership in the Polkadot DeFi Alliance.

Polkadot DeFi Alliance is a group of blockchain projects seeking to build a global decentralized financial infrastructure, including for example Chainlink and Reef Finance, and aiming to create a space for collaboration between the most promising DeFi multi-chain projects.

Polkadot is a multi-chain interchange framework launched by Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood in May 2020, which allows custom sidechains to connect with other blockchains. It therefore already aims to allow different decentralized blockchains to interact with each other.

Deeper Network on the other hand is a privacy-focused project, with a secure resource sharing platform, a decentralized consensus network, and a trusted Internet development platform.

Its goal is to build a truly decentralized and secure gateway to a more democratic Internet, leading to a better user experience, with the ambition to become the de facto portal to Web 3.0.

It also offers users tools to prevent cyber attacks and data leaks and to increase their online privacy.

Deeper also provides a financial incentive to those who make their unused bandwidth available to others in the form of DPR tokens.

Deeper has found in the Polkadot DeFi Alliance many members with relevant synergies, seeing that DeFi is still in its early stages, and therefore collaboration between those projects pushing the boundaries of this technology is crucial to increase the speed of this development.

The Polkadot DeFi Alliance
The alliance will also host monthly roundtables on the latest developments in the crypto market, with various guests such as innovators from the Web3 Foundation and Parity Technologies.

After years in which the various blockchain projects competed with each other, it seems that the time has now come to work together to further increase the speed of growth.

In this context, it is not surprising that an alliance bearing the name of Polkadot should take on the task of trying to foster these collaborations, precisely because the Polkadot project was created with the aim of enabling the development of centralized cross-chain platforms.

Deeper joins the Polkadot DeFi Alliance
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Coinbase’s upcoming direct listing will make it the first cryptocurrency exchange to go public. This listing has been described as an “Amazon moment” by analysts from D.A Davidson.

Coinbase, filed papers with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Feb. 25, for the listing on the Nasdaq.

The company’s valuation is set at $100 billion, based on its secondary market price at $373 a share. This would make it the biggest listing for a tech company since Facebook.

Analyst Gil Luria from D.A Davidson told CNBC that with this listing the cryptocurrency market and stock market will become intertwined.

“It’s going to become clear that crypto is a giant asset class with a Trillion Dollars, is very relevant to the future of the delivery of financial services, and Coinbase is going to present that moment to the marketplace,” said Lucia.

Luria’s confidence in Coinbase’s success lies in its diversification. He explained that it’s diverse coin offerings means that investing in the exchange itself lessens the risk for the investor, in comparison to investing in one coin market like bitcoin.

While Luria presented an encouraging outlook, he did note that the volatility of cryptocurrency markets is likely to play a role in the price of Coinbase stock.

Coinbase Direct Listing a Milestone: Analysts
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The Bitcoin (BTC) price has been retracing since getting rejected by the $52,500 resistance area on March 3.

Bitcoin is approaching a crucial support area. A strong resurgence will be mandatory for the possibility of bullish continuation to remain.

Bitcoin Bounce Retraces
On Feb. 28, BTC reached the $45,000 support area and bounced upwards. It proceeded to reach a high of $52,652 four days later but has been moving downwards since.

So far, BTC has reached a low of $46,294 in the early hours of March 5. This is still inside the body of the bullish candlestick of March 1. Therefore, it’s still inside the parameters of a normal retracement.

However, both the MACD and Stochastic oscillator are bearish. The latter has already made a bearish cross. On the other hand, the RSI is trying to hold on above the 50-line.
Bitcoin Struggles to Find Support
The six-hour chart shows that the main resistance area is found at $52,476. This is the 0.618 Fib retracement of the most recent downward movement and a horizontal resistance area.

Therefore, until BTC manages to clear it, we cannot consider the trend bullish — at least not in the short/medium-term.

Similar to the daily time-frame, the MACD and RSI are bearish.
Finally, the two-hour chart shows that BTC is still above the $46,600 support area (0.618 Fib retracement).

However, there are no bullish reversal signs yet.

If BTC were to break down, the next closest support area would be found at $45,000. This is the 0.786 Fib level of the most recent move and a horizontal support area from the daily chart.

Therefore, the loss of this level would be a significant bearish development for BTC.
Corrective Decrease?
A look at the very short-term 15-minute chart shows a continued decrease that has been ongoing since March 3.

The downward movement is perfectly channeling, and the significant overlap suggests that it’s likely to be corrective. This means that despite the lack of bullish reversal signs, an eventual breakout is expected.
The most likely wave count suggests another upward move towards a new all-time high.

However, a decrease below the Feb. 28 low would signal that BTC is likely to fall towards $40,000.


Conclusion
Bitcoin is expected to find relief at one of the support levels outlined and continue moving higher.

The loss of the $45,000 support area would be a major bearish development, indicating that the local low might not be in yet.

Bitcoin Retraces After Bouncing, Falling Below $47,000
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Since March 1, Ethereum has been trading below the $1,600 resistance. Buyers are attempting to break the recent high but to no avail. Each attempt at the resistance will result in the price falling to the previous lows.

Yesterday, Ether price retested the resistance and it was repelled. The bears appear to have the upper hand above the bulls after the February 23 breakdown. For instance, the bears will sell each rally made by the bulls.

At other times, the bulls will buy the dips after a deeper correction. On February 23, buyers made a rally to $1,700, but the bears sank Ether to the low of $1,300. The price tussles continued as buyers pushed the price to $1,600. In March, the ETH price has been fluctuating between $1,300 and $1, 600. Incidentally, if the bulls break the $1,600 resistance, the market will resume upward movement. However, if the bears break the $1,300 support, the ETH/USD will further decline to a $1,000 low.

Ethereum Confined Between $1,300 and $1,600 as Sellers Threaten to Short
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The blockchain-based fan engagement platform Socios.com received a huge boost after its native asset Chiliz (CHZ) was listed on OKEx – a leading global crypto exchange and derivatives trading platform. The popular digital currency for the sporting and entertainment industries, CHZ became available for spot trading against USDT and BTC at 10 AM UTC on March 3, 2021.

The CHZ blockchain’s Socios.com allows sporting teams and clubs to create Fan Tokens to connect and engage with their fans. These Fan Tokens will act as membership cards, providing its holders with the privilege to participate in various decision-making processes of their favorite teams. In addition, fan token holders will also be eligible for exclusive access to team events, merchandise and other rewards. Socios.com has already partnered with some of the biggest sporting teams and clubs including the likes of AC Milan, FC Barcelona, Juventus, UFC and more.

According to Chiliz, their Fan Token model has also helped sporting organizations unlock new revenue streams, enabling them to overcome losses in the form of poor ticket sales, lost sponsorship deals etc., during the pandemic.

Acknowledging the role of Chiliz in promoting blockchain technology, CEO of OKEx Jay Hao said, “Chiliz has uncovered another key use case for blockchain technology showing how the sports and entertainment industries can adapt to an increasingly digital world and create new revenue streams beyond traditional sources. As more and more fans begin to engage with clubs and teams through fan tokens, the use of cryptocurrencies becomes continuously more mainstream. OKEx couldn’t be happier to support this important initiative.”

Celebrating the new listing, OKEx is distributing $150,000 worth of Fan Tokens to the CHZ community members through lucky draw. Users depositing or trading CHZ on OKEx until March 10, 2021, will be eligible for the giveaway program. Up to $10,000 worth of Fan Tokens is earmarked for referral rewards.

OKEx will be activating CHZ withdrawals on the platform starting 10 AM UTC on March 4, 2021

OKEx Lists Chiliz, Enables CHZ/USDT and CHZ/BTC Spot Trading
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