Weekly Market Update: Patience Rewarded

A famous quote, attributed to Warren Buffett, goes like this; “The stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient”.

And it appears that crypto markets are no different!

Patience in the crypto market isn’t just a virtue – it’s the golden ticket for those who can stomach the ride. Take the ETF saga: years of “wen ETF?” finally paid off when the SEC greenlit Bitcoin ETFs in early 2024. The hype was electric until the market promptly dipped on the news, leaving the “buy the rumor, sell the news” crowd clutching their bags. 

Then, the patient hodlers who didn’t flinch got their reward: a juicy pump that sent Bitcoin roaring past $70K. Lesson? Good things often come to those who wait and don’t panic-sell at the first red candle.

A similar story took place with the 4th Bitcoin halving in April 2024. Bitcoin’s supply squeeze hit, and the market’s response was… many months of sideways snoozefest. Traders paced like caged tigers, cursing the lack of action, while the impatient dumped their bags. Then bam, late 2024 ignited, and BTC smashed through $100K to new all-time highs, leaving the sidelined FOMOers kicking themselves. Those that were patient were rewarded once again.

Now, it seems, we might be here again: Trump’s crypto reserve dreams and “make America the crypto superpower” flex have the bulls salivating. A million BTC stockpile? Zero capital gains tax? The news is so bullish – yet, the market’s reaction? A collective yawn and a sell-off from the get-rich-quick crowd who think they should be driving lambos by this time next week. 

Spoiler: markets don’t sprint – they coil, like a spring winding up for the next leap. The seasoned investors just sip their coffee, knowing the real move is brewing. History is clear: tune out the noise, let the news digest, and wait patiently for the payoff. In crypto, impatience costs you money! 

But always DYOR.

Bullish news may be brewing… Solana ETFs are popping up on Wall Street, the SEC is finally dropping its lawsuit with Ripple, Pakistan’s flirting with legal crypto, Saylor is getting even more confident (if that is possible) and Trump’s “industry friendly” policies are causing crypto and fintech companies to glow. But let’s not kid ourselves, the sentiment is as shaky as a house of cards in a hurricane.

The broader market is steeped in uncertainty at the moment, sharply dividing bullish and bearish investors. Bulls are optimistic about Trump’s policies and AI growth; bears focus on tariffs and recession risks. The gap between them is vast, and markets dislike this indecision. Bulls point to strong earnings, whilst bears highlight debt and global tensions. 

While patience can deliver gains, bailing from the runaway train at the right moment secures your capital for the next trip.

Is the bull run over already? Only time will tell… 

The bulls are fighting for control and sentiment has improved to: Neutral

Highlights this week: 

• BTC has climbed steadily back towards $90k and maintained its long term bullish uptrend despite the -30% correction from ATH.
• Early momentum indicators are flipping positive as BTC weekly RSI breaks back through the 50 level and ETFs return to net positive weekly inflows.
• Most of the market rallied to finish in the green this week – giving hope that perhaps the bull market is not over just yet.
• At time of writing, BTC is $87,451 and +5.7% for the week.
• Solana had a stellar week off the back of futures ETF news growing +14.5%.
• ETH also bounced back and rallied ahead of BTC on Blackrock ETF buying – now back above the crucial $2,000 level and finishing +7.1% for the week.
• After a strong start, XRP faded into a lacklustre performance despite the bullish news of SEC legal action ending – perhaps the market is waiting for it to be formalised?
• Surprise gainer is BONK growing +28.8%.
• The biggest loser for the week is Tron at a modest -4.0% .

View all top gainers: Visit the top gainers page to find out more. 

Highlights from the crypto space

President Trump’s appearance at the Digital Assets Summit in New York last week reignited market buzz, stirring a mix of rumours and excitement. This time, the sentiment leaned toward cautious optimism, tempered by whispers of a potential ‘1 million Bitcoin purchase’ and renewed talk of ‘zero capital gains tax’.

The news spurred a recovery rally for the crypto markets that caused a break of the 4 month downtrend in the Bitcoin daily RSI – green shoots of hope that the bulls may be back in control.

Unfortunately, the rally fizzled out fast when President Trump served up yet another big, fat and juicy ‘nothing burger.’

Once again, traders and speculators found themselves let down. Yet, love him or hate him, the reality is that President Trump has overseen a remarkable leap forward for the crypto outlook in the U.S. in an impressively short span of time!

In President Trump’s address he reconfirmed U.S. ambitions to become “a Bitcoin superpower” and “dominate crypto” and officially declared the end of Operation Chokepoint 2.0 – he also called on Congress to pass “simple, common sense rules for stablecoins and market structure”. 

A new report titled “The State of Stablecoins 2025” showed that active stablecoin wallets increased by 53% in one year to February 2025 – active addresses increased from 19.6 million to 30 million. Could this be the future of money?

In other news, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse confirmed that the long running legal battle with the SEC is finally over; “this is it – the moment we’ve been waiting for. The SEC will drop its appeal – a resounding victory for Ripple, for crypto, pretty much a win every way you look at it.” But taking no chances, the market is seemingly waiting for the case to officially close.

Michael Saylor has rocked the boat over in Europe this week with his prediction that ‘the Euro is going to need Bitcoin’. He is bullish as ever, claiming Bitcoin will rip forward with a vengeance when risk-on returns to market – (Micro) Strategy now holds over 500,000 BTC and rumours are growing on social media that he wants to raise a further $100 billion to buy more!

Michael Saylor could be right, as according to Bravos Research, one of the most important macro recession indicators has fallen quickly from ‘elevated’ to a much lower probability at around 20%.

The first Solana Futures ETFs launched last week – Volatility Shares Solana ETF (SOLZ) which tracks Solana futures and Volatility Shares 2X Solana ETF (SOLT) which offers leveraged exposure.

Solana Labs CEO apologized for a controversial ad called “America Is Back – Time to Accelerate” that was criticized for targeting marginalized groups. The ad depicted America as a man in therapy who wanted to focus on innovation and crypto rather than “coming up with a new gender” or “focus on pronouns” – it was pulled after nine hours with 1.2 million views.

BlackRock’s BUIDL tokenised fund is now managing about $1.145 billion worth of ETH which they say is a bet on tokenisation, stablecoin adoption and decentralised finance. 

Social media platform X was buzzing with excitement on a viral video of President Trump hanging a “Bitcoin Whitepaper” in the Oval Office at the White House – which turned out to be a deep fake!

In other crypto news…

• GameStop is taking a page out of (Micro) Strategy’s book announcing a plan to buy Bitcoin with its corporate cash.

• Trump Media signed a non-binding agreement with Crypto.com to launch exchange-traded funds and products on its financial services platform – plans to offer digital assets and securities “with a Made in America focus.”

• Pakistan is set to introduce a regulatory framework aimed at legalizing cryptocurrency for use in foreign investments, signaling a major policy shift.

• The Bank of Korea said it has not considered creating a Bitcoin strategic reserve citing volatility and IMF guidelines as the reasons for its decision.

• Binance launched Alpha 2.0 with a new feature that allows CEX users to buy any DEX tokens directly on Binance Exchange without needing to transfer assets to an external wallet or set up an on-chain account.

• The U.S. Treasury has lifted sanctions on Tornado Cash, a crypto mixer that the U.S. government previously said was used to launder $7 billion worth of crypto stolen by North Korean hackers.

• Crypto.com pushed through a proposal to reissue 70 Billion CRO tokens that were supposedly taken out of circulation forever in 2021.

• Popular memecoin launchpad Pump.fun launched a new token swaps service powered by the protocol’s liquidity pools called PumpSwap.

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🌎 Macro news TLDR: Is that the end or eye of the storm?

Green shoots are emerging fast after weeks of a painful market sell-off, fueled by fresh liquidity and a surge of investor confidence. 

The US Fed has locked in rate cuts and a slowdown of quantitative tightening, signaling relief is imminent. President Trump is still swinging the DOGE chainsaw around with much enthusiasm, but rumours of tariff delays and reductions are gaining traction.

The probability of a U.S. recession has dropped in both official macro indicators and on Polymarket. Does the market have enough juice in the tank for another leg up?

Europe is still struggling along – stumbling forward reactively with little clear direction.

In New Zealand, the recession’s officially over, but inflation and trade talks remain a tightrope walk, with every move calculated to avoid a stumble.

U.S. economic news

In a widely anticipated move, the U.S. Fed held interest rates steady as Chair Jerome Powell commented that “inflation is rising partially due to President Trump’s tariffs” – expect ‘stagflation’ with slower economic growth and two more rate cuts this year with further reduction of QT from the start of April.

President Trump signed two ‘interesting’ executive orders on Thursday – the first aimed at dismantling the Department of Education and directing his Education Secretary to take “all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return education authority to the States.”

And the second to increase domestic production of critical minerals, including uranium, copper, potash, gold and possibly coal – directing federal agencies to compile lists of pending projects and expedite their review with the National Energy Dominance Council.

Over $1.1 trillion was added to the U.S. stock market on Monday on optimism that President Trump may hold back on some wide-ranging tariff plans so the U.S. could avoid an economic slowdown and trade war.

Over in Europe….

The European Union will delay implementing its first set of tariffs on goods from the U.S. until the middle of April to allow for additional time for discussions with Washington.

The Swiss National Bank slashed its benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points to 0.25% on Thursday – in line with market expectations and citing ongoing economic uncertainty and low inflation. The news sent the already jittery European stock market into a selloff.

Europe’s busiest airport, London’s Heathrow, was closed on Friday after a nearby fire caused a power cut – this has put a spotlight on the aviation industry’s ability to handle a crisis.

President Trump and Ukrainian President Zelenskiy had, what the White House described as, a “fantastic one-hour phone call” last week where they agreed to work together to end Russia’s war with Ukraine – resulting in a partial ceasefire agreement in the Black Sea ahead of further talks planned in the coming week.

And in Asia Pacific…

The Bank of Japan kept interest rates steady last week warning of heightening global economic uncertainty – but then core inflation was higher than expectations and came in at 3% in February, bolstering the case for further interest rate hikes.

Across the Tasman, Australian supermarket giants are under fire after strong profit growth in the face of a cost of living crisis – competition regulator (ACCC) has found Woolworths and Coles are among the world’s most profitable supermarkets.

NZ is officially out of a recession as GDP growth in the quarter ending December 2024 ‘surprised to the upside’ with +0.7% growth, which was more than double what the Reserve Bank expected (0.3%). On an annual basis, GDP was down -1.1% at the same time a year ago, again beating expectations.

The deficit between what we earn overseas and what we spend overseas has narrowed by as much as expected – but it still remains at elevated levels. Statistics NZ reports that in the 12 months to December 2024 our current account deficit was $26.4 billion, 6.2% of GDP.

Good news from Trade Minister Todd McClay that reciprocal tariffs are unlikely to affect Kiwi exporters as the New Zealand market is already more open than the U.S. and our tariffs are generally lower. But bad news from China, as their ambassador to New Zealand has indirectly criticised Prime Minister Luxon’s trip to India, implying some potential damage to the NZ-China relationship.

That’s a wrap for this week!

Stay tuned for the next update

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