Crypto Markets Daily Mar 7 2025

Daily Updates:

• David Sacks, the Crypto Czar, confirmed during the early hours of the Asian equities trading session that President Trump had signed an Executive Order to establish a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. 
• That EO stated the reserve would be “capitalized with bitcoin owned by the Department of Treasury that was forfeited as part of criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings” and that the US Government “will not sell bitcoin deposited” in the reserve. 
• However, it fell short of announcing plans to purchase the 1,000,000 bitcoins or any amount of bitcoins for that matter that many had hoped for, given Senator Lummis’ earlier Strategic Bitcoin Reserve bill for example which outlined plans for large-scale government purchases. Instead, Trump’s executive order has authorised the Secretary of Treasury and Commerce to “develop budget-neutral strategies for acquiring additional bitcoin” that “impose no incremental costs on American taxpayers”. 
• Additionally, the EO clarified plans for a separate US Digital Asset Stockpile which will contain other digital assets other than bitcoin – likely XRP, SOL, ADA and ETH as mentioned in Trump’s Truth Social post over the weekend, however again, this stockpile will only so far be made up of forfeited digital assets seized by the US government. 

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• The disappointment, or at least long-awaited confirmation of the Strategic Reserve, may have played a role in the so-far ‘buy the rumour, sell the news’ response from the market. BTC dropped over 5% from its $90.6K prior to Sack’s post on X, and then pared back some of those losses, now trading at $88.5K. 
• At the time of writing, ETH, SOL, and ADA are also all down by over 3%. 
• That disappointment has been reflected in derivatives markets too – whilst both BTC and ETH maintain the same inverted term structure they have exhibited for most of this month, short-tenor vol levels for both have dropped sharply by over 10 points, resulting in a flatter curve. Short-tenor skew for BTC options once again express demand for put protection. 
• BTC perpetual futures funding rates have also dropped into the negative, reflecting persistent short pressure and bearish sentiment.

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• The Strategic Reserve Executive Order wasn’t the only one signed yesterday either – Trump made a U-turn on his 25% sanctions against select imports from Canada and Mexico for another month, until April 2, marking the second one-month delay on the trade partners. Note April 2 is the same data where Trump’s reciprocal tariff plans could also be released.
• All goods covered by the North American trade agreement, USMCA will be exempt from the tariffs. According to US trade data, 62% of Canadian imports are non-USMCA-compliant and thus will be tariffed at 25%, though much of those imports are energy products which are subject to a lower 10% tariff rate. For Mexico, 49% of its exports to the US are USMCA compliant.
• Whilst previous tariff reprieves resulted in equity markets rallying, this time was different with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 falling 1.78% and 2.79% respectively, almost a sign of fatigue from the market over the President’s whipsawing trade policy. Both the SPX and NDX recorded ATH’s on 19th Feb earlier this year, and since that high, are down 7-10%.   

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• BioNexus Gene Lab Corporation has formally approved an Ethereum-focused corporate treasury strategy, making it the first Nasdaq-listed company to have Ethereum as the exclusively focused reserve asset. The tech firm’s Ethereum Strategy Whitepaper outlined some reasoning behind its choice of Ethereum over Bitcoin, stating "While Bitcoin remains a strong store of value, Ethereum provides broader utility as a programmable financial platform" and also the “additional revenue stream” made possible through ETH staking.
• Ethereum's Pectra mainnet update is said to be postponed following issues with the rollouts onto both testnets with developers opting for more time to collect data. The final mainnet rollout date is yet to be confirmed.

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