Daily market data review and trend analysis, produced by PANews.
Macro Market
With the US-Israel joint military strike against Iran resulting in the death of Khamenei, the Middle East powder keg has been completely ignited. Trump's tough stance has heightened market anxiety, with him stating that the military operation could last for four weeks and that there would be no ceasefire until the objectives are achieved. Iran, on the other hand, has countered by declaring that the timing of a ceasefire is up to them.
Panic swept through traditional financial markets in an instant. U.S. stock index futures opened lower across the board on Monday, with S&P 500 futures, Nasdaq and Dow Jones futures all falling by more than 1%. Short-term Treasury yields even briefly fell to their lowest level since 2022, as funds frantically fled overvalued risky assets.
Amid the safe-haven frenzy, precious metals have unsurprisingly become the "ultimate safe haven" for global funds. Spot gold surged 2% to $5,390 per ounce, while spot silver jumped 2.6% to $96 per ounce. Analysts from Saxo Bank and KCM Trade stated that this worrying escalation will prompt gold to regain its status as the preferred safe-haven asset. City Index even predicts that strong safe-haven buying could push gold prices to $5,500, or even break historical highs.
The Strait of Hormuz , a vital artery of the energy market, has come to a de facto standstill, prompting panic buying that pushed international oil prices up by $8 at the open. Brent crude surged as much as 9% to $82.37 per barrel, while WTI crude jumped to $75.33 per barrel. Despite OPEC's emergency announcement of a 206,000 barrel per day production increase in April, it was still difficult to quell market anxieties about supply disruptions.
Wall Street investment banks are highly wary of the future trajectory of oil prices , with tail risks already fully priced in. JPMorgan Chase warns that if the Straits of Hormuz is completely closed, Middle Eastern oil-producing countries, limited by storage capacity, can only sustain production for a maximum of 25 days. Citigroup and Rystad Energy, on the other hand, predict that if energy infrastructure is attacked or shipping disruptions persist for several weeks, oil prices will undoubtedly fall below $100, and could even surge to an extreme low of $120.
Goldman Sachs' strategy team points out that the "duration" of the conflict has replaced the "outbreak itself" as the core variable determining asset trends. If the oil supply disruption evolves into a protracted conflict, high inflation expectations will completely lock up the Federal Reserve's room for interest rate cuts, interest rate volatility will rise sharply, and the global market may repeat the energy shock scenario of 2022.
The AI Sector: Trends and Events
On February 28, local time, negotiations between the U.S. Department of Defense and AI company Anthropic broke down due to disagreements, and the Pentagon announced that it would designate Anthropic as a "supply chain risk" and cut off cooperation. On the same day, Anthropic's competitor, OpenAI, quickly reached an agreement with the Department of Defense, meeting its requirement to use AI for "all legitimate purposes" while retaining its right to protect its technology.
Despite the controversy surrounding its collaboration with the Pentagon, Claude's market appeal remained undiminished. Instead, it significantly boosted downloads and willingness to pay, topping the Apple App Store's free app chart in the US for the first time, surpassing OpenAI's ChatGPT.
Bitcoin price
Despite the extreme pressure from the Middle East conflict, Bitcoin spot prices did not repeat the "312" crash of 2020, but instead trended slowly downwards. Although the price briefly dipped to a low of $63,000 over the weekend, it quickly staged a "V-shaped" reversal after the confirmation of Khamenei's death. February ended with a nearly 15% drop, marking the third worst February performance in history. Since reaching a new high, Bitcoin has fallen for five consecutive months, and March also began with a slow decline.
At the options level, the implied volatility (IV) for March 27th delivery surged to 51.3%, with the biggest pain point looming at $76,000. Of the total open interest of 167,000 BTC (over $11.2 billion), the put/call ratio (PCR) is only 0.75, but the 24-hour trading volume PCR has skyrocketed to 1.37. Current market sentiment is extremely polarized: long-term institutions are stubbornly holding onto their long positions, while short-term speculative funds are frantically buying put options in the $67,000 to $70,000 "meat grinder" zone for tactical hedging. According to Unbias data, 61% of analysts are currently bullish in the short term.
Bearish view
The core logic is that the withdrawal of macro funds for risk aversion and the suppression of prices by option market makers will limit the short-term rebound potential, and the market faces the risk of a downward trend due to negative liquidity feedback.
GodotSancho: Major funds have shifted from buying puts for defense to selling calls to suppress prices, sealing off upside potential; the long term maintains a deep negative premium, clearly betting on a deeper drop this week. It is recommended to slow down bottom-fishing and focus on the $66,000 support level.
Skew: The spot market is experiencing passive selling around $68,000. The market is chasing prices with leverage, so a short-term pullback would not be surprising.
bullish view
Core logic: The inflationary expectations and fiat currency trust crisis brought about by war will fundamentally reshape Bitcoin's safe-haven value as a "borderless hard asset" and force the Federal Reserve to release liquidity.
Arthur Hayes: The longer the US intervenes in the Iran situation, the more likely the Federal Reserve is to cut interest rates and print money to support war spending; the best strategy is to buy Bitcoin heavily after the Fed cuts interest rates.
Samson Mow (Jan3 CEO): Bitcoin is severely undervalued compared to gold and the global money supply, and the current Z-score falling below the -2 threshold indicates a major price reversal.
Henrik Zeberg (Macroeconomist): Driven by rising risk appetite and ETF inflows, Bitcoin's main target price is $110,000 to $120,000.
Alex Krüger: Q1 target price is $78,000 to $82,000, and a break above $71,000 would trigger FOMO in the market.
Mercado Bitcoin Research Team: If priced in gold terms, Bitcoin's bear market cycle may bottom out in February or March, with whales taking advantage of panic to buy at low prices.
BitBull / Michaël van de Poppe: The market is poised for a corrective rebound, with a short-term target price of $73,000 to $74,000.
Ethereum price quotes
Compared to Bitcoin's dramatic fluctuations, Ethereum's start to 2026 has been fraught with difficulty, with a year-to-date drop of 36% and its price retreating to around $1,900. Market data shows that Ethereum's trading volume on DEXs has plummeted by 55% in the past six months, recording only $56.5 billion in February, far below the peak of $128.5 billion in August last year. This sharp decline in on-chain activity has directly dragged down network fees and DApp revenue, making the psychological threshold of $3,000 seem increasingly unattainable.
However, behind the disheartening price performance, Ethereum's underlying fundamentals and institutional consensus remain rock solid. It still firmly controls a TVL of $52.4 billion, and if Layer 2 networks like Base and Arbitrum are included, its TVL market share reaches a staggering 65%, completely crushing Solana's $6.4 billion and BNB Chain's $5.5 billion. Furthermore, Ethereum monopolizes a whopping 68% of the RWA market share, making it the preferred choice for Wall Street giants like JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and BlackRock to issue tokenized funds. Current market sentiment towards Ethereum is complex; retail investors are extremely pessimistic due to price weakness and liquidity shortages, while traditional financial giants are accelerating their bottom-fishing.
Bearish view
Core logic: The decline in on-chain activity and the long-term price weakness have severely weakened the willingness of funds to hold and the short-term explosive potential.
Crypto Seth: Since December 2024, Ethereum has closed lower for 12 out of the past 15 months, showing continued weak price performance.
bullish view
The core logic is that Ethereum's absolute leading value locked, irreplaceable institutional adoption rate, and continuous evolution of its underlying architecture have built an extremely high long-term moat.
Vitalik Buterin: The focus of development is shifting to base layer extensions and ZK-EVM, ensuring long-term on-chain efficiency and security through parallel block verification and quantum-resistant cryptography.
Investor Jordan: Continue to add to positions in the extremely oversold $1,800 range. Ethereum's position as a stablecoin and the backbone of DeFi is unshakable. The target price for the next 5 years is $20,000.
Traditional financial institutions (JPMorgan Chase/Citigroup/BlackRock): Regardless of short-term price fluctuations, they still choose Ethereum as the preferred innovation platform for tokenized funds and banks to issue stablecoins.
Key data (as of 13:00 HKT, March 2)
(Data source: CoinAnk, Upbit, SoSoValue, CryptoBubbles)
Bitcoin ETF: Net inflows of $787 million this week
Ethereum ETF: Net inflow of $80.46 million this week
SOL ETF: Net inflow of $44.44 million this week
XRP ETF: Net inflow of $9.5545 million this week
Fear of Greed Index: 10 (Extreme Panic)
Upbit 24-hour trading volume rankings: XRP, BTC, SAHARA, ETH, CFG
Sector Performance: The crypto market declined across the board, with NFT and GameFi sectors falling by more than 3%.
A total of 67,606 people worldwide were liquidated, with a total liquidation amount of $281 million, including $141 million in BTC liquidations, $53.84 million in ETH liquidations, and $22.44 million in SOL liquidations.
Today's Outlook
Binance: Bitway (BTW) tokens will begin circulating on March 2nd at 16:00.
The MANTRA token upgrade will be implemented on March 3, including a name change and a 1:4 split.
Upbit will remove GoChain (GO) from its platform on March 3.
ENA will unlock approximately 40.63 million tokens, worth approximately $4.3 million, on March 2.
The biggest drops among the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization today were: Power Protocol down 9.4%, Decred down 7.7%, Stable down 10.7%, Internet Computer down 9.2%, and MemeCore down 5.5%.
