“If they make that legal, we will go into that business,” Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said on stage at the Economic Club of Washington DC when asked about stablecoins. 

And you’re still feeling bearish?

Moynihan said it’s “pretty clear there’s going to be a stablecoin,” noting that it would be “no different than a money market fund with check access, it’s no different than a bank account, really.”

Yeah, you read that right. The institutions are going onchain. 

Elsewhere:

• BTC is looking to stabilize above $86,000, down 2% in the past day. Current price: $87,650.

• The total crypto market cap is $3 trillion — about where it was at the November 2021 peak.

• DAO treasuries have altogether lost $7 billion in nominal value in the past month, now altogether worth $23.8 billion, per DeepDAO.

🫨 Steady lads

I know I’m not alone in thinking that this is one of the weirdest market environments I’ve encountered.

The selling on the equities side makes sense, and there are a few reasons for that, from a disappointing US consumer confidence reading to the tariff overhang. The crypto side of things is a whole different can of worms.

So we can agree that memecoins are a big part of the negative shift. I hesitate to label all of the most recent token launches — i.e. MELANIA, TRUMP and LIBRA — memecoins, but I do think they all contributed to the larger exhaustion. While they were meant to be a fun, smaller part of crypto, their dominance in the narrative has clearly led to burnout. 

We’re seeing that in the data, with CME traders pulling back and acting wary. Perp traders, on the other hand, have been slightly more active, adding some BTC longs though, notably, longs are getting punished right now.

“CME traders remain defensive. Open interest remains flat while premiums have stayed in deep single digit territory and the February contract currently trades below spot. Annualized March futures premiums are subdued at 5.7%, with the daily next month premium declining to lows not seen since the early July Mt. Gox driven market downturn,” K33 wrote.

For perp traders, buying the dip didn’t quite pay off. 

“Perps have traded at discounts to spot for several weeks, but this discount narrowed amidst the open interest spike [since Monday]. Further, funding rates on Binance reached neutral terrain as leverage climbed, pointing toward traders entering longs with leverage. This behavior was quickly punished in the market, with long liquidations amplifying the move lower.”

But it really isn’t all doom and gloom, as Bitwise’s Matt Hougan noted. 

The institutional adoption notably hasn’t stopped, and everyone I’ve spoken to is still rather bullish on the overall environment noting how favorable it is once we get away from crime szn. 

That’s not to say we shouldn’t tread carefully, but there are some potential winners out there to keep a close eye on. K33 noted, in a separate report this morning, that Aave is an example to watch, given its growth.

“A constructive regulatory regime gives DeFi a new lease on life. Leading platforms such as Aave are now free to pursue innovative avenues that may have previously carried more questionable risk, such as revenue-sharing tokenomics,” K33 analysts wrote. 

To add to that, the idea is that DeFi could also gain from actual regulatory clarity (which we still haven’t seen). Institutional players, for example, could integrate various DeFi products into portfolios — especially if spot ETH ETFs add staking. 

I rarely opine, but I do think that this painful shift away from the memecoin narrative is a necessary one. There are pockets of opportunities within the current market if̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶f̶o̶l̶l̶o̶w̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶h̶e̶a̶r̶t̶. 

No, but really, the take that there’s still demand for projects that properly show crypto’s use cases is one I personally believe. And that’s not just reserved for stablecoins and RWAs. 

— Katherine

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DAS NYC Tickets Are Moving Fast — So Should You

The biggest names in crypto, finance, and policy are coming to NYC. VIP passes? Gone. The agenda? Live. With less than 30 days to go, the time to secure your spot is now.

Markets move. The smartest money moves first.

Groups of 4-9 still save 15%.

📅 March 18-20 | NYC

• Something to celebrate: Uniswap is the latest firm to receive word from the SEC that the regulator is ending its investigation. 

• Ethereum Foundation’s Aya Miyaguchi will lead EF as its new president, upgrading from her Executive Director role.

• Bernstein analysts remain optimistic about their $200,000 bitcoin price target despite the downturn.

🎨 Art of the rebrand

Crypto moves at breakneck speed. 

One day, you could recite the top coins by heart, maybe even in order. By the next, there’s a handful that you don’t even recognize.

Some might be entirely new, like HYPE, TRUMP or USDE. These days, there’s an increasing chance that they could be old coins rebranded.

Putting aside any technical reasons for projects to switch tickers — perhaps alongside with the launch of a new chain — token rebrands serve three key functions:

• Offers a way out from stale market positioning when the meta changes.

• Provides a clear focal point for promotional efforts to create buzz.

• Resets the price chart, wiping away everything that happened in previous years.

There have been at least five examples of high-profile token rebrands in recent memory: merit circle (MC) became BEAM; bitdao (BIT) became MANTLE (MNT); matic became POL; makerdao (MKR) became sky (SKY) and fantom (FTM) became sonic (S).

Many of these and other token migrations are still ongoing — meaning the old chart lives on under the previous ticker, separate from the new one.

And whether or not resetting the chart was a primary intention for the projects that have rebranded, it’s still possible to stitch together the old chart with the new one, just for fun.

Take the MC/BEAM chart above. Anyone who’d only checked the post-rebrand BEAM chart would see that BEAM is still up more than 70% on its initial price from October 2023. 

When in actuality, the coin’s down over 70% across its entire trade history.

MNT is another such case. It’s technically up 56% since the Bybit-launched investment DAO converted itself into an Ethereum layer-2 in 2023, but it lost 50% of its value since BIT was first launched two years earlier.

The opposite is true of MATIC/POL — POL has shed 56% of its value since it started its token migration in late 2023 but its combined total lifetime returns are nearly 5,000%.

That’s similar to what FTM/S has posted over its entire lifespan. The Fantom team is now dedicated to a newly launched chain called Sonic, with FTM tokens upgradeable to S as of January.

Meanwhile, MKR/SKY is still positive by around half over its entire combined history, while only ahead by 4% since the rebrand.

Whether prices have gone up, down or sideways after rebrands, we could probably all learn a little something from each of these cases: When in doubt, why not just reinvent yourself and keep it moving. 

The kicker is that it might only work once.

— David

On our minds: Who is selling?