The week could prove crucial for markets, including bitcoin with the US Federal Reserve being one of seven major central banks to announce its interest rate decisions, while war-induced oil price hikes threaten to reignite inflation in the global economy.
Most central banks are expected to keep interest rates steady, but hawkish comments from policymakers, driven by inflation fears, could trigger downward volatility in risky assets.
While reflationary environments have historically supported bitcoin, rising inflation expectations are pushing bond yields higher and tightening financial conditions, André Dragosch, European head of research at Bitwise, told CoinDesk. These conditions generally make riskier investments less attractive.
Yet, according to Dragosch, geopolitical tensions currently dominate the market environment. Historically, these shocks tend to fade quickly, and bitcoin has often generated above-average returns after periods of elevated geopolitical risk.
“Investors should generally ignore these types of events and view them as short-term buying opportunities,” Dragosch said.
Bitcoin is trading at what Dragosch called the “biggest macro discount” on record, with sentiment near FTX collapse lows. “We’re probably closer to the bottom than the top,” he said.
What to watch
(All times ET)
- Cryptocurrency
- March 17: Lava Network (LAVA) will expand with 17 new chain integrations and nine new blockchain ecosystems.
- March 19: Walrus (WAL) deadline for Tusky users to migrate their data.
- March 23: The Backpack token generation event takes place, with 250 million tokens (25% of the total supply) to be distributed.
- Macro
- March 16, 8:30 a.m.: Consumer Price Index (CPI) in Canada for February (previous 2.3%)
- March 17, 4:30 a.m.: Reserve Bank of Australia interest rate decision estimated at 4.1% (previous: 3.85%)
- March 17, 10:00 a.m.: U.S. pending home sales MoM for February (previous -0.8%)
- March 18, 6:00 a.m.: Eurozone consumer price index (CPI) for February. MoM is. 0.7% (previous -0.6%); Annual estimate of 1.9% (previous: 1.7%)
- March 18, 8:30 a.m.: American PPI for February. Annual estimate of 3.7% (previous: 3.6%); Estimated YoY core PPI at 3.2% (previous 3.6%)
- March 18, 9:45 a.m.: Bank of Canada interest rate decision East. 2.25% (previous 2.25%)
- March 18, 10:00 a.m.: US factory orders in January (previous -0.7%)
- March 18, 2:00 p.m.: Fed decision on East interest rates. 3.50%-3.75% (previous 3.50%-3.75%); FOMC Economic Projections
- March 18, 2:30 p.m.: press conference by the President of the Fed
- March 18, 5:30 p.m.: Decision on Selic rates from the Central Bank of Brazil East. 14.50% (previous 15%)
- March 18, 11 p.m.: Bank of Japan decision on East interest rates. 0.75% (previous 0.75%)
- March 19, 4:30 a.m.: Interest rate decision by the Swiss National Bank East. 0% (previous 0)
- March 19, 8 a.m.: Bank of England decision on East interest rates. 3.75% (previous 3.75%).
- March 19, 8:30 a.m.: First unemployment claims in the United States for the week ending March 14 (estimate). 215,000 (previous 213,000)
- March 19, 8:30 a.m.: Philadelphia Fed US manufacturing index for March (previous 16.3)
- March 19, 9:15 a.m.: ECB decision on the main refinancing interest rate East. 2.15% Prev. 2.15%
- March 19, 4:30 p.m.: Fed balance sheet for the week ending March 18 (previous $6.65 billion)
- March 20, 8:30 a.m.: Canada PPI YoY (previous 5.4%); MoM (previous 2.7%)
Earnings (Estimates based on FactSet data)
- March 16: Bakkt Holdings (BKKT), post-market, -$0.47
- March 16: Bitcoin Depot (BTM), pre-market, -$0.47
- March 16: Cango (CANG), post-market, -$0.34
- March 17: CEA Industries (BNC), post-market, $0.69
- March 18: Bitfarms (BITF), pre-market, -$0.03
- March 19: Gemini Space Station (GEMI), post-market, -$0.91
- March 20: BitFuFu (FUFU), pre-market, $0.01
Token Events
- Votes and calls on governance
- March 17: Mantle (MNT) will host State of Mind Ep. 07, discussing CeDeFi milestones and DeFi strategies.
- March 18: Jupiter (JUP) will hold its weekly Planetary Call community session with updates from the team.
- March 18: head of marketing and public relations to discuss ecosystem updates.
- Decentraland DAO is voting on whether to allow registered users to customize the color of their avatar’s name tag and add a more accessible volume slider to the UI sidebar. Voting closes on March 16 and 17.
- Convex Finance votes on the Curve and Frax gauge weighting allocations for the week of March 12, directing vlCVX’s voting power over hundreds of liquidity pools. It also votes on the weight allocations of the FXN gauges for the same period. Voting closes on March 17.
- Aavegotchi DAO votes to finalize its election of 2026-2027 multisig signatories, preserving the threshold of 5 out of 9 and setting quarterly remuneration for signatories. Voting closes on March 17.
- Aavegotchi DAO is holding the third ballot to elect seven of the remaining 10 candidates as multi-signature signatories, completing the list of nine signatories for the DAO Foundation portfolio. Voting closes on March 17.
- Aura Finance votes on Balancer gauge weight allocations for the week of March 12, directing vlAURA’s voting power over Balancer pools on Ethereum, Arbitrum, Optimism, Gnosis, Base, and Avalanche. Voting closes on March 17.
- ShapeShift DAO votes on creating and funding a new international UX workflow for six months to maintain professional multilingual translations of the ShapeShift app and website. Voting closes on March 17.
- WalletConnect Network is voting on allocating 50 million WCT tokens as dedicated rewards budget for WalletConnect Pay in 2026. Voting closes on March 18.
- ENS votes on a one-time transfer of 900,000 USDC from the ENS Endowment to wallet.ensdao.eth to cover a shortfall in stream payments owed to ENS Labs. Voting closes on March 18.
- Cratos DAO is voting on extending the current standard mobile app reward deadline by one month, until April 30, 2026. Voting closes on March 19.
- Lightchain AI DAO is voting on a 90-day temporary team authority proposal, which grants the core team 90 days of temporary operational authority to make daily and strategic decisions. Voting closes on March 22.
- Unlocks
- March 16: Arbitrum (ARB) will unlock 1.78% of its circulating supply worth $9.65 million.
- March 20: LayerZero (ZRO) will unlock 5.64% of its circulating supply worth $52.45 million.
- Token Launches
