Bitcoin briefly touched $75,912 early Tuesday before returning to $74,372, but the intraday volatility is less interesting than the weekly chart below.
CoinDesk reported earlier Tuesday that the surge above $75,000 was due to derivatives activity rather than new buying, specifically the closing of large $60,000 short positions that forced market makers to buy bitcoin in spot as they rebalanced.
The rapid pullback below $74,400, a former support level from April 2025, confirmed that traders are unwilling to move above this level without a fundamental catalyst.
Every major token is up at least 5% over seven days. Ether rose 13.3% to $2,316. xrp rose 11% to $1.53, olana gained 9.7% to $93.92. Dogecoin added 9.5% to $0.10, back above a penny. BNB rose 5% to $676. It’s the broadest sustained rally since the start of the Iran war, and it comes ahead of the most important Fed meeting in months.
But the institutional flow data underlying the rally is real and becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. CF Benchmarks analyst Mark Pilipczuk noted in an email that spot Bitcoin ETFs attracted approximately $767 million in net inflows last week, the third straight week of positive flows and a sharp reversal from the five-week outflow streak of more than $3 billion earlier in the year.
Gold convergence trading is another signal worth watching. Year to date through mid-March, GLD returned about 16% while IBIT lost about 19%. But this gap has narrowed significantly, with bitcoin having outperformed gold by 13.2% since the beginning of March. The 90-day correlation between the two increased from -0.27 to +0.29 over six months. The narrative of “digital gold”, which seemed dead in February, is regaining oxygen.
The Fed meeting which begins today and ends Wednesday is the pivotal point. CME FedWatch still rates a 95%+ hold probability between 3.5% and 3.75%, so the decision itself is a non-event.
What matters is the dot plot and Powell’s press conference. Oil above $100 makes the stagflation scenario inevitable, but the labor market is weakening, with the loss of 92,000 jobs in February still recent. The Fed is caught between two mandates pulling in opposite directions, and the way Powell explains that tensions on Wednesday could determine the direction of risk assets through the end of March.
