📉 Where's The Dip?

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Tik tak, tik tak… countdown to 11 AM and the FED decision is on. All signs point to no rate change, but let’s be real—it still feels a bit nerve-wracking, right?

Here’s what we got for you today:

• 🚨 Bitcoin Braces for FED Decision—What’s Next?

• 🚩 Leverage is Risk for Almost Traders?

• ⭐ Top Highlight in Crypto Today

• 🤡 Meme Of The Day

🚨 Bitcoin Braces for FED Decision—What’s Next?

Bitcoin has been under pressure last week, dropping from $84,500 to $81,300 ahead of the FOMC meeting tonight at 11AM California time (March 19). Traders are cutting leverage, expecting the usual pump-and-dump waves as the FED reveals its stance on monetary policy.

Historically, FOMC meetings act as a market reset, with Bitcoin reacting sharply to interest rate decisions. Looking back at 2024, BTC mostly dropped after rate decisions, except for two major rallies—one before the Bitcoin halving and ETF approvals, and another tied to Trump’s election campaign in November.

What Are the Possible Outcomes?

📌 FED holds rates (most likely) – Market moves sideways, then trends up based on Powell’s comments.
📌 FED cuts rates (low chance) – Bitcoin spikes as liquidity increases.
📌 FED hikes rates (low chance) – BTC and risk assets take a big hit.

If rates remain unchanged, Jerome Powell’s post-meeting statements will dictate short-term momentum. A hawkish tone could keep markets choppy, while a dovish stance may encourage more upside.

Institutions Are Still Buying

Short-term volatility aside, the big picture remains bullish. A new Coinbase report shows 83% of institutional investors plan to increase their crypto exposure in 2025. These firms aren’t just betting on Bitcoin—nearly 75% hold altcoins, with $XRP.X ( ▼ 1.28% ) and $SOL.X ( ▼ 1.83% ) leading the pack.

And it’s not just about holding. Altcoin ETFs are inching closer to approval, with Bloomberg analysts pointing to $LTC.X ( ▼ 2.31% )  , $SOL.X ( ▼ 1.83% )  , and $XRP.X ( ▼ 1.28% ) as strong candidates. The institutional push is already in motion—on March 17, CME launched SOL futures, signaling deeper adoption.

Big Picture: The Market Is Maturing

The FED meeting might shake things up for a few days, but the long-term trend is clear. Institutional players are moving deeper into crypto, from $BTC.X ( ▼ 0.69% ) and ETFs to altcoins and DeFi.

No matter what happens tonight, the crypto market is evolving—and the smart money is paying attention.

🚩 Leverage is Risk for Almost Traders?

Over the weekend, Crypto Twitter was buzzing about a massive Bitcoin short position – $376M with 40x leverage!

To make it more interesting, the position was later increased to $380M, with a liquidation price of $86,593. Some big investors tried to force a liquidation, hoping to push Bitcoin's price to that level.

But here’s the thing – it didn’t work. But hold on! Do you know what does this mean?

1️⃣ Leverage is cool but it’s terrible ideas for most traders

Let’s break it down.

• A short position is a bet that the price of an asset will go down. And when you leverage that bet, you’re only using a portion of your money. The rest? Borrowed.

• Every short has a ‘liquidation level,’ which is basically the point at which you’ve lost the collateral you put down.

• Once that happens, the platform closes your position automatically to protect the lender’s money.

So, @cbb0fe noticed this huge short position and decided to rally some investors to buy Bitcoin, driving the price higher in hopes of forcing a liquidation. Why? Because when shorts get liquidated, it creates forced buying, pushing the price even higher.

In this case, that could’ve resulted in about $370M worth of buying pressure.

Unfortunately, they couldn’t push the price to that liquidation level.

Here’s the key takeaway:

• This stuff happens all the time. Market players constantly try to manipulate prices to trigger buying or selling pressure for profit.

• But here’s the catch: The more leverage you take on, the smaller your margin for error. A 3% price shift in Bitcoin’s value could cost a leveraged trader $9.5M of their own money!

→ If you're not careful, leveraging can lead to massive losses. This is why we strongly recommend avoiding leverage if you are a newbie and you are not the huge whale player like “0xf3f4” – it’s a risky game that’s better suited for experienced traders who know exactly what they’re doing.

As a newbie, there is another role that is much better. Let’s come to the next part 👇🏼

2️⃣ A Safer Role for Newbies

You don’t need to play the high-risk leverage game to make smart decisions in crypto. If you’re patient and strategic, finding the bottom of a price drop can set you up for big gains when the market bounces back.

Let’s rewind to June 2021, when Bitcoin was going through a sharp drop.

• Bitcoin’s price had been falling for a while.

• Exchange volume (the amount of Bitcoin being traded) was low near the bottom about $30, suggesting less panic.

• Then, something interesting happened: as Bitcoin’s price bounced slightly, heading toward $40k on June 15, it dropped again to $30k on June 22. But this time, exchange volume shot up – meaning big players were buying as others sold off.

→ What did that tell us?

It was a sign that major investors (like market makers) were soaking up the sell orders.

The price didn’t drop much, but the volume spiked. This was the sign of the bottom!

Fast Forward to Today: March 2025

• Current Price: $83k.

• Recent Bottom: $76k.

• Volume Behavior: Not seeing the big spike yet.

→ It’s very likely that we’ve found the bottom at $76k.

Why? Well, the pattern is similar to what we saw in June 2021:

• The volume isn’t increasing dramatically yet, which might suggest that big players are buying over-the-counter (OTC) rather than in the open market.

• They’re building positions quietly, and eventually, they’ll need a large volume of sales to absorb. Once that happens, expect a huge spike in volume.

Fear & Greed Index: What It Tells Us It’s been rising steadily means market sentiment is slowly shifting from fear to hope. Investors are getting more sensitive to price changes and are likely to panic-sell at the slightest drop. This is key:

• In 2021, we saw a panic sell-off when the Fear & Greed index dropped sharply to 15. But despite the panic, the price of Bitcoin didn’t fall too much – the market had already bottomed out.

• How This Could Play Out? We’re in a similar situation now. If Bitcoin drops back to around $76k, there’s a good chance many investors will panic and sell, just like they did in 2021. This could create the perfect opportunity for those of us watching the market.

→ Once the price hits that point and volume spikes, we’ll likely see a strong rebound.

The Bottom Line

By understanding these patterns, you can stay ahead of the curve and make smarter moves without relying on high-risk trades. So, while leverage traders are struggling with the ups and downs, you can sit back and look for the bottom. When the price hits $76k and volume increases, it could be time to make your move.

Stay patient, stay smart, and let the market do the work for you.

⭐ Top Highlight in Crypto Today

🐋 Whale Moves Big – Wallet 0xf3f4 closed its short order in profit. In the last 24 hours, it shorted ETH, went long on HYPE, and pushed $520M in short volume on Hyperliquid, pocketed a smooth $9.5 million

🏛️ The Fed will announce interest rates at: 11AM California time (March 19). Yeah, don’t expect any big shocks. According to CME Watch, pretty much everyone—99%—thinks they’re keeping rates steady at 4.25-4.50%. No drama there. But the June announcement? That’s where things might get interesting—could be a chance for a rate cut.

📌 Ethena Labs & Securitize launch Converge, an EVM blockchain bridging DeFi & traditional finance. It supports Ethereum apps, offering retail investors DeFi access & institutional-grade tokenized assets.

🚨 AI Agent Hacked – AIXBT, built on Virtuals Protocol, lost $100K in ETH on Tuesday after a security exploit in its simulation wallet. Its token dropped 21% to ~$0.094.

📈 Bitcoin ETFs Rebound – U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs saw $274.6M in net inflows on Monday, the largest in six weeks. After $5B in outflows, renewed institutional interest and portfolio rebalancing fueled the surge.

🌎 North Korea has passed El Salvador and Bhutan to become top 3 "governments" holding the most $BTC.X ( ▼ 0.69% ) in the world, with about 13,000 $BTC.X ( ▼ 0.69% ) . This happened after the Lazarus hacker group, tied to North Korea, stole $1.4 billion mostly $ETH.X ( ▲ 0.55% ) from the Bybit exchange and turned it into Bitcoin.

🤡 Meme Of The Day

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The Crypto Fire Team

This newsletter is for informational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice. Traders should conduct thorough research, understand the risks, and carefully evaluate their decisions before investing in cryptocurrency.