As we discussed in Entering the Bitcoin Renaissance, our last edition, Lightning Labs CEO and Co-Founder Elizabeth Stark told The Block, “a major narrative of the next cycle will be the bitcoin renaissance, and it has already begun in full swing.” Only a few months later, and that is proving to be quite prescient!

Google Trends data showed that the search popularity for the keyword "bitcoin" from February 18th to 24th, 2024 was 22, which is still low compared to May 2021 (popularity was 100).

Matrixport co-founder Daniel Yan posted on social media that the current market sentiment has reached a level that should be treated with caution. By the end of April, there may be a healthy downward adjustment of about 15%, with specific adjustments possibly appearing in March. From a macroeconomic perspective, March is already a tricky month (due to the Federal Reserve meeting and BTFP). With the upcoming upgrade of the Dencun mainnet and the Bitcoin halving, the market in March may be weak. It is still unknown where the adjustment will start (whether the new high or the adjustment will come first), but long-term holders need not worry.

According to data compiled by Cointelegraph, as the price of Bitcoin reaches a new high in nearly two years, in the past few days, the prices of Bitcoin against the Japanese yen, Malaysian ringgit, Indian rupee, New Taiwan dollar, South Korean won, Chilean peso, Australian dollar, Chinese yuan, South African rand, Norwegian krone, and Turkish lira have all reached historic highs.

SkyBridge founder Anthony Scaramucci stated that Bitcoin can definitely "replace or coexist" with gold as a store of value.

According to Coinglass data, the total open position of BTC futures contracts across the network is 454,700 BTC, equivalent to $25.77 billion, with a 24-hour increase of 0.39%. Among them, the open position of CME BTC contracts is 137,600 BTC (about $7.782 billion), ranking first; the open position of Binance BTC contracts is 108,300 BTC (about $6.14 billion), ranking second.

Bitcoin's price surged above $57,000, leading to a broader rally in the crypto market. The global crypto market cap increased by 7% to $2.25 trillion, with trading volumes also rising significantly. This resulted in over $380 million in crypto liquidations in the past 24 hours, with Bitcoin and altcoins funding rates reaching high levels. Additionally, options traders are predicting a strike price of $60K or even $70K before the upcoming Bitcoin halving, while BTC futures open interests on Binance and CME hit record highs.

IntoTheBlock stated in a post on X platform that 95% of Bitcoin addresses are currently in a state of profit. The last time the proportion was this high was during the peak of the bull market in 2021, when the price of Bitcoin exceeded $60,000.

Investors brace for a pivotal week as economic data, Fed speeches, and rate-cut speculations shape the crypto market's trajectory.

The Bitcoin creator saw an irony in the debate between economic liberty and conservation in an email thread with an early collaborator Martii 'Sirius' Malmi.

An address starting with 1aXzE transferred approximately 26,139 bitcoins worth about $1.347 billion to an address starting with 3M6XX yesterday, as monitored by Arkham.It is reported that the largest Bitcoin transaction prior to this occurred in April 2020, involving a trade of 161,500 BTC worth about $1.1 billion, involving two Bitfinex addresses, which was later confirmed by CTO Paolo Ardoino. Prior to that, other major transactions in 2019 and 2020 ranged from $491 million to $1.033 billion.

1. Ethena Labs explains the reason for the significant reduction in sUSDe APY: to ensure a slow and controlled product launch

The British Bitcoin DeFi platform SatoshiSwap.ai announced the completion of a $700,000 pre-sale round of financing. The new funds will be used to build a DEX designed specifically for the Bitcoin ecosystem. It is reported that the SatoshiSwap.ai model is similar to UniSwap, but its platform will use the Stacks L2 blockchain.

Sabre56 CEO Phil Harvey stated that "many trading opportunities have matured" after the BTC halving. He said, "Time will tell, but historical data strongly suggests significant growth within 18 months."

Farside Investors monitored that on February 23, the ARK 21Shares Bitcoin Spot ETF (ARKB) had a net inflow of $34.5 million.

According to OKX market data on February 23rd, Bitcoin fell below $51,000 and is currently priced at $50,983, with a 24-hour drop of 0.82%.

Lin, the head of Deribit Exchange's Asia-Pacific business, stated that today's largest BTC options trade was once again buying a cross-market combination for March 1st: buying both a call and put option for 52,000 on March 8th, totaling 250 BTC and paying a premium of $785,000. The largest ETH trade today was buying 2,000 call options for 32,000 at the end of March, paying a premium of $314,000. The biggest change in the past 1-2 weeks compared to before the Spring Festival is that the large trades are relatively small. Recently, with the release of financial reports for US stocks and the FOMC meeting, the prices of technology stocks have been high, and traditional large institutions are focusing on arbitrage trading or short-term hedging.

This week’s newsletter describes a proposal for providing DNS-based human-readable Bitcoin payment instructions, summarizes a post with thoughts about mempool incentive compatibility, links to a thread discussing the design of Cashu and other ecash systems, briefly looks at continuing discussion about 64-bit arithmetic in Bitcoin scripts (including a specification for a previously proposed opcode), and gives an overview of an improved reproducible ASMap creation process. Also included are our regular sections describing updates to clients and services, new releases and release candidates, and notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure software.

According to Glassnode data, since mid-March 2020, the amount of Bitcoin stored in exchange wallets has significantly decreased, marking a significant shift in investor behavior. At that time, more than 17% of the total Bitcoin supply was held on exchanges, reaching a historic high. However, the trend of decreasing exchange balances has continued, even during the 2021 Bitcoin bull market and is expected to continue until 2024. The amount of Bitcoin held on exchanges has continued to decline this year. From January 1st to February 19th, the amount of Bitcoin in exchange wallets decreased from 2.356 million BTC to 2.314 million BTC, the lowest level since April 2018.

According to OKX market data, Bitcoin fell below $51,000 and is now priced at $50,942, with a 24-hour decline of 1.89%.