The Weekly Wrap: Fed holds Rates Steady, FTX Distribution, Morgan Stanley BTC spot ETF & SEC Taxonomy

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This Week’s Top Stories

“Fed held Interest Rates Steady, Amid Oil Price Shock Uncertainty.” – Wednesday, 18 March 2026 

• The Federal Reserve on Wednesday held interest rates steady, as the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran disrupts the global economy amid the ongoing oil price shock, which was accelerated by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Two weeks after the first attack, oil continues to trade significantly higher, currently at $94 per barrel.
• The spike in oil prices has raised the near-term measures of inflation, but Powell added on Wednesday that he believes it is too soon to know the scope and duration of the potential effects on the economy.
• Overall, the committee's forecast for the coming year is that the U.S. will be making progress on inflation, but likely not as much as Powell had hoped for. Complicating the economic forecast further is the renewed tariff uncertainty brought on by the Supreme Court's Feb. 20 ruling that struck down many of Trump's tariffs from April 2025.

“FTX to Distribute $2.2B in Fourth Payout on March 31.” – Wednesday, 18 March 2026 

• FTX announced that it is set to distribute around $2.2 billion on March 31 to holders of allowed claims in the plan's convenience and non-convenience classes that have completed the pre-distribution requirements.
• Eligible creditors are expected to receive funds from their selected distribution service provider within 1 to 3 business days from March 31, 2026.

“Morgan Stanley has Filed a Second Amended S-1 for its Bitcoin Spot ETF with the SEC.” – Thursday, 19 March 2026 

• Morgan Stanley has filed a second amended S-1 for its spot bitcoin ETF with the SEC, confirming the Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust will list on NYSE Arca under the ticker MSBT.
• If approved, Morgan Stanley could become the first major U.S. bank to directly issue a spot bitcoin ETF.

“SEC Chairman Unveils Token Safe Harbor Framework to Clarify Crypto Securities Rules.” – Tuesday, 17 March 2026 

• SEC Chairman Paul Atkins has announced a token taxonomy establishing four non-security crypto asset categories (digital commodities, collectibles, digital tools, and payment stablecoins), with only tokenized traditional securities remaining under SEC jurisdiction.
• The new interpretation provides market participants with clarity on how the Commission treats crypto assets under federal securities laws, specifying that stablecoins, digital commodities, and digital tools do not constitute securities.
• The interpretation also states that digital commodities are not classified as securities provided they are intrinsically linked to the programmatic operation of a functional crypto system and derive their value from that operation as well as supply and demand dynamics.

A Quick Crypto Overview: Gold and Silver Down While Crypto is Holding Steady

Bitcoin is trading around the same price as last Friday, above $71'000, with Ethereum trading at $2'150 and Solana just below $90. 

The total crypto market followed roughly the same pattern as last week, with a steady increase during the first two days of the week. Bitcoin traded as high as $76'000 on early Tuesday morning but has since corrected roughly 6 percent to the downside. 

The Bitcoin dominance traded lower this week as well but is currently making up some ground again, while the Ethereum dominance experienced a strong start to the week, reaching its highest level this week since the end of January. 

The U.S. stock indices are trading more or less flat this week after a positive start on Monday and Tuesday but a sharp drop on Wednesday in anticipation of the Fed interest rate decision. Oil continues to trade at elevated prices but did not increase meaningfully this week, while gold and silver experienced sharp drops this week. Gold is down more than 8 percent from last Friday's prices, while silver is currently down almost 14 percent since last Friday. 

AI-related crypto projects continued to rally this week, as we highlighted last week. TAO and FET are both up almost 30 percent over the past seven days. 

Chart of the Week: Bitcoin is Gaining Ground Against Gold

As we highlighted at the beginning of March, Bitcoin has been gaining ground against gold since the Israel-Iran war began. Over the past week, this outperformance continued, and Bitcoin is up around 10 percent since last Friday and has outperformed gold by 25 percent since the beginning of March. This is certainly an interesting picture and puts Bitcoin in a more positive light, as it has been lagging its bigger brother over the past few months.

What’s Happening Onchain? S&P 500 Perps on Hyperliquid & OpenSea Token Delay 

OpenSea announced that the launch of the SEA token will be delayed due to the current market conditions. The token was scheduled to launch at the end of March and there has not yet been a new timeline published by the Foundation. 

In more positive news S&P Dow Jones Indices and the leading provider of RWA-perp-markets on Hyperliquid, Trade[XYZ], have partnered up to launch the first official S&P 500 perpetual contract on Hyperliquid. The official S&P 500 perp has taken over all other US500 markets on Hyperliquid in open interest only 22 hours after launch. The S&P 500 perp is available 24/7/365, anchored by the official index data required for deep liquidity and institutional confidence at scale. 

Additionally, Tempo launched its mainnet this week, allowing anyone to build on Tempo through their public RPC endpoints. Tempo also introduced the Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) alongside the mainnet. The MPP is an open standard for machine payments co-authored by Stripe and Tempo. 

Digital Asset Fund Flows: $1B in Net Inflows & Strategy Continues its Buying Spree 

Last week, digital asset investment products saw over $1 billion in net inflows in their third consecutive week of net inflows. The bulk of the inflows came as always from the U.S., while Hong Kong interestingly saw its strongest inflow week since August last year. Bitcoin attracted almost $800 million, followed by Ethereum with $315 million, while XRP saw outflows of $80 million. Short-Bitcoin products also recorded inflows of US$8.1m last week, highlighting that market opinion remains somewhat polarized. 

Strategy bought an additional 22K Bitcoin last week and spent more than $1.5 billion on it at an average price of roughly $70K, bringing its total BTC holdings to more than 761K, worth $57.6 billion. The company is still down on its investment with an average buying price of almost $76K. 

Market Sentiment: Continued Extreme Fear in Crypto and Stocks 

Both the crypto and the U.S. stock market continue to be stuck in the extreme fear territory. The sentiment in the crypto market dropped considerably again during the second half of this week, while it had a short recovery at the beginning of the week. The sentiment index for the U.S. stock market continues to point to the downside and appears to be targeting at least the November 2025 lows, which were slightly above the April 2025 lows, when sentiment dropped to a level of 4 amid the Trump tariffs. 

The AAII members switched bearish this week, with 52 percent saying they feel bearish on the stock market for the coming six months, up from 46 percent last week and 35 percent at the beginning of the month. The number of bullish members has stayed roughly flat with a lot of neutral members switching to a bearish bias this week. 

Other Relevant News 

• Prediction market platform Polymarket announced the acquisition of Brahma, a startup focused on cryptocurrency and decentralized finance (DeFi) infrastructure. – Link
• Kraken parent company Payward has paused its IPO plans due to weakened crypto market conditions. – Link
• Kalshi has raised more than $1 billion in a new funding round at a $22 billion valuation, roughly doubling from about $11 billion in December 2025; the round was led by Coatue Management. – Link
• Mastercard to Acquire BVNK to Connect On-Chain Payments and Fiat Rails. – Link 

Looking Ahead: Uncertainty Over Israel-USA War Against Iran Dominates 

The markets are still heavily driven by headlines surrounding the war between Israel-USA and Iran. We all remember that Trump said this war will be over rather soon, actually in a matter of weeks. But now the war has been ongoing for three weeks and an increasing number of market participants are starting to question this expectation of a short duration. The longer this war drags on, the greater the chances of potential second-order supply chain contagion, such as LNG, petrochem, fertilizer flows, helium, or aluminum, which are all at risk due to the war. 

Markets are currently navigating an oil shock repricing regime rather than a traditional flight to safety. Rising oil prices, climbing yields, and a strengthening dollar have combined with sharp selloffs in precious metals, with gold down roughly 20 percent from its all-time high and silver falling even more steeply. Notably, equity drawdowns have remained modest relative to these moves, likely because market participants have been pricing in a short-duration war. But what happens if this continues to drag on? 

Crypto has been holding surprisingly steady since the start of the conflict and Bitcoin is continuing to outperform gold as of today. Of course, this also has to do with the previous price action: with Bitcoin having already corrected to the downside towards the end of the year and gold having been on a spectacular run, this recent price action is reversing some of that previous gold outperformance. 

Below, you can find some of the key data releases and events to watch out for next week. 

Tuesday, 24 March 2026 

Japan – National CPI and Core CPI 

Wednesday, 25 March 2026 

Japan – Monetary Policy Meeting Minutes 

USA – Crude Oil Inventories 

Thursday, 26 March 2026 

USA – Initial Jobless Claims