Weekly Crypto Market Report: Trump’s Strategic Crypto Reserve Stirs the Market, SEC Retreats, and Institutional Adoption Grows

This week, the cryptocurrency market experienced significant volatility as a series of events sent the market swinging in different directions.

From former President Donald Trump’s proposal for a Strategic Crypto Reserve to the SEC’s unexpected backpedaling in its lawsuits against some big-name defendants, there was a lot going on in that regard. Yet, in the midst of all this, institutional interest in the cryptocurrency markets kept picking up.

Trump’s Strategic Crypto Reserve Sends Shockwaves

In a stunning move that made headlines almost instantly, President Donald Trump, in a release from his office, announced plans to create a “Strategic Crypto Reserve” to support the cryptocurrency market. Almost as soon as the announcement was made, the crypto market rallied, with a number of tokens surging as investors speculated what the reserve might actually do.

Bitcoin ($BTC), which had been trading relatively flat, shot up to an eye-popping $95,000 following the news. But the rally was short-lived, as skepticism surrounding the reserve’s feasibility and legitimacy cooled the market’s enthusiasm. And as doubts began to surface about how such a reserve could even be implemented, the pullback in the market that manifested itself by the end of the week gave us our first look at something that has a good chance of being a quasi-ETF: the Bitcoin Reserve.

Although the initial optimism has faded, there was a temporary sense of euphoria in the markets following the news, with plenty of analysts suggesting that the political backdrop could get friendlier for cryptocurrencies in the future—especially as Trump’s sometimes pro, sometimes con, public discourse around crypto keeps capturing headlines.

SEC Takes a Step Back: Kraken & Cumberland Get Relief

In yet another major market development, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) made waves by failing to pursue legal cases against two major entities in the cryptocurrency space—Kraken and Cumberland DRW. The SEC’s decision to not go after these high-profile cases, which had attracted a lot of media attention, suggests a potential change in the regulatory environment. This is part of a broader trend of the SEC being less aggressive in pursuing regulatory actions, despite the regulator being under pressure to provide more clarity and fairness in its interactions with the crypto industry.

This decision was a welcome sign for the market, offering relief to investors and market participants.

In the past, we have seen crypto companies and the government engaging in high-stakes legal battles over the regulatory status of digital assets. More often than not, these cases end up being resolved in favor of the crypto businesses, which is a good result for them, obviously, but it may do nothing to clear up the regulatory fog that has so many in the sector worried and which has rendered the sector into an area of many unknowns for investors.

Institutional Players Cement Their Commitment

In the world of institutions, BlackRock, the largest asset manager on the planet, stirred things up by including Bitcoin in its model portfolio. This was the first time a major asset manager had made such a move, and it felt like a monumental step for Bitcoin toward the mainstream. BlackRock allocated a modest 1-2% of its Bitcoin ETF holdings to this portfolio, but then, even modest steps made by BlackRock tend to send ripples through the financial markets.

This initiative by BlackRock folds neatly into a wider narrative of institutional interest in Solana. Just a few days ago, CME Group announced it would launch Solana futures on March 17, which was met by the requisite press release. But to really understand what’s happening here and why it matters, let’s first take a second to discuss Solana itself.

Moreover, Bitwise Asset Management took a noteworthy step by putting money into the on-chain credit protocol Maple Finance. The platform uses Bitcoin-based lending to present institutional yield opportunities, which makes for an increasingly integrated traditional finance tool in the crypto space.

1/6 NEW Weekly State of the Market Report: This week, crypto markets seesawed as Trump’s proposed Strategic Crypto Reserve sent select tokens soaring before skepticism cooled the rally. Meanwhile, the SEC dropped cases against @krakenfx and Cumberland DRW (@CumberlandSays),… pic.twitter.com/k2gtiAG8Bj

— CoinMetrics.io (@coinmetrics) March 6, 2025

Ethereum’s Pectra Upgrade Faces Challenges

Despite the overall uptick in interest from both institutions and individual investors, the news front wasn’t all sunny this week for the crypto world. The much-anticipated Pectra testnet upgrade for Ethereum hit a few snags and is now on hold. Ethereum developers weren’t looking to pull the rug out from under anyone, but they were on a schedule that had the upgrade rollout pushing hard toward the timeline of having the improvements implemented on the ‘mainnet.’ That timetable looks shaky this week at best.

Postponement is a delay; the Pegging Pectra project in Ethereum is compelling; the team undoubtedly is very good and quite capable; this is a good team working in a good manner. Now deploying Pegging Pectra is not going according to plan, and this makes Ethereum’s already precarious equilibrium of network congestion and transaction fee problems even worse. (For many in the Ethereum ecosystem, successfully deploying Pegging Pectra is seen as a necessary step toward restoring network equilibrium.)

Market Summary and Performance

By market cap, the total cap in cryptocurrency went from being at 2.77 trillion dollars to being at 2.96 trillion dollars. In this same time frame, Bitcoin went from having a market cap of 1.66 trillion dollars to having a market cap of 1.79 trillion dollars. Slightly more than half of the total cap in the market for cryptocurrencies is made up of Bitcoin. This same report puts Bitcoin’s dominance at around 60.4 percent.

In the last week, Bitcoin had a gain of 8.5%, and noteworthy altcoins such as $ADA (+56.16%), $XRP (+15.91%), $LINK (+10.52%), and $TRX (+7.96%) led the way higher. By contrast, Ethereum ($ETH) had a loss of 1.49%, and that underscores the mixed sentiment within the broader cryptocurrency market.

Across the various crypto sectors, performance was different. Specialized coins, value transfer coins, and application utility tokens saw solid gains. Media service tokens, blockchain utilities, and claim tokens all saw declines. The mixed performance reflects the market at large, with different tokens showing different amounts of volatility.

Wallet activity also fluctuated but showed significant increases in tokens like $XRP (+520.25%), $ADA (+60.11%), and $BCH (+22.29%). In contrast, we saw $FTT (-41.96%) and $BTC (-17.41%) decline. This is an illustration of the herd animal that is the cryptocurrency market, with some coins charging ahead while others seem to be retreating.

All in all, even though the crypto market has displayed resilience, the next few weeks are bound to deliver additional volatility, especially with the vital updates and regulatory advancements on the horizon. The market is still becoming more sophisticated, and it is certainly not free of obstacles—some of which might be deadly—that it must confront as it journeys through these uncertain times.

Disclosure: This is not trading or investment advice. Always do your research before buying any cryptocurrency or investing in any projects.

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