• February saw high volatility return to Bitcoin and the crypto market – but not in a good way, unless you’re ferociously buying the dip
• The month still brought plenty of positive developments, however… the largest crypto heist to date helped send sentiment plummeting
• March has so far shown better form for the asset class, with Trump talking up a ‘strategic crypto reserve’ for the US and a White House crypto summit imminent 

Well, February in the cryptoverse was a ride, wasn’t it? Thankfully that’s over, but will March be any better?

That’s the question. And for the answer, in lieu of studying tea leaves and entrails, we’ll gather some relevant information below, along with an expert take or two, to try to get a sense of what might happen next.

First, let’s recap what’s most recently brought the market to this point – the month just passed, including its key news-related moments and the performance of the bull-goose, market-dominant digital asset, Bitcoin.

Bitcoin’s February monthly return

A -17% dump for Bitcoin in February, then. Not exactly bull market performance is it?

Actually, we’ve seen those kind of months play out in bull-run years of the Bitcoin four-year cycles of yore. History doesn’t always repeat, but it does often rhyme.

How’s the Fear & Greed Index travelling?

As we already knew from scrolling through crypto accounts on X every day, sentiment in the crypto sector has very much been in the toilet lately, confirmed for you here…

What happened in February? 

Plenty, but here were some key occurrences. Not all bad, mind, but there was certainly one not-so-great bit of news stood out that’s still having some ramifications on the market.

• At the beginning of February, investment firm River released an annual report on the state of Bitcoin adoption. It found that not only is it growing exponentially and quickly, but the network has also become more decentralised, with nearly 70% of Bitcoin owned by individuals, despite governments, corporations and huge institutional players buying up BTC.

• The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), led by the newly created Crypto Task Force headed by crypto-friendly Commissioner Hester Peirce, halted or paused six legal proceedings against different exchanges and protocols, including those against Coinbase, Uniswap and Robinhood Crypto. This is indicative of the major shift towards an innovation-friendly embrace of “alternative” financial rails by the Trump admin and a far cry from the restrictive and punitive measures on the crypto industry undertaken by the SEC in the Biden era.

• Several US states have started to explore the potential of Bitcoin as part of state financial reserves. Of the 25 states that have introduced bills, five have rejected them, with four of those rejections occurring in February.

• Okay, so what was the bad thing? A hack. A big one. In fact, the biggest crypto hack to date, and one of the biggest financial heists in history.

On February 21, the North Korean-based hacker group Lazarus (initially uncovered by renowned blockchain sleuth ZachXBT) stole US$1.4 billion in Ethererum from one of the biggest global crypto exchanges – Bybit.

According to data collated by DefiLlama, the amount pilfered was larger than all of 2024’s crypto hacks combined – US$1.27 billion.

Ethereum had already been wallowing, but this certainly didn’t do the second-largest cryptocurrency, or sentiment across the crypto space, any favours.

According to blockchain intelligence firm Elliptic, in the aftermath of the hack, the North Korean hackers began laundering the stolen funds, primarily using decentralised exchanges and anonymous crypto services to cover their tracks before converting the stolen assets into Bitcoin.

The US crypto strategic reserve announcement

And then there was this massive piece of news, which came just a few days ago at the beginning of March…

🇺🇸 TRUMP EXECUTIVE ORDER 🇺🇸

“MOVE FORWARD ON CRYPTO STRATEGY RESERVE” pic.twitter.com/YucFtlpu3J

— Bitcoin Archive (@BTC_Archive) March 2, 2025

A crypto strategic reserve has been confirmed to be in the plans for the US government by none other than Donald Trump himself.

And the plan is to not just include Bitcoin but also – at this stage – Ethereum, Solana, Cardano and XRP. There may be other US-based cryptos to be added to that list, but we’ll see.

We grabbed some comments on this from James Quinn-Kumar, Director of Community Engagement for Binance Australia…

What’s next? This weekend could be… pivotal

Pivotal? Yep, heard that before, but… by all reports, there could be some supersized news coming. (Until the news sells off, that is and it serves up just regular or small fries, or something worse – maybe one of those limp fish burgers.)

The White House, and it Crypto Czar (0fficial title) David Sacks, has announced that this Friday (US time) is holding a cryptocurrency summit.

President Trump will host the first White House Crypto Summit on Friday March 7. Attendees will include prominent founders, CEOs, and investors from the crypto industry. Look forward to seeing everyone there! pic.twitter.com/PEynzDuAOt

— David Sacks (@davidsacks47) March 1, 2025

This will be the second big crypto White House event (the first one came a few days before Trump’s inauguration).

The point of this is to get leaders within the crypto industry (including Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, Microstrategy founder Michael Saylor and Chainlink founder Sergey Nazarov to name a few) to sit down with key members of the Trump administration (several or all of Trump’s crypto task force will be attending) to really hash out matters of importance that could define the crypto industry’s future in the US in a positive way.

Judging by crypto-focused X twitterings, it’s expected, too, that the Trump administration will officially launch the aforementioned US strategic crypto reserve at this summit, and provide more details about which cryptos it will contain, and how it will operate.

Earlier this week, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick (himself a raging Bitcoin bull) noted in a Tuesday interview with independent US news media company The Pavlovic Today that Bitcoin would be “treated differently” than the other cryptos Trump mentioned in his announcement.

“A Bitcoin strategic reserve is something the President’s interested in. He spoke about it all during the campaign trail, and I think you’re going to see it executed on Friday,” Lutnick said.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin and crypto prices have been rebounded midweek, ahead of the summit, but also, possibly, because of this…

One more thing

Another piece of particularly bullish news that’s just landed this week, which is possibly flying a little under the radar, has come courtesy of asset-management titan BlackRock, which is the biggest player in the Bitcoin ETF space.

BlackRock has announced it’s going to add its Bitcoin ETF to its model portfolio – a $150bn portfolio fund – for the first time, nominating at this stage a 1 to 2% allocation, so about a couple of billion bucks worth of BTC buying right there.

The point is, it means BlackRock will actually be actively buying BTC beyond its ETF servicing.

“This is a big deal because this is the first of those models to add bitcoin,” James Seyffart, ETF analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, told Coindesk, adding, “it probably won’t be the last.”

And some BlackRock commentary here, too, via Bloomberg:

“We believe bitcoin has long-term investment merit and can potentially provide unique and additive sources of diversification to portfolios,” Michael Gates, lead portfolio manager for BlackRock’s Target Allocation ETF model portfolio suite, wrote this week in investment commentary seen by Bloomberg.

BLACKROCK “if every millionaire in the US asked their financial advisor to get them 1 bitcoin, there wouldn’t be enough.” pic.twitter.com/btfl1rhDmz

— Bitcoin Archive (@BTC_Archive) March 4, 2025

Hang on, another one more thing…

This also potentially flew under radars. As reported by Bloomberg late last month…

Ken Griffin’s market-making giant Citadel Securities is looking to become a liquidity provider for cryptocurrencies, betting President Donald Trump’s embrace of the industry will usher in a boom for the asset class.

JUST IN: $65 billion Citadel Securities is looking to become a liquidity provider for Bitcoin & crypto, betting on President Trump’s embrace of the industry 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/1inIgAlpY4

— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) February 24, 2025

Another massive, traditional finance, Wall Street player that’s going to start playing the liquidity game in crypto.

And people are bearish?