Major tokens fell back on Tuesday as truce optimism flowed through risk markets.
Ether regained $2,029, up 2.6% over the past 24 hours and back above the $2,000 level that has served as a psychological pivot for weeks. Solana led the rally, up 2.9% to $85.67. BNB added 2.6% to $639. XRP rose 1.7% to $1.37. Dogecoin lagged just 1% and remains down 1.4% on the week, continuing to underperform the broader market on each rejection.
The catalyst was US President Donald Trump, who told reporters late Monday that the Iran conflict would be resolved “very soon” and that US military objectives were “pretty well accomplished.” Asian shares rose 2% after Monday’s 3.7% drop. Technology shares in the MSCI Asia Pacific index rose 3.5 per cent. Oil fell from Monday’s rise above $100.
Analysts at Nansen said in an email that crypto had “already absorbed the negatives and priced them in,” arguing that the market was reacting to headlines rather than a broader macro deterioration.
The institutional flow data supports this reading. CoinShares reported $619 million in crypto fund inflows for the week ending Friday, with $521 million going to bitcoin products and total AUM reaching $108.3 billion.
That capital came in during a week in which the S&P lost $1 trillion in a single session and the economy shed 92,000 jobs. “Spot Bitcoin ETFs continue to attract capital even as the price weakens, suggesting that institutional allocators are treating this as a tactical entry rather than capitulation,” Ryan Kirkley, co-founder and CEO of Global Settlement, said in an email to CoinDesk.
Ethereum’s position above $2,000 is the one to watch this week. The second-largest cryptocurrency has struggled to hold that level since late February, with FxPro analysts marking $2,500 and the 200-week moving average as the zone that would confirm a genuine recovery rather than a series of dead cat bounces. The gap between $2,000 and $2,500 is where the narrative shifts from “surviving the downturn” to “starting a new trend.”
For solana, the recovery has been structurally weaker. SOL is still down with approx. 55% from its cycle highs and has underperformed ether on every major rally since the October crash.
The memecoin economy that fueled Solana’s 2024 rally has evaporated, and without the speculative engine, the token trades more on macro sentiment than ecosystem activity.
XRP has been the most ranged of the majors, hovering between $1.30 and $1.45 for most of March. ETF inflows have been positive, and the legal clarity from Ripple’s settlement should be a tailwind, but the token has been unable to decouple from broader market direction.
The Fed meeting on 17-18 March looms as the next real test.
Global Settlements Kirkley noted that the 90-day correlation between bitcoin and the S&P 500 has risen to 0.78, one of the highest readings since mid-2022. When bitcoin trades in lockstep with stocks, altcoins amplify every move in both directions.
A hawkish dot plot or any hint that rate hikes are back on the table would hit the higher beta end of crypto the hardest.
