Crypto markets have wiped out recent gains amid hawkish sentiment from the US central bank.

Total market capitalization has declined by almost $100 billion in less than 24 hours before and after the Federal Reserve’s meeting on Wednesday. The metric is now at around $2.52 trillion after falling from just below a six-week high of $2.61 trillion on Wednesday.

Over the past 24 hours, around 136,000 traders were wrecked, with total liquidations coming in at $452 million. The majority, or around 85% of them, were leveraged long positions in Bitcoin.

The big slump has sent markets back towards the middle of their six-week range-bound channel, wiping out most of the gains from the recent rally.

Hawkish Fed Rattles Traders

The dump began before the meeting but continued after Fed chair Jerome Powell’s comments that there may only be one rate cut this year. The US central bank kept rates the same at 3.5% to 3.75% in a widely expected move yesterday.

Fed policymakers maintained their forecast for an additional rate cut this year, but Powell suggested that the central bank remains concerned about stubbornly elevated inflation even before the conflict’s impact on fuel prices, reported the Associated Press.

“The rate forecast is conditional on the performance of the economy, so if we don’t see that progress, then you won’t see the rate cut,” Powell said.

“FOMC events act as volatility catalysts, but their impact depends on the underlying risk regime,” stated Swissblock on Thursday, adding, “In high-risk environments, FOMC days tend to trigger rejection or accelerate downside.”

Advertisement

Rate decisions tend to “amplify the existing regime,” they added, explaining that the current regime is “transitioning toward low risk, but it is not fully confirmed yet.”

“That means FOMC can still trigger volatility, but in the end, Bitcoin depends more on its own internal strength, flow, and momentum than on macro events alone.”

FOMC events act as volatility catalysts, but their impact depends on the underlying risk regime.

In high-risk environments, FOMC days tend to trigger rejection or accelerate downside.

In stabilizing regimes, they often mark local bottoms or continuation points.

The last three… pic.twitter.com/uWnVkjpHm4

Advertisement

— Swissblock (@swissblock__) March 18, 2026

You may also like:

President Donald Trump has repeatedly called for “too slow” Powell to reduce rates, but his own actions have had the opposite effect. Trump’s tariffs and now the war in Iran have caused prices to increase, which is likely to result in inflation figures going back up.

Inflation is one of the two Fed mandates for policy decisions on rates; the other is the labor market.

Crypto Market Outlook

Bitcoin is down 4.3% on the day, dropping below $71,000 on Wednesday, where it currently struggles.

Ether prices dumped 5.6% and fell below $2,200 while struggling to reclaim that level. Meanwhile, the altcoins were bleeding heavily with larger losses for Dogecoin, Cardano, Chainlink, and Zcash.

“For now, traders are expecting a bullish relief rally in spite of no changes being made,” reported Santiment. “This is likely due to the fact that the bearish price action related to the lack of cuts already occurred yesterday.”

The asset’s price exploded by almost 20% in minutes after the listing news went live.

The former CEO of the derivatives giant BitMEX has made several multi-million-dollar trades over the past six months or so, but his latest purchase raised some eyebrows in the cryptocurrency community.

This is because it preceded a major listing of the token he bought, which pushed its price up by double digits.

Did He Know?

Lookonchain data from earlier today shows that Hayes received over 132,000 ETHFI tokens from Anchorage Digital at $0.55 per one. Shortly after, news emerged on social media that one of the largest South Korean exchanges, Upbit, had listed the asset for trading against the local won.

Similar listings by the Asian giant have led to immediate price pumps for the underlying asset on almost all occasions. One of the latest examples involved ICP, whose price skyrocketed by over 16% last week.

Although ETHFI is a much smaller altcoin, its pump was essentially similar, going up by 18% from $0.54 before the announcement to $0.64 minutes after it. However, it was halted there and has lost almost all gains, perhaps driven by the overall market-wide correction today.

Even though some comments below the original post indeed questioned whether Hayes indeed had some insider knowledge, the amount of ETHFI he received seems rather negligible compared to what he sold a month ago – $72.8K now vs. $2.15 million back then.

Interesting — just 5 hours after Arthur Hayes(@CryptoHayes) bought $ETHFI, #Upbit announced its listing.https://t.co/QEgAyVQ4lz pic.twitter.com/9jorCuAHuX

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) March 19, 2026

You may also like:

Previous Sell-Offs

CryptoPotato reported in February, shortly after the market tumbled, that Hayes had disposed of a large number of DeFi-linked tokens, including ETHFI. Aside from a $950,000 ETHFI selling spree, he also dumped $1 million worth of ENA and $1.1 million worth of PENDLE.

Hayes even sold ETH last August, suggesting at the time that the asset’s price is likely to tumble. However, the largest altcoins went on a run instead, jumping by double digits in weeks. As such, Hayes explained that he had to rebuy at higher prices and asked for forgiveness from the Ethereum community.

PI is among the few altcoins that has not plunged today.

After successfully implementing several consecutive protocol updates, the Core Team behind the controversial project noted earlier today that the next one is already in the works.

At the same time, the underlying token has posted a minor gain since yesterday. However, its broader performance continues to be quite underwhelming.

Next Update Coming Soon

The team announced the first protocol update of the year on February 20, which brought it to version 19.6. The next one, v19.9, followed suit on March 4, and the highly anticipated v20.2 was successfully migrated before the community’s Pi Day (March 14). This one was particularly important as it laid out the fundamentals for enabling smart contract capabilities.

This rollout will occur gradually, the team said, as they aim to prioritize categories that align with utility-based product innovation and operations. The specifics will depend on the needs arising from the utility creation process, they added.

Without providing a clear deadline this time, Pi Network’s official X channel indicated that the v21 upgrade is coming, and node operators must ensure their systems are “up to date.” They added that more instructions will be coming shortly.

The Pi Mainnet has successfully upgraded to Protocol 20, laying the foundation for supporting smart contracts. Node operators, please ensure your systems are up to date and stay tuned for instructions regarding the upcoming v21 upgrade.

— Pi Network (@PiCoreTeam) March 19, 2026

Advertisement

PI Resists Dropping Further

Aside from the aforementioned updates, all announced in the past month, the other big news in the Pi Network community came last week from Kraken. The veteran US exchange said it would list the underlying token for trading starting March 13.

You may also like:

The combined effects for PI were instant and rather mind-blowing. The token exploded by almost 100% in the span of just days, and tapped a five-month peak of around $0.30. However, once it indeed began trading on Kraken, it suffered the consequences of another classic buy-the-rumor, sell-the-news event.

It plummeted by over 30% at one point, and kept losing value to under $0.17 marked yesterday. Interestingly, it has rebounded slightly in the past day (3%), while most other altcoins have suffered 3-5% losses.

• FTX Token changed hands at around $0.28 amid broader crypto market volatility.
• The FTX Recovery Trust will commence a $2.2 billion distribution on March 31,2026.
• Potential impact on FTT’s price could see it fall to lows of $0.24.

FTX Token (FTT) is trading lower amid overall crypto weakness and as FTX Recovery Trust announces plans to distribute $2.2 billion to approved creditors by March 31, 2026.

The distribution will mark the fourth round of payouts from the collapsed exchange’s bankruptcy proceedings.

Could this influx of capital crash the FTT token? At the time of writing, FTT hovered near $0.28 and was down 2% in the past 24 hours.

FTX to distribute $2.2 billion to creditors

FTX’s ongoing creditor repayments follow the exchange’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filed in late 2022 as the Sam Bankman-Fried empire imploded.

SBF was convicted of various charges related to the collapse and is serving a 25-year prison sentence, with FTX now the subject of a Netflix mini-series, ‘The Altruists’, that also features a depiction of Caroline Ellison.

The expectation is that the upcoming eight-episode show will highlight the dramatic implosion of one of the crypto sector’s biggest exchanges at the time, with key questions around governance and customer protection.

Bankman-Fried recently claimed the exchange was never insolvent.

FTX creditors have nonetheless already seen a series of successful payouts, and the company is eyeing another $2.2 billion to both convenience and non-convenience class claims.

The record date for this distribution was February 14, 2026, with payouts commencing March 31 for verified claim holders and distributed within 1-3 business days via designated providers.

(1/4) FTX announced it is set to distribute its Fourth Distribution of ~$2.2 billion on 3/31/26 to holders of allowed claims in the Plan’s Convenience and Non-Convenience Classes that have completed the pre-distribution requirements.

— FTX (@FTX_Official) March 18, 2026

FTT price outlook

FTT, the native token once central to the FTX ecosystem, remains sensitive to these events, despite falling to near zero from all-time highs above $85.

Holders could see the distribution as a fresh trigger to selling pressure, putting the token’s rebound from its all-time lows of $0.24 reached in October 2025 at risk.

Data shows that at least 38.3k wallet addresses hold the FTX Token.

With FTX nearing bankruptcy closure, recovery could include a bullish flip to $0.50 and likely the psychological $1.

This will also hinge on whether broader markets stabilize in the short term.

From a technical perspective, neutral oscillators and mixed moving averages signal caution ahead of the March 31 distribution.

The daily RSI hovers near 42 and signals potential downsloping towards oversold extremes.

Meanwhile, the MACD shows mild bullish momentum with a weakening histogram.

FTT is down 22% over the past month as altcoins suffer downward pressure amid current bearish crypto conditions.

If creditors liquidate holdings with prices in decline, a retest of the all-time lows around $0.24 could follow.

Bitcoin’s BTC$70,565.84 biggest early holders, often called original gangsters, are hitting the sell button after the Federal Reserve rattled expectations for lower borrowing costs.

Blockchain data tracked by Lookonchain shows at least two long-term holders together dumped over 1,650 BTC worth more than $117.87 million early Thursday.

One veteran whale who previously sold an 11,000‑BTC stack, added another 650 BTC to his dump, while a separate early‑adopter OG with a 5,000‑BTC stash offloaded a full 1,000 BTC.

Bitcoin’s price dipped nearly 1% to $70,600 soon before press time, extending Wednesday’s 3.5% slide from $74,500, according to CoinDesk data. The broader market wilted, with the CoinDesk 20 Index 3% to 2,056 points. Ether (ETH), XRP (XRP), solana (SOL), and DOGE$0.09454 suffered similar losses.

The decline followed a hawkish Fed rate decision on Wednesday, when the central bank left the benchmark borrowing cost unchanged in the 3.5%–3.75% range but signaled a slower pace of rate cuts ahead, disappointing risk‑asset bulls.

The hawkish tone came through the so‑called interest‑rate “dot plot,” which shows where the Fed’s voting members expect interest rates to land in the months ahead. The median projection indicated only one rate cut this year, despite recent labour-market weakness. Moreover, only two committee members remained in the two‑cut camp, and Chair Powell’s own personal projection moved higher.

“The higher for longer narrative has been reinvigorated by sticky inflation and the inflationary shadow cast by rising energy costs, forcing investors to abandon their dreams of a rapid easing cycle,” Matt Mena, crypto research strategist at 21shares, said in an email.

Taken together, these developments pointed to a central bank still wary of inflation and this has led to a sharp repricing of bets on Fed rate cuts. Trading on the decentralized platform Polymarket and pricing in the CME Fed funds futures, now implies around an 80% probability of just one rate cut this year, versus a 62% probability of two to three rate cuts a month ago.

This outlook for tighter liquidity is not supportive of risk-taking in financial markets.

The global crypto market fell sharply on Thursday as new geopolitical and macroeconomic concerns threw cold water on investor appetite for risk assets.

Bitcoin (BTC), the bellwether asset, dropped nearly 5% to $70,600 on Thursday, down from the $74,000 levels seen the previous day. Ethereum (ETH) fell 6% to $2,187, while XRP (XRP), BNB (BNB), Solana (SOL), and Dogecoin (DOGE) experienced losses ranging between 3% and 6%. 

Zcash (ZEC), Worldcoin (WLD), and LayerZero (ZRO) bore some of the steepest losses amid the market-wide drop that brought the total crypto market capitalization down to $2.51 trillion.

Crypto prices fell sharply shortly after Israel launched an unprecedented cyber and drone attack on Iran’s largest gas facility, South Pars. According to reports, the massive complex powers nearly 70% of the nation’s domestic gas supply, the loss of which has threatened the country’s power grid.

The strike comes amid an escalating energy war between the U.S., Israel, and Iran, which has led to a blockade at the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway for global oil transit, and sent crude oil and gas prices soaring to record highs. Iran had earlier vowed to push oil prices to as high as $200.

The latest attack has not only shaken the crypto market but has rippled across traditional finance as well. Notably, Gold has dropped 2.1% over the day, casting investors’ doubts over its safe haven status, while Silver fell 3.5%. Together, these precious metals erased nearly $150 billion from the market.

Traditional stock indices across the globe have also fallen in tandem with risk assets. Notably, Asian benchmarks like Japan’s Nikkei 225 and the Hang Seng have fallen over 2%. Even U.S. indices like the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Nasdaq 100, S&P 500, and Russell 2000 Index have all sharply fallen across the board.

However, oil prices took a different path, rising to new levels. Notably, Brent Crude has jumped 3% to a new record high of $112 on Thursday as traders price in a prolonged disruption in a region that remains a major source of global energy production.

Typically, when gold and cryptocurrency prices crash together, it means traders are fleeing to cash rather than rotating between alternative assets.

Hotter U.S. PPI data and Fed announcement deliver a double blow to bulls

Fears of sticky inflation also played a major role in the crypto market drop today. On Wednesday, the U.S. revealed that the PPI data came in much hotter than expected, with a record monthly gain in a year for wholesale costs. This came as the market was already cautious ahead of the Federal Reserve rate decision that was scheduled for later in the day.

In his speech, Fed Chair Jerome Powell echoed concerns surrounding elevated inflation levels. Powell clarified that the Federal Reserve is prepared to hold interest rates steady as it sticks to a data-driven strategy to combat rising inflation stemming from the oil shock. As such, market hopes for rate cuts this year have fallen slim.

The resulting crash from potential delays in rate cuts and the surging oil price as a result of Middle East tensions together triggered a liquidation cascade across leveraged crypto markets. 

Data from CoinGlass shows that over $481 million in long positions were liquidated in the past 24 hours, with Bitcoin and Ethereum accounting for the majority of it, with $143 million and $127 million in long liquidations, respectively.

Long liquidations occur when investors bet on a price increase, and the asset price drops enough to hit their margin limits, forcing the exchange to automatically close their trades.

Opinion by: Merav Ozair, PhD, blockchain and AI senior advisor.

Elon Musk and Peter Diamandis support the idea that “everything will be free.” They purport to believe that AI abundance will end poverty and provide a universal high income.

Others in the mega tech ecosystem mention the coming abundance. Demis Hassabis, for example, says AI could spark a “renaissance” of “radical abundance.”

Politicians at the World Economic Forum 2026 in Davos liked Musk’s vision. They were thrilled that their economic problems would soon be “set free.” This story is quite appealing. Who doesn’t like to get things for free? 

What does it truly mean? Would all economic activities have no cost? Would all corporations become altruistic and seek no profit?

Let us unpack the narrative.

The cost of production can be cheap, but never zero

Let’s put things in perspective. In the age of AI abundance, products and services will not arrive out of “thin air.” They would still need labor, materials, energy and infrastructure.

The advances in AI and other emerging technologies may lead to very cheap energy and highly automated production. This evolution will result in the marginal cost of most digital and even physical goods approaching zero. 

This is due to three main factors. First is the automation of labor, where machines and AI handle almost all production, logistics and many services. The second is advanced manufacturing and AI distribution, like 3D printing, robotics and AI logistics systems that drastically reduce waste and inventory, making “enough for everyone” technically feasible. Lastly, abundant energy — fusion or ultra‑cheap solar makes energy so affordable that it stops being the bottleneck. 

Because energy underlies everything physical, all other costs fall. 

Plans are already in place. Elon Musk is now prioritizing lunar manufacturing and AI, with a goal of over 1,000 gigawatts of solar power. Using solar energy instead of nuclear power will reduce energy cost to almost zero. The catch: the initial cost to establish the infrastructure on the moon is very high, and it would need to overcome major challenges.

Related: Energym AI dystopia goes viral as crypto projects tout user-owned AI agents

Under those conditions, it is plausible that education resources become somewhat free to the user because they are AI‑generated and infinitely replicable once the system is built. A large fraction of healthcare becomes extremely cheap, once the appropriate AI and robot infrastructure exists. 

At the level of physics and engineering, if the real bottlenecks — energy and automation — are abundant, costs collapse, but they do not completely disappear.

Infrastructure is the missing layer that no one talks about

Robotics and energy need to run at scale and speed to create an “abundance” of everything for everyone. For this, it needs infrastructure.

Automation and robotics run on what Jensen Haung calls “AI factories.” This is AI infrastructure, representing a shift towards treating AI development as an industrial process, enabling organizations to continuously train and refine AI models for better safety and efficiency.

They are specialized, high-performance computing data centers designed to “manufacture” intelligence by converting raw data into trained AI models and tokens, rather than simply storing data. Using advanced GPUs and massive interconnected infrastructure, they are the engines of AI applications such as autonomous vehicles, robotics and generative AI.

AI factories are expensive. They need a lot of money to build and run. Companies that have already set up the infrastructure will keep growing and improving. For example, Nvidia is five times more profitable than IBM was in the 1980s, with only a tenth of the staff. Productivity and profits will increase, because AI greatly boosts efficiency. Investments will go to those who own AI models, platforms and especially the infrastructure.

This will lead to the biggest concentration of wealth in history.

Major players include tech giants like Nvidia, AWS and SpaceX. They will continue to dominate the market, making it tough for newcomers to compete.

Governments are also involved. China is using its huge solar energy capacity to boost the energy-heavy AI boom. This creates a unique “AI and energy” ecosystem. Here, artificial intelligence optimises renewable energy generation, while solar power supports data centres. China is seen as a leader in renewable energy use.

Cheap energy is not cheap 

Energy is the fuel that runs AI factories, which are the engine of all robotics, automation and AI applications that will generate abundance. Energy fuels the infrastructure, and infrastructure runs the AI applications. Therefore, energy is the real bottleneck. Without cheap energy, this “free” theory fails.

Currently, electricity is the primary form of energy used to run the infrastructure. China is aggressively integrating renewable energy into its infrastructure and other regions are expanding renewable-powered energy into data centers as well. Electricity generation and grid capacity for AI-scale infrastructure is very costly and not scalable. To reach abundance at scale, energy must be very cheap and scalable.

What are the options?

Fission energy is a type of or nuclear energy. It is fully mature, providing stable power, but produces radioactive waste. It carries the risk of nuclear proliferation, and safety concerns regarding meltdowns. It is cheaper than current fossil-based electricity sources but still has a tangible cost, and, like the other electricity sources it is limited, and not scalable.

Fusion energy involves merging light atoms to create energy, mimicking the sun, while traditional nuclear energy splits heavy atoms. Fusion offers nearly limitless, cleaner energy without long-lived high-level waste. 

Fusion is inherently safer with no risk of a runaway chain reaction. 

The caveat, however, is that fission is what’s currently being used. Creating nuclear fusion for energy is extraordinarily expensive and requires upfront investments of hundreds of billions of dollars, and it is still experimental and likely decades away from large-scale commercial use.

Unlike nuclear fission, nuclear fusion is scalable. It is cheap but not does not cost zero. Someone has to pay the upfront costs to build the infrastructure, to create it and then maintain it. 

Elon Musk is going to the moon

Lunar solar power provides ample energy without atmospheric issues. Yet, it has high costs for launching, building and maintaining in a vacuum. Musk’s plan is to move all production, including the AI factory, to the moon.

The moon has low gravity and plenty of resources, making it the cheapest place for AI infrastructure.

Robots will terraform and build infrastructure. Humans will come to oversee and expand, while AI data centres will fuel the space economy.

With Starlink, SpaceX, Optimus robots and xAI, Musk is in a strong position to make this happen.

However, machines for making advanced AI chips need to reach the moon. These bus-sized machines require very precise conditions.

The solution is a new method called Atomically Precise Manufacturing (APM). This builds atom by atom and aligns with Musk’s “first principle” thinking.

If successful, this could unlock unlimited solar energy and raw materials from the moon and asteroids. There would be no thermal limits or atmospheric interference.

This could lead to boundless AI at a low cost. Experts say that if lunar fabrication works, it could create a trillion-dollar, or even hundreds of trillions, opportunity.

Who will benefit most from this hundred-trillion-dollar chance? Will it be shared fairly?

The soft prison of “free”

When you have centralized infrastructures and systems, whoever owns the infrastructure sets the terms of engagement. Strongly centralized systems can provide extensive “free” services, but in exchange, they often demand high control over speech, movement, data and economic choices. Non‑authoritarian welfare states may trade some individual autonomy for security and guaranteed services. Many “free” digital services today are funded by surveillance, profiling and behavioral manipulation — your data and attention are the real price. 

In a world of AI abundance, the infrastructure may be government owned. It may be owned by corporations. It could be owned through a public-private partnership. Either way, the infrastructure is centralized and the centralized power will dictate the distribution terms — how AI abundance is distributed, who gets what, under what conditions. If they wish to, they can abruptly “shut the valve” and nothing is distributed either to an individual or a group. Your dependency on their services becomes a “soft prison” stripped of your autonomy and self-sovereignty.

It might be a hundred-trillion-dollar opportunity, but the owner of the centralized infrastructure will get the lion’s share and will dictate what will trickle down to the masses.

They say if something is “free”, you are the product. This remains true in a world of sheer abundance. In that world, the product is your self-sovereignty.

Opinion by: Merav Ozair, PhD, blockchain and AI senior advisor.