Cryptocurrency-friendly trading platform eToro has filed for an initial public offering (IPO) in the United States following several previous attempts.The company said in a March 24 announcement that it had submitted a registration statement on Form F-1 with the US Securities and Exchange Commission related to the IPO of its Class A common shares.EToro has applied to list its Class A common shares on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker symbol “ETOR,” according to the announcement, which stated:“A registration statement on Form F-1 relating to these securities has been filed with the SEC but has not yet become effective.”eToro public IPO announcement. Source: eToroThe public filing comes over two months after eToro made confidential filings to the SEC in a move toward a potential IPO in New York, the Financial Times reported on Jan. 16.Submitted in January, eToro’s IPO filing may value the business at more than $5 billion and list the platform as soon as the second quarter of 2025, the report noted, citing unidentified sources familiar with the matter.Trading platforms such as eToro are often used by beginning investors looking to buy their first stock shares or cryptocurrency, thanks to their ease of use.EToro’s IPO received attention from some of the world’s most notable investment banks, including Goldman Sachs, Jefferies, UBS and Citigroup, as lead managing bookmakers.Related: Friday’s PCE inflation report may catalyze a Bitcoin April rallyEToro tried to go public in 2021 via SPAC offeringThe crypto-friendly trading platform had multiple previous attempts to go public on the US stock exchange.In 2021, eToro announced plans to go public via a merger with Fintech Acquisition Corp V, a special purpose acquisition company, valuing the company at $10.4 billion. However, the deal was terminated in mid-2022 due to unfavorable market conditions.Related: Friday’s US inflation report may catalyze a Bitcoin April rallyAlthough the United Kingdom remains its largest market, eToro is pursuing a US listing to tap into a broader investor base.“Very few of our global clients would trade UK shares,” eToro founder and CEO Yoni Assia reportedly said last year. He added:“Something in the US market creates a pool of both deep liquidity and deep awareness for those assets that are trading in the US.”In 2023, eToro raised $250 million in a funding round that valued the brokerage at $3.5 billion. The business may now be valued at more than $5 billion in its upcoming IPO, said one of the people familiar with the flotation plans.According to Forbes, eToro was one of the first regulated trading platforms in Europe to offer Bitcoin (BTC) services in 2013, just a few years after the first BTC transaction was made in January 2009.Magazine: Trump’s Bitcoin policy lashed in China, deepfake scammers busted: Asia Express

Ether’s (ETH) price printed a bear flag on the daily chart, a technical chart formation associated with strong downward momentum. Could this bearish setup and decreasing transaction fees signal the start of the second leg of ETH’s drop toward $1,200?Ethereum’s network activity slumpsThe market drawdown, fueled by US President Donald Trump’s tariff threats, saw Ether’s price drop by nearly 50% from a high of $3,432 on Jan. 31 to a 16-month low of $1,750 on March 11.While ETH has rebounded 18% since, it failed to produce a decisive break above $2,000 for a second time in less than 10 days.This weakness is reflected in onchain activity, with Ethereum’s daily transaction count dropping to levels last seen in October 2024, before Donald Trump’s presidential election victory.Ethereum daily transaction count. Source: CryptoQuantEthereum's average transaction fees also plummeted, reaching an all-time low of 0.00025 ETH ($0.46) on March 24. Ethereum: Fee per transaction. Source: Source: CryptoQuantLow transaction count and fees suggest less demand for block space —whether for DeFi, NFTs or other DApps. It suggests lower network activity, often correlating with diminished interest or market confidence.Historically, Ether’s price has correlated with periods of high network activity. For example, during the 2021 DeFi boom, fees spiked to as high as 0.015 ETH due to high demand. Conversely, lower fees require less ETH, which puts downward pressure on price. ETH supply inflation returnsOther key factors weighing down Ether’s performance are its declining burn rate and rising supply.  With transaction fees declining, the daily ETH burn rate has plunged to all-time lows, resulting in an inflationary trend. According to data from Ultrasound.money, the projected ETH burn rate has declined to 25,000 ETH/year, and its supply growth has risen to an annual rate of 0.76%, bringing the issuance rate to 945,000 ETH per year.ETH burn rate. Source: Ultrasound.moneyAs a result, Ethereum’s supply has steadily increased since April 2024, reversing the deflationary period ushered in by the switch to proof-of-stake (the Merge) in September 2022. Ethereum’s total supply has now surpassed pre-Merge levels, as shown in the chart below.Ethereum supply reclaims pre-Merge levels. Source: Ultrasound.moneyThe Merge eliminated Ethereum’s mining-based issuance, which previously had a high supply inflation rate. Ethereum also implemented the London hard fork in August 2021, which introduced a mechanism that burns a portion of transaction fees. Related: Ethereum down 57% from its all-time high, but it’s still worth more than ToyotaWhen network activity is low, the amount of ETH burned is lower than newly issued ETH, making the asset inflationary.Ether’s bear flag targets $1,230The ETH/USD pair is positioned to resume its prevailing bearish momentum despite the recovery from recent lows, as the chart shows a classic bearish pattern in the making.Ether’s price action over the past 30 days has led to the formation of a bear flag pattern on the daily chart, as shown in the figure below. A daily candlestick close below the flag’s lower boundary at $2,000 would signal the start of a massive breakdown.The target is set by the flagpole’s height, which comes to about $1,230, an approximately 40% drop from the current price.ETH/USD daily chart featuring bear flag pattern. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingViewDespite these risks, some traders remain optimistic about Ether’s upside potential, with analyst Jelle saying that the price is bouncing and trying to get back above the key support level at $2,200.If this happens, “we’ll have a monster deviation on our hands,” Jelle added.Fellow analyst Crypto Ceaser said that Ethereum is “heavily undervalued” and is bottoming out at current levels.This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

Today in crypto, Binance froze a market maker’s proceeds after detecting that it sold 66 million MOVE tokens and provided “little” in buy orders, Trump Media is teaming up with Crypto.com to launch a series of “Made In America” crypto and stock exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and decentralized finance (DeFi) lender Nostra paused borrowing on two liquid staking tokens after a critical price feed issue on Starknet.Movement Network to buy back tokens with $38 million recovered from rogue market makerThe organization behind the Movement Network said it will use $38 million recovered from a market maker to buy back MOVE tokens over the next three months.On March 24, the Movement Network Foundation said it recovered about $38 million in assets from a market maker tasked with providing liquidity on buy and sell orders for the Movement (MOVE) token on Binance. Binance offboarded the market maker due to “market irregularities.” The exchange sanctioned the market maker, freezing its proceeds and forbidding it from further market-making activities.  Market makers provide liquidity to crypto tokens to attract traders and stabilize their prices. These entities are tasked with providing liquidity on both buy and sell orders to ensure the smooth operation of crypto exchanges. According to Binance, the market maker sold 66 million MOVE tokens after the token was listed, while placing “little” in buy orders. These trades netted the market maker $38 million in Tether (USDT) from their trades. Binance said it froze the profits and informed the Movement Network Foundation of the incident. Trump Media looks to partner with Crypto.com to launch ETFsTrump Media has signed a non-binding agreement with Crypto.com to launch a series of exchange-traded funds in the US.Trump Technology Group Corp (TMTG) — the operator of the social media platform Truth Social and fintech brand Truth.Fi — is also part of the agreement, which is subject to regulatory approval, according to a March 24 statement from Trump Media.Source: Kris MarszalekThe parties plan to launch the ETFs later this year through Crypto.com’s broker-dealer, Foris Capital US LLC. The ETFs will consist of digital assets and securities with a “Made in America” focus.The parties involved expect the ETFs to be widely available internationally, including in the US, Europe and Asia across existing brokerage platforms.”Once launched, these ETFs will be available on the Crypto.com App for our more than 140 million users around the world,” Crypto.com co-founder and CEO Kris Marszalek said.DeFi lender Nostra pauses borrowing after price feed errorNostra, a lending protocol on Starknet, has paused borrowing for two liquid staking tokens after identifying a “critical issue” with its price feeds, the decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol said. On March 24, errors in Nostra’s price feed inflated the reported prices of xSTRK and sSTRK — two liquid staking derivatives of Starknet’s native STRK token — to approximately three times the tokens’ actual value, Nostra said in a post on the X platform.According to Nostra, “[s]uch an inflated price feed could have caused unnecessary liquidations of otherwise safe positions, resulting in users with healthy positions getting liquidated.” In response, the DeFi protocol has disabled any further borrowing against xSTRK and sSTRK collateral deposits, Nostra said. Nostra has also recommended that users with existing xSTRK and sSTRK deposits withdraw the collateral immediately. “Since we don’t have a secondary (fallback) oracle to support these assets, as none are available, we are unable to fully prevent similar events from occurring in the future,” Nostra added.“Our priority has always been and continues to be to keep existing user funds safe and with no fallback oracle, the risks outweigh the benefits,” it said.

Traditional and cryptocurrency investors eagerly await Friday’s Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) release in the US, which may provide some relief to inflation-related concerns and increase investor appetite for risk assets including Bitcoin.The US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) will release on March 28 the next PCE report, which measures the inflation of prices US consumers are paying for goods and services.The PCE inflation print may become the “next key catalyst” for Bitcoin (BTC) and other risk assets, according to QCP Group, a Singapore-based digital asset firm.QCP wrote on Telegram:“As we approach Friday’s quarterly expiry, with the highest open interest in topside strikes above $100K, we don’t expect major volatility driven by options positioning alone. But attention will turn to the PCE inflation print, which could become the next key catalyst.”Risk assets staged a significant recovery after “Trump signaled twice on Monday that trading partners might secure exemptions or reductions, offering a reprieve that helped soothe market jitters,” QCP added.Related: Michael Saylor’s Strategy surpasses 500,000 Bitcoin with latest purchaseOther analysts have pointed at global trade war concerns as the biggest hurdle for investor appetite.Despite a multitude of positive crypto-specific developments, global tariff fears will continue to pressure the markets until at least April 2, according to Nicolai Sondergaard, a research analyst at Nansen.“I’m looking forward to seeing what happens with the tariffs from April 2nd onward, maybe we’ll see some of them dropped but it depends if all countries can agree,” Sondergaard said.BTC/USD, 1-day chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingViewBitcoin’s price is down over 14% since US President Donald Trump first announced import tariffs on Chinese goods on Jan. 20, the day of his presidential inauguration.Still, analysts expect the PCE report to further soothe inflation-related concerns, catalyzing Bitcoin’s historic rally for the month of April.Source: CoinGlassBitcoin has averaged over a 12.9% monthly return during April, making it the fourth-best month for Bitcoin’s price based on historic returns, CoinGlass data shows.Related: Crypto debanking is not over until Jan 2026: Caitlin LongBitcoin may rally to $110,000 record high on easing inflation concernsBitcoin is more likely to soar to a new $110,000 all-time high before retracing to $76,500, according to Arthur Hayes, co-founder of BitMEX and chief investment officer of Maelstrom.Bitcoin’s rise to the record $110,000 mark “appears plausible in the current market environment,” according to Juan Pellicer, senior research analyst at IntoTheBlock.“BTC is showing signs of recovery, driven by growing institutional interest and significant investments from large players,” the analyst told Cointelegraph, adding:“The Federal Reserve’s recent decision to ease its monetary tightening could further boost liquidity, favoring a price increase in the near term.”“While market volatility remains a risk that could lead to a pullback, the overall momentum and support levels suggest Bitcoin is more likely to hit the higher target first,” added Pellicer.Magazine: ETH may bottom at $1.6K, SEC delays multiple crypto ETFs, and more: Hodler’s Digest, March 9 – 15