Buterin Offloads ETH, Bitcoin Unable to Push Past $70K, XRP Spot Buying Increases: This Week’s Crypto Recap

It’s been a relatively dynamic week within the cryptocurrency industry. The total market capitalization currently stands at around $2.36 trillion, which is more or less where it was last Friday when we did the previous weekly recap, but this doesn’t paint the whole picture. You see, BTC started the week as anyone would expect – chopping to the downside, which inevitably led to an abrupt crash on Monday, when it dropped from above $67K to around $64K. This was followed by an intraday dead cat bounce and an immediate continuation to below $63,000. Sentiment was down bad, as was most of Crypto Twitter, but what followed raised a few eyebrows. Bitcoin actually started recovering… notably. It soared from $63K to $70K in less than two days. And then came yet another sign that we are amidst the depths of crypto winter – the recovery was put to a halt, and the bears once again took control, pushing the price down to where we currently sit at slightly above $66K. In case you are wondering, we are still in a state of “extreme fear,” according to the popular Crypto Fear and Greed index, meaning that the masses are definitely not convinced that the worst is behind us. In fact, the most recent bounce did very little to improve the overall sentiment. Meanwhile, the co-founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, continues selling ETH. So far, his total disposals reached around 18,700 ETH, even though he previously stated that he plans to sell 16,384 ETH to fund open-source software and hardware development, privacy tools, and security-critical infrastructure projects. Elsewhere, we have some light at the end of the tunnel for XRP holders, with spot buying seemingly on the rise. While it has done little for the price so far, this could be a sign of a structural shift in XRP’s market dynamics. Bitrue reported a 212% surge in spot buying on February 26th, most of which was linked to ETF inflows, suggesting steady demand from funds. All in all, the week started off as depressing, turned ...