The quiet before the pump

Plus: Bitcoin’s DeFi moment is finally here

We’re kicking off today’s squeeze with something extra juicy:

BitDegree’s $30K Season 7 Airdrop

is live!

Earn Bits by simply answering questions and completing micro tasks – they’ll decide your $$ share of the prize pool when the Season ends on April 30.

Oh, and to make it even sweeter,

Uphold’s

adding an extra 1,000 USDC to the mix – but only until March 24.

No time to waste! Soo… you in or what? 😏

GM. We’re the lemonade stand of crypto – turning sour market moves into something worth sipping.

🤝 Starknet is unifying Bitcoin and Ethereum.

🍋 News drops: new scam tactic through video calls, trader loses $215K while swapping stablecoins + more

🍍 Market flavor today

The Fear and Greed Index has upgraded from 😫😭😰 to a plain 😐

Not that big of an upgrade, but still – maybe, just maybe… things are starting to look up?

Well… prolly not for altcoins.

Ethereum hit its lowest level against Bitcoin since mid-2020 – and when ETH/BTC is sliding, alts usually struggle.

But it’s not just alts struggling – overall market activity is slowing down.

According to Santiment, crypto trading volume has been falling since its high on February 27, when traders were buying the dip. Now, tho’, that excitement is gone – market caps have shrunk, and investors seem burnt out (or straight-up done).

Here’s how you know the hype is really fading: volume isn’t bouncing back, even when prices briefly recover. That usually means traders don’t trust these price jumps to last, so they’re not buying in.

And without enough buyers, any upward move can fall apart just as fast.

Does low volume automatically scream “bear market”? Not necessarily. But it does scream “caution.”

So until we see both price and volume increase together, the market’s going to stay in this indecisive phase.

At the same time, CryptoQuant’s Crypto Dan made an interesting point – investors have already lost so much that there’s not a whole lot left to dump.

If there’s nothing left to dump… well, we could be in the prime position for an upward move without needing more pain first.

And, not to jinx it, but there’s one more bullish sign: Tether’s on-chain activity hit a 6-month high.

Historically, when stablecoin movement spikes during downturns, it often means that traders are getting ready to re-enter the market when they see favorable conditions.

But before we get ahead of ourselves: this doesn’t guarantee a rally. If overall sentiment remains weak, traders might just be holding onto their USDT for safety instead of using it to buy back in.

So, TL;DR: we’re in a weird, cautious phase – but we might be setting up for a bounce. Fingers crossed, y’all 🤞

🥝 Memecoin harvest

Imagine explaining to your future kids that their college fund came from whatever these are:

Data as of 08:20 AM EST.

Check out these memecoins and plenty more here.

Bitcoin is the king of crypto. The real badman, if you will.

But it’s also lowkey boring 🤷

I know, I know, the OG, the ultimate store of value, the digital gold, yada yada yada. I get it. But also, 98-99% of Bitcoin just sits there in wallets, doing absolutely nothing except waiting for the price to go up.

Why? Because it simply wasn’t built for much else.

• No built-in smart contracts → unlike Ethereum, Bitcoin can’t easily run DeFi apps;

• High transaction fees → on-chain fees can be $2+ per transaction, and when the network’s busy, it’s way worse;

• Custodial risks → most Bitcoin-based DeFi today depends on centralized platforms, meaning your BTC can get frozen, lost, or hacked.

Seeing all this, Starknet (an Ethereum Layer-2 scaling solution) thought: “So much wasted potential… Yo, we gotta figure out a way to make Bitcoin do the cool stuff Ethereum can.”

So, they’re teaming up with BTC wallet Xverse to turn Starknet into an execution layer for Bitcoin.

Imagine Bitcoin as a highway that’s super secure, reliable, and gets you from point A to point B. But the problem is that it only has one lane in each direction, no exits, and no gas stations. Traffic moves slowly, and all you can really do is drive straight.

Now, an execution layer is like building an entire city around that highway – suddenly, you can get places faster, access way more services, and do a lot more with the same road.

Here’s how it’s gonna work:

• Bitcoin remains the highway – the solid foundation everything is built around (so security stays intact);

• Starknet builds the city – handling all the extra activity (DeFi, smart contracts).

And what’s actually changing?

• Bitcoin-native DeFi unlocked: staking, lending, borrowing, and self-custodial trading;

• Speed boost: Bitcoin’s 7 transactions per second (TPS) → thousands of TPS;

• Faster confirmations: block times drop from 10 minutes → 2 seconds;

• Cheaper fees: $2 per transaction? Hell nah, make that shizz $0.002;

• No more clunky UX: finally, Bitcoin DeFi that feels smooth.

Oh, and everything is secured by zero-knowledge (ZK) tech and STARK proofs – which, for non-nerds, just means super secure, quantum-resistant, and private transactions.

But there’s one problem – to use BTC in DeFi today, you usually have to wrap it on another network. That means handing over your Bitcoin to a centralized entity – not exactly ideal for Bitcoin’s core values.

So instead, Starknet is building a Bitcoin-native way to move BTC onto its layer without middlemen, without wrapping, and without trust issues.

If Starknet pulls this off, for Bitcoiners, it means actual utility beyond just HODLing.

For Ethereum users, it means easy Bitcoin integration without friction.

And for Starknet? They get to be the glue that connects the two biggest ecosystems in crypto.

So yeah, this is huge.

Win-win-win 🤝

🍋 News drops

🚨 Crypto founders are warning about a new scam. Fake investors join video calls, pretend they have audio issues, and send a “fix” that’s actually malware.

🥪 A crypto trader got sandwiched out of over $215K while swapping stablecoins. MEV bots front-ran and back-ran their trade, inflating the price before the swap and crashing it after.

👮 Nebraska’s cracking down on crypto ATMs. A new law says operators need a license, must register with the state, and file reports on where their machines are.

🚔 Argentine lawyer Gregorio Dalbon wants a global arrest warrant for Hayden Davis, one of the minds behind the LIBRA token. It’s the token President Javier Milei endorsed before it rug-pulled investors.

🌪 North Korea’s favorite hackers – the Lazarus Group – are moving stolen crypto through mixers. CertiK caught them sending 400 ETH ($750K) to Tornado Cash today.

🍌 Juicy memes