The week could prove crucial for markets, including Bitcoin. with the US Federal Reserve among seven major central banks to announce interest rate decisions, while war-driven oil price increases threaten to reignite inflation in the global economy.
Most central banks are expected to keep interest rates steady, but hawkish comments from authorities, driven by inflation concerns, could trigger downward volatility across risk assets.
While reflationary environments have historically supported Bitcoin, rising inflation expectations are driving up bond yields and tightening financial conditions, André Dragosch, European head of research at Bitwise, told CoinDesk. Those conditions generally make riskier investments less attractive.
Still, according to Dragosch, geopolitical tensions currently dominate the market context. Historically, these shocks tend to fade quickly, and bitcoin has often generated above-average returns after periods of elevated geopolitical risk.
“In general, investors should ignore these types of events and view them as short-term buying opportunities,” Dragosch said.
Bitcoin is trading at what Dragosch called the “largest macro discount” on record, with sentiment near the FTX crash lows. “We’re probably closer to the bottom than the top,” he said.
What to watch
(All times ET)
- Crypto
- March 17 – Lava Network (LAVA) will expand with 17 new chain integrations and nine new blockchain ecosystems.
- March 19: Walrus (WAL) final deadline for Tusky users to migrate their data.
- March 23: Backpack token generation event occurs, with 250 million tokens (25% of total supply) to distribute.
- Macro
- March 16, 8:30 am: Canada Consumer Price Index (CPI) YoY for February (was 2.3%)
- March 17, 4:30am: Reserve Bank of Australia interest rate decision estimated at 4.1% (previously 3.85%)
- March 17, 10:00 am: Pending US Monthly Home Sales for February (previously -0.8%)
- March 18, 06:00: Eurozone consumer price index (CPI) for February. monthly estimate 0.7% (previous -0.6%); YoY est. 1.9% (previous 1.7%)
- March 18, 8:30 am: US PPI for February. Year-on-year est. 3.7% (previous 3.6%); Estimated underlying PPI year-on-year 3.2% (previous 3.6%)
- March 18, 9:45 am: Bank of Canada Interest Rate Decision Est. 2.25% (previously 2.25%)
- March 18, 10:00 am: January MoM US Factory Orders (previously -0.7%)
- March 18, 2:00 pm: Fed Est. interest rate decision 3.50%-3.75% (previously 3.50%-3.75%); FOMC Economic Projections
- March 18, 2:30 p.m.: Federal Reserve Chairman press conference
- March 18, 17:30: decision on the Selic rate of the Central Bank of Brazil Est. 14.50% (previously 15%)
- March 18, 11:00 p.m.: Bank of Japan interest rate decision Est. 0.75% (previously 0.75%)
- March 19, 4:30 am: Swiss National Bank Interest Rate Decision Est. 0% (Previous 0%)
- March 19, 8am: Bank of England interest rate decision Est. 3.75% (previously 3.75%).
- March 19, 8:30 am: US Initial Jobless Claims for the week ending March 14 est. 215K (previously 213K)
- March 19, 8:30 am: March US Philadelphia Fed Manufacturing Index (previous 16.3)
- March 19, 9:15 am: ECB decision on the main refinancing interest rate Est. 2.15% above. 2.15%
- March 19, 4:30 pm: Fed’s balance sheet for the week ending March 18 (previously: $6.65 trillion)
- March 20, 8:30 am: Canada YoY PPI (was 5.4%); Monthly (previously 2.7%)
Earnings (Estimates based on FactSet data)
- March 16: Bakkt Holdings (BKKT), post-market, -$0.47
- March 16: Bitcoin Depot (BTM), premarket, -$0.47
- March 16: Cango (CANG), post-market, -$0.34
- March 17: CEA Industries (BNC), post-market, $0.69
- March 18: Bitfarms (BITF), pre-market, -$0.03
- March 19: Gemini Space Station (GEMI), post-market, -$0.91
- March 20: BitFuFu (FUFU), pre-market, $0.01
symbolic events
- Governance votes and calls
- March 17: Mantle (MNT) will present State of Mind Ep. 07, analyzing CeDeFi milestones and DeFi strategies.
- March 18: Jupiter (JUP) will hold its weekly Planetary Call community session with team updates.
- March 18: head of marketing and public relations to discuss ecosystem updates.
- Decentraland DAO is voting on whether to allow registered users to customize the color of their avatar’s nametag and add a more accessible volume slider to the UI sidebar. Voting ends on March 16 and 17.
- Convex Finance is voting on Curve and Frax gauge weighting allocations for the week of March 12, directing vlCVX voting power to hundreds of liquidity pools. He is also voting on FXN caliber weight allocations for the same period. Voting ends March 17.
- Aavegotchi DAO is voting to end its 2026-2027 multi-signature signer election, preserving the 5 out of 9 threshold and establishing quarterly compensation for signers. Voting ends March 17.
- Aavegotchi DAO is holding Vote 3 to elect seven of the remaining 10 nominees as multiple signatories, completing the list of nine signers for the DAO Foundation wallet. Voting ends March 17.
- Aura Finance is voting on Balancer indicator weight assignments for the week of March 12, directing vlAURA voting power between the Balancer pools on Ethereum, Arbitrum, Optimism, Gnosis, Base and Avalanche. Voting ends March 17.
- ShapeShift DAO is voting to establish and fund a new international UX workflow for six months to maintain professional multilingual translations of the ShapeShift app and website. Voting ends March 17.
- WalletConnect Network is voting on allocating 50 million WCT tokens as a dedicated rewards budget for WalletConnect Pay in 2026. Voting ends on March 18.
- ENS is voting on a one-time transfer of 900,000 USDC from the ENS Endowment to wallet.ensdao.eth to cover a shortfall in ongoing payments due to ENS Labs. Voting closes on March 18.
- Cratos DAO is voting to extend the current mobile app standard reward deadline by one month to April 30, 2026. Voting ends March 19.
- Lightchain AI DAO is voting on a 90-day temporary team authority proposal, which grants the core team temporary operational authority for 90 days to make day-to-day and strategic decisions. Voting ends on March 22.
- Unlock
- March 16: Arbitrum (ARB) will unlock 1.78% of its circulating supply worth $9.65 million.
- March 20 – LayerZero (ZRO) will unlock 5.64% of its circulating supply worth $52.45 million.
- Token releases
