March continues crypto slide as market sentiment tanks

The crypto market continued its post-tariff collapse, dropping 4.4% in March, amid escalating trade tensions and ongoing uncertainty around a potential Fed rate cut, with market sentiment on cryptos sinking to a new low.

The March drop continues the crypto sector’s February price slump, which saw the sector lose 20.2% in market cap, leading crypto exchange platform Binance revealed in its latest monthly market update.

This is, however, still well off the 2022 price crash, with crypto’s value sinking by 65% over a successive three-month Q2 decline.

Total crypto market capitalisation has dropped an estimated 25.9% from January highs — wiping out around US$1 trillion in value, which, according to Binance, has underscored its sensitivity to macroeconomic instability.

The March 2025 drop saw Bitcoin lose nearly a quarter (19.1%) of its value since the Trump Administration flagged the introduction of tariffs, while Ethereum, the second-most popular crypto coin, was down 44%. Bitcoin is currently valued at US$80,637 (AU$129,134) per coin, while Etherum is currently at US$1,541 (AU$ 2,467). ‎

However, altcoins were the biggest losers over this period, with Memecoin, Artificial Intelligence, and Layer 2 all losing more than half their value in this period.

Bucking the trend was Toncoin (TON), created by Telegram Messager app founder Nikolai Durov, which surged 17.1% last month following a disclosure by the TON Foundation that over US$400 million in TON had been purchased from early investors by blockchain focused venture capital firms including Sequoia, Ribbit, and Benchmark, alongside a significant rise in native accounts, (up four million to 41 million over the past year).

“The broad selloff has erased early-year gains across much of the crypto market, pushing even BTC into negative territory year-to-date (YTD) as of early April — despite its strong performance in 2024,” Binance noted.

Doge coin (-17.6%), Solana (-15.8%) and Link (-9.7%) also saw notable price retreats.

Locally, however, Australian traders largely stuck with Bitcoin, with Ripple and Cardano seeing gains off the back of Trump’s announcement of a Strategic Crypto Reserve (which includes these coins). Others being considered for inclusion in the Reserve also saw modest increases in value.

Tariff pain

Since the first round of tariffs, announced in early February, the crypto sector has lost more than a quarter of its value (25.9%), following the drop in the S&P 500, which declined 17.1% over the same period.

Binance notes that crypto assets have moved “largely in lockstep with equities, with both experiencing cooling demand, broad selloffs, and a slide into correction territory”.

Meanwhile, gold, the traditional safe haven asset during times of economic tumult, has rallied to 10.3%, breaking successive all-time highs.

The tariff tensions bubbled over in March, with the imposition of trade imposts on Canada and Mexico, contributing to a US$1 billion crypto liquidation in cryptocurrency derivative markets on 4 March.

March has seen market sentiment turn decidedly cautious on crypto, Binance wrote in its update, with investors displaying “classic ‘risk-off’ behaviour”.

This sentiment was reflected in a recent fund manager survey, Binance found, with only 3% of respondents stating they would allocate to Bitcoin in the current environment (that is, in the current trade war). This is in sharp contrast to gold, which was favoured by 58%.

The US Dollar (favoured by just 15% of investors), 30-Year Treasury bonds (9%) and 3-month T-bills (4%) were similarly in disfavour.

Binance, which trades around half the global crypto spot trading volume, notes that crypto markets are behaving increasingly like risk assets.

“A prolonged trade war could continue to weigh on capital flows and dampen demand for digital assets in the near term.

“As a result, capital that might have entered crypto is either staying on the sidelines or shifting into perceived safe havens like gold.”