Bitcoin may have bottomed and could rebound toward $90,000 after US President Donald Trump signaled a willingness to ease tariffs and the Federal Reserve resisted short-term pressure last week, according to a crypto analyst.

“Bitcoin is attempting to form a bottom, supported by Trump’s recent shift toward ‘flexibility’ on the upcoming April 2 reciprocal tariffs, softening his earlier rhetoric,” 10x Research’s founder Markus Thielen said in a March 23 report.

The Federal Reserve signaled in its March 18-19 meeting that it would also “look past short-term inflationary pressures, laying the groundwork for potential future easing,” Thielen added.

“Powell’s mildly dovish tone suggests that the Fed’s put remains intact, providing further support for a recovery in stock prices.”

10x Research’s Bitcoin reversal indicators have turned bullish as a result, with Bitcoin’s (BTC) 21-day moving average now at $85,200, Thielen noted.

He said these weekly reversal indicators have pulled back to levels where past bull markets have resumed, such as in September 2023 — spurred on by the Bitcoin exchange-traded fund narrative — and August 2024 as the US election neared.

“In short, the technical backdrop has now reset to a point where a renewed uptrend could plausibly unfold.”

Thielen also noted that several altcoins are already breaking out of their downtrend channels and trading at more “attractive levels.”

Bitcoin is currently trading at $85,720, up 2.1% over the last 24 hours, CoinGecko data shows.

Meanwhile, Ether (ETH), Tron (TRX), and Avalanche (AVAX) have rebounded 4.3%, 6.4% and 8.9% respectively over the last week. 

The crypto research analyst, however, expects to see “significant resistance” at the $90,000 mark for Bitcoin, should it reach that level.

Despite the more positive outlook, “no clear catalyst exists for an immediate parabolic rally” is in sight, Thielen said.

Related: Bitcoin ‘in position’ for first key RSI breakout in 6 months at $85K

He initially said Bitcoin wouldn’t drop below $73,000 — thereby avoiding a “deep bear market” — because the largest sum bracket of Bitcoin holders (wallets with 100-1000 Bitcoin) are likely family offices and wealth managers who are invested in Bitcoin for the long term.

He also noted that the US-based spot Bitcoin ETFs returned inflows for the first time last week since the last week of January. 

“We expect Bitcoin ETF selling from arbitrage-focused investors to wind down, as the arbitrage opportunities have primarily been closed for weeks,” Thielen added.

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The UK should begin taxing crypto purchases in a bid to sway Britons to invest in local stocks, which could boost the country’s economy, says the chair of investment bank Cavendish, Lisa Gordon.

“It should terrify all of us that over half of under-45s own crypto and no equities,” Gordon told The Times in a March 23 report. “I would love to see stamp duty cut on equities and applied to crypto.”

Currently, the UK lumps a 0.5% tax on shares listed on the London Stock Exchange, the country’s largest securities market, which brings in around 3 billion British pounds ($3.9 billion) a year in tax revenue.

Gordon added that a cut could sway people to put their savings into shares of local companies, which could then spark other firms to go public in the UK and help the economy.

In comparison, she called crypto “a non-productive asset” that “doesn’t feed back into the economy.”

“Equities provide growth capital to companies that employ people, innovate and pay corporation tax. That is a social contract. We shouldn’t be afraid of advocating for that.”

The country’s Financial Conduct Authority said in November that crypto ownership rose to 12% of adults, equivalent to around 7 million people. A majority of crypto owners, 36%, were under the age of 55 years old.

Gordon said that many had “shifted to saving rather than investing,” which she claimed “is not going to fund a viable retirement.”

A 2022 FCA survey found that 70% of adults had a savings account, while 38% either directly held shares or held them through an account allowing nearly 20,000 British pounds ($26,000) of tax-free savings a year — around three in four 18-24 years olds held no investments.

But in a follow-up survey, the regulator reported that in the 12 months to January 2024, the cost of living crisis had seen 44% of all adults either stop or reduce saving or investing, while nearly a quarter used savings or sold their investments to cover day-to-day costs.

Gordon is a member of the Capital Markets Industry Taskforce, a group of industry executives aiming to revive the local market, which Cavendish would benefit from as it advises companies on how to navigate possible public offerings.

Related: Will new US SEC rules bring crypto companies onshore?

Consulting giant EY reported in January that the London stock market had one of its “quietest years on record,” with just 18 companies listing last year, down from 23 in 2023.

At the same time, EY said 88 companies delisted or transferred from the exchange, with many saying they moved due to “declining liquidity and lower valuations compared to other markets” such as the US.

However, Gordon claimed the UK is a “safe haven” compared to markets such as the US, which has lost trillions of dollars in its stock markets due to President Donald Trump’s tariff threats and fears of a recession.

Crypto markets have also slumped alongside US equities, with Bitcoin (BTC) trading down 11% over the past 30 days and struggling to maintain support above $85,000 since early March.

In the past 24 hours, at least, Bitcoin is up 2%, trading around $85,640.

Magazine: Memecoins are ded — But Solana ‘100x better’ despite revenue plunge 

US authorities are seeking to return $7 million to victims of a social engineering scam that tricked them into sending money to fake cryptocurrency investment platforms. 

The scam involved the fraudsters contacting victims and earning trust before directing them to websites masquerading as legitimate crypto investment platforms, Virginia’s Eastern District US Attorney’s Office said in a March 21 statement.

Once victims made a deposit, the funds were funneled through over 75 bank accounts under the names of shell companies, then sent abroad “deceptively characterized” as domestic wires, despite being transferred to a bank outside the US.

“The sites falsely represented to the victims that their investments were making sizeable gains,” Virginia’s US Attorney’s Office added in its statement.

“When victims would attempt to make withdrawals, the perpetrators would coerce the victims to send even more money using tactics such as claiming the victims owed taxes on their purported profits.”

The United States Secret Service seized some of the stolen funds from a foreign bank in 2023 and began the civil forfeiture action by filing a claim in a US District Court.

However, the bank also made a claim against the cash, and the US authorities eventually reached a settlement agreement for $7 million of the seized funds. 

Victims of the scam have been urged to contact the Secret Service to petition to recover their losses. 

Related: Web3 businesses can outsmart crypto scams before they strike — Here’s how

In its 2025 Crypto Crime Report, blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis said crypto crime has entered a professionalized era dominated by efficient cyber syndicates. 

Australian federal police said on March 21 they had to alert 130 people of a message scam aimed at crypto users that spoofed the same “sender ID” as legitimate crypto exchanges such as Binance. 

Another similar string of scam messages reported by X users on March 14, spoofed Coinbase and Gemini and attempted to trick users into setting up a new wallet using pre-generated recovery phrases controlled by the fraudsters. 

Cybersecurity firm Malwarebytes sent a warning on March 18 about a syndicate using a new form of crypto-stealing malware hidden inside a “cracked” version of TradingView Premium. 

Microsoft’s Incident Response Team said on March 17 that it had discovered cyber scammers were using a new remote access trojan (RAT) that targets crypto held in 20 cryptocurrency wallet extensions for the Google Chrome browser. 

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Fidelity Investments has filed to register a tokenized version of its US dollar money market fund on Ethereum — joining the likes of BlackRock and Franklin Templeton in the blockchain tokenization space.

Fidelity’s March 21 filing with the US securities regulator said “OnChain” would help track transactions of the Fidelity Treasury Digital Fund (FYHXX) — an $80 million fund consisting almost entirely of US Treasury bills.

While OnChain is pending regulatory approval, it is expected to take effect on May 30, Fidelity said.

The OnChain share class aims to provide investors transparency and verifiable tracking of share transactions of FYHXX, although Fidelity will maintain traditional book-entry records as the official ownership ledger.

“Although the secondary recording of the OnChain class on a blockchain will not represent the official record of ownership, the transfer agent will reconcile the secondary blockchain transactions with the official records of the OnChain class on at least a daily basis.”

Fidelity said the US Treasury bills wouldn’t be directly tokenized.

The $5.8 trillion asset manager said it may also expand OnChain to other blockchains in the future.

Related: Ethereum eyes 65% gains from ‘cycle bottom’ as BlackRock ETH stash crosses $1B

Asset managers have increasingly turned to blockchain to tokenize Treasury bills, bonds and private credit over the past few years.

The RWA tokenization market for Treasury products is currently valued at $4.78 billion, led by the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL) at $1.46 billion, according to rwa.xyz.

Over $3.3 billion worth of RWAs are tokenized on the Ethereum network, followed by Stellar at $465.6 million.

BlackRock’s head of crypto, Robbie Mitchnick, recently said Ethereum is still the “natural default answer” for TradFi firms looking to tokenize RWAs onchain.

“There was no question that the blockchain we would start our tokenization on would be Ethereum, and that’s not just a BlackRock thing, that’s the natural default answer.”

“Clients clearly are making choices that they do value the decentralization, they do value the credibility, and the security and that’s a great advantage that Ethereum continues to have,” he said at the Digital Asset Summit in New York on March 20.

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