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Crypto trading volumes and dwindling digital asset prices are flashing signs of trader exhaustion and potentially weaker market momentum, according to analysts. 

Crypto-wide trading volume has been dropping since it peaked in February amid dip-buying opportunities. According to CoinGecko data, daily trading volume hit its highest level this year in early February when it reached $440 billion. It has since sunk by 63% to $163 billion on March 12. 

Market data firm CoinMarketCap has slightly lower figures but they show the same trend — that volume peaked in 2025 in early March before falling back 52% to current levels.  

Analytics firm Santiment said on X on March 13 that this decline in volume suggests that trader enthusiasm for the asset class is diminishing.

“When trading volume for major cryptocurrencies consistently drops, even during slight price recoveries, it typically points toward diminishing trader enthusiasm.”

Santiment added that trader behavior “indicates a mix of exhaustion, hopelessness, and capitulation” following further market capitalization declines over the past fortnight. 

Total market capitalization has declined almost 25% since the beginning of February, shrinking by $900 billion as the crypto market correction deepens. 

Those declines have accelerated over the past 10 days when markets have lost 15% as fears of a recession in the United States increased amid escalating global trade tensions.

Santiment stated that traders are becoming cautious, suggesting they might not believe that the current upward price movements will last. “Essentially, reduced trading activity reflects uncertainty, as fewer traders are convinced that buying at current levels will yield profitable outcomes,” the analysts added.

Weakening trading volume amid minor price bounces can serve as an “early warning sign of weakening market momentum,” Santiment reported, adding that without robust buying participation, price gains can quickly lose steam, “as there simply isn’t enough underlying support to sustain the upward trend.”

“This leads to the possibility that any rebound could be temporary, with prices vulnerable to another downturn.”

Related: Bitcoin high-entry buyers are driving sell pressure, price may ‘floor’ at $70K

However, shrinking volume during minor rebounds isn’t necessarily a direct bearish signal, it said, adding that volume is a metric that measures participation from both retail and institutional traders and it needs to start rising before prices do.

 “To signal a healthier and more sustainable recovery, bulls generally will want to see both rising prices and rising volumes simultaneously.”

Crypto market capitalization is currently around $2.8 trillion, which is where it was this time last year before seven months of consolidation followed. 

Meanwhile, the Crypto Fear & Greed Index remains in “fear” territory, below 50, where it has been since Feb. 21. 

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A crypto trader fell victim to a sandwich attack while making a $220,764 stablecoin transfer on March 12 — losing almost 98% of its value to a Maximum Extractable Value (MEV) bot.

$220,764 worth of the USD Coin (USDC) stablecoin was swapped to $5,271 of Tether (USDT) in eight seconds as the MEV bot successfully front-ran the transaction, banking over $215,500.

Data from Ethereum block explorer shows the MEV attack occurred on decentralized exchange Uniswap v3’s USDC-USDT liquidity pool, where $19.8 million worth of value is locked.

The MEV bot front-ran the transaction by swapping all the USDC liquidity out of the Uniswap v3 USDC-USDT pool and then put it back in after the transaction was executed, according to founder of The DeFi Report Michael Nadeau.

The attacker tipped Ethereum block builder “bob-the-builder.eth” $200,000 from the $220,764 swap and profited $8,000 themselves, Nadeau said.

DeFi researcher “DeFiac” speculates the same trader using different wallets has fallen victim to a total of six sandwich attacks, citing “internal tools.” They pointed out that all funds traveled from borrowing and lending protocol Aave before being deposited on Uniswap.

Two of the wallets fell victim to an MEV bot sandwich attack on March 12 at around 9:00 am UTC. Ethereum wallet addresses “0xDDe…42a6D” and “0x999…1D215” were sandwich attacked for $138,838 and $128,003 in transactions that occurred three to four minutes earlier.

Both transactors made the same swap in the Uniswap v3 liquidity pool as the trader who made the $220,762 transfer. 

Others speculate the trades could be attempts at money laundering.

“If you have NK illicit funds you could construct a very mev-able tx, then privately send it to a mev bot and have them arb it in a bundle,” said founder of crypto data dashboard DefiLlama, 0xngmi.

“That way you wash all the money with close to 0 losses.”

Related: THORChain at crossroads: Decentralization clashes with illicit activity

While initially criticizing Uniswap, Nadeau later acknowledged that the transactions didn’t come from Uniswap’s front end, which has MEV protection and default slippage settings.

Nadeau backtracked on those criticisms after Uniswap CEO Hayden Adams and others clarified the protections Uniswap has in place to fight against sandwich attacks.

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The latest US core Consumer Price Index (CPI) print, a measure of inflation, came in lower than expected at 3.1%, beating expectations of 3.2%, with a corresponding 0.1% drop in headline inflation figures.

According to Matt Mena, crypto research strategist at 21Shares, the cooling inflation data adds to the likelihood that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates this year, injecting much-needed liquidity into the markets and sending risk-on asset prices higher. Mena added:

“Rate cut expectations have surged in response — markets now price a 31.4% chance of a cut in May, up over 3x from last month, while expectations for three cuts by year-end have jumped over 5x to 32.5%, and four cuts have skyrocketed from just 1% to 21%.”

Despite the better-than-expected inflation numbers, the price of Bitcoin (BTC) declined from over $84,000 at the daily open to now sit around $83,000 as traders grapple with US President Donald Trump’s trade war and macroeconomic uncertainty.

Related: Bitcoin’s ‘Trump trade’ is over — Traders shift hope to Fed rate cuts, expanding global liquidity

Is President Trump crashing markets to force rate cuts?

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said on several occasions that the central bank is not rushing to cut interest rates — a view echoed by Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller.

During a Feb. 17 speech at the University of New South Wales in Syndey, Australia, Waller said the bank should pause interest rate cuts until inflation comes down.

These comments were met with concern from market analysts, who say that a lack of rate cuts might trigger a bear market and send asset prices plummeting.

On March 10, market analyst and investor Anthony Pompliano speculated that President Trump was intentionally crashing financial markets to force the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates.

According to The Kobeissi Letter, the US government needs to refinance roughly $9.2 trillion in debt before it reaches maturity in 2025.

Failure to refinance this debt at lower interest rates will drive up the national debt, which is currently over $36 trillion, and cause the interest payments on the debt to balloon.

Due to these reasons, President Trump has made interest rate cuts a top priority for his administration — even at the short-term expense of asset markets and business.

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