Bernstein analysts Gautam Chhugani and his team published a note on Monday arguing that the 60% collapse in cryptocurrency-adjacent stocks from their all-time highs represents a “rare chance to buy the dip at a ‘big’ discount” — language that runs directly against the prevailing mood of Extreme Fear gripping the market.
The note maintained Outperform ratings on Coinbase, Robinhood, and Figure Technology Solutions while lowering price targets on all three to reflect expectations of weak first-quarter results when those companies report earnings in the coming weeks.
Bernstein’s argument rests on a structural view rather than a near-term price call: the analysts believe crypto equities are approaching a floor “into weak Q1 earnings” and that the Iran-war-driven macro pressure that has hammered the sector is temporary rather than structural.
Coinbase’s earnings per share are projected to grow 23% in 2026, driven by what Bernstein describes as a coming “stablecoin boom” and the rollout of new products that reduce revenue dependence on spot trading fees — the most volatile element of the exchange’s income.
The Fear and Greed Index for crypto sits at 8, in Extreme Fear territory, a reading last seen during the August 2025 flash crash that in retrospect marked a local price bottom. On-chain analysts note that nearly half of all circulating Bitcoin is currently underwater, with long-term holders selling at a loss — historically a signal that a capitulation phase is reaching its final stages rather than beginning.
Bitcoin itself is holding just above $67,000, attempting a modest rebound after testing the $65,900 support level, with the recovery capped by the $296 million in net ETF outflows recorded last week — the first net outflow week after four consecutive weeks of inflows.
Whether the Bernstein call ages well depends almost entirely on the Iran war duration. A ceasefire signal would likely trigger a sharp snap-back across risk assets including crypto. A continuation into May would test both the $65,000 support and Bernstein’s confidence in the sector’s structural resilience.
Bitcoin’s week has been a microcosm of the broader market — sharp falls when the Iran conflict escalated, an equally sharp recovery when ceasefire signals emerged, and then a fragile, news-dependent consolidation that left technical analysts deeply cautious. On Monday, Bitcoin briefly dipped below $68,000 as oil prices spiked above $112 per barrel and a broad risk-off move swept digital assets. By Wednesday, with Trump’s Truth Social post generating peace talk optimism, it had recovered to trade above $71,000.
At 9am Eastern on Wednesday, Bitcoin was priced at approximately $71,299, up modestly from Tuesday’s levels and roughly $16,100 lower than at the same point a year ago. Iran’s rejection of the US ceasefire proposal — which among other terms included a demand for control of the Strait of Hormuz — injected fresh uncertainty, but the market absorbed it with more composure than it had shown earlier in the week.
What the price movement this week has confirmed is something analysts have been arguing for months: Bitcoin has become deeply entangled with global macro sentiment rather than behaving as an uncorrelated asset. The phrase “digital gold” feels increasingly hollow when BTC falls in lockstep with equities during risk-off episodes and rises with them when geopolitical tension eases. Gold, in contrast, has absorbed $16 billion in ETF inflows year to date while Bitcoin ETFs have seen $4.5 billion in outflows over the same period.
On the institutional side, Michael Saylor’s Strategy has accumulated roughly 90,000 BTC in Q1 2026 alone, including a $76.6 million purchase of 1,031 coins, bringing total holdings to over 762,000 BTC. That accumulation acts as a structural demand floor during selloffs, reducing the probability of a severe crash even as retail sentiment remains cautious. The Fear and Greed Index sits at 25/100, firmly in fear territory. Technical indicators are mostly bearish, with Bitcoin’s 200-day EMA sitting at around $86,916 — a long way above current prices. The five-day pause in US strikes on Iran expires around March 28, and that date now functions as the most immediate catalyst for Bitcoin’s next significant directional move.
Monday was a sharp reminder of how directly Bitcoin now responds to geopolitical developments rather than purely crypto-native signals. When Trump posted on Truth Social that US strikes on Iran’s infrastructure would be paused for five days following “very good and productive” talks, Bitcoin jumped approximately 5% and broke back above $71,000.
The move came after a weekend that had seen Bitcoin drop below $67,600, with $336 million in total crypto liquidations over 24 hours and roughly $100 million in Bitcoin long positions wiped out as oil spiked and risk-off sentiment dominated.
Galaxy Digital, Coinbase, and IREN each gained around 2% in pre-market trading. Strategy — formerly MicroStrategy and the largest corporate Bitcoin holder — rose more than 3%.
The relief proved short-lived. Iran’s Fars news agency denied any direct or indirect talks with the US, which contradicted the White House narrative and caused markets to give back a portion of the gains.
By Tuesday morning, oil had jumped 4% on reports that Saudi Arabia and the UAE were moving toward joining the coalition against Iran. Bitcoin consolidated rather than extended.
Options markets reflected the unease. Put options on Deribit continued to trade at an 8-to-10 volatility point premium to calls through the June-end expiry — essentially unchanged from before Monday’s announcement. Traders are treating the geopolitical news with scepticism rather than pricing in a resolution.
The Fear and Greed Index fell to 8 at its low point over the weekend — deep inside “extreme fear” territory — before recovering somewhat on Monday’s news to settle in the mid-30s by Tuesday.
One structural positive amid the turbulence: spot Bitcoin ETFs have now recorded net inflows for four consecutive weeks. Last week alone, net inflows reached $95.18 million, indicating institutional capital is maintaining long-term allocations regardless of short-term volatility.
Bitcoin’s correlation with gold during this period has been telling. Gold has attracted strategic central bank buying even under geopolitical stress. Bitcoin has traded more like an equity — correlating closely with the S&P 500 rather than functioning as a haven.
The divergence does not invalidate the long-term institutional thesis. It does suggest that Bitcoin’s “digital gold” narrative requires a certain baseline of macro stability to sustain itself, and the current environment has not provided that.
If the Strait of Hormuz situation de-escalates meaningfully, the geopolitical headwind on crypto removes itself and the structural institutional demand story reasserts. Until then, the market is navigating a macro environment it cannot control.
There are bad days to be sitting on a leveraged crypto position, and then there is quadruple witching Friday, and then there is quadruple witching Friday during a Middle East war, a hawkish Fed and a four-week equity selloff.
According to Goldman Sachs, more than $7.1 trillion in notional options exposure expires simultaneously, the largest quarterly derivatives expiry ever recorded, with roughly $5 trillion tied to the S&P 500 index alone and a further $880 billion linked to individual stocks.
Bitcoin was holding around $69,800 as those contracts began expiring, with Ethereum at $2,134, XRP at $1.43 and Solana at $88.93, each of those figures sitting well below where they were when the year began and well below where most investors had positioned for them to be by now.
The Fear and Greed Index for crypto markets registered 30 going into Friday’s session, firmly in fear territory and barely recovered from the reading of 23 recorded earlier this week following the Federal Reserve’s hawkish rate hold.
Quadruple witching matters to crypto investors because Bitcoin no longer operates in a silo separate from traditional finance.
The asset increasingly trades alongside equities and other risk assets, meaning institutional liquidations, portfolio rebalancing and derivatives settlement in the stock market create direct ripple effects in digital asset prices, often within the same trading session rather than with any meaningful lag.
Cole Kennelly, CEO of Volmex Finance, said the event is already showing up in digital asset volatility metrics: “Quadruple witching could trigger a spike in cross-asset volatility as large derivatives positions expire. This may already be showing up in crypto, with the Bitcoin Volmex Implied Volatility (BVIV) Index trending higher into the event.”
The historical pattern from 2025 provides limited comfort for anyone hoping Friday itself will pass quietly.
Bitcoin tended to show muted or flat performance on the day of quadruple witching events themselves, but consistently followed with weakness in the days and weeks after, sometimes sharply so.
In September 2025, a post-witching decline took Bitcoin from $177,000 all the way to $108,000, while the June event was followed by a local bottom just two days later.
Analyst Max Crypto noted on social media that BTC has dropped between seven and eight percent before bouncing during three of the last four quadruple witching events, a pattern that, combined with the current macro backdrop, suggests the path of least resistance remains downward rather than upward in the near term.
Today’s derivatives expiry does not even represent the end of the week’s event risk for crypto specifically.
A separate $13.5 billion in digital asset derivatives are set to expire on Deribit on March 27, just six days away, and positioning data from that exchange shows traders leaning into volatility strategies rather than building directional bets, which signals a market bracing for continued turbulence rather than any clean directional resolution.
Bitcoin ETF outflows over the past two days have compounded the selling pressure, with BlackRock’s IBIT posting $38.25 million in outflows on Thursday, Fidelity’s FBTC shedding $26.02 million and Bitwise contributing $17.18 million to net outflows of $90 million across the day, a continuation of the $163.52 million in net outflows recorded on Wednesday.
The combined weight of geopolitical uncertainty, a Fed that has signalled one rate cut for the entirety of 2026, oil above $100 and now the mechanical pressure of the largest derivatives expiry in financial history arriving in the same week is as challenging a set of conditions as the crypto market has navigated since the October 2025 peak.
When spot Ethereum ETFs received SEC approval in 2024, they came with a significant constraint attached: the funds were explicitly prohibited from staking the ETH they held. Regulators at the time were concerned that staking arrangements might constitute unregistered securities offerings, a legal question that Gary Gensler’s SEC had no appetite to resolve in favor of asset managers. That prohibition has now been reversed, and the product BlackRock launched on Nasdaq on March 12 is the clearest possible demonstration of how much the regulatory landscape has shifted.
The iShares Staked Ethereum Trust, trading under the ticker ETHB, is BlackRock’s third crypto ETF and its first designed to generate yield for shareholders rather than simply track price. Under normal market conditions, between 70% and 95% of the fund’s ETH holdings are staked through Coinbase Prime, with investors receiving approximately 82% of gross staking rewards, currently running at roughly 3.1% annually, distributed monthly. BlackRock and Coinbase split the remaining 18% as a staking fee, with downstream validators including Figment, Galaxy Digital, and Attestant handling the actual network participation.
Two regulatory developments made this structure legally viable. The first was the GENIUS Act, a federal stablecoin framework passed in July 2025 that clarified the legal runway for yield-generating crypto products more broadly. The second was the change in SEC leadership, with Paul Atkins replacing Gary Gensler as chair. Atkins’ SEC approved ETHB’s structure without objection after roughly three months of review, a timeline made possible by new generic listing standards that compressed the process from as long as 240 days to as little as 75.
ETHB attracted $155 million in inflows within its first 24 hours of trading, with day-one volume of approximately $15.5 million growing to around $76 million by the following session. Total assets under management reached roughly $170 million within days of launch, a meaningful initial scale even if it sits far below the $6.5 billion that BlackRock’s non-staking Ethereum ETF, ETHA, has accumulated since mid-2024. The gap between the two funds reflects both the head start ETHA enjoys and the natural caution institutional allocators bring to genuinely new product structures.
The fee architecture is structured in two layers. A base management fee of 0.25% per annum applies, though a promotional rate of 0.12% is in effect for the first 12 months or until the fund reaches $2.5 billion in assets, whichever comes first. On top of that, the staking fee split of 82% to investors and 18% to sponsors operates as a second, performance-linked fee layer. Taken together, the structure is competitive, and for investors who understand it, the yield component meaningfully changes the economic case for holding Ethereum through a regulated vehicle rather than just buying spot exposure.
ETHB is not the first staked Ethereum product in the US market. Grayscale and REX-Osprey’s ETH + Staking ETF both preceded it, and Grayscale in particular has been operating in this space for several months. What changes with BlackRock’s entry is the distribution scale and institutional credibility behind the product, the same dynamic that played out when BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF came to market and rapidly dominated the space even though it wasn’t the first spot BTC fund to launch.
The broader implications for the crypto ETF market may matter even more than the ETHB launch itself. If a staked proof-of-stake asset can be packaged into an ETF that distributes monthly yield, the structural template now exists for other proof-of-stake networks. Solana and Cardano staking ETF filings are already pending in front of the SEC, and while BlackRock has not filed for either, its demonstration that the mechanics work will almost certainly accelerate the review timeline for those products.
Industry-wide, crypto investment products attracted more than $1 billion in weekly inflows in the period surrounding ETHB’s launch, with staked Ethereum ETFs capturing a disproportionate share of that flow. CoinShares data confirmed the figure, reflecting what analysts are describing as a structural shift in how large capital allocators are approaching digital asset exposure. Major asset managers now appear to view yield-generating crypto products as an emerging alternative asset class, comparable to how they think about real estate investment trusts or commodity-linked structured products, rather than purely speculative bets.
Lido’s Kean Gilbert put the directional implication plainly when discussing the institutional staking market earlier this year: “Looking ahead, I expect fully staked exposure to become the reference point for ETH ETFs rather than the exception.” That framing, which seemed premature when it was offered in January, looks considerably more prescient now that BlackRock has validated it with product and capital.
Ethereum itself is trading around $2,188 as of Wednesday, down more than 50% from its 52-week high of $4,831 but up roughly 58% from its cycle low of $1,473 earlier this year. US spot Ethereum ETF assets under management across all products have grown to approximately $14.14 billion this month, up from $13.18 billion a month ago, suggesting that institutional accumulation is continuing steadily even as the price sits well below recent highs. The divergence between falling prices and rising institutional AUM is a feature of this market moment, and BlackRock’s ETHB is now part of the mechanism driving it.
On Saturday, March 14, the Ethereum Foundation confirmed via a post on X that it had finalised the sale of 5,000 ETH to BitMine Immersion Technologies at an average price of $2,042.96 per coin, placing the transaction’s total value at approximately $10.2 million.
The announcement arrived without fanfare, which was somewhat deliberate, because the entire point of conducting the deal over the counter was to avoid the kind of visible sell pressure that an exchange liquidation of the same size would have created in a market already navigating significant macro uncertainty.
BitMine, chaired by Fundstrat’s Tom Lee and publicly traded on the NYSE American under the ticker BMNR, is not a speculative buyer loading up on a volatile asset — it is the largest publicly traded ether treasury company in the world, currently holding approximately 4.534 million ETH as of March 8, a stack worth more than $9.3 billion at recent prices.
The fact that the Ethereum Foundation chose BitMine as its counterparty rather than routing supply through exchanges is the most structurally interesting part of this transaction, because it means the ether did not actually leave the long-term holding universe — it simply moved from one institutional balance sheet to another with a longer time horizon.
The proceeds will fund the Foundation’s core operations, covering protocol research and development, ecosystem growth initiatives, community grant programs, and developer support, consistent with the treasury framework the organisation published in June 2025.
That framework established a target annual spending rate of roughly 15% of treasury holdings, alongside a two-and-a-half-year operating buffer designed to insulate the Foundation from having to sell into unfavourable market conditions out of necessity.
This is the second time the Foundation has used a direct corporate OTC sale to raise operational capital, having previously sold 10,000 ETH to SharpLink Gaming in July 2025 at an average price of $2,572.37 — a considerably higher price point that makes the current transaction’s $2,042.96 clearing price a reflection of where ETH has been trading through the first quarter of 2026.
On-chain data shows the Foundation’s treasury currently holds approximately 169,863 ETH, valued at around $359 million at recent prices, while the broader universe of corporate institutional ETH holdings has grown to exceed 5.16 million coins — a number that illustrates the pace at which ETH is migrating from retail and speculative holders toward longer-term institutional balance sheets.
The analytical question this transaction raises is whether a funding model built on periodic direct sales to corporate buyers represents a structural improvement over the previous approach of liquidating treasury holdings on open markets, and the answer seems to be yes, at least in terms of market impact management.
Private placements reduce slippage, limit visible selling pressure on public exchanges, and allow both parties to negotiate terms without moving prices — advantages that become more meaningful as the Foundation’s operational needs grow alongside the scale of the Ethereum ecosystem it is funding.
Whether the OTC model introduces governance concerns worth monitoring is a separate question, because directing large supply flows toward specific corporate accumulation entities creates concentration dynamics that the broader Ethereum community may want to track more closely over time as the Treasury framework matures.
Bitcoin (BTC) managed to climb back above the $70,000 level on Wednesday, demonstrating resilience in price despite several failed attempts over the past five weeks to surpass the $74,000 resistance mark.
Ongoing geopolitical tensions between the United States and Israel-Iran, combined with disappointing February U.S. labor data, have compounded investor caution, tempering enthusiasm for a sustained bullish move in the near term.
ETF Inflows Show Institutional Interest, But Skepticism Remains
While U.S.-listed Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) recorded $414 million in net inflows between Monday and Tuesday, these gains failed to counterbalance $576 million in net outflows seen during the previous Thursday and Friday, highlighting cautious market sentiment.
Analysts note that derivatives markets indicate limited optimism among professional traders, suggesting a substantial rally before the end of March is considered unlikely according to call option pricing.
Derivatives Pricing Highlights Limited Upside Potential
Bitcoin call options on Deribit for March 27, with a $78,000 strike price, traded at $704, implying that whales and market makers assign less than a 17 percent probability of BTC achieving roughly a 12 percent gain from current levels.
Meanwhile, the annualized premium for two-month Bitcoin futures remains below the 4 percent neutral threshold, signaling stagnant demand for leveraged long positions even after a brief four-day rally that briefly retested $74,000.
Macroeconomic Concerns Weigh on Trader Sentiment
Professional traders appear wary of maintaining significant BTC momentum due to global economic uncertainty, with inflationary pressures exacerbated by conflict-driven oil price increases, which some strategists suggest offset fiscal stimulus effects.
Seema Shah, chief global strategist at Principal Asset Management, emphasized that investors are increasingly focused on how geopolitical tensions could influence inflation, underscoring broader economic caution across financial markets.
Institutional Adoption Supports Price Stability
Despite macroeconomic headwinds, investment products linked to Strategy (MSTR US) shares continue to underpin Bitcoin prices, with the company posting record daily trading volumes and enabling additional at-the-market share offerings for spot Bitcoin purchases.
X user “gumsays” highlighted that Strategy’s adoption of variable rate perpetual structures could drive purchases of billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin weekly, suggesting that potential ETF inflows may create sustained institutional demand in the medium term.
Traders are likely to maintain a cautious outlook until after March before anticipating Bitcoin to break the $78,000 threshold, as broader market dynamics and derivatives activity continue to reflect measured sentiment rather than outright enthusiasm.
Investor appetite for Bitcoin investment products strengthened again at the start of the week, ending a brief period of withdrawals that had weighed on cryptocurrency-linked exchange-traded funds.
Data from SoSoValue showed that US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds attracted approximately $167 million in net inflows on Monday as the cryptocurrency moved closer to the $70,000 price level.
The inflows followed two consecutive trading sessions dominated by redemptions, during which roughly $577 million exited the funds across Thursday and Friday combined.
Bitcoin itself was trading near $70,015 at the time of reporting, according to CoinGecko data, reflecting modest recovery after recent volatility in the broader digital asset market.
The renewed demand suggested that institutional investors were again allocating capital to the largest cryptocurrency as prices approached a psychologically important threshold.
Altcoin ETFs Continue Facing Pressure
While Bitcoin funds regained momentum, investment vehicles tied to other major cryptocurrencies continued to experience significant selling pressure despite modest price gains in their underlying assets.
Exchange-traded funds linked to Ether, XRP, and Solana all recorded further net outflows on Monday, extending a multi-day trend of investors withdrawing capital from altcoin-focused products.
SoSoValue data indicated that Ether ETFs lost $51 million during the session, while XRP products saw $18 million leave the funds and Solana ETFs recorded withdrawals of roughly $2.5 million.
Across the past three trading days, Ether has experienced the largest cumulative losses among the group, with total outflows reaching approximately $225 million.
Although selling pressure in Ether and Solana funds has gradually moderated over the same period, XRP products have experienced accelerating withdrawals totaling roughly $41 million since Thursday.
Solana-related funds have also seen consistent but smaller outflows, with around $16 million exiting the products during the recent three-day stretch.
Market Sentiment Influenced By Geopolitical Developments
The broader cryptocurrency market received a temporary boost after comments from US President Donald Trump suggested that tensions related to the conflict involving Iran could soon ease.
Trump told reporters on Monday that the war with Iran could be approaching its conclusion, a development that helped calm financial markets and pushed global oil prices lower.
Lower energy prices and reduced geopolitical uncertainty often encourage investors to take on more risk, which can support assets such as cryptocurrencies and technology-linked investments.
During the same period, several major digital tokens recorded gains of between three and five percent over a twenty-four-hour timeframe, according to market data from CoinGecko.
Despite those price increases, the continued withdrawals from altcoin ETFs indicated that institutional investors remained cautious about committing capital beyond Bitcoin itself.
Analysts Warn Market Bottom May Not Be Reached
Some market analysts have warned that it may still be too early to conclude that the recent downturn in the cryptocurrency market has fully run its course.
A CryptoQuant analyst known as IT pointed to the Bitcoin long-term holder to short-term holder spent output profit ratio as an indicator that selling pressure remains present among newer market participants.
The metric recently dropped to 0.89, suggesting that short-term holders were continuing to sell Bitcoin at a loss rather than realizing profits on their positions.
Such behavior is typically associated with periods of market stress, when investors who entered positions during higher price levels decide to exit as volatility increases.
However, the analyst emphasized that the current readings do not yet reflect the type of widespread capitulation historically associated with the formation of a definitive market bottom.
As a result, the data suggests that while pressure in the market is increasing, a clearer turning point for Bitcoin prices may still lie ahead.
US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds have recorded a second consecutive week of net inflows, signaling a renewed wave of investor demand after a prolonged stretch dominated by withdrawals and cautious sentiment.
Data compiled by SoSoValue indicates that spot Bitcoin ETFs attracted approximately $568.45 million in fresh capital during the latest week, continuing the recovery that began with $787.31 million in inflows the week before.
The back-to-back positive weeks mark the first time the funds have achieved consecutive gains in roughly five months, suggesting investor appetite is returning after a difficult period for digital asset investment vehicles.
Prior to the recent turnaround, the funds had endured a five-week streak of consistent redemptions that resulted in cumulative outflows totaling around $3.8 billion across the sector.
The heaviest weekly withdrawals occurred during the period ending January 30, when investors collectively removed about $1.49 billion from spot Bitcoin ETFs as market uncertainty intensified.
Volatile Daily Flows During The Week
Although the weekly totals ultimately showed strong inflows, the daily performance across the week revealed fluctuating investor sentiment and intermittent profit-taking as markets reacted to shifting price dynamics.
Monday began with strong demand as the funds collectively attracted $458.19 million in inflows, reflecting renewed institutional interest and optimism surrounding the broader cryptocurrency market outlook.
The positive momentum continued into Tuesday, when spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded an additional $225.15 million in inflows as investors maintained confidence following the previous week’s encouraging performance.
Midweek trading delivered the largest inflow of the period, with $461.77 million entering the funds on Wednesday as market participants increased exposure to Bitcoin through regulated investment vehicles.
However, sentiment shifted toward the end of the week, with Thursday seeing net outflows of $227.83 million before withdrawals accelerated further on Friday with $348.83 million exiting the products.
Ether ETFs Also Register Consecutive Weekly Gains
Spot Ether exchange-traded funds in the United States mirrored the broader recovery trend, recording their second straight week of net inflows after several weeks of persistent investor withdrawals earlier this year.
The funds attracted approximately $23.56 million in new capital during the latest reporting week, following an earlier inflow of about $80.46 million during the preceding week.
These gains represent the first instance of consecutive positive weeks for US spot Ether ETFs since early October of last year, highlighting improving sentiment toward Ethereum-related investment products.
Before this recovery period began, Ether ETFs had experienced a five-week stretch of withdrawals that collectively removed more than $1.38 billion from the funds.
The most severe week during that downturn occurred in late January, when investors withdrew roughly $611 million as cryptocurrency markets faced heightened volatility and declining prices.
Bitcoin ETFs Rapidly Closing Gap With Gold Funds
The broader trajectory of Bitcoin ETF adoption has also attracted attention among industry observers who are comparing the pace of inflows with those seen historically in traditional commodity investment vehicles.
Fernando Nikolić, Blockstream’s director of marketing, highlighted in a post on X that spot Bitcoin ETFs have already matched approximately fifteen years of cumulative inflows recorded by gold ETFs.
Remarkably, that milestone has been reached in less than two years despite gold funds having a significant advantage in terms of time and maturity within the exchange-traded fund market.
Nikolić also noted that the achievement occurred during a period when Bitcoin experienced a drawdown of roughly forty-six percent and endured several months of negative price performance.
“Anyone still arguing about whether bitcoin is ‘digital gold’ is wasting their breath,” he wrote. “Bitcoin isn’t trying to be gold. Bitcoin is making gold look slow,” he added.
Fold, a publicly traded Bitcoin financial services company, has retired $66.3 million in convertible debt, removing a potential source of shareholder dilution and strengthening its capital structure ahead of planned product expansion.
The company disclosed that it paid off two outstanding convertible notes, which previously allowed debt holders to convert their positions into equity under certain conditions.
By eliminating these instruments, Fold significantly reduces the possibility of future share issuance that could dilute existing investors’ ownership stakes.
Bitcoin Collateral Released
As part of the restructuring, Fold also freed 521 Bitcoin that had been pledged as collateral against the convertible notes, restoring full control over those digital assets.
With the obligations settled, the previously encumbered Bitcoin can now be deployed for general corporate purposes, offering greater operational and financial flexibility.
The company stated that retiring the notes reduces financing constraints and positions Fold to pursue strategic growth initiatives more aggressively.
Expansion Into Consumer Credit
One priority includes launching a consumer-focused Bitcoin rewards credit card that distributes BTC instead of traditional points or cash-back incentives.
Fold originally built its brand around a debit card that allows users to spend U.S. dollars while earning Bitcoin rewards on everyday purchases.
Over time, it expanded into savings features and merchant partnerships designed to encourage long-term Bitcoin accumulation rather than immediate crypto spending.
Founded in 2019, Fold went public on the Nasdaq in February 2025 through a SPAC merger with FTAC Emerald Acquisition, becoming one of the first Bitcoin-centric financial services firms listed on a major U.S. exchange.
Despite that milestone, Fold shares have fallen more than 84% since debuting publicly, underscoring the volatility facing crypto-aligned equities.
Intensifying Competition In Crypto Rewards
The broader crypto rewards market has grown increasingly competitive, with multiple companies offering alternative cards tied to digital asset incentives.
Coinbase’s card enables customers to spend cryptocurrency balances directly while earning rewards, forming part of its broader strategy to integrate payments, trading, and financial services.
Other competitors, including Nexo, Bybit, and Crypto.com, offer crypto-backed or Visa-branded cards that provide token-based cashback and borrowing capabilities against digital assets.
More recently, Mastercard partnered with MetaMask to introduce a U.S. crypto-linked card that converts digital assets to fiat currency at the point of sale.
Against that backdrop, Fold’s debt elimination and collateral release represent a strategic effort to streamline operations while preparing to compete more aggressively within the expanding digital rewards ecosystem.