Although the price has hovered optimistically close to the critical $100,000 barrier, stagnant blockchain activity metrics show certain vulnerabilities that could hinder further upside.

According to data from Checkonchain, daily on-chain transfer volume remains near the $10 billion mark, aligning almost perfectly with its 365-day mean. This is a clear indication that transactional demand remains tepid.

Sharp increases in on-chain throughput marked previous bullish phases, but the current scenario reflects minimal fresh transactional activity, effectively capping potential momentum.

Furthermore, Bitcoin’s mempool (the main indicator of transaction backlog and network demand) has been shallow, sustaining only about three to four blocks’ worth of pending transactions. This contrasts starkly with historical breakout periods, where the mempool swelled significantly amid heightened transactional urgency.

Active address metrics corroborate the lethargy seen in on-chain volume and transaction counts. In the past 30 days, daily active addresses averaged around 930,000, with recent fluctuations marking multi-month lows dipping occasionally below 800,000, a departure from the activity typically associated with bullish enthusiasm.

Without an uptick in new or returning user interactions, Bitcoin is increasingly dependent on existing holders to drive the market upward. This dependency often translates into weaker buying pressure, particularly at significant resistance levels where profit-taking from stale holders may dominate.

Bitcoin’s velocity, which shows the rate at which coins change hands, seems to compound these pressures. Data from CryptoQuant shows velocity remains stagnant around 13.0, showing that coins are moving through the Bitcoin ecosystem more slowly.

Moreover, the investor sentiment backdrop provides limited comfort. Although roughly 400,000 BTC recently transitioned into long-term holder (LTH) status in the past month, suggesting a tightening supply, this shift is double-edged. Historically, significant movements into LTH status coincide with phases of market inertia rather than explosive growth as investors brace for prolonged sideways movements.

Additionally, Bitcoin’s short-term holder (STH) cost-basis of $93,500 almost perfectly mirrors the current spot price, adding further technical and psychological weight. This price alignment amplifies the risk of forming a technical lower-high scenario on the weekly charts, particularly if bid support fails to materialize decisively in the next few weeks.

Exchange inflow data offers additional cautionary signals, averaging approximately 32,700 BTC daily over the last month. These numbers represent neither panic selling nor aggressive accumulation: they reflect a neutral and disinterested market.

This middle-ground sentiment most likely won’t provide sufficient fuel to propel Bitcoin past resistance clusters near $100,000, where approximately 15% of Bitcoin’s circulating supply currently resides in unrealized losses, ready to offload at break-even points.

Previous episodes of muted activity have typically led to market frustration, culminating in sudden downside corrections or extended periods of price stasis, both of which are demoralizing for bullish investors hoping for rapid ascents.

Bitcoin will likely escape this inertia when transfer volume, ETF turnover, and active addresses spike in tandem. Increased velocity and mempool depth, followed by increased movement in the derivatives market, would certainly bolster confidence.

Derivatives themselves have seen sharp spikes and drops in activity in the past month, indicating volatile speculative fervor, but weren’t enough to keep BTC above $95,000. But without all these signals materializing together, the likelihood increases that Bitcoin might succumb to a lower-high formation on the weekly chart that could push it back to as low as $86,000.

The current state of transactional inertia acts as a barrier to Bitcoin’s immediate upside potential. Unless significant on-chain activity resumes, the market’s aspirations of surpassing and sustaining Bitcoin’s price above $100,000 may remain out of reach in the short term.

The post Quiet mempool and flat volume could mean limited fuel for Bitcoin’s breakout above $100k appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Dogecoin’s chart has turned into what independent market analyst Kevin calls “literally doing nothing” for almost a month and a half. In a broadcast on X, the veteran technician recounted that the memecoin’s last decisive move was a sharp sell‑off more than six weeks ago; since then price has compressed into a narrow band, threatening to lose the structural support it reclaimed at the end of March.

Dogecoin Momentum Still Weak

Kevin has been monitoring the same horizontal levels for “weeks.” The upper bound of the range is the post‑bear‑market breakout retest around $0.156, while the key Fibonacci retracement “macro 0.382” sits lower at $0.138 — a zone he has repeatedly described as his “line in the sand.” Only a weekly candle close beneath that level would convince him that the rally that began in late 2023 has fully broken down. “If Dogecoin breaks $0.138 on weekly closes, then it’s probably over,” he cautioned.

Momentum signals are failing to provide early confirmation either way. Commenting on the much‑watched 3-day MACD, Kevin pushed back against social‑media claims that a bullish cross is already in play. “People don’t know how to read this indicator properly,” he said. “Technically, yes, by definition it’s a cross, but it’s really not a cross […] You have to have expansion of the moving averages in order to have a confirmed cross.” Without that expansion, he warned, the fledgling uptick in the histogram could “easily just roll right over.”

With spot price inertia now stretching to 42 days, risk‑reward has compressed as well. Kevin frames the decision tree in stark terms: hold the $0.156–$0.138 congestion and Dogecoin keeps its constructive medium‑term structure; lose it and traders must look down to the psychological $0.10 shelf. Even there, he sees only the possibility of a counter‑trend bounce toward $0.25–0.26.

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The broader-market backdrop offers little immediate relief. Using Bitcoin as a leading indicator, Kevin reminds viewers that the entire complex remains in what he calls a “major correctional phase,” triggered when the three‑day MACD crossed down in January 2025. Historical study of Bitcoin’s macro pullbacks suggests they persist “anywhere from 114 to 174 days,” he noted.

“They operate the same way no matter what the economic circumstances are. They last anywhere from 114 to 174 [days]. Every single time whether it’s a bear market [or] bull market. Bad news, good news doesn’t matter. They always last the same amount of time. 174 days being the longest in history, 114 days being the average of every correct major correctional period in history,” Kevin explained.

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Should Bitcoin fail to defend $70,000, he argues, odds of a fresh all‑time high in the short run would be quite low. “If Bitcoin breaks $70,000 and goes into the $60,000’s, we’re gonna get a huge bounce out of there. You get a huge countertrend rally. Everything will look rosy again, but the chances are that it makes a new high very slim. Same goes for Dogecoin. If dogecoin comes down to this $0.10 level and it gets a bounce, maybe it comes like a big counter trend rally back up to like $0.25 or $0.26 and then it just rolls over and that’s the end,” Kevin stated.

For Dogecoin, therefore, the next decisive signal is likely to be a hard break of the $0.156–$0.138 corridor or a confirmed momentum resurgence on the higher‑time‑frame MACD — whichever comes first. Until then, the asset remains trapped in Kevin’s words: “We’ve done nothing… there’s not much to talk about.”

At press time, DOGE traded at $0.1621.

Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

China’s finance ministry has raised tariffs on select US imports to 125%, matching the United States’ most recent escalation and signaling continued parity in the trade conflict.

The tariff adjustment, announced early Friday, comes just two days after Beijing raised duties to 84%, following Washington’s move to impose higher import taxes on Chinese goods.

The decision took effect immediately and was accompanied by sharply worded statements from Chinese officials who framed the measures as a defensive response to what they labeled unilateral economic aggression.

The Chinese foreign ministry described the US actions as “hegemonic” and “bullying,” while the commerce ministry called the move a “mistake on top of a mistake.”

Per BBC News, Beijing stated it would not escalate further but warned against continued US tariff pressure, describing the latest hike as contrary to international economic norms.

Beijing’s Commerce Ministry told the BBC that US tariffs have turned into

“A numbers game with no practical significance in economics[…] It will become a joke.”

Cross-Asset Response Reflects Diverging Risk Narratives

The market reaction reflected uncertainty about how deeply the tariff escalation would affect global trade and capital flows. While traditional safe-haven assets received modest inflows, risk assets moved unevenly.

Bitcoin, which had dipped approximately 0.60% before the announcement as broader risk assets sold off, briefly recovered after 9:00 A.M GMT but ultimately remained near flat at $81,292.68 as of press time, down 0.07% intraday.

The mixed response highlights an ongoing debate over Bitcoin’s role as a macro hedge. Some investors treat it as a store of value during geopolitical tension, while others view it as a high-beta asset sensitive to broader market sentiment. The indecision mirrors behavior seen during previous trade disputes, where crypto’s utility as a safe-haven asset remains context-dependent.

In contrast, gold rose steadily, gaining 0.35% over the session. The metal’s upward momentum continued past the announcement, consistent with previous episodes of trade friction. Gold’s price behavior suggested capital rotation out of equities and into hard assets that are less vulnerable to trade volume disruption.

US Treasury bonds also attracted demand. Prices on the 10-year bond climbed by 0.12%, driving yields lower and reflecting investor caution. Falling yields often signal expectations for slower economic growth or future Federal Reserve rate cuts.

The uptick in demand aligns with a broader risk-off sentiment, especially in anticipation of further policy tightening or retaliatory economic measures. Still, it contrasts with recent declines in bond prices along with equities. The move, while modest, indicates a renewal in US bonds as a flight to safety after the sell-off earlier this week.

Oil Declines Sharply, Yuan Static

Oil posted the most notable downside move across assets. Prices fell 1.02% as traders recalibrated demand expectations under the assumption that extended trade disputes could constrain global industrial activity. The move reflects sensitivities to macroeconomic indicators that suggest trade barriers could reduce energy consumption, particularly in manufacturing-heavy regions.

Meanwhile, Chinese bonds mainly remained unchanged. The proxy 10-year Chinese government bond posted a marginal increase of just 0.01%, hinting at either a fully priced-in market or expectations that the People’s Bank of China may intervene to ensure currency stability. Such muted movement implies investors anticipate limited near-term volatility in foreign exchange markets despite the tariff escalation.

The S&P 500 (SPY proxy) slipped 0.63% in pre-market trading, reflecting cautious sentiment and a continued wholesale move out of equities.

Broader Trade Landscape

The tariff increase follows a pattern of reciprocal moves that began with the Trump administration’s sweeping import tax policies. Since the start of the trade confrontation, Beijing has matched Washington’s escalation with near-equal tariff hikes. The cumulative increases have driven both sides’ duties to historically elevated levels, with a stated 125% tariff now becoming the baseline for many products.

Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te separately noted that Taiwan is engaged in early negotiations with Washington after a temporary pause reduced US tariffs on the island’s exports from 32% to a 10% baseline. Per BBC News, Lai stated that his government remains committed to securing favorable outcomes to protect industrial interests.

Whether the tariff ceiling holds or triggers new rounds of retaliation remains uncertain. For now, investors appear divided in their interpretation of what elevated tariffs signal, either an inflection point in trade relations or an entrenched state of economic separation between the world’s two largest economies.

While commodities like gold and bonds continue to absorb geopolitical risk in traditional ways, Bitcoin’s identity straddles both ends of the spectrum. Its lack of clear directional conviction may reflect broader hesitancy to assign it a fixed role in macroeconomic crises, at least until clearer signals emerge from either central banks or geopolitical actors.

Mentioned in this article

The Bitcoin (BTC) mining hashprice — a miner’s daily revenue per unit of hashing power expended to mine blocks — has remained constant at around $48 per petahash per second (PH/s), despite a slight 1.4% uptick in Bitcoin difficulty.

Data from CoinWarz shows that the Bitcoin difficulty climbed to 113.76 trillion at block 889,081 on March 23, up from the 112.1 trillion difficulty in the previous epoch.

According to TheMinerMag, a hashprice below $50 places financial stress on miners running older hardware such as the Antminer S19 XP and S19 Pro.

The older hardware coupled with declining network transaction fees risks pushing some miners into unprofitable territory — forcing them to turn off their hardware until they upgrade their application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) or network conditions change.

Mining firms have been struggling since the April 2024 Bitcoin halving event, which slashed the block subsidy to 3.125 BTC per block mined, generally increasing network difficulty, and the recent downturn in the crypto markets due to macroeconomic uncertainty.

Related: SEC says proof-of-work mining does not constitute securities dealing

Miners have a rough start to 2025

Research from financial services firm JPMorgan shows that publicly listed Bitcoin mining companies collectively lost 22% of their share value in February 2025.

Even miners who diversified operations into artificial intelligence and high-performance computing data centers, to shore up revenue lost through mining activities, are facing financial pressures, the JPMorgan report found.

The financial services firm cited the release of DeepSeek R1, an open-source AI model trained for a fraction of the cost as the leading models and performs on par with closed-source AI products, as a strain on large AI data centers.

A steadily rising network hashrate, which is the sum total computing power in the Bitcoin network, is also creating increased competition among miners, who must expend greater computing resources to remain profitable.

Fears of a prolonged trade war between the United States and Canada, alongside constant tariff headlines, have put miners on edge.

Threats from Canadian officials to levy tariffs on energy exports to the United States place even more pressure on the already struggling industry.

Magazine: Korea to lift corporate crypto ban, beware crypto mining HDs: Asia Express

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