5 Things to know in Bitcoin this week

Bitcoin (BTC) limps into the end of Q1 on 13% losses as fresh macroeconomic volatility looms.

• BTC price action risks a fresh dip below $80,000 as new US trade tariffs weigh on risk-asset sentiment.

• Crypto traders’ tariff woes focus on April 2, dubbed  “Liberation Day” by President Donald Trump, while gold heads higher.

• Despite the doom and gloom, Bitcoin has, in fact, had a relatively mild March, while Q1 threatens to be its worst in seven years.

• Profitability currently points the way to a bull market drawdown with no realistic bottom in sight.

• The Coinbase Premium puts up a noble fight amid the price dip, suggesting that panic sellers have already exited.

BTC price: “Bearish engulfing” sets the tone

Bitcoin traders are on edge this week as US trade tariffs follow the monthly and quarterly candle closes.

A recipe for risk-asset volatility has many market participants bracing for the worst as BTC price action edges increasingly close to $80,000.

The lowest levels in around two weeks at around $81,200 accompanied the March 30 weekly close, data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView confirms.

“In LTF, the first noticeable thing is this new wick to the downside,” popular trader CrypNuevo responded in part of a thread on X. 

“The odds are on the side of it getting filled quite soon.”

Fellow trading account HTL-NL noted a “bearish engulfing” candle on the weekly chart.

“Let’s see if it plays out,” he told X followers on the day.

The picture on longer timeframes, per trading resource Barchart, is no better unless the risk-asset landscape improves.

Bitcoin and US stocks are headed for so-called “death crosses,” it warned prior to the Wall Street open, as short-term losses catch up to the broader uptrend.

“What if price action is red heading into those Death Crosses with the actual Crosses marking the bottom like we’ve seen many times before?” Barchart queried.

A look at exchange order book data from monitoring resource CoinGlass meanwhile shows bid and ask liquidity clustered tightly around price. 

Continuing, CrypNuevo paid particular attention to the 50-day and 50-week exponential moving averages (EMAs).

“Seeing some compression between the 1W50EMA and 1D50EMA which always leads to an aggressive move,” he observed. 

“It might take a bit more time based on previous cases. It’s also quite common seeing multiple and consecutives retests of this bull market support.”

D-Day for US tariffs precedes jobs data onslaught

US employment data and Federal Reserve officials are among the key events on the radar for risk-asset traders this week.

Job openings, jobless claims and nonfarm payrolls are all due, with the first round of numbers released on April 2.

However, this could likely be overshadowed by the start of new US trade tariffs set to begin on the same day. As Cointelegraph continues to report, crypto remains highly sensitive to tariff news, with US President Donald Trump giving mixed messages as to which measures will ultimately come into force.

In a dedicated X thread on the topic, trading resource The Kobeissi Letter noted that tariffs will impact around $1.5 trillion worth of US imports by the end of the month.

“President Trump has been discussing this Wednesday, April 2nd, for weeks. This is a day that he has named ‘Liberation Day’ where widespread new tariffs are coming,” it wrote. 

“We believe April 2nd will be the biggest escalation of the trade war to date. Markets are in for a wild week.”

Kobeissi pointed to unusually high levels of market uncertainty, as represented by the Economic Policy Uncertainty Index.

With many a surprise to come, market commentators are not the only ones in “wait and see” mode.

April 4 will see Fed Chair Powell take to the stage with a speech on the economic outlook at the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing (SABEW) Annual Conference in Arlington, Virginia.

Earlier this month, Powell said that while it was not easy to pin inflation pressures on tariffs, he was in no hurry to lower interest rates — the key move being watched for by risk-asset traders.

The latest estimates from CME Group’s FedWatch Tool continue to favor the Fed’s June meeting as the date of the next rate cut.

Bitcoin rounds off a limp Q1

As both the monthly and quarterly candles prepare to close, Bitcoin is looking at distinctly uninspiring mid-term performance.

Data from CoinGlass shows BTC/USD down 12.7% in Q1 at the time of writing, making it the worst first quarter of the year since 2018.

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