Worst Q1 for BTC price since 2018: 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 US President Donald Trump, while gold heads higher.

• Despite the doom and gloom, Bitcoin has 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 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 two weeks at about $81,200 accompanied the March 30 weekly close, data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView confirmed.

“In LTF, the first noticeable thing is this new wick to the downside,” trader CrypNuevo responded 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.

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.

This may 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 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 may impact about $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 awaited 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 a 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.

Conditions have worsened for hodlers thanks to gold outperforming as a safe-haven bet, hitting repeated all-time highs while BTC/USD fell 30% from its January peak.

That bull market correction, however, remains fairly standard in a historical perspective. Data from onchain analytics firm Glassnode confirms that the maximum drawdown in previous bull markets passed 60%.

“This cycle continues to be the least volatile of all,” it acknowledged in February.

Others agree that despite the frustrating lack of further price upside, Bitcoin has weathered the macroeconomic storm fairly well.

“Overall quarter not horrible,” trader Daan Crypto Trades summarized about the CoinGlass figures this weekend.

On a monthly basis, the picture remains far from the most bearish BTC price scenarios — 2.7% losses since March 1, making for a fairly average third month of the year.

MVRV Ratio lacks “definitive bottom signal”

A key Bitcoin price metric continues to give off warning signals this week as the market flushes out “overheated” conditions.

The market value to realized value (MVRV) ratio, which compares the market cap to realized cap to determine short-term and long-term profitability, is trending back toward its long-term average.

In early March, the tool printed a so-called “death cross” — its short-term moving average crossed below a long-term equivalent, in keeping with the profit drawdown sparked by Bitcoin’s descent below $80,000.

“Much like in previous cycles, this cross was followed by a price decline after Bitcoin hit a local peak, reinforcing the MVRV's effectiveness as a market sentiment indicator,” Yonsei Dent, a contributor to onchain analytics platform CryptoQuant, wrote in one of its “Quicktake” blog posts on March 30.

“With the MVRV now converging toward its long-term historical average, it appears the market has exited the overheated zone. However, no definitive bottom signal has emerged yet.” 

Dent suggested that while current behavior mimics past BTC price cycles, market participants “should remain cautious of further downside risk.”

Last month, analysis predicted that Bitcoin still has room for fresh all-time highs on longer timeframes, based on MVRV ratio data.

Coinbase traders keep the faith

The return of the Coinbase Premium has been painfully slow this quarter as episodes of panic selling characterized recent market behavior.

Related: $65K Bitcoin price targets pile up as 'Spoofy the Whale' buys the dip

The Premium, which is the difference in spot price between the Coinbase BTC/USD and Binance BTC/USDT pairs, currently hovers around neutral.

While unremarkable in and of itself, the metric’s resilience to ongoing BTC price pressure caught the eye of CryptoQuant contributor Crypto Sunmoon.

“Panic selling is decreasing,” he concluded in another Quicktake post this weekend.

A positive Premium reflects increasing US investor confidence in adding BTC exposure and is traditionally a key ingredient in sustainable Bitcoin bull markets.

Meanwhile, its resistance to the downside in the face of falling prices leads Sunmoon to suspect a “possible trend reversal.”

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.