On Friday, the crypto market experienced a downturn, slashing the global crypto market value by over 7% to $2.55 trillion. Other altcoins, including Bitcoin (#BTC) and Ethereum (#ETH) prices, also dropped, alongside #BNB, #XRP, and Cardano (ADA).

Despite the rise of meme coins in recent days, Dogecoin (#DOGE) and Shiba Inu (#SHIB) prices also saw heavy sell-offs, dropping by 12%. Investors and analysts foresaw the expected need for necessary pullbacks after the Bitcoin halving for the market to surge further.

1. Options Expiry on Friday: The expiry of 332,094 ETH options, with a total notional value of $1.24 billion, is expected, with a put-call ratio of 0.69. The maximum pain point is $3,550. Traders are particularly bullish on Ethereum, yet they made profits above the maximum pain point. ETH price rose to $3,748 after a 24-hour drop to $3,656.

2. Diminished Hope for Fed Rate Cuts: US Fed interest rate cuts will depend on new economic data such as inflation and unemployment, as stated by Jerome Powell in his testimony to Congress. Following higher CPI data earlier this week, high PPI, retail sales, and unemployment figures indicate higher inflation and resilience of the US economy. This provided more reasons for the Fed to likely postpone interest rate cuts until the end of the year. The likelihood of keeping interest rates steady in March and May is quite high.

3. Liquidation of Crypto Assets Due to Liquidity Purge: The crypto market lost over $680 billion in market value recently due to liquidations. According to Coinglass data, over 192,000 traders were liquidated in the past 24 hours, and the largest single liquidation order, worth $13.30 million, occurred in the BTC-USDT swap on the OKX crypto.

4. Slow Entry into Spot Bitcoin ETFs: Entries into the US Spot Bitcoin ETF dropped by 80.6% to $133 million due to weakening Wall Street sensitivity to new economic data, according to CoinOtag reports. It marked the lowest entry in the past eight trading days.