Ethereum jumped 6.4% to trade at the $2,170 level on Monday morning, resulting in $208 million worth of liquidations in the last 24 hours with over 60% coming from short positions. 

That said, traders are not convinced the token has enough fuel to climb above $2,500. Prediction market-implied odds of ethereum trading above $2,500 in March have increased from 6% to 23% this morning, but the probability was 70% seven days ago. 

(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

Rather, the bearish mood remains, with traders pricing in an implied 67% probability the price of ethereum slips as low as $1,750 this year.

The price action comes as ethereum ETFs registered their first weekly outflow in March, as $59.9 million exited the investment funds last week, per SoSoValue. 

Elsewhere, the largest ethereum treasury firm, BitMine Immersion Technologies, announced acquiring 65,341 tokens last week worth around $141.8 million at current prices, bringing the value of its total ethereum holdings to $10.1 billion. The firm also stated it is the largest staking entity in the world, with over 67% of its ethereum stockpile contributing to the network’s security, according to a company press release.

“As many have noticed, crypto and particularly ETH have outperformed the broader market since the Iran war commenced, with ETH rising 18% and outperforming equities,” BitMine Chairman Tom Lee said in a statement. Lee added, “This is a marked contrast to Gold (a traditional store of value), which has fallen more than 15%. Crypto is demonstrating itself to be a good ‘war time’ store of value.” 

BitMine’s unrealized loss on its ethereum purchases currently stands at nearly $7 billion, per DropsTab data.

Very big things happening today in the world of nutritionally-complete products that taste like chalk, as Danone agrees to buy the celebrity-backed protein bar, powder, meal, and meal-replacement shake maker Huel for €1 billion, or around $1.2 billion.

In a statement announcing the acquisition, Danone — apparently the number-one yogurt producer in the US and the nation’s top plant-based food and beverage company as well — said that buying Huel will enhance its “presence in functional nutrition and extend its portfolio into the fast-growing Complete Nutrition space.” Danone, the parent company behind Evian and Actimel, also praised Huel’s “best-in-class digital execution” and fan bases across the UK, Europe, and the US.

Bulking season

Huel, a portmanteau of “human” and “fuel,” was only set up just over a decade ago, but thanks to its marketing efforts; a buzzy product range that marries on-the-go eating with nutrient-dense, plant-based ingredients; and a decent list of (mostly UK-based) celebrity investors, like actor Idris Elba and talk show host Jonathan Ross, sales have soared.

In the latest instance that Elon Musk views Tesla and SpaceX as effectively one company, the CEO of both announced Saturday that the two firms will join forces on his Terafab project — what Musk says will be “the most epic chip-building exercise in history by far.”

Many of the details mirror what we reported last week, with one major addition: SpaceX will play a leading role.

Terafab, whose location is still under consideration as the facility would be too big to fit on the Giga Texas campus, aims to vertically integrate the entire chipmaking process, from design and fabrication to testing and packaging. The goal is to supply AI chips to Tesla, SpaceX, and its subsidiary xAI, Musk’s AI company, whose suppliers Musk said will be unable to handle their demand in “three or four years.” While Tesla has designed its own chips, it has never manufactured them.

Musk said the facility is intended to produce up to 1 terawatt of compute annually. The plant will manufacture two types of chips: inference chips for Tesla’s Robotaxis and Optimus robots, and custom AI chips intended for space-based applications like solar-powered AI satellites. According to Musk, roughly 80% of the compute will be allocated to space-related uses, with the remaining 20% supporting projects on Earth.

Morgan Stanley has estimated the project could cost Tesla an additional $35 billion to $45 billion in capital expenditure, though now perhaps some of that capex might be shared with SpaceX. Like many of Musk’s ambitions, the project is enormous in scale and will likely to take years to complete — potentially into the end of the decade or beyond.

Exxon and Chevron jumped again on Friday, the two largest positive contributors to the S&P 500 as of midday, even as the broader market remained mired in the red.

The two giant US energy companies are also on track to notch another in a series of new all-time highs as well Friday, and for obvious reasons.

Energy continues to be the bright spot for the S&P 500 since the start of the Iran war. (It is the only gainer of the 11 separate sectors that compose the blue-chip index, rising more than 7% in March.)

But energy’s gain has come with pain elsewhere. Since rising gas prices work mechanically as a tax on other forms of consumer spending, staples stocks have been hit hard, with the sector down more than 6% this month alone. Meanwhile, the inflationary pressure pushing the Fed away from further rate cuts continues to hit precious metals and miners. SPDR Gold Shares ETF and iShares Silver Trust futures both fell further on Friday; they’re down roughly 10% and 15% for the week, respectively, and producers like Newmont and Freeport-McMoRan also continue to drop.

Non-bitcoin cryptocurrencies have seen their trading volume plummet in the past five months. The combined trading volume of ethereum, XRP, solana, dogecoin, SUI, and chainlink has decreased by 60% since crypto’s October 10 liquidation event, according to Thomas Probst, a research analyst at crypto markets data provider Kaiko.

For all altcoins, spot trading volume on Binance has declined between 80% and 85% to $7.7 billion, while altcoin volume on other exchanges has dropped to $18.8 billion, down from a range of $63 billion to $91 billion in October, a Friday report from Decrypt found, citing data from CryptoQuant.

“This trend may be explained by a contraction in market liquidity over the same period,” Probst told Sherwood News. “This phenomenon is also reflected in the average 1% market depth, which stood at approximately $2.6 million before the October 10 crash and is now closer to $1.7 million when aggregated across ETH, XRP, SOL, SUI, and LINK.” 

Market depth is used by investors and traders to gauge the scale of liquidity in a market. 1% market depth refers to the amount of liquidity needed to move the market by 1%. 

CoinGlass’s Altcoin Season Index, a measure to assess the performance of non-bitcoin cryptocurrencies, has been sitting above 50 this week, suggesting that the current market is neither in a bitcoin dominant phase nor an altcoin season.

Since the Iran war started, risky assets have been in the crosshairs. Stocks have sold off as oil prices spiked, the odds of rate cuts later this year have been slashed, and even the usual safe havens like gold and silver have been unreliable ports in the growing storm.

One port of refuge, however, has been in software stocks. As noted by my colleague Matt Phillips recently, a number of high-profile software names — the same ones that some pundits doomed to obsolescence because of AI just a few short weeks ago — have held up well. Design company Figma, however, has not been one of those names.

Figma’s stock has dropped 19% since the close of trading on February 27, while the iShares Expanded Tech Software ETF has gained 2%.

Though still notching very respectable top-line growth, with sales up 40% last year, Figma is far from the “cash cow” stage of its life — perhaps why it’s been hit harder than peers such as Adobe, Workday, or Salesforce. Indeed, on a GAAP basis, Wall Street still expects the company to lose $477 million this year, as heavy stock-based compensation weighs on its profitability.

Figma’s pain was then compounded when Google announced a major update to Stitch on Wednesday — a product described as “an AI-native software design canvas that allows anyone to create, iterate and collaborate on high-fidelity UI from natural language.”

Debate is still raging on Reddit and other social media platforms as to whether Stitch, or other vibe-coding platforms and tools, will meaningfully eat into Figma’s core business. One user said that it “offers very little to experienced designers. It removes the tools Figma offers and delegates everything to AI. Figma at least has all the capabilities plus AI for people who want to use AI.” Another — complaining about the newly prohibitive cost of credits in Figma’s own AI-powered tool, Figma Make — was more bearish on Figma’s usefulness, saying that the number of credits the designer would need to use would cost $16,000 under Figma’s new pricing model.

For now, investors aren’t giving Figma the benefit of the doubt, with the stock down 12% in the last two days alone.

China’s EV startup trio, Nio, Li Auto, and XPeng, are now all profitable, following the latter’s Q4 results released Friday.

XPeng reported a quarterly net profit of about $55 million, compared to rival Nio’s Q4 net profit (also its first) of about $40 million. Li Auto posted Q4 net profit of less than $1 million.

All three companies being profitable offers a stark contrast to the EV market in the US, where Rivian quietly delayed its 2027 profitability target in a filing about its Uber robotaxi partnership yesterday. Lucid is likely further away, and last month cut 12% of its US workforce as part of its “path toward profitability.”

Still, it’s not all rosy for China’s EV startups, either. XPeng ADRs were down more than 6% in Friday morning trading as its Q1 sales forecast came in below estimates. As China rolls back subsidies, auto sales are slumping. Chinese retail EV and hybrid sales fell 32% in February from the same month last year.