The Trump administration may be intentionally creating uncertainty in the stock markets to corner Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell into lowering interest rates, according to a market commentator. 

Doing so increases the likelihood that the US won’t need to refinance around $7 trillion in debt it owes over the next few months, Bitcoin commentator Anthony Pompliano said in a March 10 X post.

US President Donald Trump and Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent are “taking matters into their own hands; they’re crashing asset prices in an attempt to force Jerome Powell to cut interest rates,” said Pompliano, who serves as the founder and CEO of Professional Capital Management and host of The Pomp Podcast.

In late January, Powell announced the Fed was not lowering interest rates from the current target range of 4.25% to 4.5% despite calls from Trump to do so.

Pompliano said the recent market panic has been driven in part by Trump’s tariffs — and has been used to create a more favorable bond market while lowering the 10-year Treasury yield.

He noted that the 10-year Treasury yield is already down from nearly 4.8% in January to 4.21% now — a sign that Trump’s purported strategy is “heading in the right direction.”

Source: Thomas Kralow

Whether Pompliano’s theory is correct or not, the stock market has been tanking of late, and crypto has been hit even harder.

Broad market index funds such as State Street’s Standard & Poor’s 500 index fund (SPY) fell 2.66% on March 10 alone, while the Nasdaq-100% fell 3.8%, Google Finance data shows.

Both indexes are down 7.32% and 10.7% over the last month, while Bitcoin (BTC) is down 27.4% from its $108,786 all-time high, and over $1.2 trillion has been wiped from the cryptocurrency market cap since Dec. 17.

If the stock market continues to tank, it will come down to a “who blinks first” contest between Trump and Powell, Pompliano said.

While Trump hasn’t confirmed such a strategy, Pompliano pointed to a Fox News interview on March 9 where Trump said: “Nobody ever gets rich when the interest rates are high because people can’t borrow money.”

Pompliano added that lowering interest rates would also benefit American consumers:

“The big goal, get interest rates down, and that will lead to more economic activity, thanks to access to cheap capital. Give the people cheap capital and they’ll go and do things with it.”

Related: Bitcoin dips to $80K in ‘ugly start,’ could retest key resistance: Hayes

CME FedWatch, a tool used to measure expectations for a Federal Reserve interest rate change, has tipped a 96% probability that the target rate will remain between 4.25% and 4.50% following the Federal Reserve’s next meeting on March 19. 

However, it’s near 50-50 odds for the target rate to be lowered in the Federal Reserve’s following meeting on May 7.

The Federal Reserve typically avoids lowering interest rates when inflation is high, as one of its primary objectives is to maintain price stability.

However, a Trump-inflicted recession, or “Trumpcession,” as some call it, could force America’s top bank to start cutting again.

Magazine: Meet lawyer Max Burwick — ‘The ambulance chaser of crypto’

A California financial regulator says users reported seven new types of crypto and AI scams that it hadn’t seen before through thousands of complaints in 2024. 

The California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI) said in a March 10 statement that it received 2,668 complaints in 2024 and found seven types of scams they didn’t have on record yet, such as fake Bitcoin (BTC) mining schemes, where fraudsters offer fake investments in mining. 

The DFPI also received complaints about fake crypto gaming schemes, where users are encouraged to deposit funds only to have their wallets drained, and fraudsters offering fake jobs that require victims to transfer crypto and provide private information.

Source: California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation

Victims also reported the theft of private keys through fake airdrops, fake investment group scams in WhatsApp or Telegram, AI Investment scams offering unusually high returns and losing their crypto after interacting with certain sham websites. 

The AI industry experienced significant growth in 2024, reaching a market cap of $638 billion, according to Precedence Research.

There was also a notable rise in crimeware-as-a-service (CaaS), where experienced hackers and cybercriminals sell their tools and services to less experienced offenders for a price.

DFPI Commissioner KC Mohseni said the regulator is urging caution when interacting with unknown platforms and to “verify website domains to avoid fraudulent imitations, and stay wary of crypto recovery scam sites.”

Through its partnership with the State, the DFPI says it shut down more than 26 fraudulent crypto websites and uncovered $4.6 million in user losses last year. 

California DOJ shuts down 42 crypto scam websites

California’s Department of Justice (DOJ) took down 42 crypto scam websites in 2024 that stole $6.5 million from victims, with an average loss per person of $146,306.

In a March 10 statement, the California DOJ said that because international fraudsters often carry out scams, they are difficult to prosecute and arrest.

Common threads among the scam websites were promises of high returns, no contact information, offers of prizes for signing up, and no listings on legitimate crypto industry websites such as CoinMarketCap, the California DOJ said. 

Related: Crypto lost to exploits, scams, hits $1.5B in February with Bybit hack: CertiK

A report from on-chain security firm Cyvers identified pig butchering schemes as one of the most costly in 2024, estimating the scam cost the industry over $5.5 billion across 200,000 identified cases. 

Meanwhile, blockchain security firm CertiK’s annual Web3 security report flagged crypto phishing attacks, which cost users $1 billion across 296 incidents, as the most significant security threat of 2024.

Magazine: Bitcoin’s odds of June highs, SOL’s $485M outflows, and more: Hodler’s Digest, March 2 – 8

Ether (ETH) price dropped below $2,600 on Feb. 24 and has since struggled to sustain a meaningful recovery. The latest correction toward the $2,000 level triggered over $918 million in leveraged long (bull) liquidations in ETH futures within 15 days, according to CoinGlass data.

Traders now question what needs to happen for ETH to break above $2,500.

Ether/USD (left) vs. total altcoin market cap (right). Source: TradingView / Cointelegraph

Ether has underperformed the altcoin market by 10% during this period, as shown in the chart above.

More concerningly, this decline followed a memecoin frenzy that boosted Ethereum’s main competitor, Solana (SOL). This suggests that additional factors are hampering ETH’s price, and four major issues need to be addressed before Ether can reclaim a bull market.

Ethereum’s upgrades and increased competition 

For some, the upcoming Pectra upgrade on the Ethereum network falls short of what is needed to drive a meaningful turnaround, whether it lowers base-layer transaction fees or significantly enhances usability.

Even if the changes do improve the user experience, analysts argue that Ethereum still lacks interoperability across different layer-2 solutions, both in terms of liquidity and user accessibility.

Recent reports of empty blocks on the Ethereum testnet have added to risk perception at a time when investors were already skeptical. Regardless of whether this issue is unrelated to the upcoming upgrade or easily fixable, some traders worry that any potential delay could be perceived negatively by the market.

In essence, fear remains the dominant sentiment, and for this to change, several pressing issues must be resolved.

Critics argue that part of ETH investors’ disappointment stems from the rise of indirect competitors, such as the modular layer-1 Berachain, which focuses on integrating liquidity and governance for decentralized finance (DeFi) applications.

7-day protocol fees ranking, USD. Source: DefiLlama

Berachain has successfully captured over $3 billion in deposits, as measured by total value locked (TVL) on DefiLlama.

Similarly, Hyperliquid, a perpetual futures application hosted on its own blockchain, has surpassed $2.8 billion in open interest, outpacing competitors on the Ethereum network. In many ways, competition is growing beyond the traditional model.

For ETH’s price to regain bullish momentum, traders need reassurance that the Ethereum network offers practical and clear advantages for its projects and users. Ultimately, Ethereum’s focus on decentralization and incremental improvements—whether justified or not—could be stemming demand compared to its competition.  

Weak onchain activity and institutional demand

The lack of demand from institutional investors is evident in the spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) flows, which were negative in nine of the last 10 trading days, resulting in $406 million in net withdrawals.

Some analysts suggested that demand could surge following the eventual approval of native staking on Ethereum ETFs, but this theory is now less certain, given that the ETH supply is increasing at 0.7% annually.

Lower demand for blockchain processing has reduced the burn-fee mechanism, causing Ether to become inflationary. As a result, the adjusted native staking reward is now below 2.5%, while deposits in stablecoins yield up to 4.5% in most DeFi projects.

Ultimately, the eventual inclusion of staking in spot ETFs is unlikely to be a game-changer for institutional demand.

Related: DeFi TVL drops by $45B, erasing gains since Trump election

Lastly, traders are concerned that the US Securities and Exchange Commission may approve a spot Solana ETF in 2025, creating direct competition for investors who currently only have access to Ether and Bitcoin (BTC) ETF products.

Therefore, for ETH price to reach $2,500 and beyond, investors need clearer evidence that Ethereum offers sustainable advantages beyond its first-mover advantage.

In summary, Ether’s future depends on Ethereum network upgrades, increased network usage, a subsequent decline in supply, and reduced friction for layer-2 interoperability, ensuring that the entire ecosystem benefits from its growth.

This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.