SlingShot DAO, a play-to-earn gaming ecosystem, has raised $16 million in funding, with participation from Dragonfly, among others.

On March 18th, based on Coinglass data, if Bitcoin drops below $80,000, the cumulative intensity of long liquidation on mainstream CEXs will reach 5.09 billion. Conversely, if Bitcoin goes above $85,000, the cumulative intensity of short liquidation on mainstream CEXs will reach 16.4 billion. **BlockBeats Note**: The liquidation chart does not display the exact number of contracts to be liquidated or the exact value of the contracts being liquidated. The bars on the liquidation chart actually represent the significance of each liquidation cluster in relation to adjacent clusters, that is, intensity. Therefore, the liquidation chart shows to what degree reaching a certain price level will affect the market. Higher "liquidation bars" indicate that once the price reaches that level, a more intense reaction will occur due to a liquidity cascade.

On March 18th, based on market data, the U.S. stock market opened with the S&P 500 Index declining by 0.29% and the Nasdaq by 0.36%. Cryptocurrency stocks opened with increased losses, including: Coinbase (COIN) down by 3.2%; Tesla (TSLA) down by 5.85%; MicroStrategy (MSTR) down by 6.99%; MARA Holdings (MARA) down by 5.16%; Hut 8 Corp. (HUT) down by 5.13%.

On March 18th, according to crypto analyst Ericonomic. Based on on-chain data, Ethena has made a purchase of a token named "USDe" on Hyperliquid. Or it may integrate its stablecoin USDe into the Hyperliquid network. The analysis shows that the wallet with the code for purchasing USDe, "0x4758...d605", has funds that can be traced back to the Ethena deployer (EOA), which further confirms the Ethena team's participation. In addition, Ethena recently transferred funds to Hyperliquid and set up 4 to 8 multi-signature wallets, indicating that they may be getting ready for deployment. A relevant proposal was submitted to the Ethena governance forum in October last year, but the team has not officially announced the progress. Currently, Ethena may be waiting to deploy USDe until after the launch of HyperEVM and HyperCore interoperability features.

On March 18th, according to HTX market data, Bitcoin fell below $82,000 and is currently trading at $81,800, experiencing a 24-hour decline of 1.92%.

On March 18th, JPMorgan Chase announced that the Bank of Japan will announce its interest rate decision for March this week. It is very likely that the policy rate will stay at 0.50%. Whether important conditions for further rate hikes will be disclosed at the meeting will be crucial in determining the timing of the next rate hike and is worthy of attention. Considering the increased communication from Bank of Japan officials regarding the upside risks to inflation recently, we believe that the possibility of a rate hike may be increased at the next meeting in May, but our base case scenario is a rate hike in June. If the Bank of Japan keeps its policy unchanged, the reaction of the yen exchange rate may be limited. (Kinoko)

On March 18th, Adam, the analyst from Greeks.live, stated on social media that the market sentiment is inclined towards cautious neutrality. The majority of traders think that Bitcoin is in a consolidation stage and requires a breakthrough to determine its direction. Some traders are optimistic about Bitcoin in the short term, while they hold a bearish attitude towards ETH and expect the ETH/BTC exchange rate to continue its downward trend.