Crypto heads into the week of March 2 with five clear catalysts on deck: a worsening US-Iran conflict under President Donald Trump, a privacy-focused Bitcoin package from Starknet, an upgrade to Polygon’s paid-for agency gas, a new round of Avalanche stimulus, and Friday’s US jobs report.
Crypto checklist for this week
Bitcoin is still the biggest macro watch this week, but the setup has already changed. The initial war bump sent BTC down to $63,000 at the end of the week, but the move didn’t hold. The token rose to $68,196 on Sunday and returned to around $65,807 on Monday morning in Europe, while widespread reports indicated that traders are already reassessing whether the conflict will turn into a permanent macro shock or a severe but temporary incident.
Oil followed a similar pattern: Brent briefly rallied to $82.37 before reversing some of the move and returning to the upper $70s, which is important as crypto traders are now watching inflation risks and rate expectations more than the initial geopolitical headline itself.
What matters now is not that Washington and Tehran are in open conflict, but that the political signals are mixed. Trump has said he is willing to talk to the “new leadership” in Iran, while the White House has also made it clear that military action is ongoing.
At the same time, AP’s live broadcast says that Iran’s leaders openly reject negotiations. For markets, this creates something more subtle to watch than a straightforward risk story: if diplomacy looks credible and oil falls off its highs, Bitcoin’s rebound could be sustained; if the war widens and energy markets tighten again, it is likely that crypto will trade first under macro pressure and secondarily.
On the product side, Starknet is preparing to roll out strkBTC, an encrypted Bitcoin asset issued on Starknet and paid for native BTC, with optional protection for balances and transfers. The design is important because Starknet does not advertise privacy as mandatory. In his own words, “Privacy is available when needed. Transparency remains available when compliance is needed.”
Polygon’s Catalyst will go live on March 4th, when the Lisovo/LisovoPro hardfork is planned around block 83,756,500, implementing PIP-82. The proposal would recycle up to $1 million in gas station fees spent on agency business transactions, a direct subsidy for car-to-car payments. Polygon’s own submission says the chain has attracted 20.3% of x402 transactions and 10.4% of total volume since the start of the year.
The component to watch for Avalanche is the Retro9000 C-Chain round, which starts on March 2nd and will come from the Foundation’s $40 million Retro9000 funding pool. The main shift is methodological. Avalanche says the program will move from rewarding who builds to rewarding what gets used, and projects evaluated by AVAX will be burned through smart contract activity, with the top 40 eligible for awards.
The latest scheduled macro event arrives on Friday, March 6, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the U.S. employment report for February at 8:30 a.m. ET. Reuters expects payrolls to rise by 60,000 after 130,000 in January, and the release is an important test of whether last month was a false signal or the start of a stronger labor base. For crypto, this report is important because it could quickly restore lowered expectations, just as markets try to price in geopolitical pressure.
This is why crypto is mostly macro oriented. If the Middle East risk keeps oil, the dollar and broader risk sentiment moving, Bitcoin and the broader altcoin market could be in for a drastic change in headlines. But if US-Iranian tensions cool, Friday’s jobs report could become the next major trigger, and markets will likely judge it by one question above all: whether it strengthens or weakens the case for Fed easing.
At press time, the total crypto market cap was $2.25 trillion.
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
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