Bitcoin finished March 20 above $41,000 after a 9.3% seven-day rise on Kraken

Bitcoin finished Kraken’s March 20, 2022 UTC reporting day at $41,289, retaining most of a weeklong rebound even as the exchange measured a 2.2% decline during the final session. Compared with Kraken’s reported bitcoin price of $37,788 on March 13, the March 20 figure was 9.3% higher.

That calculation describes the change between two Kraken daily report values: ($41,289 minus $37,788) divided by $37,788. It is not a composite-market return, and it should not be interpreted as an official closing price for an asset that trades continuously across many venues.

The rebound survived a broad Sunday pullback

Kraken reported $553.4 million of spot trading across its markets on March 20, against a trailing 30-day daily average of $939.1 million. The session total was therefore approximately 41.1% below that venue-specific average. Bitcoin accounted for $149.1 million of the reported activity and remained Kraken’s most-traded crypto asset by dollar volume.

The retreat was broader than bitcoin. Kraken measured ether down 3.0% at $2,862.80, solana down 4.1% at $88.61 and avalanche down 5.4% at $84.70 during the same UTC reporting day. ApeCoin, which had entered trading only days earlier, fell 18% to $9.649 on $5.75 million of Kraken volume. These figures show that March 20 brought a pullback across several risk-sensitive tokens rather than an isolated bitcoin move.

The seven-day comparison nevertheless remained substantial. Ether’s reported value rose from $2,515.30 on March 13 to $2,862.80 on March 20, a calculated increase of 13.8%. Bitcoin’s 9.3% increase over the same two Kraken observations left it well above the sub-$38,000 level recorded one week earlier.

Contemporaneous Bitstamp-based reporting provided a useful cross-check, placing BTC/USD in the upper-$41,000 area during March 20 and noting that bitcoin had reached approximately $42,400 on March 19. That report described the approaching weekly candle as potentially bitcoin’s strongest weekly close since early February. Because it was published before the full UTC session ended, that characterization was an event-day expectation, not independent proof of Kraken’s final number.

A macro test after the Federal Reserve’s first increase

The weekly advance followed the Federal Open Market Committee’s March 16 decision to raise the federal-funds target range to 0.25%–0.50%. It was the first increase in that tightening cycle. The Federal Reserve also said it anticipated continuing increases and expected to begin reducing its securities holdings at a later meeting.

Bitcoin’s ability to hold above $41,000 by March 20 mattered because digital-asset markets had absorbed that policy shift alongside uncertainty from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and elevated inflation. The chronology supports saying that the rebound survived the rate announcement; it does not prove that the Federal Reserve decision caused the rise. Equity-market strength late in the week was another contemporaneously discussed factor, but the available records do not isolate a single driver.

What the March 20 record established

The strongest conclusion is narrower than a declaration that a new bull market had begun. Bitcoin had recovered sharply from its March 13 Kraken observation and held most of that gain through March 20, but it had also fallen during the final day, remained below the approximately $42,400 Bitstamp level seen on March 19 and traded amid subdued Kraken-wide volume.

Those conditions made March 20 a test of durability rather than a confirmed breakout. The record established a meaningful weekly rebound across bitcoin and ether, while the low venue-level activity and Sunday declines preserved substantial uncertainty about whether the move would continue.