Cryptocurrency investors are taking a safety nett before the March rate rise

<p>Analytics company Glassnode sees a lot of signs that investors are bracing for a bad storm because the Fed is going to raise interest rates in March.</p> <p>On-chain data from Glassnode shows that Bitcoin investors are hedging their bets in order to avoid a rise in interest rates from the Federal Reserve in March, which would be bad for them.</p> <p>In Glassnode's The Week On-Chain newsletter from Feb. 14, they say that the flat futures term structure through March is the most important thing going on with Bitcoin (BTC). Investors aren't sure how a tighter US dollar will affect the rest of the world's economy.</p> <p>In the short term, the rate hike has already been taken into account, says Cointelegraph contributor Michal van de Poppe. But it's still not clear what the long-term effects will be. So, Glassnode found that investors are taking steps to protect themselves from the low downside risk.</p> <p>Investors appear to be cutting back on their debt and using derivatives markets to protect against risk and buy protection against the Fed rate hikes that are expected in March.</p> <p>While the data clearly shows that the futures term structure curve is flat, it also suggests that investors aren't expecting a big rise in prices through the end of 2022. The annualised premium on futures is only 6% right now, but it's going to go up.</p> <p>It is the amount that someone will pay for the risk of a futures contract each year in extra money. A higher premium means that the person wants to take more risks.</p> <p>On-chain data from Glassnode shows that Bitcoin investors are hedging their bets in order to avoid a rise in interest rates from the Federal Reserve in March, which would be bad for them.</p> <p>Another sign that investors aren't feeling very confident is that they're slowly but surely cutting back on their debt by closing futures positions on their own. Such de-risking has led to what Glassnode sees as a drop in total futures open interest from 2% to 1.76 % of the total crypto market cap. It looks