If you feel like markets have slowed down a lot, it might be because the recession has just started. OPEC has cut production by more than 1M barrels/day, Germany's YoY import prices has dropped by nearly 4% and it goes on

If you are looking at crypto markets and wondering why it feels like there's more red lately, it's probably because the recession has just arrived. Firstly, OPEC, effectively the big oil cartel of the world has cut production by more than 1 million barrels per day. If you didn't know, as much as media make make it seem otherwise, by and large the world runs on oil, and the price of oil acts as either signal of or catalyst to whether the global economy is growing, weakening or outright crashing. OPEC cutting the supply is probably an effort to support prices due to falling demand, as less supply when there;s also less demand means the price can more or less stay the same, and hopefully preserve profits.

On top of this, Germany's import prices have fallen by 3.8% YoY. Germany is *the* market of Europe. Being the strongest economy, any weakness in Germany is surely a bad sign for effectively the entire region. The Rhine waterway is typically a important transport channel and helps to keep their import/export prices lower. Germany has a fairly even split between important and exports so while they may be more insulated than most, the sharp fall in Germany;s import prices indicates a severely weakening economy, and this 3.8% fall will likely be a lot higher in other European nations who are not quite as blessed. Quite ironically, the fall in import prices will sharply decrease inflation but it is very likely to push the economy straight from heavy inflation right into a solid recession.

I've been somewhat ignoring the elephant in the room being the banking crashes and failures. Banks are the source of credit growth, and the global economy runs on credit as we are heavily in debt in almost every sector. Banks now have heavily restricted the credit the give out through mainly loans, and are simply looking at suring up their balance sheets to protect against almost certain bank runs. Even Biden has admitted that the banking crash is not over. So all of a sudden, a bunch of money from the economy has disappeared, which will be sure to bring down inflation, as well as crush the already weak economy. We have already been being a lot of layoffs for months. On top of this, 5 banks in France were raided for fraud(who knew right?) to that is estimated to be the tune of $100 Billion. This is absolutely sure to spare more bank runs, and if these banks are properly prosecuted and fined, it is highly likely one or more will fail.

And on the point of layoffs, it is funny to me that government keeps pointing to unemployment being low as a sign we are not facing a recession. Unemployment is currently at record low levels, which is not exactly good because every time unemployment hits a record low, this precedes a recession. See graph below. Further, if inflation is still hot, business are still making more profits and a business making more profits would seek to make even more profits by hiring more staff to expand to, you guessed it, make more profits.

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Unemployment Chart - Grey vertical bar shows recession

There are other things we could go into like the ISM Index, treasury rates, Retail Sales and Asia's economy but I think you get the point. We are at a weird crossroads where the economy is weakening so much such that even though crypto markets are looking up because of lack of confidence in banks and more potential crashes, there a point where too much crashes and too little confidence in the entire economy will overcome whatever positive effect the crash does have. Even if also the Fed does cut interest rates soon, which is expected, there's no guarantee at all this will be enough to support markets and it will only be to make an atrocious market just a very bad one. Crypto cannot survive by itself when the economy around it is poor.

TLDR: Various market indicators have shown that the economy is very near a recession and it may have just begun, by the slowdown we are seeing in price appreciation if not outright decrease. Even with 'positive effects' of a banking panic, the weak economy may be too weak to support any upward market, whether in crypto or otherwise, and a banking will only far worsen this.