Bitcoin 

BTC

$18,104

 checked its latest gains at the Wall Street open on Mar. 1 as bulls sought to defend $44,000 highs. 

BTC weekly gains hit 17%

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView followed BTC/USD as it declined from its local peak of $44,980 on Bitstamp at the opening bell.

The second day of trading with armed conflict in Europe as its background, March 1 continued a surprisingly cool phase for U.S. equities, with only oil showing the knock-on effects of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

Bitcoin, by contrast, held onto the majority of its advances, which had been rekindled in earnest on March 1. Versus the same time a week ago, BTC/USD was up 17% at the time of writing.

"Forty-four thousand dollars has been tested a million times, wouldn't wanna be caught shorting that," popular Twitter account DonAlt summarized as part of a post about low timeframes.

"$40 tho good support if we should get a surprise dip."

Bitcoin thus improved its image as a potential safe haven in times of strife, reversing initial losses as the Ukraine situation began to unfold late last week.

"Bitcoin is proving itself as a safe haven in times of global uncertainty. It has outperformed every other asset class by orders of magnitude since the Ukraine invasion," Charles Edwards, founder of crypto fund Capiole declared.

At the time of writing, BTC/USD was declining towards the $43,600 zone previously highlighted by fellow analyst Nebraskan Gooner as a necessary zone to hold for the daily close.

Smaller crypto wallets begin sweeping record highs

Activity related to Bitcoin and Ether 

ETH

$1,396

 wallets, in particular, continued to grow.

Related: $300M in crypto liquidations accompanies Bitcoin's surge to $44K

According to data from on-chain analytics firm Glassnode, smaller ETH addresses holding at least 0.01 ETH and BTC addresses 0.1 BTC both reached all-time highs.

There were 21.9 million 0.01 ETH wallets and 3.35 million 0.1 BTC wallets detected as of March 1.

ETH/USD returned to $3,000 on the day — a two-week high.