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Crypto Daybook Americas: ADA Rallies, BTC Looks to Powell’s Testimony on Capitol Hill
By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)
Cardano’s ADA is trading higher, buoyed by Grayscale’s recent spot ETF application, while bitcoin (BTC) remains rangebound in a lackluster crypto market as we gear up for Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s testimony to Congress.
Powell takes the stage on Capitol Hill later Tuesday for his semi-annual update on monetary policy. He’ll start with the Senate and repeat his performance in the House of Representatives on Wednesday.
The testimony is likely to do little to revive BTC’s upswing. The consensus is that Powell will uphold his data-dependent approach, reiterating that the central bank isn’t in a rush to cut interest rates anytime soon and is keen on observing more progress with inflation.
Data shared by Bloomberg’s Lisa Abramowicz shows that market-implied inflation rates for the next two to five years have soared to their highest levels since early 2023. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump’s tariffs could underpin inflation. The CME’s FedWatch tool currently shows traders anticipate just 50 basis points in cuts by the end of next year, significantly less than the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) outlined in its December forecasts.
However, there’s a glimmer of hope: If the Consumer Price Index (CPI) release on Wednesday comes in weaker than expected, it could create some upside volatility.
In other news, Japanese mobile-game studio Gumi said it is planning to purchase bitcoin worth 1 billion yen ($6.6 million), following Tokyo-listed Metaplanet’s lead. Metaplanet began buying BTC last year and its shares soared a staggering 4,800% in 12 months.
Social media continues to buzz with debate over the imbalance in Ethereum’s ecosystem, where layer-2 scaling products retain most of the generated revenue while contributing only a small percentage back to the foundational layer. Solana, meanwhile, continues to outshine Ethereum and other smart-contract blockchains in decentralized exchange trading volumes and revenue.
In traditional markets, gold is taking bull breather while copper, often seen as proxy for global economic health, is trading lower, snapping a six-day winning streak. Stay alert!
What to Watch
Crypto
Feb. 13: Start of Kraken’s gradual delisting of the USDT, PYUSD, EURT, TUSD, UST stablecoins for EEA clients. The process ends March. 31.
Feb. 13: Story (IP) mainnet launch.
Feb. 14: Dynamic TAO (DTAO) network upgrade goes live on the Bittensor (TAO) mainnet.
Feb. 14, 2:30 a.m. (Estimate): Qtum (QTUM) hard fork network upgrade.
Feb. 18, 10:00 a.m.: FTX Digital Markets, the Bahamas-based subsidiary of FTX, will start reimbursing creditors.
Feb. 21: TON (The Open Network) will become the exclusive blockchain infrastructure for messaging platform Telegram’s Mini App ecosystem.
Macro
Feb. 11, 10:00 a.m.: Fed Chair Jerome Powell presents his semi-annual report to the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. Livestream link.
Feb. 11, 2:30 p.m.: U.S. House Financial Services Subcommittee («Digital Assets, Financial Technology, and Artificial Intelligence») hearing titled «A Golden Age of Digital Assets: Charting a Path Forward.» Witness include Jonathan Jachym, who is Kraken’s deputy general counsel. Livestream link.
Feb. 12, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases January’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) report.
Core Inflation Rate MoM Est. 0.3% vs. Prev. 0.2%
Core Inflation Rate YoY Est. 3.1% vs Prev. 3.2%
Inflation Rate MoM Est. 0.3% vs. Prev. 0.4%
Inflation Rate YoY Est. 2.9% vs. Prev. 2.9%
Feb. 12, 10:00 a.m.: Fed Chair Jerome Powell presents his semi-annual report to the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services. Livestream link.
Feb. 13, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases January’’s Producer Price Index (PPI) report.
Core PPI MoM Est. 0.3% vs. Prev. 0%
Core PPI YoY Est. 3.3% vs. Prev. 3.5%
PPI MoM Est. 0.3% vs. Prev. 0.2%
PPI YoY Prev. 3.3%
Feb. 13, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Department of Labor releases the Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims report for the week ended Feb. 8.
Initial Jobless Claims Est. 216K vs. Prev. 219K
Earnings
Feb. 11: Exodus Movement (EXOD), post-market, $0.14 (2 ests.)
Feb. 11: HIVE Digital Technologies (HIVE), post-market, $-0.15
Feb. 12: Hut 8 (HUT), pre-market, $0.05
Feb. 12: IREN (IREN), post-market, $-0.01
Feb. 12: Reddit (RDDT), post-market, $0.25
Feb. 12: Robinhood Markets (HOOD), post-market, $0.41
Feb. 13: Coinbase Global (COIN), post-market, $1.89
Feb. 14: Remixpoint (TYO: 3825)
Token Events
Governance votes & calls
Aave DAO is discussing recognizing HyperLend as a friendly fork of Aave deployed on the Hyperliquid EVM chain, as well as the deployment of Aave v3 on Ink, Kraken’s layer-2 rollup network.
Sky DAO is discussing, among other things, onboarding Arbitrum One to the Spark Liquidity layer, increasing the PSM2 rate limits on Base and minting 100 million USDS worth of sUSDS into Base to accommodate growth on the network.
Morpho DAO is discussing a 25% reduction in MORPHO rewards on both Ethereum and Base after another reduction took effect on Jan. 30.
DYdX DAO is voting on the dYdX Treasury subDAO taking control over the stDYDX within the protocol’s Community Treasury and any tokens accrued through auto compounding staking rewards.
Feb. 12 2 p.m. : Render (RENDER) to host an AI Scout Discord AMA session.
Unlocks
Feb. 12: Aethir (ATH) to unlock 10.21% of circulating supply worth $23.80 million.
Feb. 14: The Sandbox (SAND) to unlock 8.4% of circulating supply worth $80.2 million.
Feb. 16: Arbitrum (ARB) to unlock 2.13% of circulating supply worth $42.93 million.
Feb. 21: Fast Token (FTN) to unlock 4.66% of circulating supply worth $78.8 million.
Token Launches
Feb. 12: Avalon (AVL) to be listed on Bybit.
Feb. 12: Game7 (G7) to be listed on Bybit, Gate.io, HashKey, MEXC, XT, and KuCoin.
Feb. 13: EthereumPoW (ETHW) and Polygon (MATIC) to no longer be supported at Deribit.
Conferences:
CoinDesk’s Consensus to take place in Hong Kong on Feb. 18-20 and in Toronto on May 14-16. Use code DAYBOOK and save 15% on passes.
Feb. 12-13: Frankfurt Digital Finance (FDF) 2025
Feb. 13-14: The 4th Edition of NFT Paris.
Feb. 18-20: Consensus Hong Kong
Feb. 19: Sui Connect: Hong Kong
Feb. 23 to March 2: ETHDenver 2025 (Denver, Colorado)
Feb. 24: RWA London Summit 2025
Feb. 25: HederaCon 2025 (Denver)
Derivatives Positioning
Litecoin’s near 10% price surge in the past 24 hours is accompanied by an 18% rise in perpetual futures open interest. HBAR, UNI have also seen notable increases in open interest, according to Velo Data.
Speaking of perpetual funding rates, SOL, SUI are seeing negative readings in a sign of bias for bearish short positions.
At 11%, ETH’s CME futures basis is greater than BTC’s, which may draw in carry traders, resulting in a strong uptake for ether spot ETFs.
BTC, ETH put skews on Deribit have eased slightly. Flows have been muted.
Market Movements:
BTC is up 0.62% from 4 p.m. ET Monday to $97,989.64 (24hrs: +0.27%)
ETH is up 0.53% at $2,702.45 (24hrs: +2.07%)
CoinDesk 20 is up 1.79% to 3,269.36 (24hrs: +1.77%)
Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is up 8 bps to 3.05%
BTC funding rate is at 0.01% (10.95% annualized) on Binance
DXY is unchanged at 108.31
Gold is up 0.58% at $2,931.2/oz
Silver is down 0.74% to $32.15/oz
Nikkei 225 closed unchanged at 38,801.17
Hang Seng closed -1.06% at 21,294.86
FTSE is unchanged at 8,767.36
Euro Stoxx 50 is up 0.1% to 5,363.27
DJIA closed Monday +0.38% at 44,470.41
S&P 500 closed +0.67% at 6,066.44
Nasdaq closed +0.98% at 19,714.27
S&P/TSX Composite Index closed +0.85% at 25,658.9
S&P 40 Latin America closed +0.77% at 2,428.87
U.S. 10-year Treasury rate was unchanged at 4.49%
E-mini S&P 500 futures are down 0.33% to 6,068.5
E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are down 0.47% at 21,743.5
E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are down 0.21% at 44,488
Bitcoin Stats:
BTC Dominance: 61.21% (-0.59%)
Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.02752 (0.77%)
Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 802 EH/s
Hashprice (spot): $53.19
Total Fees: 4.58 BTC / $445,648
CME Futures Open Interest: 166,695 BTC
BTC priced in gold: 33.3 oz
BTC vs gold market cap: 9.46%
Technical Analysis
BTC’s monthly chart serves as an excellent illustration of how trendlines drawn from major price points act as support levels.
Over the past two months, the downside has consistently been capped at around $90,000. This level is defined by a trendline connecting the twin peaks from 2021.
Crypto Equities
MicroStrategy (MSTR): closed on Monday at $334.62 (+2.16%), up 0.15% at $335.11 in pre-market.
Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $280.22 (+2.09%), up 0.23% at $280.86 in pre-market.
Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$27.24 (+1.3%)
MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $16.76 (unchanged), up 0.36% at $16.82 in pre-market.
Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $11.63 (-0.1%), down 0.1% at $11.62 in pre-market.
Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $12.82 (+2.07%), up 0.1% at $12.83 in pre-market.
CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $11.18 (-1.32%), down 0.54% at $11.12 in pre-market.
CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $23.50 (+1.51%), unchanged at $23.5 in pre-market.
Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $49.61 (+0.83%), up 2.6% at $50.90 in pre-market.
Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $51.18 (+5.81%), down 2.31% at $50 in pre-market.
ETF Flows
Spot BTC ETFs:
Daily net flow: -$186.3 million
Cumulative net flows: $40.52 billion
Total BTC holdings ~ 1.177 million.
Spot ETH ETFs
Daily net flow: -$22.5 million
Cumulative net flows: $3.16 billion
Total ETH holdings ~ 3.791 million.
Source: Farside Investors
Overnight Flows
Chart of the Day
Solana-based decentralized exchanges have hosted more trading volume than Ethereum since October.
While You Were Sleeping
Ether Has Underperformed, but Total Value Locked on Ethereum Is Rising: Citi (CoinDesk): A Citi research paper says ether has underperformed bitcoin this year, despite Ethereum’s improving fundamentals, rising total value locked (TVL), continued ETF inflows and potential for crypto-friendly U.S. regulation.
Hedge Funds Are Short Ether CME Futures Like Never Before. Is It Carry Trade or Outright Bearish Bets? (CoinDesk): Hedge funds hold record ether futures shorts on CME, mainly for carry trades profiting from the difference between spot ETH ETF and ETH futures pricing. Bearish bets may also be contributing.
Trump Sets 25% Tariffs on Steel, Aluminum, Widening Trade War (Bloomberg): President Trump placed a 25% tariff on all imported steel and aluminum, effective March 12, with the aim of boosting domestic production and creating new jobs.
Chinese Companies Don’t Know Where to Put Their Cash — and It’s Sparking a Record Rise in Dividend Payouts (CNBC): Chinese companies are offering record dividends and share buybacks, encouraged by government reforms to improve shareholder returns.
UK Inflation Threat Receding, Says BoE Rate-Setter Who Voted for Big Cut (Financial Times): Catherine Mann, an external member of Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee, said she had voted for a 50 basis point rate cut last week, citing reduced inflationary pressures.
WazirX Offers 85% of Stolen User Funds as Rebalancing Ends (CoinDesk): Indian crypto exchange WazirX, hacked last year, hopes to start initial fund distribution in April, aiming to return 85% of the dollar value of users’ crypto holdings, with more to come later.
In the Ether
The week has begun on an interesting note, with the U.S. dollar crashing to three-year lows alongside losses on Wall Street, yet bitcoin, which usually follows the sentiment on Wall Street, stands tall.
This could just be the beginning.
The shift away from the USD and toward seizure and censorship-resistant assets like BTC and stablecoins could accelerate if President Donald Trump follows through with his reported plans to fire Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, which have pushed the DXY and U.S. stock markets lower today.
That’s the lesson from Turkey, which has seen its currency, the lira (TRY), collapse over the years mainly due to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s repeated interference in the central bank’s operations. The sliding lira has triggered a capital flight into BTC and stablecoins since at least 2020-21.
Trump’s issues with the Fed
Trump has feuded publicly with the Federal Reserve and its chairman, Jerome Powell, for years, criticizing Powell for being too late on rate cuts even during his first term when interest rates were way lower than today.
However, Trump’s criticism has recently reached a fever pitch with reports suggesting he is looking for ways to get rid of Powell, who recently warned of stagflation even as the President reiterated calls for lower borrowing costs while suggesting there is no inflation.
Powell’s patient approach follows a trade war-led spike in survey-based measures of inflation expectations, which could always become self-fulfilling.
Still, on Monday, Trump went further, calling Powell a «major loser» and warning that the economy could slow down unless interest rates are immediately lowered.
Lesson From Turkey
Erdogan began interfering in the central bank’s operations in 2019, and since then, the lira has collapsed sevenfold from 5.3 per dollar to 38 per dollar.
It all started with Turkey’s inflation rate reaching double digits in 2017. It remained elevated in the subsequent year, which prompted the country’s central bank to increase the one-week repo rate from 17.5% to 24% in September 2018.
The move likely didn’t go well with Erodgan, who issued the first decree dismissing Central Bank of Turkey (CBT) governor Murat Cetinkaya in July 2019. From then on until the end of 2021, Erdogan issued multiple decrees dismissing and hiring several CBT officials. Amid all this, inflation remained elevated, and the lira continued to depreciate at an alarming rate.
«We certainly don’t believe in high interest rates. We will pull down inflation and exchange rates with low-rate policy … High rates make the rich richer, the poor poorer. We won’t let that happen,» Erdogan said in 2021.
As of 2025, Turkey faces an inflation rate of nearly 40%, according to data source TradingEconomics.
This episode serves as a cautionary tale for Trump, highlighting that tampering with central bank independence — especially in the face of looming inflation — can erode investor confidence and send the domestic currency into a tailspin.
This does not necessarily mean that the USD will crash exactly like lira but may see significant devaluation.
Perhaps it could prove even more destabilizing for global markets, considering the dollar is a global reserve currency, and the U.S. Treasury market is the bedrock for international finance.
If better sense fails to prevail, U.S. investors may feel incentivized to move away from U.S. assets and into BTC and other alternative investments, just as Turks did.
Uncategorized
Bitcoin Holding Near $87k While Stocks Slump a ‘Strong Sign’ of Maturing BTC Sentiment
Bitcoin (BTC) is taking a stand even as the broader stock market keeps sliding down to its tariff-related lows on Easter Monday.
The top cryptocurrency is up 2.3% in the last 24 hours and now trading for $86,800 for the first time since April 3—the day after the Trump administration unveiled its new tariff policy. Mainly buoyed by bitcoin, the broader market gauge CoinDesk 20 Index has risen 1.17% in the same period of time, with most tokens relatively unchanged.
Crypto-linked stocks have also remained stable, with Coinbase (COIN) and Strategy (MSTR) down 1.2% and 1.3% respectively, and major bitcoin miners such as MARA Holdings (MARA), Riot Platforms (RIOT), and Core Scientific (CORZ) slumping between 2% and 3%.
The crypto market’s resilience is noteworthy considering that the S&P 500, Nasdaq, and Dow Jones have gone lower by 3.35%, 3.5% and 3.27% respectively, making their way back down to the tariff-related lows of two weeks ago.
Gold, meanwhile, is up 2.9% and is now trading for $3,400, while the DXY (an index that measures the strength of the dollar against a basket of other currencies) reached its lowest level in three years.
“Was today’s tandem rally in bitcoin and gold merely holiday-driven noise, or a meaningful shift towards bitcoin as a safe-haven asset? The latter would mark a material change in how traditional finance views bitcoin,» analysts at crypto trading firm QCP Capital wrote.
«With Europe still on holiday, market confirmation may take a few more sessions. The correlation between bitcoin, gold and equities is one to watch closely.»
Meanwhile, Lawrence McDonald, former head of U.S. Macro Strategy at French investment bank Société Générale, said that it may be time to sell gold in favor of bitcoin.
“Bitcoin has NEVER held up this well with a VIX near 30,” he posted on X, calling bitcoin’s resilience a game-changer. “This is a strong sign of a maturing bitcoin market (good news) and colossal encroaching fiat currency stress, USD.”
The weakness of stocks and the U.S. dollar, put into perspective with bitcoin and gold’s strength, may be due to investors’ concerns about Trump potentially looking to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.
Earlier on Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump continued putting pressure on Powell, whom he called a “major loser” in a Truth Social post, sending an already shaky stock market even lower.
Trump demanded that Powell and his team lower interest rates “NOW,” arguing that there is currently “virtually no inflation” and that costs for many things are declining. Nevertheless, Trump said there’s a threat that the economy will slow down unless the Fed cuts rates.
Powell’s term, which started when he was appointed by Trump himself during his first four years in the Oval Office, is set to end in May 2026, but Trump has been trying to find a legal way to fire Powell beforehand.
The Fed Chair has previously argued that there is no possible way for the U.S. President to remove him under the law.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin shared a new proposal over the weekend that would radically overhaul the system that powers its smart contracts.
Buterin’s suggestion, which he posted on Ethereum’s primary developer forum, involves replacing the Ethereum Virtual Machine, the software engine that powers programs on the network, with RISC-V, a popular open-source framework that offers built-in encryption and other benefits. .
The EVM is a key piece of Ethereum’s underlying design and has been seen as one of the main elements that helped the network succeed in a crowded field of other blockchains. Many non-Ethereum networks have used the EVM to build their own chains, as has a growing ecosystem of layer-2 networks built atop Ethereum, including Coinbase’s Base chain.
The EVM has long played an essential role in Ethereum’s development. Other chains that use it can seamlessly connect with apps on Ethereum, and developers on EVM-based networks can transition more smoothly to building applications directly within the Ethereum ecosystem.
Buterin argued that transitioning Ethereum to a RISC-V architecture will “greatly improve the efficiency of the Ethereum execution layer, resolving one of the primary scaling bottlenecks, and can also greatly improve the execution layer’s simplicity.” (The execution layer is the part of the network that reads smart contracts.)
The RISC-V architecture, which has seen limited adoption in other blockchain ecosystems, like Polkadot, could offer «efficiency gains over 100x» for certain kinds of applications, according to Buterin. These improvements could reduce the network’s costs — long seen as a major barrier to adoption.
Among the primary benefits of RISC-V is its native support for certain kinds of encryption. Transitioning to the new architecture could, in Buterin’s view, be a simpler alternative to the community’s current plan, which involves rebuilding the EVM around zero-knowledge cryptography.
Buterin’s proposal is something developers would tackle over the long term, comparable to projects like the Beam Chain, which is looking to revamp Ethereum’s consensus layer.
The RISC-V comes at a time of broader soul-searching for the Ethereum community. Recently, transaction volumes have declined, and Ethereum’s token has lagged behind the broader market.
Earlier this year, the Ethereum Foundation, the primary non-profit that supports the development of the broader Ethereum ecosystem, underwent a leadership transition in an attempt to remedy the impression among community members that the ecosystem lacked a clear roadmap and was losing its lead compared to competitors.
Read more: Top Ethereum Researcher’s Dramatic Proposal Draws Standing-Room-Only Crowd in Bangkok
Can Bitcoin Benefit From Trump Firing Powell? Turkey’s Lira Crisis May Provide Clues
Bitcoin Holding Near $87k While Stocks Slump a ‘Strong Sign’ of Maturing BTC Sentiment
Vitalik Buterin Proposes Replacing Ethereum’s EVM With RISC-V
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