Uncategorized
Crypto Daybook Americas: Inflation Data May Shake Out Bitcoin’s Doldrums as Demand for BTC Picks Up
By Francisco Rodrigues (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)
The U.S. inflation report due later today might shift bitcoin (BTC) out of the doldrums that have mired it this week.
In recent years, the January figure has tended to show significant price hikes. Last year, for example, the month’s data put an end to a series of lower readings, repeating a pattern also seen in 2023. That’s because businesses often evaluate their costs and raise prices at the start of the year, as the Wall Street Journal points out.
A higher-than-expected inflation report could suggest “monetary policy has more work to do” Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan said in a speech last week. The Federal Reserve has already indicated it isn’t rushing to adjust interest rates after 100 basis points of reductions last year.
Also playing into the consideration are the Trump administration’s tariffs, with the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston pointing to a potential rise as high as 0.8% to core PCE, the inflation measure the Fed focuses on. Still, in 2018 and 2019 tariffs had negligible effects.
On the other hand, a soft inflation report could be beneficial for risks assets including bitcoin. A lower-than-expected figure will probably raise interest-rate cut expectations, potentially weakening the U.S. dollar index and lowering Treasury yields, CoinDesk’s Omkar Godbole has reported.
Meanwhile, demand for the largest cryptocurrency holds strong. Just this week, Japanese mobile-game studio Gumi revealed plans to accumulate around $6.6 million worth of BTC, while KULR Technology Group increased its crypto holdings to 610.3 bitcoin.
Similarly, Goldman Sachs’ 13F filing shows the banking giant significantly increased its exposure to spot bitcoin and ether ETFs in the fourth quarter. And don’t forget Strategy’s near-weekly bitcoin purchases.
Bitcoin’s Coinbase premium, which measures the difference between BTC’s price on the U.S. exchange and Binance, recently turned negative, suggesting U.S. traders are cautious about the upcoming inflation report.
The caution comes amid growing headwinds for the crypto market, which may have reached the top of its cycle. Research firm BCA Research has recently shared a note with clients suggesting the record ETF inflows and the memecoin craze are warning signals.
Warning signals are present elsewhere, with a recent JPMorgan report pointing out that crypto ecosystem growth slowed last month, while total trading volumes dropped 24%. Activity is nevertheless ahead of where it was before the U.S. elections. 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.: Qtum (QTUM) hard fork network upgrade.
Feb. 18, 10:00 a.m.: FTX Digital Markets, the Bahamas-based subsidiary of FTX, starts reimbursing creditors.
Feb. 21: TON (The Open Network) becomes the exclusive blockchain infrastructure for messaging platform Telegram’s Mini App ecosystem.
Macro
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. 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)
Feb. 18: CoinShares International (STO: CS), pre-market
Feb. 18: Semler Scientific (SMLR), post-market
Token Events
Governance votes & calls
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.
Curve DAO is voting on increasing 3pool’s amplification coefficient to 8,000 over 30 days and raise admin fees to 100%. To optimize liquidity, as part of an experiment, 3pool will have higher fees while Strategic Reserves will offer lower fees.
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)
Token Talk
By Shaurya Malwa
The Central African Republic’s CAR token is down 95% from Monday’s peak prices, with a market capitalization now around $40 million.
CAR was issued late Sunday and promoted by the republic’s President
Faustin-Archange Touadéra as an asset that could help fund public facilities in the impoverished nation.
Touadéra claimed proceeds from CAR token are being used to rebuild and furnish a high school, whose details are not yet public.
Derivatives Positioning
Following Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s remarks hinting at a potential delay in quantitative easing until interest rates approach zero, market sentiment turned more cautious, leading to a sharp decline in open interest across altcoins.
Rocket Pool, Venice Token and TST experienced the most significant drops, with open interest plunging 44%, 32%, and 30%, respectively, over the past 24 hours.
On the other hand, Binance ecosystem tokens gained momentum, with BNX the standout performer. Open interest in BNX surged 57% to $166 million within a day, while its price jumped 18% to $0.868.
Market Movements:
BTC is down 0.4% from 4 p.m. ET Tuesday to $96,029.62 (24hrs: -1.97%)
ETH is down 0.17% at $2,619.27 (24hrs: -2.87%)
CoinDesk 20 is up 0.66% to 3,178.54 (24hrs: -2.74%)
Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is up 5 bps to 3.1%
BTC funding rate is at 0.01% (10.95% annualized) on Binance
DXY is unchanged at 107.99
Gold is down 0.15% at $2908.1/oz
Silver is down 0.22% to $32.16/oz
Nikkei 225 closed up 0.42% at 38,963.7
Hang Seng closed +2.64% at 21,857.92
FTSE is unchanged at 8,781.91
Euro Stoxx 50 is up 0.1% to 5,396.36
DJIA closed Tuesday +0.28% at 44,593.65
S&P 500 closed unchanged at 6,068.5
Nasdaq closed -0.36% at 19,643.86
S&P/TSX Composite Index closed -0.11% at 25,631.8
S&P 40 Latin America closed +0.65% at 2,444.58
U.S. 10-year Treasury rate was up 1 bps at 4.54%
E-mini S&P 500 futures are down 0.16% to 6,082.5
E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are unchanged at 21,777
E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are down 0.21% at 44,616
Bitcoin Stats:
BTC Dominance: 61.32% (+0.06%)
Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.02728 (+0.33%)
Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 800 EH/s
Hashprice (spot): $53.56
Total Fees: 5.25 BTC / $505,060
CME Futures Open Interest: 167,470 BTC
BTC priced in gold: 33.1 oz
BTC vs gold market cap: 9.4%
Technical Analysis
Dogecoin reaches a critical point support and resistance at 25 cents, with prices coiling around that level since Feb.3.
Traders may watch DOGE’s Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) indicator, which tracks the relative changes in prices across specific time periods.
The indicator is trending upward with net buying volumes since Feb. 3, indicative of a rally if the MACD line crosses above zero.
Crypto Equities
MicroStrategy (MSTR): closed on Tuesday at $319.46 (-4.53%), up 0.82% at $322.30 in pre-market.
Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $266.90 (-4.75%), up 0.88% at $269.25 in pre-market.
Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$26.54 (-2.57%)
MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $16.02 (-4.42%), up 1% at $16.18 in pre-market.
Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $11.14 (-4.21%), up 0.81% at $11.23 in pre-market.
Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $12.26 (-4.37%), up 0.24% at $12.29 in pre-market.
CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $10.28 (-8.05%), up 0.39% at $10.32 in pre-market.
CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $22.34 (-4.94%), up 0.12% at $22.46 in pre-market.
Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $46.98 (-5.3%), unchanged in pre-market.
Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $49.16 (-3.95%), unchanged in pre-market.
ETF Flows
Spot BTC ETFs:
Daily net flow: -$56.7 million
Cumulative net flows: $40.46 billion
Total BTC holdings ~ 1.174 million.
Spot ETH ETFs
Daily net flow: $12.6 million
Cumulative net flows: $3.17 billion
Total ETH holdings ~ 3.785 million.
Source: Farside Investors
Overnight Flows
Chart of the Day
Ethereum has dropped down to 17th in terms of weekly revenues across all blockchains and applications, with a relatively small $7 million pocketed by network validators.
While You Were Sleeping
Bitcoin May See Gains from Soft U.S. CPI, Major Risk-On Surge in BTC Appears Unlikely (CoinDesk): Bitcoin and other risk assets may get a boost if today’s CPI report shows soft inflation, but Trump’s tariffs are likely to curb further rate cuts and put the brakes on a sustained rally.
Trump to Tap Former CFTC Commissioner, a16z Policy Head Brian Quintenz for CFTC Head (CoinDesk): Brian Quintenz, a former commissioner of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and a crypto advocate, has reportedly been chosen by President Trump to be the agency’s chairman.
Crypto Custody Firm BitGo Said to Weigh IPO as Soon as This Year (Bloomberg): Crypto custodian BitGo is considering an IPO for the second half of 2025, joining firms such as Gemini and Kraken, which are also expected to go public this year.
Why Today’s Inflation Report Is Especially Important (The Wall Street Journal): January’s U.S. inflation data — with the CPI released today, PPI tomorrow, and PCE on Feb. 28 — is important for predicting the Fed’s monetary policy because businesses typically raise prices at the start of the year.
Stocks Steady; Sanguine Powell Knocks Bonds and Gold (Reuters): Fed Chari Powell’s Senate testimony on Tuesday, downplaying rate-cut urgency unless inflation falls or job market weakens, boosted Treasury yields and the dollar, while sending oil and gold prices lower.
China’s Tech Stocks Enter Bull Market After DeepSeek Breakthrough (Financial Times): Chinese tech stocks have surged 20% in one month after DeepSeek’s AI breakthrough revived investor confidence in internet companies, helping the Hang Seng Tech index to outpace the Nasdaq 100.
In the Ether
UPDATE (Feb. 12, 12:03 UTC): Adds Derivatives Positioning section.
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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