Uncategorized
Crypto Daybook Americas: Roses Are Red, Violets Are Blue, Inflation Is Hot, but Bitcoin Shines Through
By James Van Straten (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)
Bitcoin (BTC) continues to climb the wall of worry, pushing above $97,000 despite hotter-than-expected U.S. consumer and producer price inflation reports in the past couple of days. That’s a surprise. With prices rising and the likelihood of a Fed rate cut receding, you’d expect risky investments like cryptocurrencies to pause, at the very least.
The buoyant behavior is possibly underpinned by signs that inflation is still seen as easing in coming months.
«Bitcoin could likely get some relief in the short-term judging by the high-frequency U.S. inflation indicator by truflation which suggests a significant decline in headline inflation over the coming months,» said Andre Dragosch, the head of European research at Bitwise. The Truflation U.S. Inflation Index currently shows 2.06%, indicating a potential decline.
Dragosch also noted the Federal Reserve’s cautious stance, suggesting the central bank is very aware of what happened in the 1970s, when three waves of inflation hit peaks of 6.2%, 12% and 15%.
«The Fed is afraid of the 1970s inflation scenario, which is why it rather takes a more cautious approach at the moment and is afraid of cutting rates too aggressively,» he said.
All that means the bitcoin bull market is far from over if historical trends hold out. Take a look at the 200-week moving average (a period of almost four years!). That’s currently around $44,200, below the previous market peak of $69,000 from November 2021. In the past, the average has risen toward the prior record, a move that implies further price growth is on the cards.
Also consider that short-term holders have accumulated 1.5 million bitcoin since September, showing continued demand from investors who tend to keep their BTC for less than 155 days.
On the public company front, Coinbase followed Robinhood with strong earnings and Gamestop is pondering a bitcoin investment, another potential catalyst for the market. Stay Alert!
What to Watch
Crypto:
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.
Feb. 24: Ethereum developers start testing the code for the Pectra network upgrade on the Holesky testnet.
Macro
Feb. 14, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Census Bureau releases January’s Retail Sales data.
Retail Sales MoM Est. -0.1% vs. Prev. 0.4%
Retail Sales YoY Prev. 3.9%
Feb. 18, 10:20 a.m.: San Francisco Fed President and CEO Mary C. Daly delivers a speech at the Conference for Community Bankers in Phoenix. Livestream link.
Feb. 19, 2:00 p.m.: The Fed releases minutes of the Jan. 28-29 FOMC Meeting.
Earnings
Feb. 18: CoinShares International (CS), pre-market
Feb. 18: Semler Scientific (SMLR), post-market
Feb. 20: Block (XYZ), post-market, $0.88
Feb. 26: MARA Holdings (MARA), $-0.13
Token Events
Governance votes and calls
Aave DAO is discussing using GHO as a gas token across various networks. The framework proposes using the canonical network bridge to mint GHO directly as a gas token.
Umma DAO is voting on reducing UMA token emissions to optimize its economics. The proposal is to reduce emissions by 14% and assess the impact of the move.
Aavegotchi DAO is discussing migrating the protocol to Base over a need to join a chain with “strong ecosystem support.”
Arbitrum DAO is discussing upgrading to ArbOS 40 “Callisto,” which includes support for Ethereum’s upcoming Pectra upgrade.
Unlocks
Feb. 14: Starknet (STRK) to unlock 2.48% of circulating supply worth $15.19 million.
Feb. 15: Sei (SEI) to unlock 1.25% of circulating supply worth $13.46 million.
Feb. 16: Arbitrum (ARB) to unlock 2.13% of circulating supply worth $46.2 million.
Feb. 16: Avalanche (AVAX) to unlock 0.4% of circulating supply worth $43.55 million.
Feb. 21: Fast Token (FTN) to unlock 4.66% of circulating supply worth $78.8 million.
Feb. 28: Optimism (OP) to unlock 2.32% of circulating supply worth $36.67 million.
Token Launches
Feb. 14: Pudgy Penguins (PENGU) to be listed on Coinbase, according to a post shared by the Pudgy Penguins account.
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.
Day 2 of 2: 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 Francisco Rodrigues
Binance founder and former CEO Changpeng Zhao’s dog has been the talk of the town. After revealing he had the pet and being bombarded with requests for information, he eventually gave in, knowing memecoins would be launched.
Zhao shared a picture of himself with the Belgian malinois named Broccoli in a lengthy post that inspired a slew memecoins. These tokens, trading under the ticker BROCCOLI, debuted both BNB Chain and Solana.
Some saw significant price rises right after their introduction to reach billion dollar-plus market caps as traders rushed in. As the hype faded, so did the prices. Fortunes were made and sold over Broccoli.
One trader, for example, spent less than $1,000 to create a token inspired by the dog and started selling the tokens just two minutes later. The trader managed to make $6.5 million on the launch, as CoinDesk’s Danny Nelson reported.
The volatility affected the price of BNB itself, which is now 6.6% lower in the last 24 hours while bitcoin and ether are both up slightly. PancakeSwap’s CAKE token, which was up more than 70% on the week, is down 18%in the same period.
Elsewhere, the Trump-backed DeFi protocol WLFI has kept accumulating tokens, purchasing around $5 million worth of wrapped bitcoin (WBTC) and $1.4 million of Movement (MOVE).
Derivatives Positioning
XRP’s perpetual funding rates remain slightly negative, indicating a bias for shorts despite a 10% price surge. Should prices continue to rise, these shorts may throw in the towel, squaring off their bets and adding to an upward move in prices.
LTC, XLM and DOGE have seen net buying pressure in perpetual futures, according to the open interest-adjusted cumulative volume delta tracked by Velo Data.
BTC CME futures basis remains below ETH basis.
Block flows on Deribit featured outright longs in out-of-the-money calls and a bull call spread. In ETH, a call option at the $3,300 strike was filed in the March expiry, according to Amberdata.
Market Movements:
BTC is up 0.57% from 4 p.m. ET Thursday to $97,093.36 (24hrs: +0.96%)
ETH is up 1.39% at $2706.09 (24hrs: +1.13%)
CoinDesk 20 is up 3.70% to 3,324.03 (24hrs: +3.85%)
Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is up 1 bps to 3.06%
BTC funding rate is at 0.0035% (3.8632% annualized) on Binance
DXY is down 0.32% at 106.97
Gold is up 1.17% at $2,960/oz
Silver is up 4.32% to $34.06/oz
Nikkei 225 closed -0.79% at 39,149.43
Hang Seng closed +3.69% at 22,620.33
FTSE is down 0.26% at 8,741.88
Euro Stoxx 50 is unchanged at 5,501.78
DJIA closed Thursday +0.77% at 44,711.43
S&P 500 closed +1.04% at 6,115.07
Nasdaq closed +1.5% at 19,945.64
S&P/TSX Composite Index closed +0.53% at 25,698.5
S&P 40 Latin America closed +0.69% at 2,438.53
U.S. 10-year Treasury rate was down 7 bps at 4.53%
E-mini S&P 500 futures are down 0.1% to 6,129.25
E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are unchanged at 22,107
E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are down to 44,686
Bitcoin Stats:
BTC Dominance: 60.58 (-0.63%)
Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.02783 (0.47%)
Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 818 EH/s
Hashprice (spot): $54.1
Total Fees: 5.67 BTC / $546,770
CME Futures Open Interest: 167,750
BTC priced in gold: 33.0 oz
BTC vs gold market cap: 9.37%
Technical Analysis
XRP has bounced off the Ichimoku cloud support, keeping the broader bullish outlook intact.
Prices seem to be headed toward the descending trendline resistance, which, if topped, will likely yield a move to record highs.
A potential move below the cloud would signal a bearish trend change.
Crypto Equities
MicroStrategy (MSTR): closed on Thursday at $324.92 (-0.58%), up 0.6% at $327.03 in pre-market.
Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $298.11 (8.44%), down 1% at $295.12.
Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$28.37 (+5.58%)
MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $16.91 (+4.13%), up 0.65% at $17.02
Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $12.23 (+9.59%), up 0.1% at $12.24.
Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $12.54 (+3.72%), down 0.32% at $12.50.
CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $10.67 (+1.43%), up 0.66% at $10.74.
CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $23.28 (+2.42%), down 1.12% at $23.02.
Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $49.45 (+3.69%), up 1.86% at $50.37.
Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $50.00 (+2.35%), down 3.34% at $48.33.
ETF Flows
Spot BTC ETFs:
Daily net flow: -$156.8 million
Cumulative net flows: $40.05 billion
Total BTC holdings ~ 1.171 million.
Spot ETH ETFs
Daily net flow: $12.8 million
Cumulative net flows: $3.14 billion
Total ETH holdings ~ 3.777 million.
Source: Farside Investors
Overnight Flows
Chart of the Day
The chart shows yields on the U.S. 10-year and two-year Treasury notes.
The 10-year yield has declined by 27 basis points in four weeks while the two-year yield has dropped 10 basis points.
The so-called bull flattening of the Treasury yield curve is a positive sign for risk assets, per some observers.
While You Were Sleeping
Bitcoin Bull Market Is Far From Over, Suggests Historical BTC Trend Tied to 200-Week Average (CoinDesk): Historical trends suggest the bitcoin price has room to grow despite renewed U.S. inflation pressures. While the long-term average remains below previous highs, investor bets signal optimism for further gains.
China’s Gaorong Ventures Invests $30 Million in Crypto Unicorn (Bloomberg): HashKey Group, the operator of one of Hong Kong’s regulated crypto exchanges, received $30 million from a Chinese venture capital firm at a reported post-money valuation of nearly $1.5 billion.
Japanese Energy Firm Remixpoint Boosts Crypto Holdings More Than 8,000% in 9 Months (CoinDesk): Remixpoint (3825) disclosed it had accumulated over 125 BTC for its treasury and spent over 9 billion yen ($59 million) on crypto.
Vance Wields Threat of Sanctions, Military Action to Push Putin Into Ukraine Deal (The Wall Street Journal): U.S. Vice President Vance warned that military power could be used if Russia refuses to agree to a peace deal that guarantees Ukraine’s independence from Moscow.
India, US Agree to Resolve Trade and Tariff Rows After Trump-Modi Talks (Reuters): India promised to increase its oil, gas and military-equipment purchases from the U.S. as it prepares for trade talks that could ease tariff tensions.
Taiwan Pledges to Boost US Investment After Donald Trump’s Tariff Threat (Financial Times): Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te outlined measures to address the U.S. trade imbalance and pledged to ensure Taiwan remains indispensable in the global semiconductor supply chain.
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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