Uncategorized
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
Uncategorized
Bank of England’s Proposed Stablecoin Ownership Limits are Unworkable, Says Crypto Group
The Financial Times (FT) reported on Monday that cryptocurrency groups are urging the Bank of England (BoE) to scrap proposals limiting the amount of stablecoins individuals and businesses can own.
The group warned that the rules would leave the UK with stricter oversight than the U.S. or the European Union (EU).
According to the FT, BoE officials plan to impose caps of 10,000 british pounds to 20,000 british pounds ($13,600–$27,200) for individuals and about 10 million british pounds ($13.6 million) for businesses on all systemic stablecoins, defined as tokens already widely used for payments in the U.K. or expected to be in the future.
The central bank has argued the restrictions are needed to prevent outflows of deposits from banks that could weaken credit provision and financial stability.
The FT cited Sasha Mills, the BoE’s executive director for financial market infrastructure, as saying the limits would mitigate risks from sudden deposit withdrawals and the scaling of new systemic payment systems.
However, industry executives told the FT the plan is unworkable.
Tom Duff Gordon, Coinbase’s vice president of international policy, said “imposing caps on stablecoins is bad for U.K. savers, bad for the City and bad for sterling,” adding that no other major jurisdiction has imposed such limits.
Simon Jennings of the UK cryptoasset business council said enforcement would be nearly impossible without new systems such as digital IDs. Riccardo Tordera-Ricchi of The Payments Association told the FT that limits “make no sense” because there are no caps on cash or bank accounts.
The U.S. enacted the GENIUS Act in July, which establishes a federal framework for payment stablecoins. The law sets licensing, reserve and redemption standards for issuers, with no caps on individual holdings. The European Union has also moved ahead with its Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), which is now fully in effect across the bloc.
Stablecoin-specific rules for asset-referenced and e-money tokens took effect on June 30, 2024, followed by broader provisions for crypto-assets and service providers on Dec. 30, 2024. Like the U.S. approach, MiCA does not cap holdings, instead focusing on reserves, governance and oversight by national regulators.
Fears of a downside for bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) have eased substantially, according to the latest options market data. However, the pace of the next upward move in these cryptocurrencies will largely hinge on the magnitude of the anticipated Fed rate cut scheduled for Sept. 17.
BTC’s seven-day call/put skew, which measures how implied volatility is distributed across calls versus puts expiring in a week, has recovered to nearly zero from the bearish 4% a week ago, according to data source Amberdata.
The 30- and 60-day option skews, though still slightly negative, have rebounded from last week’s lows, signaling a notable easing of downside fears. Ether’s options skew is exhibiting a similar pattern at the time of writing.
The skew shows the market’s directional bias, or the extent to which traders are more concerned about prices rising or falling. A positive skew suggests a bias towards calls or bullish option plays, while a negative reading indicates relatively higher demand for put options or downside protection.
The reset in options comes as bitcoin and ether prices see a renewed upswing in the lead-up to Wednesday’s Fed rate decision, where the central bank is widely expected to cut rates and lay the groundwork for additional easing over the coming months. BTC has gained over 4% to over $116,000 in seven days, with ether rising nearly 8% to $4,650, according to CoinDesk data.
What happens next largely depends on the size of the impending Fed rate cut. According to CME’s Fed funds futures, traders have priced in over 90% probability that the central bank will cut rates by 25 basis points (bps) to 4%-4.25%. But there is also a slight possibility of a jumbo 50 bps move.
BTC could go berserk in case the Fed delivers the surprise 50 bps move.
«A surprise 50 bps rate cut would be a massive +gamma BUY signal for ETH, SOL and BTC,» Greg Magadini, director of derivatives at Amberdata, said in an email. «Gold will go absolutely nuts as well.»
Note that the Deribit-listed SOL options already exhibit a strong bullish sentiment, with calls trading at 4-5 volatility premium to puts.
Magadini explained that if the decision comes in line with expectations for a 25 bps cut, then a continued calm «grind higher» for BTC looks likely. ETH, meanwhile, may take another week or so to retest all-time highs and convincingly trade above $5,000, he added.
Good Morning, Asia. Here’s what’s making news in the markets:
Welcome to Asia Morning Briefing, a daily summary of top stories during U.S. hours and an overview of market moves and analysis. For a detailed overview of U.S. markets, see CoinDesk’s Crypto Daybook Americas.
Hyperliquid’s validator community has chosen Native Markets to issue USDH, ending a weeklong contest that drew proposals from Paxos, Frax, Sky (ex-MakerDAO), Agora, and others.
Native Markets, co-founded by former Uniswap Labs president MC Lader, researcher Anish Agnihotri, and early Hyperliquid backer Max Fiege, said it will begin rolling out USDH “within days,” according to a post by Fiege on X.
According to onchain trackers, Native Markets’ proposal took approximately 70% of validators’ votes, while Paxos took 20%, and Ethena came in at 3.2%.
The staged launch starts with capped mints and redemptions, followed by a USDH/USDC spot pair before caps are lifted.
USDH is designed to challenge Circle’s USDC, which currently dominates Hyperliquid with nearly $6 billion in deposits, or about 7.5% of its supply. USDC and other stablecoins will remain supported if they meet liquidity and HYPE staking requirements.
Most rival bidders had promised to channel stablecoin yields back to the ecosystem with Paxos via HYPE buybacks, Frax through direct user yield, and Sky with a 4.85% savings rate plus a $25 million “Genesis Star” project.
Native Markets’ pitch instead stressed credibility, trading experience, and validator alignment.
Market Movement
BTC: BTC has recently reclaimed the $115,000 level, helped by inflows into ETFs, easing U.S. inflation data, and growing expectations for interest rate cuts. Also, technical momentum is picking up, though resistance sits around $116,000, according to CoinDesk’s market insights bot.
ETH: ETH is trading above $4600. The price is being buoyed by strong ETF inflows.
Gold: Gold continues to trade near record highs as traders eye dollar weakness on expected Fed rate cuts.
Elsewhere in Crypto:
Bank of England’s Proposed Stablecoin Ownership Limits are Unworkable, Says Crypto Group
What’s Next for Bitcoin and Ether as Downside Fears Ease Ahead of Fed Rate Cut?
Asia Morning Briefing: Native Markets Wins Right to Issue USDH After Validator Vote
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