Uncategorized
Crypto Daybook Americas: Trump’s Looming Tariff Escalation Fails to Rattle Bitcoin
By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)
Despite the increasing rhetoric surrounding President Donald Trump’s tariffs, bitcoin (BTC) is holding steady alongside positive cues from foreign exchange risk barometers like AUD/JPY. Later today, Trump is due to impose 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum imports on top of additional metal duties.
This market stance ahead of an impending tariff escalation contrasts starkly with the risk aversion observed a week ago, when Trump fired the first tariff shot. Perhaps market participants think he’s using aggressive tactics to negotiate trade deals rather than committing to sustained tariffs. This notion has gained traction following lat Monday’s decision to suspend tariffs on Mexico and Canada for 30 days, hinting at a more strategic approach to trade negotiations.
According to QCP Capital, the current market stability could embolden Trump to take a tougher stance. «A feedback loop is emerging — President Trump, highly sensitive to market reactions, is facing a market increasingly calling his bluff. This could embolden him further, adding another layer of volatility,» QCP said in a Telegram broadcast.
It will be interesting to see how this develops.
There’s a social media post doing the rounds that shows record open short positions in the CME-listed cash-settled ether futures. Those shorts are not necessarily outright bearish bets and are likely components of carry trades, where investors hold long positions in ETFs while shorting CME futures. Note that the ETH ETF inflows surged last week. It’s possible some of the shorts are investors hedging against long altcoin bets amid concerns over the number of coins and impending large unlocks.
Over the weekend, Base member Kabir.Base.eth refuted claims that the sequencer Coinbase had been selling ETH earned as fees, adding a layer of transparency to its operations.
In another notable development, Archange Touadéra, president of the Central African Republic, reportedly issued a new memecoin that saw a trader turn $5,000 into an astonishing $12 million in less than three hours, achieving a remarkable return of 2,450x, according to LookOnChain data.
Meanwhile, litecoin (LTC) continues to shine as the top-performing cryptocurrency of the past 24 hours, up 9%.
On the macroeconomic front, the surge in the U.S. consumer inflation expectations raises concerns about the likelihood of a prolonged pause in Federal Reserve’s rate cuts. Plus, the U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI) is due for release on Wednesday. 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. 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, 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 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 Financial Services Committee. 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 Prev. 3.5%
PPI MoM Est. 0.2% 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. 215K vs. Prev. 219K
Earnings
Feb. 10: Canaan (CAN), pre-market, $-0.08
Feb. 11: HIVE Digital Technologies (HIVE), post-market, $-0.15
Feb. 11: Exodus Movement (EXOD), post-market, $0.14 (2 ests.)
Feb. 12: Hut 8 (HUT), pre-market, $0.05
Feb. 12: IREN (IREN), post-market, $-0.01
Feb. 12 (TBA): Metaplanet (TYO:3350)
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
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 for growth on the network.
Feb. 10, 10:30 a.m.: OKX to hold a listings AMA with Chief Marketing Officer Haider Rafique and Head of Product Marketing Matthew Osofisan.
Feb. 12, 2 p.m. : Render (RENDER) to host an AI Scout Discord AMA session.
Unlocks
Feb. 10: Aptos (APT) to unlock 1.97% of circulating supply worth $71.14 million.
Feb. 10: Berachain (BERA) to unlock 12.08% of circulating supply worth $66.07 million.
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.
Token Launches
Feb. 10: Analog (ANLOG) to be listed on Bitget, Gate.io, MEXC and KuCoin.
Feb. 12: Avalon (AVL) and Game 7 (G7) to be listed on Bybit.
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. 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. 25: HederaCon 2025 (Denver)
Token Talk
By Shaurya Malwa
Various memecoins raffled around the world from Asia to America, bringing back signs of a frenzy that tends to grip the crypto market every few months.
BNB Chain’s TST token, originally created in a tutorial, skyrocketed to a $300 million market cap following mentions by Binance founder Changpeng Zhao. The token gained popularity in Chinese communities, posts show.
David Portnoy of U.S.-based Barstool Sports promoted JAILSTOOL as market watchers accused him of using his social influence to pump the lowcap token, which peaked at over $200 million before settling at a $78 million market cap.
The Central African Republic issued its own memecoin, CAR, aiming to support national development and increase the country’s global visibility.
Derivatives Positioning
Basis in BTC and ETH CME futures dipped below 10%, which may translate into slower inflows into the ETFs.
Perpetual funding rates on offshore exchanges for most major coins remain marginally bullish between an annualized 5% to 10%. XLM stands out as having the most negative funding rate — in excess of -20% — reflecting a bias for shorts.
Front-end ETH puts trade a vol premium of two to five points relative to calls, exhibiting downside fears. BTC front-end options also show a put bias, according to data source Amberdata.
Market Movements:
BTC is up 1.80% from 4 p.m. ET Friday to $97,805.98 (24hrs: -1.01%)
ETH is down 0.79% at $2,647.53 (24hrs: -0.63%)
CoinDesk 20 is up 2.92% to 3,209.42 (24hrs: +0.19%)
CESR Composite Staking Rate is down 3 bps to 2.97%
BTC funding rate is at 0.0087% (9.48% annualized) on Binance
DXY is up 0.12% at 108.16
Gold is up 1.44% at $2,902.17/oz
Silver is up 1.29% to $32.22/oz
Nikkei 225 closed unchanged at 38,801.17
Hang Seng closed up 1.84% at 21,521.98
FTSE is up 0.53% at 8,746.63
Euro Stoxx 50 is up 0.34% at 5,343.63
DJIA closed -0.99% to 44,303.40
S&P 500 closed -0.95% at 6,025.99
Nasdaq closed -1.36% at 19,523.40
S&P/TSX Composite Index closed -0.36% at 25,442.91
S&P 40 Latin America closed -1.10% at 2,410.24
U.S. 10-year Treasury went up 4 bps to 4.48%
E-mini S&P 500 futures are up 0.46% at 6,077
E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are up 0.70% at 21,742
E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are up 0.35% at 44,576
Bitcoin Stats:
BTC Dominance: 61.70% (0.05%)
Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.02717 (-0.22%)
Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 808 EH/s
Hashprice (spot): $54.1
Total Fees: 5.04 BTC / $337,318
CME Futures Open Interest: 164,510
BTC priced in gold: 33.5 oz
BTC vs gold market cap: 9.52%
Technical Analysis
Shares of Strategy (MSTR) have dived out of a mini rising channel, hinting at an end of the bounce from the Dec. 31 low and potential resumption of a broader pullback from late 2024 highs.
Prices have found acceptance below the 38.2% Fibonacci retracement of the fourfold rally seen from September to November.
A golden rule of technical analysis is that for a market to maintain its current trend, it must hold above the 38.2% level. If it fails to do so, the bull trend is said to have ended.
Crypto Equities
MicroStrategy (MSTR): closed on Friday at $327.56 (+0.56%), up 2.27% at $334.98 in pre-market.
Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $274.49 (+1.52%), up 1.83% at $279.52 in pre-market.
Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$26.89 (-0.66%)
MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $16.77 (-0.18%), up 1.97% at $17.10 in pre-market.
Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $11.64 (+0.26%), up 1.89% at $11.86 in pre-market.
Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $12.56 (+0.24%), up 0.88% at $12.67 in pre-market.
CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $11.33 (+9.15%), up 1.5% at 11.50 in pre-market.
CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $23.15 (+1.71%), up 0.52% at $23.27 in pre-market.
Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $49.20 (-1.44%), up 2.20% at $50.28 in pre-market.
Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $48.37 (+0.75%), +0.52% at 48.62 in pre-market.
ETF Flows
Spot BTC ETFs:
Daily net flow: $171.3 million
Cumulative net flows: $40.70 billion
Total BTC holdings ~ 1.176 million.
Spot ETH ETFs
Daily net flow: No flows reported.
Cumulative net flows: $3.18 billion
Total ETH holdings ~ 3.793 million.
Source: Farside Investors
Overnight Flows
Chart of the Day
The yield on 10-year U.S. inflation-indexed securities, the so-called real yield, has dropped by 34 basis points in just over three weeks.
A continued decline could trigger a search for higher returns, galvanizing demand for risk assets, including BTC.
While You Were Sleeping
Bitcoin HODLer Metaplanet Achieves $35M Unrealized Gains in 2024 Thanks to BTC Treasury (CoinDesk): The Japanese company, which already holds 1,761 bitcoin, said it plans to have 10,000 BTC by year end.
Bitcoin Indicator That Signaled $70K Breakout Turns Bearish as Trump’s Trade War Rhetoric Grows (CoinDesk): A popular technical indicator is showing bitcoin weakness amid rising U.S. trade-tariff rhetoric. A drop below $90K would confirm persistent bearish momentum.
US Endowments Join Crypto Rush by Building Bitcoin Portfolios (Financial Times): U.S. foundations and university endowments are ramping up cryptocurrency investments, driven by FOMO and Trump’s pro-crypto stance, despite concerns over price volatility and a lack of regulatory clarity.
Trump Unveils Plans for 25% Tariffs on Steel, Aluminum Imports (Bloomberg): The U.S. is set to announce 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, and reciprocal tariffs on nations taxing U.S. goods will follow this week.
Inflation Rises Amid Lunar New Year Spending As European Stocks Benefit (Euronews): China’s January inflation climbed 0.5% YoY, fueled by Lunar New Year spending and stimulus. Persistent PPI deflation and U.S.-China trade tensions remain a concern.
China’s Strategy in Trade War: Threaten U.S. Tech Companies (The Wall Street Journal): China is reportedly planning to target more U.S. tech giants like Apple and Broadcom with antitrust investigations, aiming to bolster its bargaining position in trade negotiations with the U.S.
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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