Daily Market Update: Feb 14, 2023

February 14, 2023

BTC is currently trading around $21,600 and ETH around $1,500. Notable gainers in the last 24 hours are BGB, GMX, and AGIX. The global crypto market cap is ~$1.05T, up ~0.4% over the last day. DeFi Total Value Locked is ~$47b and BTC dominance is around 44%.

Risk assets are down following a slightly worse-than-expected U.S. CPI release. YoY Core CPI rose 5.6% versus expectations of 5.5%. U.S. equities are down ~50 bps despite futures pointing to a positive open before the release. Bitcoin is also down ~125 bps since the 8:30 am news. Notably, markets may take more time than usual to digest this month’s release, given a change in reporting methodology from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Notable news includes: Biden will reportedly name Fed Vice Chairwoman Lael Brainard as its top economic advisor; Paxos confirmed its receipt of a Wells Notice from the SEC, stating it disagreed with the agency’s accusation that BUSD is a security and it will “vigorously litigate” the disagreement if required; USDC’s issuer Circle was reportedly the NYDFS whistleblower that pointed the agency to Paxos; Binance processed nearly $1b of withdrawals yesterday after regulators scrutinized its BUSD stablecoin; Binance tapped Gemini’s former COO/CCO to become its new CCO; Interactive Brokers announced crypto trading services for its Hong Kong institutional clients; DBS Group is similarly expanding its crypto services to Hong Kong customers; OFAC-compliant blocks on Ethereum hit a three-month low of 47%; Iris Energy revealed it will nearly triple its hashrate to ~5.5 EH/s by adding ~44k S19j Pro mining rigs; Bitcoin miners have made nearly ~$600k already from inscription transaction fees; one Bitcoin influencer sent his Bored Ape to an Ethereum burn address after inscribing it on Bitcoin; NFT influencer Cozomo de’ Medici donated 22 digital artworks including a Zombie CryptoPunk to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Magic Eden laid off ~15% of its staff; former Jump Trading developers raised $19m to build a new layer 1 blockchain called Monad; and, a court approved the sale of certain FTX investments of “relatively de minimis value.”

Authors:
Matt Kunke, Junior Strategist | TwitterTelegramLinkedIn
Brian Rudick, Senior Strategist | TwitterTelegramLinkedIn

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