Bitcoin Jumps on Tariff News—Traders Eye Next Leg Up
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Tariff cuts send crypto markets into rally mode as Bitcoin leads the charge. Traders are now positioning for what comes next—will the bulls break resistance or is this another head-fake before the usual Wall Street rug-pull?
Key drivers: Macro tailwinds meet crypto’s perennial volatility. Watch for liquidity flows—retail FOMO hasn’t even kicked in yet.
Bottom line: Another day, another government policy accidentally pumping digital assets. Meanwhile, traditional finance still can’t decide if crypto is a threat or just their next fee-generating product.
What to Watch
- Crypto:
- May 12, 1 p.m.-5:30 p.m.: A U.S. SEC Crypto Task Force Roundtable on "Tokenization: Moving Assets Onchain: Where TradFi and DeFi Meet" will be held at the SEC’s headquarters in Washington.
- May 13: The Singapore High Court holds a hearing to determine whether Zettai, the parent company of WazirX, can proceed with restarting the India-based crypto exchange and compensating users affected by the July 2024 hack.
- May 14: Neo (NEO) mainnet will undergo a hard fork network upgrade (version 3.8.0) at block height 7,300,000.
- May 14: Expected launch date for VanEck Onchain Economy ETF (ticker: NODE).
- May 16, 9:30 a.m.: Galaxy Digital Inc.’s Class A shares are set to begin trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol GLXY.
- May 19: CME Group is expected to launch its cash-settled XRP futures.
- Macro
- Day 4 of 4: Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng will hold trade talks with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent during his visit to Switzerland.
- May 12, 8 a.m.: Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography releases March industrial production data.
- Industrial Production MoM Prev. 2.5%
- Industrial Production YoY Prev. -1.3%
- May 13, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases April consumer price inflation data.
- Core Inflation Rate MoM Est. 0.3% vs. Prev. 0.1%
- Core Inflation Rate YoY Prev. 2.8%
- Inflation Rate MoM Est. 0.3% vs. Prev. -0.1%
- Inflation Rate YoY Est. 2.4% vs. Prev. 2.4%
- May 14, 3 p.m.: Argentina’s National Institute of Statistics and Census releases April inflation data.
- Inflation Rate MoM Prev. 3.7%
- Inflation Rate YoY Prev. 55.9%
- Earnings (Estimates based on FactSet data)
- May 12: Exodus Movement (EXOD), post-market
- May 13: Semler Scientific (SMLR), post-market
- May 14: Bitfarms (BITF), pre-market
- May 14: IREN (IREN), post-market
- May 15: Bit Digital (BTBT), post-market
- May 15: Bitdeer Technologies Group (BTDR), pre-market
- May 15: KULR Technology Group (KULR), post-market
Token Events
- Governance votes & calls
- A Sei Network developer proposed ending support for Cosmos to simplify the blockchain and align more closely with Ethereum to reduce complexity and infrastructure overhead and boost Sei’s adoption.
- May 12: Helium (HNT) proposal HIP 144 voting ends on authorizing Nova Labs to introduce a 30-day delay, or Rewards Escrow period, to the process of claiming rewards for Helium Mobile.
- May 15, 10 a.m.: Moca Network to host a Discord townhall session discussing network updates.
- Unlocks
- May 12: Aptos (APT) to unlock 1.82% of its circulating supply worth $68.54 million.
- May 13: WhiteBIT Coin (WBT) to unlock 27.41% of its circulating supply worth $1.2 billion.
- May 15: Starknet (STRK) to unlock 4.09% of its circulating supply worth $23.87 million.
- May 15: Sei (SEI) to unlock 1.09% of its circulating supply worth $14.91 million.
- Token Launches
- May 12: Jerry The Turtle (JYAI) to be listed on LBank with JYAI/USDT pair.
- May 12: Space and Time (SXT) to be listed on Bitrue with SXT/USDT pair.
- May 16: Galxe (GAL), Litentry (LIT), Mines of Dalarnia (DAR), Orion Protocol (ORN), and PARSIQ (PRQ) to be delisted from Coinbase.
Conferences
CoinDesk’s Consensus is taking place in Toronto on May 14-16. Use code DAYBOOK and save 15% on passes.
- Day 2 of 7: Canada Crypto Week (Toronto)
- Day 1 of 2: Dubai FinTech Summit
- Day 1 of 2: Filecoin (FIL) Developer Summit (Toronto)
- Day 1 of 2: Latest in DeFi Research (TLDR) Conference (New York)
- Day 1 of 3: ACI’s 9th Annual Legal, Regulatory, and Compliance Forum on Fintech & Emerging Payment Systems (New York)
- May 13: Blockchain Futurist Conference (Toronto)
- May 13: ETHWomen (Toronto)
- May 14-16: CoinDesk’s Consensus 2025 (Toronto)
- May 19-25: Dutch Blockchain Week (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
- May 20-22: Avalanche Summit London
- May 20-22: Seamless Middle East Fintech 2025 (Dubai)
- May 21-22: Crypto Expo Dubai
- May 21-22: Cryptoverse Conference (Warsaw, Poland)
- May 27-29: Bitcoin 2025 (Las Vegas)
- May 27-30: Web Summit Vancouver (Vancouver, British Columbia)
- May 29: Stablecon (New York)
- May 29-30: Litecoin Summit 2025 (Las Vegas)
Token Talk
By Shaurya Malwa
- Animal-themed memecoins are surging.
- A speculative frenzy has gripped popular memecoins from 2024, with prices for tokens like cat-themed MICHI, hippo-themed MOODENG and squirrel-themed PNUT all more than doubling since Saturday.
- That has helped alleviate some losses for the tokens. which took a 90% drawdown from peak prices in 2024, mainly around October and November.
- Talk of a "Cat Coin Supercycle” narrative has gained steam among some crypto circles on X. This suggests renewed retail investor enthusiasm, likely fueled by viral social media activity.
- Cat token mog (MOG) appears to have put the frenzy into gear, jumping over 130% last week as technology entrepreneurs from Ycombinator’s Garry Tan to Elon Musk changing their profile pictures on X to one referencing the token.
- Traders looking for short-term speculative bets may keep an eye on the animal and cat memecoin sectors, especially as the price moves bring more eyeballs — and demand — to these tokens.
Derivatives Positioning
- While BTC has largely traded between $104K-$106K in the past 24 hours, perpetual futures open interest on offshore exchanges has increased to nearly $20 billion from $18 billion.
- The growth shows the market is building energy during the consolidation and an eventual breakout could be a violent one.
- Global aggregated funding rates remain positive for BTC and ETH, pointing to bullish sentiment.
- TRX, XMR, TAO, BTC and HYPE have seen net positive cumulative volume delta for the past 24 hours, a sign of net buying pressure in the market.
- In Deribit’s options market, SOL traders chased upside with the $200 call option expiring on June 27.
- BTC traders bought the $120K call expiring at the end of June and sold higher strike calls in longer duration expiries.
Market Movements
- BTC is up 1.21% from 4 p.m. ET Friday at $104,445.95 (24hrs: -0.16%)
- ETH is up 8.81% at $2,546.56 (24hrs: +1.43%)
- CoinDesk 20 is up 4.27% at 3,265.29 (24hrs: +1.18%)
- Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is up 10 bps at 3.23%
- BTC funding rate is at 0.0072% (7.8687% annualized) on Binance
- DXY is up 1.14% at 101.48
- Gold is down 3.22% at $3,219.31/oz
- Silver is down 1.54% at $32.23/oz
- Nikkei 225 closed +0.38% at 37,644.26
- Hang Seng closed +2.98% at 23,549.46
- FTSE is up 0.48% at 8,595.81
- Euro Stoxx 50 is up 2.01% at 5,416.72
- DJIA closed on Friday -0.29% at 41,249.38
- S&P 500 closed unchanged at 5,659.91
- Nasdaq closed unchanged at 17,928.92
- S&P/TSX Composite Index closed +0.41% at 25,357.74
- S&P 40 Latin America closed +0.83% at 2,578.58
- U.S. 10-year Treasury rate is up 5 bps at 4.44%
- E-mini S&P 500 futures are up 2.82% at 5838.25
- E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are up 3.81% at 20,904.00
- E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are up 2.16% at 42,216.00
Bitcoin Stats
- BTC Dominance: 62.77 (-0.60%)
- Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.2448 (+1.39%)
- Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 897 EH/s
- Hashprice (spot): $55.70
- Total Fees: 3.43 BTC / $357,259
- CME Futures Open Interest: 149,160 BTC
- BTC priced in gold: 31.9 oz
- BTC vs gold market cap: 9.04%
Technical Analysis
- The total market cap of all cryptocurrencies, excluding BTC and ETH, has topped the 200-day simple moving average (SMA).
- The breakout indicates positive outlook for altcoins, in general.
Crypto Equities
- Strategy (MSTR): closed on Friday at $416.03 (+0.4%), up 2.59% at $426.80 in pre-market
- Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $199.32 (-3.48%), up 4.96% at $209.20
- Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at $0.03 (0%)
- MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $15.76 (+10.29%), up 4.44% at $16.46
- Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $8.48 (+0.47%), up 4.83% at $8.89
- Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $9.32 (-1.38%), up 5.69% at $9.85
- CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $9.2 (+5.99%), up 5.11% at $9.67
- CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $15.55 (+0.13%), up 5.98% at $16.48
- Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $34.79 (-1.28%), up 9.95% at $38.25
- Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $50.13 (+17.98%), up 3.73% at $52
ETF Flows
- Daily net flows: $321.4 million
- Cumulative net flows: $41.2 billion
- Total BTC holdings ~ 1.17 million
- Daily net flows: $17.6 million
- Cumulative net flows: $2.49 billion
- Total ETH holdings ~ 3.46 million
Source: Farside Investors
Overnight Flows
Chart of the Day
- The chart shows the market cap for USDC, the world’s second-largest dollar-pegged stablecoin, has declined from $62.28 billion to $60.68 billion.
- Meanwhile, the market cap for Tether’s USDT, its larger rival, has risen further, greasing the crypto market rally.
While You Were Sleeping
- Military Officials of India, Pakistan to Discuss Next Steps, India Says, as Ceasefire Holds (Reuters): India may retaliate for future ceasefire violations after sending a hotline message Sunday about alleged breaches of the prior day’s truce, a senior military official said.
- Metaplanet Overtakes El Salvador With $126M Bitcoin Purchase (CoinDesk): Asia’s biggest corporate holder of bitcoin bought 1,241 BTC for 18.4 billion yen ($126 million), raising its holdings to 6,796 BTC and surpassing El Salvador’s total.
- Ethereum Staking Giant Lido Loses Just 1.4 ETH in Hacking Attempt (CoinDesk): Ethereum’s largest liquid-staking protocol escaped with only minor gas fee theft, with no user funds affected, after a key at validator Chorus One was compromised.
- Privacy-Focused Zcash Tops Key Resistance Above $40 to Flash Bull Signal (CoinDesk): On Sunday, Zcash (ZEC) reached $45.80 on HTX, its highest since Jan. 26, after trading in a narrow range since February, suggesting potential for further gains.
- China Courts Lula and Latin America After Trump’s Tariff Shock (The New York Times): China is positioning itself as both an economic partner and counterweight to U.S. influence, with a senior official saying Latin Americans want self-determination, not a new “Monroe Doctrine.”
- Traders Bet the Euro’s Ascent Is a Tidal Wave in the Making (Bloomberg): Deutsche Bank, which just months ago predicted the euro would dip below dollar parity, now expects it to climb to $1.20 this year and $1.30 by 2027.
In the Ether
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