Yesterday's US inflation data came as a strong surprise to the markets, strengthening the case for the Federal Reserve to extend a pause on interest rate cuts.
US Consumer Price Index (CPI) for January (YoY): 3.0% (forecast: 2.9%, previous: 2.9%)
US monthly CPI (MoM): 0.5% (forecast: 0.3%, previous: 0.4%)
Market expectations for Fed rate cuts have shifted from September to late 2025, pushing Treasury yields higher - the 10-year rose 9bps to 4.63% and the 2-year 7bps to 4.36%.
Higher inflation readings initially prompted a sell-off in risk assets including crypto, possibly as prolonged high interest rates increase the attractiveness of fixed-income investments relative to more speculative assets. Bitcoin dropped to $94,200 following the inflation report but rebounded sharply, reaching a high of $98,100 within a few hours. BTC is currently trading at $96,145, almost unchanged from 24h ago. The swift recovery suggested that traders had already priced in the potential for negative inflation data.
Key US economic releases scheduled for 14:30 CET today include the US Producer Price Index (PPI), a measure of manufacturing inflation, and US weekly Initial Jobless Claims data.
The global crypto market cap is $3.18tn, a 0.63% increase over the last day, while the total crypto market 24h volume increased 32.26% to $133.02bn.
Crypto liquidations came in at $311.21m over the last 24 hours, with BTC long positions leading.
On Feb 12, crypto ETFs maintained their outflow trend, with Bitcoin ETFs seeing net outflows of $251m and Ether ETFs experiencing net outflows of $40.9m, reversing the previous day's $12.6m inflows.
In their Q4 2024 Quarterly Earnings Commentary dated Feb 12 2025, CME Group, a US derivatives exchange, reported record average daily trading volume (ADV) of 197,000 contracts ($10 billion notional) in their crypto products. This included quarterly ADV records for Bitcoin and Ether futures, as well as Micro Bitcoin and Micro Ether futures, and represents a 307% increase from Q4 2023.
Crypto.com has received authorization under the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) to operate across all 30 European Economic Area (EEA) countries, following approval from the Malta Financial Services Authority on January 27, 2025.
BitPanda, an Austrian crypto exchange, received the Financial Conduct Authority approval on February 12 to operate in the UK market, allowing the exchange to offer and market crypto services to British investors while complying with UK anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing regulations.
SIX, the Swiss stock exchange group, has launched a Digital Collateral Service allowing financial institutions to use both crypto and traditional securities as collateral. The service will initially support seven major cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Avalanche, Cardano, Solana, XRP, and USDC) and plans to add more based on demand. The crypto collateral will be limited to crypto-related transactions involving ETP issuers, institutional traders, and crypto exchanges, but cannot be used for repo transactions or securities lending.
