Bitcoin inflows across all exchanges have been net negative since last July, as there have been total net outflows of 46,000 BTC, worth around $1.8 billion at current prices. Analytics firm Glassnode attributes the current relatively low inflows to “the scale of market uncertainty at present,” and suggests that crypto markets have shifted to derivatives trading over spot sells in order to hedge risk.
Credit Suisse short-term rate strategist, Zoltan Pozsar, has written that the U.S. is in a commodity crisis. The impact is opening the door to a new world monetary order that could weaken the current dollar-based system, leading to increased inflation in the West. Pozsar, a former Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury official, acknowledged this crisis could benefit Bitcoin when the dust settles. “This crisis is not like anything we have seen since President Nixon took the U.S. dollar off gold in 1971."
Investment firm Bain Capital ($155 billion in AUM), announced a $560 million fund focusing on the crypto ecosystem. Bain Capital Crypto is broadly interested in the DeFi and Web 3, however the fund has a narrower focus on protocols and the native tokens that power them.
HIVE Blockchain has become the latest miner to sign a deal to buy ASIC chips from semiconductor manufacturer Intel for new custom mining devices. HIVE expects the new devices will nearly double its aggregate Bitcoin mining hash rate from 1.9 to 3.8 Eh/s.
U.S. stocks and oil swung wildly on headlines related to the war in Ukraine.
The S&P 500 turned slightly higher in a day that the saw the benchmark fluctuate between a gain of as much as 1.8% and losses that reached 1%.
U.S. imports of foreign goods in January climbed on higher vehicle and energy shipments ahead of the Russia-Ukraine crisis while exports fell, widening the trade deficit to a new record of $89.7 billion. The foreign-trade gap in goods and services expanded 9.4% from the prior month in January, according to the Commerce Department.
President Joe Biden said the U.S. will ban imports of Russian fossil fuels including oil, a major escalation of Western efforts to hobble Russia’s economy that will further strain global crude markets.