In April, the U.S. CPI inflation decreased to 4.9%, Bitcoin increased to over $28,000
According to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on Wednesday morning, the annual U.S. inflation rate slowed down to 4.9% in April, which was below economist forecasts of 5.0% and a decrease from March’s rate of 5.0%.
Following this news, the price of Bitcoin (BTC) rose by over 1% to just above $28,000.
For the month of April, the CPI increased by 0.4%, which was in line with expectations, but higher than March’s rate of 0.1%. Meanwhile, the core CPI, which excludes food and energy costs, rose by 0.4% in April, matching economist forecasts and March’s rate. The annual core CPI rate for April was 5.5%, which was below economist forecasts of 5.5% and March’s rate of 5.6%.
At its most recent meeting in May, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) of the U.S. Federal Reserve indicated that it is considering at least a pause in its ongoing rate increases, which have taken the benchmark fed funds rate from about 0% in early 2022 to the current targeted range of 5.0%-5.25%.
Despite the fast pace of rate hikes, inflation has remained above the Fed’s 2% target. However, the central bank is also monitoring the growing troubles in the U.S. banking system, including the failure of several regional lenders such as First Republic Bank.
Traders are now speculating that the modest moderation in inflation seen in the CPI report may give the Fed more room to adopt an easier monetary policy.
As a result, the yield on the U.S. 10-year Treasury has decreased by seven basis points to 3.45%, while the 2-year yield has fallen by nine basis points to 3.94%.
In Q1, Tether announced a profit of $1.48 billion and disclosed its reserves of Bitcoin and gold
Tether, the stablecoin issuer, has released its latest attestation, revealing a net profit of $1.48 billion in Q1, double the previous quarter’s earnings.
In addition, the company has disclosed the details of its Bitcoin and gold holdings for the first time, with Bitcoin making up approximately 2% of its reserves and gold comprising about 4%.
Tether’s USDT stablecoin has been one of the most stable in the $131 billion stablecoin market, increasing its market capitalization by 24% since the start of the year, while several other stablecoins lost their dollar pegs.
Tether’s Q1 attestation, signed by BDO Italia, showed that the company held $2.44 billion in excess reserves of the $79.4 billion Tether-issued tokens in circulation.
Tether has been criticized in the past for a lack of transparency about its reserve assets, but in the latest report, the company has introduced new categories in the reserve breakdown to provide greater transparency to users.
The floor price of a Milady NFT experiences a significant surge after it is tweeted by Elon Musk
On Wednesday, Twitter CEO Elon Musk delighted fans of the Miladys non-fungible token (NFT) collection by sharing a meme featuring one of the avatar NFTs overlayed with the words “There is no meme, I love you”.
This caused the collection to quickly become the top trending item on the NFT marketplace, OpenSea.
The floor price of the collection briefly reached an all-time high of 7.3 ETH (approximately $13,700), before dropping to 5.6 ETH at the time of press.
Over the past seven days, there has been a 59% increase in the floor price of the Miladys collection, which consists of 9,823 NFTs featuring wide-eyed childlike faces.
Despite its innocent imagery, the collection has been mired in controversy due to conspiracy theories and slurs shared by the project’s creator, Charlotte Fang, also known as Charlie Fang or Charlemagne.
Remilia, the company behind the project, admitted that its CEO was responsible for an offensive Twitter account and other posts and has since left the project.
