First Mover Americas: Bitcoin Tops $66K as Interest-Rate Cuts Loom

This article originally appeared in First Mover, CoinDesk’s daily newsletter, putting the latest moves in crypto markets in context. Subscribe to get it in your inbox every day.

Bitcoin is priced at around $66,200, up about 6% in the last 24 hours, following its best day in two months. BTC rose more than 7.5% on Wednesday after U.S. inflation data raised the probability of an interest-rate cut by the Fed in coming months. Like other risk assets, BTC is sensitive to expected changes in the monetary policy of major central banks and rallies when the cost of borrowing is forecast to decline. Markets also expect the Bank of England and European Central Bank to cut rates in June. The broader digital asset market has risen over 6% in the last 24 hours, as measured by CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20).

Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) plans to offer spot bitcoin trading in response to demand from clients, according to the Financial Times. Already the top bitcoin futures exchange, CME is aiming to take on the likes of Binance and Coinbase, who dominate the spot market. “Crypto exchanges might lose some business with the potential debut of a bitcoin spot market on the CME, a global derivatives giant, as the present bull run is particularly driven by institutions, who prefer to trade on regulated avenues," Markus Thielen, founder of 10x Research, said. The spot trading business could be run through the EBC currency trading venue in Switzerland, the report added.

ShibaSwap, the decentralized exchange associated with meme coin Shiba Inu has expanded to Ethereum layer 2 Shibarium. Users can now float new liquidity pools on Shibarium, allowing traders to swap tokens on the network and earn a cut of trading fees for providing liquidity. The developers said the increased use of the Shibarium blockchain for transactions will result in a higher burn rate for the SHIB token, reducing supply. The SHIB price has risen 8.8% in the past 24 hours, in line with the broader market jump. “The more transactions will run on Shibarium blockchain, the more the protocol will burn base gas fees which will impact the overall burn rate of $SHIB,” they said.

- Omkar Godbole