Ever-changing moods

Investors' attitudes adjusted but whipsaw conditions persist in the markets. Bitcoin rose 6%, momentarily getting above $82,000, although the largest crypto remains in the red relative to seven days ago. BTC was $81.6K when we checked it at about 9 a.m. (EST). 

Stocks boomed on Wednesday after Trump announced a 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs while still leaving in place across-the-board 10% levies and ramping up an already contentious spat with China. The Dow finished up historically huge yesterday. Dow futures today are down.

Overlooked somewhat in the past week of tariff-related mayhem was Ripple's announcement it was buying a prime broker, Hidden Road, for $1.25 billion. It's Ripple's largest-ever acquisition and represents one of the biggest deals in the crypto space so far this year. And it harkens to a widening out of the ledger technology company's mission to digitally remake the financial landscape. Hidden Road plans to use Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin as collateral across its prime brokerage products (CNBC).

XRP, the token associated with Ripple, surged 11% as it reclaimed $2. XRP's spot price increase was recorded over 24 hours as of 9:07 a.m. (EST), per CoinGecko.

The rollercoaster ride isn't over yet. Trump's decision to largely (but not entirely) reverse course on tariffs led the stock market to come roaring back. But there are fresh signs of more turbulence brewing. 

Unnerving bond market volatility was not a direct reason for the tariff pause but it did add "a little more urgency" to the decision, confirms Kevin Hassett, director of the U.S. National Economic Council.

Between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, the 10-year Treasury yield spiked incongruously above 4.5%. Were it true that U.S. government-issued IOUs represented safety in a storm, as has historically been the case, yields would have been falling, not rising, considering the tariff turmoil and the plunge in the stock market that was happening at the time.

Now comes word that, indeed, Japan and China may have been selling U.S. government bonds, Reuters said.

As of this morning, the 10-year yield had fallen to 4.3%.

We'd actually forgotten about the whole Signal controversy. No, no, not the one involving high-ranking U.S. officials discussing an airstrike on Yemen; rather, the time back in 2021 when the encrypted messaging app came under fire over the integration of its privacy-focused MobileCoin, now called Sentz, because of concerns over the potential for conflicts of interest.

Flash forward to today and there's Telegram encouraging the use of Toncoin, a coin connected with Telegram's founders. Meanwhile, the industry continues to speculate that Elon Musk might one day turn X into an "everything app" that could include the promotion of an in-house token, although, as Cointelegraph noted, Musk denies this. Of course, Dogecoin enthusiasts have long dreamed of the day that the biggest-cap memecoin would in some way be woven into the fabric of the Musk-owned social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

Making headlines this morning is former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey who has just publicly (via a post on X) prodded Signal to integrate Bitcoin for P2P payments. Dorsey’s sentiment was shared by former PayPal president David Marcus.

“All non-transactional apps should connect to Bitcoin,” Marcus said.

Cointelegraph said these endorsements reflect "a growing push to promote BTC as a functional payment system rather than just digital gold or a pure store of value."