Inflation eases
What's being bought and sold*
TOP TRENDING ASSETS
*Trading activity in the past 24 hours on the Uphold platform, as of 8 a.m.12th March 2025.
The combined total of buy and sell percentages can exceed 100% due to customers who engage in both buying and selling the same asset within the 24-hour time frame.
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What’s up
In Time For St. Patty's Day, Crypto Greens
The monthly consumer price index (CPI) numbers came out today at 8:30 a.m. (EST) and the headline take-away was a welcome surprise: On an annualized basis, the inflation rate (in February) was 2.8%, less than the 2.9% that most economists had expected.
As of 9 a.m. (EST), Bitcoin was roughly $84,000 on a gain of 4% in 24 hours. BTC gained 1% in the sixty minutes ending 9 a.m. (EST).
XRP and Dogecoin each surged 7%-9% over the past day as of then.
Stock futures were green. Tesla shares got a boost on Tuesday after a mini EV showroom was set up in the driveway of the White House.
Meanwhile, President Trump perplexingly has ramped up his rhetoric about Canada becoming America's 51st state, an unlikely scenario that Trump keeps promoting, couching it as the simplest way to ease the trade tensions he instigated.
What's down
Chaotic Trade Policy Vexes Business Leaders
President Trump met with 100 or so American CEOs yesterday behind closed doors at a meeting of the Business Roundtable. These leaders arrived hoping to come away with a clearer sense of what to expect as far as the tariff strategy going forward.
But Trump didn't come through with a clear message and leaders left as flummoxed as they were going in, per reports.
"The trouble with trade wars is once they start they can get out of control," the Wall Street Journal warns.
Yesterday saw the Nasdaq close down 13.6% from its record high in December.
What's next
The United States Of Bitcoin?
At yet another crypto industry gathering held in Washington, D.C., a litany of lawmakers, lobbyists and entrepreneurs stressed the case there is no time like the present for the U.S. to take a leadership role in Bitcoin adoption.
“I think we’re at this inflection point where the geopolitical aspects of Bitcoin start to become extremely important," said Matthew Pines, executive director of the Bitcoin Policy Institute (BPI), a D.C.-based think tank and host of the event, dubbed "Bitcoin For America."
"The race is on," Pines added, referring to what he describes as an inevitable push by more world leaders to follow the lead of the Trump administration which last week announced plans for a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.
An "America First" crypto stance was a theme echoed by a few speakers, including Vivek Ramaswamy, who was once in line to co-head the Department of Government Efficiency and currently is running to be governor of Ohio, as well as Senator Cynthia Lummis, a Republican from Wyoming and among the staunchest crypto supporters in the land.
“This really is freedom money,” said Sen. Lummis of satoshis. “And America should lead when it comes to freedom money.”
Putting "jingoistic overtones" aside, as Bitcoin Magazine noted, many of the speakers underscored how a U.S. push into BTC ultimately benefits everybody.
A win-win for the world was the vision conveyed by the ultimate BTC champion, Michael Saylor, who is the executive chairman of Strategy, a Bitcoin hoarding vehicle that was once a business intelligence software company known as MicroStrategy. Saylor wants the U.S. to become synonymous with the world's largest crypto.
“Everybody who is living in Asia and in Africa would move to the U.S. if they could,” Saylor asserted. “They’d move their money to the U.S. if they could. They want the currency of the U.S., they want the security, the values, but they can’t have it. So the second-best thing that they can have is the chance to move their money into Bitcoin.”
