Bitcoin Slumps as Investors Anticipate U.S. CPI Data

GB Market Commentary 10/03/2022

by Marcus Sotiriou

The crypto markets performed well yesterday, as Biden ‘s executive order laid out clear steps for a path towards regulating the industry whilst protecting innovation., and South Korea elected a president called Lee Jae-myung whom is crypto friendly. Some policies that have been proposed by Jae-myung are issuing tokenised securities in order to allow people to benefit from real estate appreciation, to establish a monitoring agency, and to bring back initial coin offerings (ICO), which the country banned in 2017.

However, Bitcoin slumped this morning as Wednesday’s positive day turned into a convictionless rally. This has been the case for every rally since the start of the year, as investors have been preparing for the end of QE, which was yesterday. Today, U.S. CPI data for the month of February will be released which is a highly anticipated event. Month-over-month inflation is expected to be at 0.8%. This is higher than the increase of 0.6% inflation from January, which would show that inflation is accelerating. A higher than expected reading could lead to a further fall in global markets, as investors may price in aggressive monetary policy from the Federal Reserve. A lower than expected reading may have an opposite effect.

Enterprise adoption in Africa is set to surge as crypto start-up Basqet announced the launch of a payments gateway which will allow businesses to accept Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as payment.Basqet said that it is launching a public beta and will be going live with 118 businesses, who are already signed up to start accepting payments in several cryptocurrencies.

Before their beta launch Basqet have settled around $1.3 million dollars in transactions with a handful of businesses. One of the biggest issues around crypto payments is volatility of cryptocurrencies. Basqet aim to resolve this is by settling payments in US dollars, crypto, and over 5 other local African currencies to avoid any significant price fluctuations. Merchants that sign up for Basqet’s beta launch can do so very easily - it takes just 10 minutes for a business to sign up generate a payment link and send it via WhatsApp, Instagram or any other channel to their customer. I think this usability and ease of access is what is required for crypto to reach mainstream adoption in the payments sector.