What Does Yesterday's CPI Data Mean for the Market?

GB Market Commentary 13/04/2022

by Marcus Sotiriou

Bitcoin and the S&P 500 dropped yesterday after the U.S. CPI data from March was released. Year-over-year CPI was up 8.5%, which is more than the expected 8.4% and another record high CPI reading for the past 40 years. This is what grabbed the headlines, hence adding further concerns of a recession looming this year. However, I think the CPI data was bullish. This is because core CPI, which strips away gas and food, was up just 0.3% month-over-month, which is lower than the expected 0.5%. This signals that inflation is actually slowing down, as the factors that are not affected by the war are showing a decrease in month-over-month inflation.

The metaverse continues to see progress with institutional backing as HSBC has launched a metaverse fund for private banking clients in Hong Kong and Singapore. It is a mystery at this point what metaverse projects will be contained within the fund, but nonetheless, this is additional confirmation of the long-term potential of the metaverse and hence a bullish sign. HSBC initially showed interest in the metaverse by acquiring land in the Sandbox metaverse.

Last week, HBAR Foundation also announced support for the metaverse, as they are now attributing $250 million of HBAR tokens toward the development of metaverse projects on the Hedera Hashgraph blockchain.

A Vice President at HBAR Foundation said, “We see this whole metaverse area as a bit of a catch-all for the apps bringing in new users into Web 3. I see 2021 as the year of NFTs, and 2022 as the year of their enterprise applications.” I think enterprise applications may take longer to fully take off, but we are certainly seeing major strides now, and I expect institutional adoption to rise exponentially over the next 5 years.