Wednesday, Apr 12, 2023

US CPI, the FOMC minutes, the Ethereum Shapella upgrade, the IMF report, more BTC tailwinds… um, there’s a lot going on.

“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.” – Mark Twain ||

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WHAT I’M WATCHING

• CPI day. At 8:30amET, the US releases its inflation data for March. A lot is riding on this reading. More on this below.

• How about that rally? BTC is now up more than 80% year-to-date. That’s not bad at all, and there are further tailwinds building.

• Bitcoin mining. I wasn’t planning on addressing the NYT bitcoin mining article, but the thunder around it has gotten so loud that I now feel the misinformation deserves some attention. We knew bitcoin mining was misunderstood; it turns out that energy distribution is, also. More on this below.

• Shapella day. The latest Ethereum upgrade is expected to go live at around 22:30 UTC tonight. While no strong price moves are expected, excitement is building, as it should – it still astonishes me that we can watch such significant technological progress live while monitoring relevant asset prices. Here’s a good Watch Guide.

MARKETS

How sticky is sticky?

Soon after this email lands in your inbox, we’ll know the CPI reading for March. This set of data is particularly significant as the Fed has been tightening now for just over a year and has not seen the rapid drop in inflation that it hoped for. Expert opinions are divided as to whether this year will bring the key metric close to the official target of 2% - I’m in the camp that believes no, not even close. It will come down, especially as consumption drops, but structural factors are likely to keep some components persistently high.