First Mover Americas: Bitcoin Hits 9-Month High

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Bitcoin continued to rally early Tuesday, building on Monday's gains, with an 18% increase over the past 24 hours. The world's largest cryptocurrency broke the $25,000 mark following the release of U.S. inflation data. The cryptocurrency has since reached around $26,200, a nine-month high. Over $100 million worth of bitcoin shorts, or bets against a rise in prices, were liquidated on Monday. Ether also gained on Tuesday, up 10%, and crypto exchange OKEx’s OKB token rose 25%.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced former White House official Carole House as the new chairwoman and blockchain analysis company TRM Labs' Ari Redboard as vice chairman of its Technology Advisory Committee. The CFTC published a list of its members to the committee on Monday, announcing the committee had been newly constituted and is being sponsored by Commissioner Christy Goldsmith Romero, who took office last March. "To protect our markets from increasingly-sophisticated cyberattacks, to ensure responsible development of digital assets in a way that protects customers and to ensure that the implications of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence are well understood, the Commission requires advice from technology experts," Goldsmith Romero said in a statement.

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has officially suspended trading for the binance USD (BUSD) stablecoin, according to a tweet on Monday. The exchange announced its intention to delist BUSD in February with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong citing liquidity concerns. The decision came after Paxos Trust, the company that issues BUSD, stopped minting the stablecoin as a result of regulatory action by the New York Department of Financial Services and, reportedly, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Chart of the Day

• The chart shows the combined market capitalization of the top three dollar-pegged stablecoins – USDT, USDC and BUSD – continues to slide despite bitcoin's 25% recovery from late Friday lows near $19,550.
• The divergence reflects investor preference for assets detached from traditional finance.
• Three U.S. banks have collapsed within a week, bringing attention to bitcoin as a censorship-resistant non-sovereign alternative asset that cannot be debased.

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