Bitcoin Surges as US Seeks to Ease Trade, Fed Tensions

Bitcoin continued to climb after US President Donald Trump said he had no intention of firing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, easing concerns over the central bank’s autonomy, Bloomberg reported.
The largest cryptocurrency rose about 3% before trimming some gains to exchange hands at $93,804 at 7:28 a.m. in London on Wednesday. Smaller tokens including Ether, XRP and Solana also rose.
Bitcoin topped $90,000 on April 22 in a sign it was breaking free of a longstanding tendency to move in the same direction as US stocks. But the token then rose in line with stocks and the dollar after Trump’s comments on Powell and amid optimism that trade tensions may be easing. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told a closed-door investor summit Tuesday that the tariff standoff with China cannot be sustained by both sides and that the world’s two largest economies will have to find ways to de-escalate.
US-listed Bitcoin exchange-traded funds took in a combined $936 million on Tuesday, the third-highest inflow for the group this year.
Another boost for crypto came in the form of a report that Cantor Fitzgerald LP, Tether Holdings Ltd. and SoftBank Group are in talks to form a $3 billion vehicle that would absorb billions of dollars in cryptocurrency.
But the crypto rally might be headed for a correction by the end of the week, said Stefan von Haenisch, director of over-the-counter trading in Asia Pacific for crypto custody firm Bitgo Inc. The market “has rallied relentlessly and feels a bit overbought here,” he said, adding that a correction to at least $88,000 for Bitcoin “would not be unexpected.”
QR Capital, a Brazil-based crypto asset manager, said in a note that it had observed “a sharp decline in spot trading volume on centralized exchanges, with a shift of liquidity towards the futures market.”
That suggests investors “are seeking leverage for more aggressive positions in crypto,” it added. “While this denotes confidence, it also raises the risk of sharp corrective moves: an excess of leveraged positions could trigger cascading liquidations if there is a sudden reversal in market sentiment.”