Blockchain data shows the Japanese treasury firm moved the bitcoin between wallets it controls, not to an exchange, so the transfer isn't a sale despite its $1.4 billion paper loss.
A mid-day check on crypto markets show bitcoin giving up early-day gains in the U.S. session and falling towards the lower end of its tight trading range.
At 12:00 Eastern time, it traded at $63,350, largely flat over the past 24 hours but down 1.6% from the session highs before this morning’s U.S. CPI report. BTC has been trading in a narrow range between $62,000 and $66,000 over the past five weeks, and the inflation data matching expectations did not provide the fuel the break out in either direction from that band.
XRP (XRP), meanwhile, is teetering on the brink of falling below the $1 level, which has been holding since November 2024. Among larger cryptocurrencies, Hyperliquid’s native token (HYPE) and Near Protocol’s NEAR (NEAR) stood out with more than 4% gains, while Uniswap’s UNI (UNI) fell 5%.
Looking at traditional markets, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 pared early-session gains, but were 0.2% and 0.7% higher from Tuesday’s close. Gold was holding above $4,400 an ounce, near its two-month highs.
WhiteFiber (WYFI) and Nebius (NBIS) shares both jumped around 15% after strong Q2 results. WhiteFiber revenue rose 54% to $28.8 million, supported by initial billing at NC-1, its flagship North Carolina data center with 40 megawatts contracted and potential expansion to 300 megawatts.
Nebius revenue surged 454% to $582.3 million, while adjusted EBITDA swung to $236.2 million. Investors welcomed accelerating AI demand, new contracts and expanding capacity, despite continued net losses and heavy capital spending.
Wednesday’s in-line CPI report avoided the upside surprise that could have rattled risk assets, but inflation remains too hot to give the Fed an all-clear, analysts said.
Headline inflation at 3.4% remains well above the Fed’s target, while energy prices are nearly 15% higher than a year ago, noted Daniela Hathorn, senior market analyst at Capital.com. That should keep inflation front and center after Fed Chair Kevin Warsh stressed the need to prevent elevated prices from damaging the economy.
Hathorn said markets now price roughly 60% odds of no change in September versus 40% for a 25 basis-point hike. A month ago, market participants saw only 30% chance of a pause versus 70% odds for hiking rates, according to CME FedWatch.
For crypto, the report takes an immediate inflation shock off the table without offering much fuel for a breakout. Ryan Lee, chief analyst at Bitget Research, said the print “neither forces a hawkish re-pricing nor delivers a clear dovish catalyst,” leaving bitcoin traders to focus on ETF flows, liquidity and derivatives positioning while awaiting Jackson Hole and more inflation data.
Iggy Ioppe, CIO at Theo, struck a similar note, arguing that keeping rates unchanged still amounts to effective easing given current inflation and labor-market conditions and should support risk assets over the medium term.
US stock futures rose Wednesday as strong AI earnings lifted sentiment before today's inflation data.
CoreWeave surged 16% after hours on booming AI-compute demand and Super Micro rallied 7.6% on a revenue forecast that topped the highest estimates, pushing Nasdaq 100 futures up 0.3%. Korea's Kospi jumped 4%, with Samsung and SK Hynix both up about 6%.
The bigger event lands at 8:30am ET, when July CPI is expected to show headline inflation easing to 3.4% from 3.5%.
It's the first inflation read since the weak jobs report cut September rate-hike odds to about 36%, and a soft print would firm the case for the Fed to hold.
Metaplanet shifted 3,881 BTC, worth about $247 million, across several transactions over three hours on Wednesday, per Arkham data.
The move went from the company's cold wallets to new addresses it also controls, not to an exchange.
Transfers to fresh self-custody wallets don't add to tradable supply the way deposits to an exchange do, so on their own they aren't selling.
Metaplanet has done this before. It moved nearly 5,000 BTC in March in the same pattern, test transactions followed by larger amounts into new wallets, and analysts then read it as internal custody reshuffling rather than distribution. Nothing in Wednesday's on-chain data points anywhere different.
Metaplanet bought its roughly 43,000 BTC at an average of about $96,000, so with bitcoin near $63,600 the company is sitting on an unrealized loss of about $1.4 billion, down 34%.
$BTC Metaplanet has been one of the most aggressive corporate buyers since April 2024, with a stated target of 210,000 BTC.