logo
Bitcoin Volatility Fell To Lowest Since 2023 In July

Bitcoin Volatility Fell To Lowest Since 2023 In July

Forbes15 hours ago
Bitcoin's price volatility dropped to its lowest in more than a year in July, according to multiple measures of these fluctuations.
The cryptocurrency's annualized 60-day volatility fell to 28.53% on July 30, according to figures compiled by investment manager Blockforce Capital.
At this point, the measure was at its lowest value since August 28, 2023, additional figures provided by Blockforce Capital reveal.
The digital currency's annualized 30-day volatility also reached its lowest in over a year last month, dropping to 25.26% on July 23. At this level, the measure was at its most subdued value since October 15, 2023.
The chart below helps illustrate these developments:
The world's most prominent digital currency experienced these shifts in volatility during a month where its price fluctuated between less than $105,000 and more than $122,750, Coinbase figures from TradingView reveal.
It is also worth noting that these measures of bitcoin volatility fell to their lowest in over a year in a month where the crypto space in general benefited from significant progress.
Over the course of July, the U.S. House of Representatives passed three separate bills providing cryptocurrency regulations, and one of them, the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act (GENIUS Act), was signed into law by President Donald Trump.
Past that, the House declared 'Crypto Week' starting on Monday, July 14.
The crypto space benefited from additional progress during the month, as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission released guidance on exchange-traded products (ETPs) on July 1, which some experts predicted would result in a landslide in applications for these products.
SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce extended an olive branch to the crypto/blockchain space when she issued a statement on tokenizing securities on July 9, which invited industry participants to meet with members of the agency.
All in all, the crypto space's regulatory backdrop became a bit more clear, making it easier for entrepreneurs, investors and other industry participants to make well-informed decisions.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Trump Says He 'Probably' Won't Run For President Again
Trump Says He 'Probably' Won't Run For President Again

Time​ Magazine

time2 minutes ago

  • Time​ Magazine

Trump Says He 'Probably' Won't Run For President Again

President Donald Trump said he would 'probably' not run for president again after his second term in an interview with CNBC on Tuesday. The remark came in response to a question from the hosts of 'Squawk Box' about whether he would run for a third term, which the Constitution forbids, to which Trump replied: 'No. Probably not. I'd like to run. I have the best poll numbers I've ever had. You know why? Because people love the tariffs.' Trump was immediately fact-checked by host Joe Kernen, who pushed back that Trump has the best poll numbers among Republicans, not the general public. Trump responded that he had 'a lot of fake polls.' In late July, TIME reported that Trump's poll numbers had hit new lows, with a Gallup poll showing his approval ratings at 37% among U.S. adults. His support has dropped significantly among Independents, who cited the budget, Ukraine and foreign trade. His standing with Republicans had remained in the high 80s, though, steady throughout his second term. Trump's comments come after he has teased running for a third term throughout the first six months of his second. In some interviews, he has refused to rule out the possibility of running again, despite the 22nd Amendment of the U.S. Constitution only allowing presidents to serve two terms in office. 'A lot of people want me to do it,' Trump said in a March interview with NBC News. He added that 'there are methods which you could do it.' Many of Trump's supporters have been encouraged by the idea and have taken to chanting 'four more years' at his events. In April, the Trump Organization began selling 'Trump 2028' caps on its merchandising website, as well as t-shirts that say 'Trump 2028 (Rewrite the Rules),' In other interviews, however, Trump has denied he would seek a third term. In an April 22 interview with TIME, Trump said: 'I'd rather not discuss that now, but as you know, there are some loopholes that have been discussed that are well known. But I don't believe in loopholes.' In a May NBC interview, he added that he would rather look to other leaders in the party, including his Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The phone interview with CNBC covered Trump's tariffs, import taxes, Trump's decision to replace Fed Chair Jerome Powell, and the recent jobs report that led to Trump firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Threats of 250% pharma tariffs Trump said that in addition to his plans to roll out tariffs on semiconductors and chips—the announcement of which he said will come 'within the next week or so'—he also wants to eventually roll out a massive tariff on pharmaceuticals to boost domestic production. 'On pharmaceuticals, we'll be putting an initially small tariff on pharmaceuticals, but in one year, one and a half years, maximum, it's going to go to 150% and then it's going to go to 250% because we want pharmaceuticals made in our country,' Trump said, threatening the highest rate thus far on the product. This news comes after a May Executive Order from Trump that directed the U.S. Department of Health and Services, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies to reduce drug prices, which he doubled down on in late July after he sent letters to 17 drugmakers calling on them to commit to steps to lower U.S. drug prices by Sept. 29. Leaders in the pharmaceutical industry have warned, though, that these large levies will drive up drug prices. NATO leaders 'do whatever I want' Trump told CNBC hosts that the leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 'do whatever I want.' Tensions have risen as NATO attempts to work towards a ceasefire in Russia and Ukraine, telling NBC in July that the U.S. would work through the organization to help give weapons to Ukraine. Read More: The Trump Era of Flattery Diplomacy is Here In the same interview, Trump threatened the European Union with 35% tariffs if it failed to live up to a pledge to invest some $600 billion in the U.S., and also threatened India with higher tariffs, citing their buying of Russian oil. India, he says, has 'not been a good trading partner.' Trump had criticized India's buying of Russian oil on Truth Social on Monday, claiming he would 'substantially' raise tariffs as a result. 'They're fueling the war machine. And if they're going to do that, then I'm not going to be happy,' Trump said of India in the CNBC interview Tuesday. Jobs report was 'rigged' Last week, Trump directed his Administration to fire Erika McEntarfer, head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, following a report that showed that the U.S. added fewer jobs in July than many economists had expected, which indicated to economists that job growth stalled in the aftermath of several of Trump's controversial economic policies, including his volatile tariff policies. 'It's a highly political situation. It's totally rigged. Smart people know it. People with common sense know it,' Trump told CNBC, though host Kernan pushed back, telling Trump that this was a 'big leap' to call the report 'rigged.' 'Critics are going to say, 'Hey, he's picking a guy or a gal that's going to give him the numbers that he wants.' So it undermines confidence in the system to some extent,' Kernan told the President. Still, Trump defended his move. 'She's a very nice woman, but when they say that nobody was involved, that it wasn't political, give me a break.'

How Trump is reshaping government data
How Trump is reshaping government data

NBC News

time2 minutes ago

  • NBC News

How Trump is reshaping government data

Meteorological data collected by some weather balloons has been halted. Statistics for HIV among transgender people were scrubbed from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's website. And basic public figures, like how many people work for the federal government, have been frozen or delayed for months. Across the federal government, President Donald Trump has been wielding his influence over data used by researchers, economists and scientists, an effort that was playing out largely behind the scenes until Friday, when he fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The agency collects and publishes economic data, and Trump accused its former chief, Erika McEntarfer, of giving fake employment data last week showing a recent slowdown in the labor market. "The numbers were rigged. Biden wasn't doing well, he was doing poorly," Trump said in an interview on CNBC Tuesday, referring to the jobs numbers. Presidents of both political parties often seek to spin government data to their benefit, cherry-picking numbers that put their agendas in the best light possible. But McEntarfer's firing has drawn criticism from economists, Wall Street investors and even Republicans who are raising wider concerns about the continued reliability of government data once seen as the gold standard. 'We have to look somewhere for objective statistics. When the people providing the statistics are fired, it makes it much harder to make judgments that, you know, the statistics won't be politicized,' Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said in an interview. 'You can't really make the numbers different or better by firing the people doing the counting.' William Beach, whom Trump nominated for BLS commissioner in the last half of his first term, said in an interview with NBC News that the commissioner has no control over the results of the jobs report, which is compiled by a group of economists and statisticians. The commissioner doesn't see the data until it is locked into the system several days before its release, Beach said. "It's not currently possible for the commissioner to rig the data," he said. Trump has a history of seeking to distort hard numbers. In 2019, during his first term, he showed off a doctored hurricane model that included a Sharpie-like black swipe that made Alabama seem to be in Hurricane Dorian's path — when it wasn't. As the Covid-19 pandemic raged, Trump bemoaned how testing made the United States look as though it had more cases than other countries. 'Think of this: If we didn't do testing, instead of testing over 40 million people, if we did half the testing, we would have half the cases,' he said at a news conference at the White House. 'If we did another, you cut that in half; we would have, yet again, half of that. But the headlines are always 'testing.'' And the final days of his first term in office were spent refusing to accept the results of the 2020 presidential election, claiming falsely that there had been widespread voter fraud in his loss to Democrat Joe Biden. In his second term, the administration's efforts to target or control government data appear to be growing. After buyouts and staffing cuts, the National Weather Service stopped some of its weather balloon releases beginning in February, a measure that independent meteorologists say has left data gaps that have degraded forecasts. This spring, the National Centers for Environmental Information announced it would no longer track billion-dollar weather and climate disasters, something it had done since 1980. The administration also shuttered the National Climate Assessment's website in July after it told hundreds of volunteer scientists who were working on its 2027 report that it no longer needed them and ended funding for the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which had coordinated work on the federal report. The White House denied any effort to control data. 'President Trump is leading the most transparent administration in history,' said White House spokesman Kush Desai. 'Not only has the administration continued to share the data that's critical for policymakers, businesses, researchers, and everyday Americans, but we have taken historic steps to improve the reliability and accuracy of that data by re-examining how it's collected and distributed.' The White House said the NWS never lost confidence in weather model accuracy, and that the agency is looking at ways to improve the efficiency of weather balloon data collection and new satellite technology to improve forecasting models. The NWS continues to launch weather balloons daily, it said. In the CNBC interview Tuesday, Trump contradicted some data put out by his own government. He said that prices were falling — despite numbers released by the BLS last week showing inflation picking up in June. He said a gallon of gas was down to $2.20; the average price for a gallon of gas is $3.14, slightly up since when Trump entered office though lower than it was at this time a year ago, according to Energy Department data. Trump provided no evidence Friday that any data had been rigged when he fired McEntarfer hours after a government report showed that hiring had slowed significantly, making a revision to the number of jobs added over the previous two months. It isn't uncommon for the agency to revise numbers downward, but the revision last week was the largest since the start of the pandemic. At the same time, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has cut back on some data collection because of staffing issues. The agency has twice reduced the sample collection areas across the country for the monthly inflation report, suspending data collection entirely in Lincoln, Nebraska, and Provo, Utah. In July, it suspended data collection by roughly 15% across the 72 other areas. The reasoning was to 'align survey workload with resource levels.' The White House attributed these changes to the recently fired commissioner and said the Department of Labor only learned of these changes in the press. The Department of Labor, which oversees BLS, has been working to address staffing and other issues affecting data collection, it said. Economic officials in past administrations of both political parties have said improvements in government collection of data are needed because of budget cuts and falling response rates to government surveys. But they said there are no indications the BLS commissioner could be involved in changing the numbers for political purposes. Stephen Moore, a former Trump campaign adviser on economic issues, agreed with Trump's decision to replace McEntarfer and said he hopes a new leader could improve the accuracy of employment data. 'There's no doubt that since Covid, the job numbers have become more and more imprecise,' he said, citing a drop-off in survey response rates by the public and employers. But he doubted whether the poor job numbers were politically motivated — something Trump and his top economic adviser have alleged. 'It might be true, but there's no real evidence of that,' Moore said. The deputy commissioner of BLS, Bill Wiatrowski, who took up the role during the Obama administration, will become the acting chief while Trump looks for a replacement, who will have to be confirmed by the Senate. Other types of federal data haven't been updated for months. Immigration and Customs Enforcement used to provide a data dashboard of arrests, detentions and deportations, but it hasn't updated it since December. The White House said the Department of Homeland Security has been regularly putting out information on immigration enforcement actions by press release, in media appearances by top officials and on social media. A dataset that tracks how many people work for the federal government, broken down by gender, age and average salary, had been updated quarterly for decades until January, when it froze for months, making it difficult to understand how many people work in the federal government and what the impact of cuts by the Department of Government Efficiency have been. The first-quarter data was eventually published last month, four months late. Across public health agencies, the administration has been removing data, limiting data collection and sometimes issuing guidance that contradicts their own data — affecting not just government decision-making but also the ability for outside medical researchers, public health departments and doctors to give the best advice to patients and the public. 'The consequences from a health perspective to the loss of data will be severe,' said Richard Besser, former acting director of the CDC and current president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a nonprofit health foundation. 'If you can't trust the CDC's website, where can people go for that critical health information? That's the key question, and unfortunately, I don't have a good answer. And that worries me greatly.' The CDC scrubbed a swath of HIV-related content from its website in January to comply with Trump's executive orders on diversity, equity and inclusion, while continuing to put out total HIV statistics. It also temporarily withheld two weekly reports on bird flu that had been scheduled to be published Jan. 23 though the data was eventually released. In April, Reuters reported that, because of staffing cuts, the Consumer Product Safety Commission would stop collecting data via the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System about injuries from motor vehicle crashes, falls, alcohol, adverse drug effects, aircraft incidents and work-related incidents. Trump's embrace of government data can depend on which way it's trending. Several months ago, he was quick to herald the labor statistics when they were more favorable. 'GREAT JOB NUMBERS, FAR BETTER THAN EXPECTED. IT'S ALREADY WORKING. HANG TOUGH, WE CAN'T LOSE!!!' he wrote on social media when the number of jobs added in March exceeded expectations.

Tariffs, Now What? An Investor's Guide To Tariffs
Tariffs, Now What? An Investor's Guide To Tariffs

Forbes

time2 minutes ago

  • Forbes

Tariffs, Now What? An Investor's Guide To Tariffs

It's the most beautiful word in the English language. "Tariffs." Well, that is according to President Donald Trump. But what exactly is it? A tariff is a tax imposed on imported or foreign goods, thereby increasing their cost. Tariffs are not unique to the United States. Governments worldwide use tariffs to make their domestic products more competitive in the global marketplace and protect specific domestic industries against cheaper foreign alternatives. For the United States, which began heavily outsourcing manufacturing starting in the 1980s, tariffs are also a tool to incentivize a reshoring of domestic supply April 2, 2025, Trump announced much higher tariffs than expected on nearly all U.S. trading partners. It was his self-proclaimed "Liberation Day," though just four days later, the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average both fell by more than 10%. Facing rattled equity and bond markets, on April 9, Trump announced a 90-day pause for most of the tariffs he'd announced just a week earlier, except those against China. The weeks after this initial pause have been a rollercoaster. Although the S&P 500 has recovered all its losses from the post-Liberation Day drop, bond markets remain shaky. From seasoned investors and portfolio managers to ordinary individuals who only check their 401(k)s once a year, people should recognize that in a tariff-heavy environment, traditional equity and bond markets may struggle. As these traditional markets attempt to recalibrate to this new economy and speculate on the outcome, investors have options in the alternative investment space. Tariffs, Trade, and Private Equity Certain private equity (PE) investments offer a strategic advantage in volatile trade environments. According to KPMG's Q1'25 Pulse of Private Equity Report: "In this environment, PE firms are expected to concentrate activity in tariff-resilient sectors such as technology, business services, financial services, and healthcare — industries perceived as better positioned to weather global trade volatility." To speak on a few sectors mentioned in KPMG's report - For technology, tariffs on imported components, such as chips, may drive investment into U.S.-based manufacturing, cloud infrastructure, and cybersecurity, where private equity can provide capital growth. In the financial services sector, certain fintech platforms and private credit lenders operate with minimal exposure to foreign goods or global supply chains. There are several ways for investors to access these private equity markets. For example, private equity funds are available to investors. This option involves substantial risk though, as the fund's success relies on the manager's ability to create value and sell underlying companies to realize gains. Another option is the fund-of-funds or multi-manger funds. This option is similar to a private equity fund; however, the underlying portfolio consists not of individual companies but of other private equity funds. This approach allows broader diversification by providing access to multiple asset classes, sectors, investment strategies, and managers, all from a single investment. Regardless of the private equity investment, it is important to understand that these types of investments carry risks. They are generally illiquid and require an appropriate risk tolerance. They are also most suitable for investors with a relatively long time horizon. Tariff Talk On Real Estate While real estate rarely enters the conversation about tariffs, specific subsectors – particularly essential retail and industrial real estate – are uniquely positioned to weather the storm and, in some cases, potentially benefit from the tariff environment. In their May 2025 Investment Perspective, analysts at Lord Abbett noted, "Within the retail sector, our preference is for grocery-anchored shopping centers that benefit from necessity-based retailers. Marginal malls and power centers are most at risk from a strained consumer. We are keenly aware of possible tenant bankruptcies as retail margins and volumes are potentially squeezed due to tariffs." The types of businesses that didn't close during the 2020 Covid pandemic are the types that are still needed if the economy slows down. When looking at tariffs, you can use the same filter. Regardless of a tariff - is the item a must have or a like to have? Resilient cash flows continue to come in from tenants with stable demand (i.e., food, medicine), which are more likely to maintain financial consistency to pay their leases. While essential retail offers stability, industrial real estate offers opportunity. Warehousing, logistics centers, and "Last Mile" fulfillment centers have become increasingly important in a high-tariff environment to support domestic supply chains, transportation, and timely deliveries. Investors have the typical options of public or private REITs to access these sectors of the real estate market. Another option that pertains specifically to industrial real estate is the Zero-Coupon Delaware Statutory Trust (DST). In a Zero-Coupon DST, all cash flow is directed to service the property's debt. Zero-Coupon DSTs typically involve properties leased to high-credit tenants, such as large industrial distribution facilities. So, why would anyone invest in a DST that generates no income? The answer: tax advantages. Although a Zero-Coupon DST does not provide income for investors, it allows them to defer capital gains and other taxes owed from a property sale. Rather than paying the IRS, an investor can reinvest the proceeds into real estate using a 1031 exchange. Another advantage is the investor typically received passive losses that can help defer the taxes on other investments passive income. While the loss of income may be a downside, investing in a Zero-Coupon DST may be the lesser of two evils compared with paying a large tax bill upfront on a property sale. Additionally, investors can potentially earn a return on their investment when exiting the Zero-Coupon DST if the property appreciates or if the loan on the property is paid down during the holding period (which can span anywhere from 10 to 20+ years). Investors should be aware that a pay down of principal on the loan is considered taxable income by the IRS. Since no distributions are paid in a Zero-Coupon DST, an investor may need to pay out-of-pocket for any taxes owed on this phantom income. Be advised that DSTs available through private placements are highly speculative, illiquid securities and involve the risk of loss of invested money. While tariffs can be a concern for investors, there are alternatives such as Zero-Coupon DSTs, real estate, and even private equity that allow for potential growth. Securities are offered through Arkadios Capital. Member FINRA/SIPC. Advisory services are offered through Creative Capital Wealth Management Group. Creative Capital Wealth Management Group and Arkadios are not affiliated through any ownership. This material was created for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as tax, legal or investment advice.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store