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Crypto Insight
3 hours ago
- Crypto Insight
Bitcoin mining difficulty falls slightly from recent all-time high
Bitcoin's mining difficulty fell slightly on Saturday after hitting an all-time high of 126.9 trillion on May 31 at the start of the previous difficulty adjustment period. The Bitcoin mining difficulty level currently stands at roughly 126.4 trillion, according to data from CryptoQuant. Higher mining difficulty and network hashrate, which is a separate but related measure of the total computing power securing the Bitcoin protocol, both translate into increased miner competition and higher production costs. Miners continue to face financial pressures from the reduced block reward following the April 2024 halving, rising operational costs, and increased mining difficulty, which have changed the calculus for mining companies struggling to remain profitable. Publicly traded mining companies buck trend Despite the challenges miners within the highly competitive industry face, some publicly traded Bitcoin mining companies are expanding their operational capacity and choosing to retain their mined BTC as a treasury asset. Mining firm MARA announced that it increased BTC output by 35% in May, amid a record-level hashrate and market volatility. On April 5, Bitcoin's network hashrate crossed 1 zetahash per second (ZH/s) in computing power — a significant milestone for the decentralized monetary protocol. Despite this, MARA announced that it mined 950 Bitcoin in May and increased its corporate treasury reserves to 49,179 BTC, making it one of the largest Bitcoin holders in the world. 'Record production month for MARA — and we sold zero Bitcoin,' the company's chief financial officer Salman Khan wrote in a June 3 X post. CleanSpark, a public Bitcoin miner focused on securing the network through clean energy, also increased its BTC production in May 2025. The company mined 694 BTC during the month, a 9% increase over production in April, bringing its total reserves to 12,502 BTC, according to its monthly report. 'We increased our month-end hashrate to 45.6 exahashes per second (EH/s), up 7.5% sequentially,' CleanSpark president and CEO Zack Bradford wrote in the May update. The growing trend of mining companies accumulating Bitcoin as a treasury asset also represents a significant shift in business strategy for mining firms that have traditionally sold their coins to cover operational costs. Source:
Zawya
3 hours ago
- Zawya
Investors shun long-term US bonds as hopes for aggressive Fed rate cuts fade
Bond investors, anticipating the Federal Reserve will hold interest rates steady again this week, are moving away from longer-dated Treasuries as they temper expectations for an aggressive easing given the lower chance of a U.S. recession. Their flight away from the long end of the curve also reflects worries about President Donald Trump's tax and spending bill, which is being considered by the U.S. Senate. On Wednesday, the U.S. central bank's policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee is widely expected to keep its benchmark overnight interest rate in the 4.25%-4.50% range at the end of a two-day meeting, as it tries to grapple with a mercurial Trump administration trade policy that could still boost inflation in the second half of the year. But soft consumer and producer price readings in May, which so far have yet to show the effects of higher tariffs on inflation, have fanned expectations that the Fed could resume cutting rates soon. Futures tracking the Fed's policy rate show higher odds that the central bank will deliver a pair of back-to-back rate cuts starting in September. Before the release of the latest inflation numbers, the market had priced in a cut in September followed by another one in December. The Fed reduced rates three times in 2024 before pausing its easing cycle early this year. "I don't necessarily want to go long duration," said Victoria Fernandez, chief market strategist and fixed income portfolio manager at Crossmark Global Investments in Houston. While traders are betting the Fed's next rate cut will happen at its July or September meetings, Fernandez said she could see it happening "toward the very end of the year or even into next year." Duration, expressed in number of years, shows how far the bond's value will fall or rise when interest rates move. In general, when rates fall, higher-duration bonds experience a greater increase in value compared to those with lower duration. Long-duration bets typically involve buying assets on the back end of the curve on expectations of a decline in yields. "There's a reason long rates (30-year Treasuries) are moving toward 5%, and that is because there's significant pressure in selling duration," said Neil Aggarwal, head of securitized products and portfolio manager at Reams Asset Management in Indianapolis. "There are near-term concerns about volatility and from a short-term basis if you expect volatility to persist, it's difficult being long duration." Thirty-year bond auctions were not well-received during the Treasury sales in April and May, amplifying the market's reticence about holding longer-dated debt. The long bond did see strong demand at last week's auction, helped in part by the rise in 30-year yields and easing volatility in the sector. Positioning based on the latest J.P. Morgan Treasury Client Survey and active core bond fund indexes also suggested that long-duration positions have declined over the past two months. Analysts said part of that move could be attributed to diminished expectations of a U.S. recession, which briefly increased in April following Trump's imposition of tariffs on imported products from around the world. Trump has since walked back most of the tariffs even as the U.S. and China affirmed a trade deal. Goldman Sachs, for instance, last week trimmed its view of the probability of a U.S. recession in the next 12 months to 30% from 35% on easing uncertainty around Trump's tariff policies. FISCAL WORRIES, STEEPER CURVES Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," which passed the U.S. House of Representatives and is being debated in the Senate, is likely to increase the deficit by $2.4 trillion over the next decade, Congressional Budget Office estimates showed, coming at a time when the U.S. debt as a share of gross domestic product has surged. Tariff revenue, however, should offset some of the deficit impact of the tax and spending bill, analysts said. The prospect of even bigger deficits has added to concerns about the back end of the curve. "There is a legitimate argument to expect steeper government curves in this cycle," said Danny Zaid, portfolio manager at TwentyFour Asset Management in New York. Yield curve "steepeners" have been a popular trade since the Fed embarked on its easing cycle in late 2024. The strategy involves bullish bets on short-dated Treasuries, while reducing longer-dated exposure, which pushes yields on longer-dated Treasuries higher than short-term maturities. "As investors, you should demand more compensation to fund a government that has a 120% debt-to-GDP ratio than a government that has 70% debt to GDP," Zaid said. Investors are compensated with a higher yield for taking risk over a longer period. "We think the curve can steepen some more," said Brendan Murphy, head of fixed income for North America at Insight Investment in Boston, referring to the five- to 30-year yield curve. "We are overweight duration but concentrated more on the front end relative to the back end and more cautious about that 30-year part of the curve primarily due to uncertainty around the fiscal expansion and the potential for inflation to pick up due to some of this tariff policy." Investors on Wednesday will also focus on the release of updated quarterly economic projections from Fed policymakers, including rate forecasts, which are issued in a chart known as the "dot plot" that reflects how much easing is expected. The "dots" from the March meeting showed a policy rate of 3.75%-4.00% by the end of 2025, or two quarter-percentage-point cuts. Bond investors do not expect any changes to the Fed's policy rate forecast. (Reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss; Editing by Alden Bentley and Paul Simao)
Zawya
3 hours ago
- Zawya
Tariff 'stacking' adds another headache for US importers
John Hamer, president of Rodgers Wade Manufacturing in Paris, Texas, makes store fixtures for big retailers like Ross Dress for Less and Ulta Beauty. He sources many of the goods from China, which until recently meant he paid 70% in tariffs on metal fixtures. "The media was saying it was 30%, but that was never true," he said, referring to the tariff rate for China announced in May as part of a truce between the Trump administration and Beijing as it negotiated a broader deal. That's because Hamer's 30% tariff was stacked on top of existing tariffs, including a tariff on Chinese steel products that varies depending on the amount of steel used in a fixture. When U.S. President Donald Trump adds a new tariff the old ones don't go away. Some companies will pay far more because of a phenomenon called tariff stacking, the latest complication for U.S. importers trying to navigate Trump's on-again, off-again trade war. The reality for many U.S. businesses is that their tariff bills are often far higher than the headline number touted in trade talks. Tariff stacking applies to any country exporting to the U.S., but the most extreme cases tend to be with China, where the U.S. has accumulated a long list of sometimes hefty existing tariffs, implemented under different provisions of U.S. trade law. The latest twist is an announcement that the two sides have agreed to a 55% tariff, but that's in part only an estimate of what the average pre-existing tariffs were. Hamer isn't sure what his tariff total will be now, but he figures it couldn't get much worse. 'Hopefully this will bring the (tariff) number down - and some of the clients who've been sitting on the sidelines will go ahead and place orders,' he said, 'because it's been all over the map.' 'HERE'S THE TARIFF BILL' Hamer is searching for suppliers outside China to avoid his stacked tariffs. He's checked Mexico and is planning a trip to India next month as part of the effort. In the meantime, he is passing through all the tariffs. "The customers pay the tariff," said Hamer. "When it comes in, we say, 'Here's the tariff bill.'" Many businesses are still hoping for a reprieve from President Donald Trump's trade war. Federal courts, including the U.S. Court of International Trade, have ruled that Trump's imposition of tariffs exceeded his authority. A federal appeals court is considering the administration's appeal to that ruling, and the tariffs remain in effect while that plays out, a process expected to take months. Some are counting on tariff exemptions, a popular tool used by companies during the first Trump administration to get goods imported without the taxes. Michael Weidner, president of Lalo Baby Products in Brooklyn, is one of them. 'We believe there should be an exemption for baby products,' he said. 'Same with toys.' The Trump administration has said it will resist creating such carve-outs. And even during the last trade war, it was a complex process. For instance, Lalo imports a 'play table' from China that happens to be classified under a customs category that was subject to a 25% tariff under a part of trade law that aims to fight unfair trade practices. So Weidner has been paying 55% tariffs on those, thanks to stacking. Trump campaigned on a vow to use tariffs to pull manufacturing back to U.S. shores and collect revenue to help fund a major tax cut. His battle with China quickly spiraled into a conflagration with the U.S. imposing a 145% across-the-board tariff that shut down much of the trade between the world's two largest economies. The agreement to curb the tariffs is part of a larger effort to negotiate individual deals with most of the U.S.'s trading partners. PASSING COSTS THROUGH On Wednesday, a White House official said the 55% figure represents a sum of a baseline 10% 'reciprocal' tariff Trump has imposed on goods from nearly all U.S. trading partners; 20% on all Chinese imports because of punitive measures Trump has imposed on China, Mexico and Canada associated with his accusation that the three facilitate the flow of the opioid fentanyl into the U.S.; and finally pre-existing 25% levies on imports from China that were put in place during Trump's first term. 'It sounds like that's the way he's thinking of the baseline - 55% - at least for some products," said Greta Peisch, a trade lawyer at Wiley Rein in Washington. Ramon van Meer's business selling filtered shower heads from China may yet survive the trade war, though he's not certain. That depends entirely on whether he can can manage the multiple tariffs placed on his $159 shower heads, which became a viral sensation on Instagram. When the Trump administration trimmed tariffs on China to 30% in May, van Meer's tariff bill was actually 43%. That's because the 30% tariff was stacked on top of an existing 13% tariff. It's an improvement over the 145% tariffs slapped on Chinese imports in April, when he halted shipments entirely. 'At least I can afford to pay it,' said van Meer, chief executive of Afina, based in Austin, Texas, referring to his latest calculations. "And I don't have to raise the price by that much." (Reporting by Timothy Aeppel in New York with additional reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt in Washington. Editing by Dan Burns and Michael Learmonth)
