Bitcoin traded in a narrow range around $80,300 through Wednesday morning Eastern time, off 0.7 per cent on the day and at the lower end of a band that has held for most of the past 72 hours. The price is up 12 per cent from the early-May lows and 36 per cent below the October 6, 2025 record of $126,173.
The market has resolved into a sideways pattern as two opposing forces have offset each other. The China summit and any prospective de-escalation of the Iran war are read by traders as Bitcoin-positive — risk-on appetite returning to crypto alongside equities and small-caps. The hot CPI and PPI prints, by contrast, have pushed the implied path of Federal Reserve cuts further out and tightened dollar funding conditions in a way that historically pressures Bitcoin.
Spot Bitcoin ETF flows have been modest. The eleven US spot Bitcoin ETFs collectively recorded net inflows of $32 million on Tuesday, the smallest single-day net inflow since the Iran war began in late February. BlackRock's IBIT and Fidelity's FBTC remain the dominant flow generators by share; the smaller-cap funds have seen modest outflows for the past four sessions.
Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation, traded at $3,124 on Wednesday morning, up 0.4 per cent on the day. Spot Ether ETFs absorbed $48 million in net inflows on Tuesday, a fourth consecutive positive session. The ETH/BTC pair has firmed to 0.039, the highest since February.
Stablecoin issuance — a leading indicator of cross-border crypto flows — has tracked the broader pattern. Tether's USDT market capitalisation crossed $156 billion on Tuesday, a record. USDC, the second-largest stablecoin, added approximately $1.2 billion in net issuance through April, with growth concentrated in Asian and Latin American on-ramps.
The political backdrop in Washington has stabilised. The Senate stablecoin bill, which had stalled in Banking Committee through March on a Democratic objection to the systemic-risk framework, passed committee on April 28 and is expected to receive a floor vote later in May. The House version, which had differed on the conflict-of-interest carve-outs, has been quietly reconciled with the Senate text through staff-level work over the past two weeks.
Galaxy Digital and other crypto-native institutions have raised growth-stage capital through May at valuations roughly 30 per cent below the early-2025 peaks. The flatter price trajectory has compressed token-launch activity to a fraction of the 2024 pace, with venture funding skewed towards stablecoin infrastructure, custody and exchange-traded-product issuance over speculative new tokens.