Bitcoin
Bitcoin (BTC), Stocks Bleed as China’s Surprise Rate Cut Signals Panic, Treasury Yield Curve Steepens
Risk assets fell on Thursday as China’s second rate cut in a week raised concerns of instability in the world’s second-largest economy.
Bitcoin (BTC)the leading cryptocurrency by market cap, is down nearly 2% since midnight UTC to around $64,000 and ether (ETH) fell more than 5%, dragging the broader altcoin market lower. The CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20), a measure of the broader cryptocurrency market, lost 4.6% in 24 hours.
In equity markets, Germany’s DAX, France’s CAC and the euro zone’s Euro Stoxx 50 all fell more than 1.5%, and futures linked to the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 were down slightly after the index’s 3% drop on Wednesday, according to the data source. Investing.com.
On Thursday morning, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) announced a surprise, cut outside the schedule in its one-year medium-term lending rate to 2.3% from 2.5%, injecting 200 billion yuan ($27.5 billion) of liquidity into the market. That is the biggest reduction since 2020.
The movement, together with similar reductions in other lending rates earlier this week shows the urgency among policymakers to sustain growth after their recent third plenary offered little hope of a boost. Data released earlier this month showed China’s economy expanded 4.7% in the second quarter at an annualized pace, much weaker than the 5.1% estimated and slower than the 5.3% in the first quarter.
“Equity futures are flat after yesterday’s bloody session that shook sentiment across asset classes,” Ilan Solot, senior global strategist at Marex Solutions, said in a note shared with CoinDesk. “The PBoC’s decision to cut rates in a surprise move has only added to the sense of panic.” Marex Solutions, a division of global financial platform Marex, specializes in creating and distributing custom derivatives products and issuing structured products tied to cryptocurrencies.
Solot noted the continued “steepening of the US Treasury yield curve” as a threat to risk assets including cryptocurrencies, echoing CoinDesk Reports since the beginning of this month.
The yield curve steepens when the difference between longer-duration and shorter-duration bond yields widens. This month, the spread between 10-year and two-year Treasury yields widened by 20 basis points to -0.12 basis points (bps), mainly due to stickier 10-year yields.
“For me, the biggest concern is the shape of the US yield curve, which continues to steepen. The 2- and 10-year curve is not only -12 bps inverted, compared to -50 bps last month. The recent moves have been led by the rise in back-end [10y] yields and lower-than-expected decline in yields,” Solot said.
That’s a sign that markets expect the Fed to cut rates but see tighter inflation and expansionary fiscal policy as growing risks, Solot said.