Morning Minute: CPI Coming in Hot; Money, Crypto Shrug

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Today’s top stories:

• Crypto majors and stocks bounce back after hot CPI; BTC at $80.6k
• Trump is taking a dozen CEOs to China ahead of the Xi summit
• The Clarity Act will receive more than 100 amendments before Thursday
• ETH devs introduce Better Signing to prevent user loss
• Google reveals the first instance of an attacker using artificial intelligence (AI) in a zero-day attack

📈 CPI Coming Hot; Money, Crypto Shrug

The April CPI reading came down on Tuesday morning and gave the wrong news on inflation expectations.

Headline inflation rose 0.6% for the month, ending the 12th month at 3.8%, the highest since May 2023. Core CPI, excluding food and energy, grew 0.4% for the month and 2.8% for the year, above the 2.7% consensus on both sides. Average hourly wages fell 0.5% for the month and 0.3% for the year, meaning workers are being paid more in nominal terms but less in real terms. That’s the problem with stagflation: high inflation, low real income, and a central bank that won’t cut back.

Obviously, Iran’s war on oil is the main driver. Energy prices rose 17.9% year-on-year, the biggest annual increase since September 2022, led by gasoline up 28.4% and fuel oil up 54.3%.

Markets sold off briefly on the news, although stocks still closed the day in the green as well Bitcoin from $80k to $80.7k.

All this comes as Kevin Warsh takes over the Federal Reserve from Jerome Powell on Friday. The odds of a rise in 2026 (rise, not cut) jumped to 30% after the publication of the CPI, from 1% a month ago. So climbing is more on the table than cutting.

As for Warsh, he welcomes the legacy of a Fed that will not pass, an economy with 3.8% inflation, oil still above $100, and rising anxiety. He will have his work for him…

📝 Best Sound Words Revealed

Senate Banking Committee revealed the documents of the 309 Clarity Act just after midnight Tuesday, ahead of Thursday’s 10:30 a.m. ET poll.

The word came without any major surprises. Key requirements include:

• The SEC/CFTC’s jurisdiction is split with digital assets classified as assets
• DeFi security for those who do not control user funds
• A stablecoin for restricting yield on services with rewards based on permitted actions.

Very rare in the 309 pages is any mention of Ethics, due to the Trump family crypto activities. Without it, many Democrats believe the bill is dead on arrival.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) remains publicly non-committal, and all 13 Republican votes are needed for the committee to move the bill forward. Major US unions including SEIU, AFT, NEA, and AFSCME sent a joint letter to the Senate calling for the bill to be rejected, saying it could endanger pension programs.

As of this morning, more than 100 updates had already been submitted for Thursday’s review — another sign that it’s unprecedented in its day.

Citi analysts tied their $143,000 BTC target for 2026 directly to the Clarity Act clause, projecting an additional $15 billion in ETF funds when the bill clears Congress. If it doesn’t pass, then the goals should be re-evaluated.

💰 JPMorgan files for 2nd Tokenized Money Market Fund on ETH

JPMorgan Tuesday to launch the JPMorgan OnChain Liquidity-Token Money Market Fund (JLTXX) on Ethereum, designed specifically to meet the requirements of stablecoin issuers under the GENIUS mandate.

The fund invests in short-term U.S. Treasuries, funds, and repo agreements that are backed by government securities. The fund will be managed by JPMorgan’s Kinexys Digital Assets unit, creating a permissioned system that sits on top of public Ethereum as its foundation.

It’s JPMorgan’s second market (its MONY fund was launched on Ethereum in December 2025), but JLTXX was designed primarily around a stablecoin reserve for use rather than general asset management. The filing puts JPMorgan directly in competition with BlackRock’s Stablecoin Reserve Vehicle, which was issued the same week, and Morgan Stanley’s MSNXX fund, which launched last month to target the same stablecoin reserve market. Three of the world’s largest financial institutions are racing to become the center of Treasury wealth for the $320 billion stablecoin market that is growing 28% annually.

The RWA market has grown 200% annually to $30 billion. Expect to grow there.

💡Ethereum Devs Implement Clear Signing, Fixing Longstanding Security Issue

An Ethereum A working group made up of wallet developers, security companies, and the Ethereum Foundation’s Trillion Dollar Security Initiative launched Clear Signing on Tuesday—an open standard designed to eliminate blind signing, an error that causes billions in user losses.

Blind signing is the practice of accepting hexadecimal data without understanding what it does. When users accept Ethereum transactions, they currently see “a low-level, machine-readable interface that is accurate but difficult to interpret without technical expertise.” Criminals take advantage of this practice by making fake certificates look like legitimate ones when signing.

Bybit’s $1.5B transaction, WazirX’s $235M breach, and the CoW DAO domain takeover this month all followed the same playbook: get a user or multisig signer to agree to a transaction whose true purpose was hidden. This makes it very difficult to come up with a clear signature.

The working group includes Ledger, Trezor, MetaMask, WalletConnect, and Fireblocks. Trezor CTO Tomáš Sušánka: “This will solve a major problem that has plagued cryptocurrency users for years: blind signing. When users fail to understand what they are signing, security becomes more difficult.

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors are slightly greener after CPI hit and Trump’s China visit looming; BTC -0.1% at $80.6k; ETH +1% at $2,303; SOL even at $95; HYPE -3% at $39.40
• INJ (+24%), TIA (+ 11%) and STX (+ 9%) led the top managers
• Oil -1% on $98; Gold +0.3% at $4,702
• The future it is green and the Nasdaq is up 0.7% as Nvidia leads the top chip stocks
• Trumpet they are taking on a dozen CEOs to China with him as he prepares to meet with Xi, including Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, Larry Fink, Tim Cook and others.
• Kevin Warsh was confirmed to the Fed Board of Governors on Tuesday in a Senate vote of 51-45with Pennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman the only passing vote
• Senate Banking Committee received over 100 edits to the Clarity Act before tomorrow
• Wintermute to be invited Bitcoin’s recent competition is a short-term squeeze rather than a jump, showing open interest and a surge in assets such as its indicators.
• Square passed over 1 million Bitcoin traders on Tuesdaysix weeks after the payment of Lightning Network BTC to eligible US sellers on March 30; traders receive USD by default while BTC is exchanged immediately upon exit
• DTCC price chose Chainlink to use Collateral AppChain on Tuesdayincluding Chainlink’s Runtime Environment and data standard to enable 24/7 near real-time collateral management.
• Franklin Templeton is the father of Kraken Payward announced the strategic partnership on Tuesday bringing tokenized equities, a managed onchain currency, and integrating the BENJI fund into the Kraken platform.

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme leaders he was mixing; DOGE +4%, SHIB even, PEPE even, PENGU -6%, TRUMP +4%, BONK even%, SPX +2%, FARTCOIN -4%
• RKC (+140%), Worldcup (+800%), CopperInu (+90%), Hanta (+55%), Maga (+50%) and Aura (+36%) led the popular movers.

📈 Multi Day Market

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

• Jez to inform his PaperTrade project as a fair launch, a fully onchain perpetuals exchange built on Hyperliquid, offers 1,000x leverage with zero slippage, no fees, and a self-generated pool.
• Circular raised $120M led by SoftBank expanding its suite of AI-powered blockchain tools for financial institutions
• Google’s Threat Intelligence Group it was revealed on Tuesday found the first known instance of an attacker using zero-day AI in a live attack.

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

• Directors of NFT were very red below 1-3%; Punks +1% at 29.6 ETH, BAYC -2% at 10.15 ETH, Pudgy -3% at 5.19 ETH; Hypurr’s -3% at 290 HYPE
• Gift of Time (+30%), Slonks (+30%) and GVC (+5%) led the notable movers