Bitcoin Stalls as Fed’s Bostic Warns of ‘Thick’ Economic Fog

The price of Bitcoin hovered around $84,000 on Tuesday as the White House fine-tuned its message on tariffs without stoking noticeable market volatility.

During a briefing, White House Press Secretary Karline Leavitt said that “relief is being considered” for farmers strained by U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war, while members of Trump’s cabinet are currently working with 15 nations to “cut these good trade deals.”

The price of Bitcoin was recently changing hands around $84,300, showing a 0.6% decrease over the past day, according to crypto data provider CoinGecko. Ethereum dropped 1.8% to $1,600, while Solana, the sixth largest digital asset by market value, fell 1.6% to $128.

Tuesday’s calm mirrored trading on Wall Street. The S&P 500 fell 0.02%, the tech-heavy Nasdaq advanced 0.07%, and the Dow sank 0.2%, according to Yahoo Finance.

Trump targeted more than 180 nations this month when unveiling “reciprocal” tariffs, but his efforts to reshape international trade have recently focused on China. After Trump dropped stiff levies to 10% for most nations, markets have grown somewhat relieved. Yet questions surrounding how Trump’s tariffs could hit the U.S. economy linger.

Economists fear that Trump’s tariffs will push up costs for consumers while weighing on economic growth, despite the Consumer Price Index arriving cooler than economists expected last week, showing a 2.4% increase in the 12 months through March.

When it comes to stagflation, Trump’s tariffs may live up more to the first half of the portmanteau, according to analysts at Yardeni Research. In a Tuesday note, they wrote that “consensus expectations may be overestimating the inflationary impact and underestimating the downside risks to growth,” positing that they may be a counterbalance to each other.

Within the cryptosphere, investors gained new insight into how the U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve could be bolstered with new purchases. On a podcast, Bo Hines, executive director of the Presidential Council of Advisers on Digital Assets, said the money could come from tariffs.

The rollout of Trump’s Bitcoin reserve stoked excitement earlier this year, but after his recent  trade zigzags, it’s been nearly a month since Bitcoin traded above $90,000.

Investors are also eager to understand how Trump’s tariffs could influence the Federal Reserve’s approach to interest rates after projecting two cuts last month. On Monday, Raphael Bostic, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, said it’s still too early to tell.

“I think the fog has just gotten really, really thick,” he said. “The economy is in a big pause, […] and we’ll just have to see sort of how things evolve.”

Edited by James Rubin