By Parrot Press Staff

President Donald Trump’s recent announcement of “reciprocal tariffs” this month has caused economic trade policy uncertainty to reach an all-time high. This has led investors to shy away from risk assets, such as bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrencies.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell added fuel to the fire by stating late Wednesday that the central bank anticipates a rise in unemployment as the economy is likely to slow down and inflation is expected to increase. Powell mentioned that some of the tariffs imposed are likely to be paid by the public, further weighing on risk assets. This resulted in the Nasdaq dropping 1.17% and the S&P 500 decreasing by 2.24% before the closing bell. Despite this, bitcoin saw an increase of more than 1% in the past 24 hours. The CoinDesk 20 (CD20) index, which provides a broader market perspective, also saw a rise of 1.8%. However, the crypto market is more considered a gauge of risk rather than a safe haven, as reported by Coindesk.

According to Michael Brown, an analyst at Pepperstone, there is likely to be a growing demand for “assets which provide shelter from political incoherence and trade uncertainty,” as reported by The Telegraph. While bitcoin has outperformed the stock market, showing a 1% increase in the past month compared to the Nasdaq’s 8% drop, institutional investors are turning to gold as a safe haven investment.

Gold has seen an 11% increase over the last month and a 27% increase since the beginning of the year, reaching around $3,340 per troy ounce. A survey conducted by Bank of America’s Global Fund Manager revealed that 49% of fund managers view “long gold” as the most crowded trade on Wall Street, with 42% of them predicting it to be the best-performing asset of the year.

UBS analysts suggested that adding gold allocations has become more compelling due to the escalating tariff uncertainty, weaker growth, higher inflation, geopolitical risks, and diversification away from US assets and the US dollar, as reported by Investopedia.

Gold fund flows have reached $80 billion so far this year, while data from SoSoValue indicates that spot bitcoin ETFs have seen $5.25 billion net inflows in January, with net outflows occurring since the rise in uncertainty. In the month of April alone, over $900 million has exited these funds, following net outflows of $3.56 billion in February and $767 million in March. It is advised to stay alert in such an uncertain market environment.

In the latest Token Events updates, EigenLayer is implementing slashing on Ethereum mainnet, Pepecoin is undergoing its second halving, BNB Chain will be undergoing the opBNB mainnet hardfork, and Coinbase Derivatives will be listing XRP futures pending approval by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Various conferences and events, such as CoinDesk’s Consensus in Toronto on May 14-16, NexTech Week Tokyo, Money20/20 Asia in Bangkok, Crypto Horizons 2025 in Dubai, and many more are scheduled to take place in the upcoming days.

In other news, Raydium’s LaunchLab platform has gone live, competing with Pump.fun and introducing a perceived competing platform to the Solana ecosystem. This has led to over 1,750 tokens being created shortly after LaunchLab’s debut, driving the price of Raydium’s RAY token up by as much as 10%.

On the technical analysis front, Bitcoin has rebounded off the golden pocket zone, showing strong buyer interest. It has broken out of the daily downtrend that has been in place since February, indicating a potential shift in structure. BTC is currently sitting below the daily 50 and 200 exponential moving averages, which act as important decision points for the price direction.

Overall, the market is seeing fluctuations due to economic uncertainty, geopolitical risks, and trade concerns, highlighting the importance of diversification and following market trends closely.