New York, Feb 13, 2026, 13:05 (EST) — Regular session
- Bitcoin rose about 5% in U.S. afternoon trade, after an earlier dip below $66,000
- A cooler U.S. inflation print pushed rate-cut bets higher and eased pressure on risk assets
- Spot bitcoin ETFs logged another day of heavy withdrawals on Thursday
Bitcoin rose on Friday, recovering toward $69,000 after a choppy week for risk assets. The largest cryptocurrency was up 5.1% at $68,926, after trading between $65,148 and $69,295. Ether gained 7.3% to $2,053.
The move followed U.S. data showing consumer prices rose 0.2% in January and increased 2.4% year-on-year, a touch cooler than economists expected. Core CPI, which strips out food and energy, rose 0.3%. “The inflation report is better than expected … This is good news for the Fed,” said Phil Orlando, chief market strategist at Federated Hermes in New York. (Reuters)
Fed funds futures — contracts that reflect where traders see policy headed — lifted the implied odds of a first rate cut in June to about 70%. Traders were pricing roughly 64 basis points of easing for 2026 after the data, up from about 58 beforehand; a basis point is 0.01 percentage point. “With inflation under control, attention is shifting back to labor market conditions,” said Chris Zaccarelli, chief investment officer at Northlight Asset Management. (Reuters)
Crypto traders are also watching U.S.-listed spot bitcoin ETFs, funds that hold bitcoin and trade like a stock. They saw a net $410 million outflow on Feb. 12, after $276 million left the day before, data compiled by Farside Investors showed. BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) made up about $158 million of Thursday’s withdrawals. (Farside Investors)
Crypto-linked equities stayed in focus after Coinbase swung to a surprise quarterly loss on Thursday as trading volumes cooled during a broader digital-asset selloff. “Crypto is cyclical, and experience tells us it’s never as good, or as bad as it seems,” the exchange said in its shareholder letter. David Bartosiak, a stock strategist at Zacks Investment Research, said the company’s diversification and “shock absorbers” — including stablecoin revenue — could smooth results, even as Reuters noted bitcoin has nearly halved from its Oct. 6 peak and U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs saw billions of dollars of withdrawals in November, December and January. (Reuters)
Still, some strategists warn bitcoin remains a momentum trade. Geoff Kendrick, Standard Chartered’s head of digital assets research, cut his 2026 bitcoin forecast to $100,000 from $150,000 and warned it could slide as low as $50,000 in the near term, Barron’s reported. (Barron’s)
But the softer CPI print does not settle the bigger policy question if tariff-related costs reappear later in the year. Economists have warned that companies are still passing through some of President Donald Trump’s tariffs and that inflation has a habit of printing hot at the start of the year — the so-called “January effect” — which can jolt rate expectations. (Reuters)
Next up is the U.S. personal consumption expenditures price index on Feb. 20, the inflation gauge the Fed leans on most, along with another round of daily ETF flow data that can swing short-term positioning. The next Federal Reserve policy meeting is scheduled for March 17-18. (Bea)
