Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Price Jumps Over $65,500 on Soft Inflation Data 

The Bitcoin price jumped over $65,500 on Wednesday after US inflation data showed that producer prices fell in June. 

Data from the Labor Department showed that the Producer Price Index posted its biggest decline in 14 months. The PPI, excluding food and energy, fell 0.3% in June, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers. 

Bitcoin’s price was recently trading at $64,943, a 2% 24-hour jump. 

The Bitcoin price has typically surged when signs inflation is cooling emerge as investors then expect a bigger chance of lower interest rates. Crypto, stocks and other “risk-on” assets have in the past done well in a low-interest rate environment. 

Still, the cooling inflation does not take into account the latest escalation in the US-Iran war: President Trump this week said the US would take control over the Strait of Hormuz. 

On Wednesday, the US leader vowed to intensify the bombing until Tehran stops attacking ships in the Strait of Hormuz and agrees to open the waterway. 

“We’re going to hit [Iran] very hard the night after,” President Trump told Fox News on Tuesday. “And then next week it gets really bad for them because next week comes the power plants.”

“The only way you can negotiate with these people is through strength,” he added. 

Bitcoin’s price has faced increased volatility since the US and Israel attacked Iran on February 28, with the leading cryptocurrency dropping hard on initial reports of war.

Since the start of the year, the leading cryptocurrency has shed nearly 30% of its value, and is now close to 50% below the $126,080 record it notched in October. 

Downwards pressure has been added to the Bitcoin price as US investors fast cashed out of spot exchange-traded funds throughout the month of June as inflation uncertainties and a boom in artificial intelligence-related stocks has led speculators to put their cash elsewhere.

JUST IN: Bitcoin rips to $65,374 pic.twitter.com/j0mRcD6SMY

— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) July 15, 2026

Bitcoin price jumps on cooler inflation numbers

Figures released on Tuesday from June’s Consumer Price Index also showed that inflation appeared to be easing in the US, also leading to a jump in the Bitcoin price. 

Over a seven-day period, Bitcoin’s price has traded from $61,507 to as high as $65,501. 

Traders are now keeping an eye on what new Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh — who’s typically been an inflation hawk in the past — will do while leading the central bank. 

The new Chair told congress this week that the Federal Reserve has “no tolerance for persistently elevated inflation,” and that policy makers at the bank share “a resolute commitment to restoring price stability.”

Kevin Warsh was sworn in as the new central bank chief in May. The former Federal Reserve governor has said he wanted to lower the cost of borrowing but markets initially priced him in as a hawk — someone who would raise interest rates to tackle inflation. 

At the time of writing, the bitcoin price is near $65,000.

This post Bitcoin Price Jumps Over $65,500 on Soft Inflation Data  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Which is worse, sailing your superyacht through the city where your company just made mass job cuts, or getting named to a U.S. Federal Reserve panel on jobs and productivity three days after announcing thousands of layoffs?

It might not be a full Zuck, but Microsoft Xbox CEO Asha Sharma is getting lots of attention, and not in a good way, for the latter this week.

Sharma was named Thursday to co-lead a new Federal Reserve “Productivity and Jobs” task force, charged with assessing the economic impact of AI and other new technologies on the labor market. Her co-leaders: Marc Andreessen, the venture capitalist and vocal AI booster, and Stanford economist Charles I. Jones, who is currently on leave at Anthropic, maker of the Claude AI chatbot.

The gaming press, as you can imagine, is having a field day. The headline from Kotaku sums it up: “Xbox CEO Will Advise Federal Reserve On Jobs After Mass Layoffs.”

PC Gamer, for its part, noted that the task force is supposed to represent a “commitment to price stability and maximum employment.” However, that’s the Fed’s broad mandate, as described by Chairman Kevin Warsh. It’s actually not the specific mission of the Productivity and Jobs task force, which is narrower: assessing what AI and other new technologies are doing to the economy.

In a separate sign of the backlash, Microsoft communications chief Frank Shaw took to X on Friday to knock down claims that the Xbox cuts were made to replace employees with foreign workers, calling it “bad information” and noting that the H-1B visa figures being cited are company-wide renewals, not Xbox-specific. He also pointed out that Sharma is “an American born, raised, and educated CEO, from Wisconsin.”

Also lost in the coverage of the Fed appointment is the fact that Sharma is less than five months into the job, having taken over as Xbox CEO in February with a mandate to turn around and preserve a gaming division that spent more than $20 billion over five years while its core revenue shrank. The restructuring announced this week is a key part of that effort.

What’s more, it’s hard to imagine that this is the timing Microsoft or Sharma wanted. Announcements like this are often outside the control of the participants. The Federal Reserve sets its own schedule.

Still, it’s tough timing for an executive who announced plans this week to cut 3,200 gaming jobs — about 1,600 immediately, with the rest over the coming year — amounting to roughly 20% of Xbox’s workforce. Sharma herself called it the most significant restructuring in the division’s history.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s superyacht Launchpad, for the record, is currently cruising the waters off Juneau, Alaska, a full 900 miles from Seattle.