Live Updates: Risk Assets Under Pressure as Oil Jumps and Bonds Sell Off

Bitcoin and technology stocks faced renewed selling as Treasury yields and oil prices climbed, while a stronger dollar added another headwind for risk assets. Silver also dropped below $59 an ounce.

Brent crude has widened its premium over WTI, trading near $105 a barrel compared with about $92.50 for WTI. The difference between the two benchmarks stands at roughly $12.50 per barrel.

Large Brent-WTI spreads have previously emerged during periods of severe market disruption. Between 2011 and 2013, booming North American oil production exceeded pipeline capacity, putting pressure on WTI prices.

The spread reached extreme levels during the COVID-19 pandemic, when collapsing demand and insufficient storage capacity briefly drove the expiring WTI futures contract below zero.

The differential widened sharply again in March after the Iran war began in February. Disruptions to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and rising freight costs lifted Brent more than WTI, while stronger U.S. inventories provided support to the domestic benchmark.

The widening gap points to growing supply constraints and transportation pressures in internationally traded crude.

Coinbase Cryptography Chief Pushes Back on AI Warning

Yehuda Lindell, Coinbase’s head of cryptography, has challenged Ethereum researcher Justin Drake’s warning that artificial intelligence could threaten the cryptographic systems securing bitcoin, ether and other digital assets.

“There is no evidence whatsoever pointing to a break of decades old hardness assumptions like elliptic curve cryptography,” Lindell wrote.

His comments came after Drake’s post went viral. Drake argued that AI advances could make it possible to break the cryptography protecting major cryptocurrencies long before quantum computers become capable of the same task.

Drake urged the blockchain industry to enter “bunker mode” and advised crypto holders to move their funds to new addresses that have never signed a transaction.

Lindell said he had initially decided against commenting but felt compelled to respond after the post gained widespread attention, describing it as “a really bad take IMO.”

He argued that there is no logical connection between AI becoming better at mathematics and the immediate failure of the hardness assumptions behind elliptic-curve cryptography.

Lindell also noted that a genuine ability to break ECC would have consequences far beyond cryptocurrency. An attacker could potentially generate fraudulent PKI certificates, impersonate bank websites, create malicious banking applications and sign compromised operating systems that could be distributed to phones and computers.

He described the warning as fearmongering, stressing that there is currently no evidence demonstrating that such a capability exists.

Lindell said making claims of this scale without evidence is irresponsible and effectively constitutes FUD because there is no proof that the threat is real.

Jobless Claims Stay Near Historic Lows

Initial U.S. jobless claims declined to 197,000 last week from 199,000 previously. Economists had forecast a modest increase to 200,000.

Claims have remained unusually low for several months, suggesting either that labor-market conditions remain resilient or that the indicator has become less informative about the health of the economy.

Bitcoin Drops Below $83,000

Bitcoin fell below $83,000 as rising yields, oil prices and the dollar pressured risk-sensitive assets.

The 10-year Treasury yield increased to 5.352%, while the 30-year yield continued climbing above 5.73%, reaching fresh highs.

WTI crude jumped more than 4% over the past 24 hours to around $92.40 per barrel. Brent also rose roughly 4% to $105. New York Harbor ultra-low sulfur diesel futures gained another 4% to $4.80 per gallon.

The U.S. Dollar Index rose to 102.4, adding to pressure on risk assets as higher energy costs raised fresh concerns about inflation.

Bitcoin traded around $82,965, down nearly 1% over 24 hours.

Gold remained above $4,100 an ounce, while silver fell below $59 to a fresh low. Nasdaq 100 futures also declined nearly 1%, underscoring broader weakness in technology and other risk-sensitive assets.