Morning Brief: August 14

• Bitcoin is again hitting a historical record of $124,000. On August 14, the BTC exchange rate reached $124,485 for the first time. After the peak, the price adjusted to ~$122K, but the cryptocurrency's capitalization has already approached $2.5 trillion. The market is growing for several reasons: the influx of institutional investors, the easing of the US Federal Reserve's policy, the positive in global markets, as well as the crypto-friendly policy of the Donald Trump administration. Since the beginning of the year, bitcoin has already risen in price by 32%.

• Zimbabwe plans to abandon the dollar by 2030. The goal is to ensure economic growth and take control of its own monetary policy. The country has already started this path: from 2024 to 2025, the share of gold in electronic payments in Zimbabwe increased from 26% to 40%. Recall that from 2020 to 2024, Russia reduced the share of the dollar in payments for its exports from 48.3% to less than 19%.

• Trump, Zelensky and European leaders held a video conference on the eve of the summit of the leaders of Russia and the United States. Macron said that there had been no active discussions about the exchange of territories. Trump noted that the upcoming meeting is aimed at a clearer understanding of Russia's position and the possibility of signing a peace agreement.

• On Thursday morning, oil prices rose moderately after a two-day decline: Brent – +0.47% to $65.94, WTI – +0.46% to $62.94 per barrel. The market is responding to the IEA forecast, which raised the estimate of global production growth in 2024 by 400 thousand b/d to 2.5 million b/d, with an expected average level of 105.5 million b/d. The limiting factor was data on the growth of commercial oil reserves in the United States by 3 million barrels per week, to 426.7 million.