Oil Bounces to $97 as Ceasefire Frays; Treasury Drops Stablecoin Rules; AMD Wins $60B Meta Deal

1. Iran conditionally reopens Hormuz -- with a catch

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi announced Thursday that "safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz will be possible via coordination with Iran's Armed Forces." It is a conditional reopening, not a free one: vessels must request clearance from Tehran before transiting. MarineTraffic data shows large clusters of ships still anchored in the Persian Gulf, with only a handful -- including the Greek-owned bulk carrier NJ Earth -- having actually made the passage since Wednesday's ceasefire announcement.

Iran's IRGC halted traffic earlier Thursday after accusing Israel of ceasefire violations in Lebanon and claiming the U.S. breached three elements of the truce. VP JD Vance pushed back: "Lebanon was never included in this agreement." The net result is a Hormuz that is technically open but operationally bottlenecked, with the 800-vessel backlog unable to clear at any meaningful pace.

• WTI crude: $97.50 (+3.1%) -- oil pricing in a messy, partial reopening
• Brent crude: $97.80 (+3.1%) -- tracking WTI closely
• Hormuz transit rate: Still 8-10 ships/day vs. 20M bbl/day equivalent pre-conflict
• Friday Islamabad talks: Witkoff, Kushner, Vance still scheduled; odds of a durable deal remain uncertain

2. March CPI drops tomorrow -- the most important data point of Q2

The Bureau of Labor Statistics releases March CPI on Friday, April 10, at 8:30 a.m. ET. Consensus sits at 2.8% year-over-year headline with core at 3.1%. The context matters: March data captures a war still fully raging before Wednesday's ceasefire. Energy prices are estimated to have surged 10.6% month-over-month in March, when WTI averaged well above $100 per barrel.

The analytical wrinkle: April data (released mid-May) is when Wednesday's 17% oil crash first shows up in the CPI series. The Fed -- with rates parked at 3.5-3.75% after the March 18 FOMC hold -- must read backward-looking data through a forward-looking lens. JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup earnings drop the same morning, making Friday a double-catalyst session.

• Consensus: 2.8% YoY headline / 3.1% YoY core
• Fed rate: 3.5-3.75%, held steady at March 18 FOMC meeting (11-1 vote)
• Bank earnings: JPM, WFC, Citi report at 11:00 UTC same morning

3. Treasury drops landmark stablecoin AML rules under the GENIUS Act

The U.S. Treasury, FinCEN, and OFAC jointly proposed rules on April 8 requiring all permitted payment stablecoin issuers to comply with federal anti-money laundering and sanctions laws for the first time. The framework treats stablecoin issuers as financial institutions under the Bank Secrecy Act -- the same legal footing as banks and money-services businesses.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent framed the proposal as protecting the integrity of U.S. dollar-denominated digital assets. Enacted in July 2025, the GENIUS Act mandated this framework. Final rules are due by July 18, 2026, with full enforcement starting January 18, 2027.

• Covered: All permitted stablecoin issuers -- Tether, Circle, bank-issued tokens
• Requirements: Risk-based AML programs, independent testing, secondary market monitoring
• Sanctions: Firms must be able to block, freeze, and reject flagged transactions
• Comment period: 60 days open; final rules by July 18, 2026

4. AMD lands a $60B Meta deal -- Nvidia's AI monopoly has a serious rival

AMD secured a multi-year, 6-gigawatt GPU supply agreement with Meta Platforms valued at roughly $60 billion over five years, deploying custom Instinct MI450 GPUs and 6th Gen EPYC "Venice" CPUs starting in the second half of 2026. The deal is the largest single-customer commitment in AMD's history and signals that Meta is aggressively diversifying its AI infrastructure away from Nvidia's H100/H200 ecosystem.

AMD's AI accelerator market share is projected to climb from approximately 9% in 2025 to over 15% by year-end 2026. Nvidia still holds roughly 75% of the market, but the 25% AI chip tariffs imposed in January are accelerating supply diversification across every major hyperscaler -- and Meta just validated AMD as the credible alternative.

5. Bitcoin Depot discloses $3.6M corporate BTC theft in SEC filing

Bitcoin ATM operator Bitcoin Depot filed an SEC disclosure revealing that hackers stole approximately 50.9 BTC (valued at $3.665 million) from corporate wallets on March 20, 2026. The breach was detected March 23 after unauthorized parties accessed the company's IT systems using credentials tied to corporate digital asset settlement accounts. Stolen funds were transferred to KuCoin deposit addresses.

Bitcoin Depot says customer platforms were not affected. The company activated incident response protocols, engaged external cybersecurity experts, and notified law enforcement. The 16-day gap between detection (March 23) and public SEC disclosure (April 8) is drawing scrutiny from crypto security analysts over breach-notification timelines for digital asset firms.

6. Markets midday: Flat, with energy up and tech down

U.S. equities are broadly flat at midday despite 54.5% of issues declining -- technically a down market under the surface. The S&P 500 is barely positive (+0.02%) after Wednesday's 2.51% surge, with the Dow off 0.2% and the Russell 2000 slipping 0.09%. Energy stocks are leading, bid by the oil bounce. Tech and growth names -- Wednesday's biggest winners -- are the drag as 10-year Treasury yields tick back up with oil.

• Gold: $4,700 (-0.3%) -- holding support ahead of CPI
• Bitcoin: $71,069 (+0.3%) -- resilient, shrugging off ceasefire noise
• WTI Oil: $97.50 (+3.1%) -- ceasefire premium partially reasserting
• S&P 500: 6,743 (flat) -- digestion day after Wednesday's outsized move

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