Bitcoin Calms to $30,000 Ahead of US CPI Announcement (Market Watch)

After yesterday’s massive price pump, bitcoin has calmed around $30,000 ahead of the long-awaited US CPI numbers.

Most altcoins have retreated today, with ETH slipping below $1,900 and BNB dumping below $320. However, SOL has defied the market sentiment.

Bitcoin Stalls at $30K

The end of last week, and especially the weekend, brought little or no price movement for bitcoin, which had been stagnant at around $28,000. Although Monday started on a familiar note, the landscape changed in the late hours and early hours of Tuesday.

Bitcoin went on the offensive hard, rising above $29,000 and even $30,000 for the first time since before the Terra crash. This rally culminated in a price increase to $30,400 (a new 10-month high).

BTC has since lost some ground, betting on the $30,000 price tag. The asset remains quiet for now, but all that is expected to change later today when the US CPI numbers for March are due out.

As of now, the market cap has retreated to $580 billion, but dominance over altcoins continues to increase and is now at 47.5%.

ETH slips ahead of Shapella

Aside from the KPI numbers, the other highly anticipated event scheduled to take place today is Ethereum’s Shapella upgrade. With ongoing speculation about what might happen to ETH’s price after the unlock, the asset has retreated slightly over the past 24 hours and is currently below $1,900.

Most other altars with larger caps are of similar form. BNB, XRP, ADA, DOGE, MATIC and LTC have all dropped up to 4% in a day. Solana is the only exception to the larger-cap altos. SOL is up 5.5%, adding to yesterday’s gains, and is trading above $23.

Most of the lower and medium-sized altars are also slightly in the red today. This has pushed the cumulative market cap of all crypto assets south by over $20 billion. Even so, the calculation is still over $1.2 trillion on both CMC and CoinGecko.