Cryptos rise; Bitcoin, at $30,000, awaits U.S. CPI

There are rises in the cryptocurrency market. Bitcoin (BTC) has rallied more than 1% in the last 24 hours and manages to climb to $30,600, while Ethereum (ETH) follows in its wake by climbing to close to $1,900.

While the reigning cryptocurrency managed to briefly reconquer $31,000 in the last hours of Tuesday, the movement of BTC and the rest of the digital assets has been fairly flat over the last 14 days. So much so that experts are once again stressing that Bitcoin is stuck in the $29,000 to $31,000 range once more, which it has only been able to break for a few minutes in recent weeks.

For Edward Moya, senior market analyst at OANDA, this is due to the fact that Wall Street continues to wait for further news on Bitcoin spot ETFs, especially BlackRock's. Similarly, the expectation of a harsher-than-expected Federal Reserve (Fed) has not gone down well with cryptocurrency market investors. Right now, the market is anticipating a 25 basis point hike at the July meeting and practically discounting one more for the rest of the year.

"Stocks are looking a little toppy ahead of earnings and that might mean risk aversion might be ready to make a return. Bitcoin got a strong vote of confidence from Standard Chartered, with a price target of $50,000 this year and $120,000 for 2024. Miner profitability was one of the key reasons for the elevated price targets, but that might not be as easy as electricity costs grow and over surging debt payments," Moya explained.

"From a technical point of view, we are still in a very narrow consolidation zone around $29,500 and $31,000," commented Javier Molina, senior market analyst at eToro, while stressing that the "decrease in volatility, the exit of short-term investors and a reduced volume does not exceed $5 billion."

On the technical side, the expert added, "if prices are able to break above $31,000, the medium-term structure would change and we would pose a very bullish scenario with the first target at $36,000 and $40,000 as the next benchmark." "However, not being able to overcome $31,000 returns the scenario to the downside whose main support goes through $25,000 if $29,500 is lost first and $28,000 as the second support."

All in all, there seems to be some consensus among analysts that the market is waiting for the June US inflation data, to be released tomorrow, on Wednesday, before making any major moves. Market watchers expect CPI to pull back to 3.1% from the previous 4%, while the underlying rate will provide a breather and drop to 5% from 5.3% in May.

"Friday’s employment report showed a hiring slowdown but also strong wage gains. What will make this inflation report exciting is that we could see annual headline inflation fall to 2.8%, while core inflation remains hot, bolstered by housing inflation. The steep decline in annual CPI won’t remain a recurring theme and pricing pressures might remain throughout the summer," Moya commented.

In other market news, there are notable gains in most of the major altcoins. Binance coin (BNB), for example, has soared 6%, while Solana (SOL) rises 5% and Cardano (ADA) and Ripple (XRP) soar 3% and 2%, respectively.