Bitcoin BTC Price Holds Above $30,000, Ether ETH Price Hovers Near $1.9,000 Ahead Of CPI, Shapella Upgrade
Bitcoin (BTC) held firm above $30,000 on Tuesday as investors awaited Wednesday’s US Consumer Price Index (CPI) report for March and Ethereum’s Shapella upgrade.
The largest cryptocurrency by market cap recently hovered above $30,200, up over 3% in the last 24 hours. BTC topped the psychologically important $30,000 level late Monday night (ET) for the first time since last June. Analysts expect the March CPI to continue a recent cooling trend with the year-over-year rate rising 5.2%, down from February’s 6%. The month-over-month interest rate is also expected to cool.
“Traders [are] speculate that this week’s CPI numbers could come in at a level that gives the Fed reason to think about pausing interest rate hikes at its next meeting, thereby giving a boost to assets like bitcoin, said James Lavish, managing partner at Bitcoin Opportunity Fund, to CoinDesk in an email.
Lavish added that if BTC continues to rise “with conviction,” a move straight into the mid-to-high $30,000s would be likely, forcing short speculators to cover and buy instead. Some investors are trying to get positioned in front of that.”
Analysts at K33 Research highlighted in a note to clients on Tuesday that open interest (OI) in BTC perpetuities rose by 10% to 297,000 BTC on Monday to reach its highest daily growth in open interest since early October. That spurt was followed by volatility and a decline during the day.
“While BTC’s performance following increases in OI has varied, it tends to herald long or short squeezes,” analysts wrote, adding that similar daily growth in OI occurred during a 2022 spring rally and before the July 2021 short squeeze .
Ether (ETH), the second largest cryptocurrency, was recently trading at around $1,895, up 0.3% from the same time on Monday. Validators and market watchers will be watching Ethereum’s Shapella upgrade, which is expected to go live Wednesday evening (ET) and will mean validators can withdraw their long-locked ETH from the Beacon Chain.
Crypto data firm Kaiko highlighted in a Tuesday report that ETH markets have been heavily spot-driven over the past month, with the all-time futures-to-spot ratio hitting its lowest level since the network’s merger in September. In contrast, this ratio had increased to almost double pre-merger levels at the start of the year.
Among other digital tokens, Solana’s SOL rose over 12% to trade around $23.2, while ETC, the token for Ethereum Classic, an offshoot or fork, of Ethereum, gained over 4% to change hands at $21.6. The CoinDesk Market Index, which measures the overall performance of the crypto market, was up 2.3% for the day.
The crypto market’s rally also coincided with crypto-related stocks’ continued momentum from Monday. Shares of bitcoin miner Marathon Digital Holdings ( MARA ) closed up 12% on Tuesday, while both exchange Coinbase ( COIN ) and business software company MicroStrategy ( MSTR ), a major corporate owner of BTC, rose more than 6%.
Stock markets were mixed on Tuesday afternoon, with the S&P 500 closing flat and the tech-heavy Nasdaq down 0.4%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) rose 0.2 percent.
