On Monday morning, the global cryptocurrency market cap was trading marginally high at $1.06 trillion, almost unchanged in the last 24 hours. The total trading volume also increased to $72.92 billion.
Late last week, bitcoin and the broader cryptocurrency market entered a strong rally that took the total crypto market above $1 trillion again.
Additionally, the crypto market has been gearing up for the incoming increase in volatility ahead of the U.S. CPI inflation data that shall be released later this week. Because of this, the BTC price is up by 2%in the last 24 hours and is trading at $21,837 levels at the time of writing. Meanwhile, ETH is down by 1.13% and is trading at $1,735 levels.
However, market participants should prepare themselves for the rocky roads ahead. If a higher than expected inflation reading is observed on Tuesday, 13 September, it will cast a shadow on the rally of the crypto market.
Additionally, it could directly impact the Fed’s interest-rate decision ahead of this month. For this month, most market experts believe that the Fed could go for a 75 basis points rate hike. A higher inflation reading could force the Fed to turn hawkish with a higher rate hike.
However, other analysts differ. He expects Fed rate hikes to slow down in the coming months, which will be good news for bitcoin.
Senior market analyst for City Index Ltd., Tony Sycamore, said “The market knows that it’s got a break from this unrelenting hawkish Fedspeak for a couple of weeks and that the pace of central bank rate hikes is likely to slow.”
Ethereum Merge is just around the corner!
We are now only three days away from the Ethereum merge, and the market is displaying mixed feelings of excitement and concern about the event. At this point, even the smallest hiccups in the upgrade event could be enough to slow the price rally of Ethereum and cause losses.
However, as of now, things have been sailing smoothly with the testnet developments over the previous weeks.
Sean Farrell, Head of Digital Asset Strategy at Fundstrat Global Advisors LLC, told Bloomberg: “We will remain ether in the merge for a long time, using the decline as a buying opportunity.”
Sean also reiterated that Ether did not succumb to the decline in “news-selling” after the three first Ethereum upgrades.
The Current Status of The Crypto Markets
On Monday morning, Crypto tokens saw some profit booking after registering sharp gains over the weekend. However, Bitcoin continued to hold its gains and advanced towards the $22,000 mark.
Barring bitcoin, all other assets were seen trading in the red. Ethereum and Dogecoin were the top losers, each losing around 2%.
According to crypto analysts, the sudden surge in the Bitcoin market might lose momentum quickly.
