The US annual inflation rate hit another 40-year-high today (it’s been doing that a bit lately), keeping Twitter busy and Bitcoin and the crypto market at large suppressed.

Fresh Consumer Price Index data was released today by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the survey says… 7.9%.

“Increases in the indexes for gasoline, shelter and food were the largest contributors”, said the Bureau. Energy has surged 25.6% over the past 12 months, with gasoline rising 38% and natural gas 23.8%.

Meanwhile, the European Central Bank has also been discussing wildly increasing inflation, with war in Ukraine named a root cause. The ECB today released its latest monetary policy decisions, surprising some with intent to exit its bond-buying stimulus plan sooner than expected this year, as reported by the Financial Times.

What’s all this mean for Bitcoin and crypto? It’s certainly more negative sentiment that risk-on markets won’t dig in the short term, although it shouldn’t be wholly unexpected. The crypto market has dipped a bit on the news, but at the time of writing it at least hasn’t fallen off a cliff.

And those Bitcoin investors who are rock-solid in their belief the asset is, or will become, an inflation hedge might even be licking their lips about it all. Well, maybe.

As usual, gold fan numero uno Peter Schiff had something to say about that narrative yesterday, though, when Bitcoin was rallying…

Schiff seems strangely quiet about Bitcoin so far today – surely it’s a good day to sink the golden boot in. Guess he’ll pipe up at some point.

Anyway, another day, another another bump in the road in what’s an extraordinarily bumpy Q1. Stay the course but keep eyes open and remain flexible? Couldn’t possibly say – maybe that’s something to ask your financial adviser mate down the pub.

 

Top 10 overview

With the overall crypto market cap at about US$1.83 trillion, down 5.2% from this time yesterday, here’s the current state of play among top 10 tokens – according to CoinGecko.

The big round orange one (that’d be BTC) is leading the daily dippage, along with BNB and SOL. XRP is comparatively flying with a 4.6% loss. XRP would probably be up on this ETP news on most other days, though…

Reflecting markedly different sentiment compared with this time yesterday, it’s hard to find too many positives from go-to crypto Twitter analysts right now – it’s headwinds a-go-go. Dutchman Michaël van de Poppe is at least throwing us a “long term”, zoom-out bone in this tweet.

 

Uppers and downers: 11–100

Sweeping a market-cap range of about US$18.6 billion to about US$857 million in the rest of the top 100, let’s find some of the biggest 24-hour gainers and losers at press time.

DAILY PUMPERS

• Stacks (STX), (market cap: US$1.8 billion) +51%

• Waves (WAVES), (mc: US$2.87b) +5%

• THORChain (RUNE), (mc: US$1.55b) +5%

• Elrond (EGLD), (mc: US$3.2b) +1.5%

• eCASH (XEC), (mc: US$1.5 billion) +1%

Stacks, a layer 1 platform that is built to enable the use of smart contracts and decentralised applications on the Bitcoin network, has some price-pumping news.

A US$165 million pledge called “The Bitcoin Odyssey” has just been launched by crypto exchange Okcoin with various participating VCs, and the funds will go toward products and apps being built on Stacks, according to a CoinDesk report.

 

DAILY SLUMPERS 

• Arweave (AR), (market cap: US$1.65 billion) -11%

• Anchor Protocol (ANC), (mc: US$1b) -11%

• Monero (XMR), (mc: US$3.1b) -10%

• Juno (JUNO), (mc: US$1.8b) -10%

• Fantom (FTM), (mc: US$3.14b) -10%

 

Uppers and downers: lower caps

Moving below the crypto unicorns (in some cases well below), here’s just a selection catching our eye…

DAILY PUMPERS

• JasmyCoin (JASMY), (market cap: US$74.5m) +24%

• ICON (ICX), (mc: US$618m) +13%

• Lisk (LSK), (mc: US$307m) +9%

• Mirror Protocol (MIR), (mc: US$313m) +8%

• OMG Network (OMG), (mc: US$606m) +8%

 

DAILY SLUMPERS

• Spookyswap (BOO), (market cap: US$109 million) -19%

• Tomb Shares (TSHARE), (mc: US$157m) -18%

• Tokemak (TOKE), (mc: US$263m) -17%

• Geist Finance (GEIST), (mc: US$39m) -15%

• DUSK Network (DUSK), (mc: US$125m) -14%

 

Final words

If you’re not feeling like the world’s greatest investor or trader today, spare a thought for “EtherRock” NFT dabbler “Rock dust”…

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