Mooners and Shakers: Bitcoin rockets to $26k on US CPI inflation data, then cools off; Jim Cramer says sell

If you were up past midnight last night (AEDT), you might’ve noticed Bitcoin grabbing the ball and bursting up the sideline over the $26k metre line. Annnd, then it came back down fairly hard again a handful of hours later.

But not too far, mind. It’s still holding onto the impressive gains of the past couple of days, and then some.

Why did it do this? US CPI inflation data, innit. There are broader reasons for the Bitcoin pumpage this week, which we drilled into yesterday with Collective Shift and you can read about that here.

But as for the US CPI report, it came in fairly cool, showing YoY inflation had dropped to 6%, down from 6.4% in January. Meanwhile, Core CPI (discounting food and energy price sectors) remained flat at 5.5%. Upshot – markets, including Wall Street, digged this.

And the CME’s Fedwatch tool now shows that more than 20% of the market is pricing in a 0% rate hike after this month’s FOMC meeting. If that happens, Crypto Twitter bulls will be in a right back-slapping, meme-pumping frenzy.

That said, as US investment analyst Callie Cox over at eToro noted in an email update sent to Coinhead this morning, “Inflation is still the Fed’s number one priority, and if you don’t think the banking sector’s risks will spread, then inflation could still be an issue.”

The crypto market was already buoyant before the CPI data came out, though, on the news of the promise of a Fed bailout (although Biden and co are at pains not to call it that) for the Silicon Valley Bank’s (SVB) depositors – at no apparent cost to US taxpayers. It’s a “money printer goes brrrrr” quantitative-easing hopium narrative.

Let’s roll this meme out again…

Anyhoo, let’s see how the crypto market’s price action is tracking right now, as we type…

So then, the crypto majors have cooled off somewhat from where they surged in the small hours, but some effects of the pumpage are still there.

Jim Cramer reckons BTC is a sell

Where to next? And how to play things? If you believe US financial analyst Jim “As Seen on TV” Cramer knows what he’s talking about, then it’s time to sell Bitcoin… (actually right before it pumped).

And whether or not you subscribe to the “Inverse Cramer” idea of doing the exact opposite of what the CNBC Mad Money host says, let’s at least hear what he had to say… including:

“I would sell my Bitcoin into this rally, believe me, and I had been a believer in BTC… Bitcoin is a strange animal, I will say. Point blank, I think it’s being manipulated up.”

Manipulated up? There’s no doubt whales are splashing about behind the scenes, but pretty sure the potential shift in the Fed-related macro landscape might be having something to do with things right now, too.

Uppers and downers: 11–100

Sweeping a market-cap range of about US$8.3 billion to about US$437 million in the rest of the top 100, let’s find some of the biggest 24-hour gainers and losers at press time. (Stats accurate at time of publishing, based on CoinGecko.com data.)

PUMPERS

• SingularityNET (AGIX), (market cap: US$585 million) +26%

• Stacks (STX), (mc: US$1.3 billion) +22%

• ImmutableX (IMX), (mc: US$1.03 billion) +21%

• Fetch.ai (FET), (mc: US$471 million) +17%

• Conflux (CFX), (mc: US$637 million) +16%

SLUMPERS

• Maker (MKR), (market cap: US$779 million) -5%

• ApeCoin (APE), (mc: US$1.59 billion) -3%

• WhiteBIT Token (WBT), (mc: US$626 million) -3%

• Monero (XMR), (mc: US$2.7 billion) -2%

• LEO Token (LEO), (mc: US$3.1 billion) -1%

Around the blocks

Some pertinence and randomness that stuck with us on our morning moves through the Crypto Twitterverse.

It’s a “great time to be in crypto”, says Collective Shift founder Ben Simpson, who also thinks there is potential for a bit of a pullback in coming weeks, too.

Meanwhile, Jaysis H – just take a look at these Signature Bank commercials, would you? Thankfully, there’s no such thing as an internal marketing team for Bitcoin…