Proactive Investors - It was an afternoon of two halves for bitcoin on Tuesday.
The benchmark cryptocurrency initially surged following better-than-expected inflation data emerging from the US, which showed core inflation slowing to 4% year on year and headline inflation slowing to 3.2%.
Both prints edged out market forecasts by 10 basis points, which initially satisfied the bulls enough to push the BTC/USDT pair to an afternoon high of $36,693.
But the trading session quickly soured, with bitcoin falling to the bears for the remainder of the afternoon and the BTC/USDT ultimately closed 2.5% lower on the day; the worst daily performance in over two months.
This was despite the US Dollar Index (DXY) also having one of the worst trading sessions of the year as traders put in dovish bets on the US Federal Reserve.
But that did nothing to dispel the fact that bitcoin remains in a nervously overbought period following weeks of speculative gains on the back of BlackRock’s spot bitcoin ETF hype.
Bitcoin has rallied over 30% in the past month alone, making subsequent profit taking an inevitability.
Bitcoin has added nearly a third since this time last month – Source: tradingview.com
The second-largest cryptocurrency Ethereum (ETH) plummeted more than 3.6% on Tuesday, closing at $1,936 where it has remained today.
Ripple (XRP) is back to square one following a dramatic Monday which saw the blue-chip altcoin soar to a four-month high on false news that Blackrock (NYSE:BLK) filed for an XRP ETF.
After a brief surge in the spot markets, the XRP/USDT sharply retraced its steps and closed yesterday’s session over 6% lower.
Elsewhere in the altcoin markets, Solana (SOL) remains the top performer, having added over 35% over the past seven days, followed by Polygon (MATIC)’s 25% rally.
Cardano (ADA) and Tron (TRX) have added mid-single digits to their token prices, while Dogecoin (DOGE) has slipped into the red.
Global cryptocurrency market capitalisation currently stands at $1.38 trillion, with bitcoin dominance slipping below 52%.