Proactive Investors - Promising US inflation data was insufficient to drag bitcoin (BTC) out of its prolonged sideways trade, with the BTC/USDT pair closing Wednesday 0.8% lower at US$30,370.
Bitcoin has remained essentially unchanged this morning, swapping for US$30,400 at the time of writing.
US CPI inflation slowed to 3% in June, the lowest level since March 2021, beating market expectations of 3.1%.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq index rallied by more than 1% after the announcement of the data, and while bitcoin did briefly see some upside, it wasn’t enough to motivate a sustained bull run.
Bitcoin remains locked in a sideways trading channel between 30k and 31k, where it has largely been trapped for three weeks now.
Even news of a bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) being approved in Amsterdam for the first time couldn’t push bitcoin higher.
Bitcoin ETFs are a hot topic right now, with the world’s largest asset manager BlackRock (NYSE:BLK) trying to persuade hawkish US regulators to approve its spot bitcoin ETF.
Speculation on an approval pushed bitcoin above US$30,000 in June, but a lack of further news has caused the benchmark cryptocurrency to plateau.
Bitcoin hits three-week sideways trade – Source: currency.com
Bitcoin trading volumes remain at historically low levels, causing speculation on how long it can sustain the current spot price.
Bitcoin dominance is hovering around 51.5%, a slight tapering off from last month's 52%-plus highs, but still indicative of a substantial concentration of investor interest in the crypto space towards bitcoin.
In the meantime, BTC/USDT appears fairly evenly balanced between the bulls and the bears, suggesting a sideways trade could persist.
On the Ethereum (ETH) front, the second-largest cryptocurrency closed Wednesday 0.3% lower at US$1,871, where it has remained this morning.
In the wider altcoin space, Solana (SOL) was heavily overbought at US$21.83, a 10% week-on-week gain. SOL is the only blue chip to post double-digit growth in the past week, despite no obvious catalyst.
Global cryptocurrency market capitalisation currently stands at US$1.18tn, having dipped 1.1% overnight.
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