Bitcoin price blasts through $28,000 on positive inflation data

Bitcoin (BTC) rose to $28,153 on Wednesday, May 10, after the latest consumer price index (CPI) report showed that US inflation fell more than expected in April. 

The world’s biggest crypto coin jumped more than 1.5% from $27,690 and added over $10 billion to its market worth in just a few minutes as crypto investors welcomed the fact that inflationary pressures continued to ease last month, driving expectations of the Federal Reserve’s pause in its policy tightening campaign. 

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), annual inflation fell to 4.9% in April, compared to economists’ expectations of 5%. Month-on-month, inflation climbed 0.4%, higher than the 0.1% increase recorded in March.

Core inflation, which disregards food and energy costs, rose 5.5% year-over-year, in line with the estimates. 

Potential Fed pivot

The bigger-than-anticipated inflation rate drop comes just a week after the Federal Reserve delivered its most recent interest rate hike of 25 basis points (bps). The US central bank has been constantly raising rates since March 2022 as part of its most aggressive policy tightening campaign in over 40 years. 

The next Fed policy meeting is in June, which means there will be another CPI inflation report next month before the Fed announces its next rate move. However, many believe this might be the last rate increase for a while, particularly after today’s CPI data. 

Bitcoin price prediction

BTC’s jump on Wednesday follows a tepid period for the cryptocurrency, which lost some of the gains it saw in mid-April when it exceeded the $30,000 mark. 

While some believe BTC could thrive in the coming months in hopes of a potential Fed pivot, others are not as bullish on the cryptocurrency’s prospects.

On May 10, the well-known pseudonymous cryptocurrency trader Alton Sherpa observed that the 4-hour exponential moving averages (EMAs) are tightly clustered, and there are many upcoming support and resistance (S/R) levels. In his opinion, this indicates that the current trading environment is still quite volatile.

“I dont think that this goes past 29k in the short term; lots of resistance coming. 4h EMAs all clustered + lots of S/R levels incoming, this is still a v. choppy environment IMO.”

– Altcoin Sherpa wrote in the tweet.

Finally, the CoinMarketCap community, whose predictions have an 82% historical accuracy rate, expects Bitcoin to trade at an average price of $24,753 on May 31, implying a potential downside of 12% from the current price.

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