Hassan Maishera
TL;DR
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BTC continues to trade above the $51k level after losing less than 1% of its value in the last 24 hours.
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Investors will be eyeing the Core PCE Price Index report later this week to gain a better understanding of the current inflation level.
BTC Stabilizes Above $51k
Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market cap, has been trading above the $51k level for the past week. It continues to maintain its price above that level and is currently trading at $51,588 per coin.
The stability in BTC’s price comes as there is no major macroeconomic event on the horizon. However, investors will be keeping an eye on this week’s core PCE Price Index report on Thursday.
Personal consumption expenditures (PCE) is a measure of the spending on goods and services by consumers in the US and is considered a gauge of inflation in the U.S. economy.
As a measure of inflation, the PCE will help investors determine the Fed’s direction regarding interest rates decision by next month. This will also help determine the market’s direction in the coming days.
While BTC remains stagnant, Ether continues to rally higher. In the last seven days, ETH is up by more than 7%, compared to BTC which has lost less than 1% of its value.
At press time, Ether’s price stands at $3,108, up by 2.5% in the last 24 hours. Ether’s performance can be attributed to the upcoming Dencun upgrade launch on the Ethereum mainnet. The upgrade is slated for March 13 and is designed to reduce costs for layer-2 transactions and data availability on Ethereum.
Despite BTC’s poor performance, the total cryptocurrency market cap has touched the $2 trillion mark after adding 1% to its value in the last 24 hours. This implies that the total market cap is down by roughly 35% from the all-time high of $3 trillion recorded in 2021.
