Altcoins Bleed Again as BTC Was Stopped at $98K Ahead of CPI Data (Market Watch)

Bitcoin’s price rally to and above $98,000 yesterday was short-lived as the asset was rejected and pushed south by about three grand in the following hours.

The altcoins have suffered even more, as usual, by marking substantial declines over the past day of up to 8% in the case of SUI.

BTC Stopped at $98K

The primary cryptocurrency endured a highly volatile start to the previous business week by charting a few $10K moves that sent its price on a real rollercoaster following Trump’s tariffs against China, Mexico, and Canada. The asset calmed in the following days and even tried to reclaim the $100,000 level on Friday but was quickly halted in its tracks.

The rejections drove it south to $96,000, which is where it spent most of the weekend. The bulls tried to take the upper hand on Monday and Tuesday and pushed bitcoin to a multi-day peak of just over $98,000.

However, the overall bearish sentiment prevailed, and BTC couldn’t breach that level for long. Just the opposite, it started to lose value and dropped to $95,000 later on. As of now, it has added around $1,000 and sits at $96,000, but more volatility is expected later when the US CPI numbers for January are set to be released.

Its market capitalization has declined to $1.910 trillion on CG, while its dominance over the alts has returned to 58.5%.

Alts Back in Red

As it typically happens during similar crashes, the altcoins have it even worse. The biggest daily losers from the larger-cap alts are SUI (-8%), HBAR (-8%), AVAX (-7%), XLM (-6%), LINK (-5.5%), and DOGE (-5%).

Ethereum, Ripple, Cardano, and Solana are also in the red, but in a slightly less painful manner. In contrast, ENA, TIA, and KAS have plunged by double-digits from the mid-cap alts.

The cumulative market cap of all crypto assets has seen over $80 billion gone in a day and is well below $3.3 trillion on CG now.