July’s US consumer price index (CPI) has seen an annual rise of 8.5%, or smaller than expected, suggesting an inflation peak and potential cool-off, after hitting 9.1% in June.
Bloomberg-surveyed economists estimated that inflation would show an 8.7% annual increase this July, and a 0.2% increase compared to June.
Also, in July, annual core CPI - which excludes prices of food and energy - was the same as in June (5.9%) and lower than estimated (6.1%).
Both bitcoin (BTC) and ethereum (ETH) jumped right after the announcement. BTC rallied from USD 23,100 and briefly spiked above USD 24,000, increasing its daily gains to 3% (at 13:21 UTC), while ETH jumped from USD 1,710 to USD 1,820, increasing its daily gains to 7%. Multiple altcoins also turned green.
The inflation was expected to see a slower increase in July as petrol prices dropped across the country. However, it still remains close to 40-year highs.
Ahead of the announcement, Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, opined that “everyone is primed for reasonably good news, so it’s got to be good news. If it’s not as good as people think, it’s going to be unusually bad news.”
“I think the 9.1% inflation rate we suffered in June will be the peak...a lot of this depends on oil prices,” he added.
Also, per a July survey from the New York Federal Reserve, consumers expected inflation to run at a 6.2% pace over the next year and a 3.2% annual rate for the next three years – compared to 6.8% and 3.6%, respectively, seen in a June survey.
Meanwhile, Marcus Sotiriou, an analyst at the digital asset broker GlobalBlock, said in a comment shared with Cryptonews.com prior to the report that,
“CPI is expected to be 8.7% - if the released number is lower than this figure, I
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