Bitcoin shrugged off inflation fears almost as quickly as print landed.
The largest cryptocurrency fell to $79,879 late Tuesday in the United States, after April’s consumer price index rose 3.8% year-on-year, higher than economists had estimated, with gasoline prices responsible for most of the rise since the start of the Iran war. BTC recovered to $81,208 on Wednesday morning in Asia, ending the session up 0.3% over 24 hours after trading in a range of $1,400. The dip was bought aggressively.
Among the majors, BNB led with a 2.5% gain to $677, while dogecoin added 1.3% to $0.1114. Ether fell 0.3% over 24 hours to $2,300 and is now down 3.2% over seven days, lagging the cohort. Solana slipped 0.6% to $95.52. $XRP Was trading at $1.45, down 0.5% on the day.
The CPI index shook traditional markets harder than crypto. The S&P 500 fell 0.2% and the Nasdaq 100 fell 0.9%, with semiconductor stocks taking the brunt of the selling after weeks of outsized gains.
The yield on rate-sensitive two-year Treasuries held just below 4%, while the yield on Japan’s 20-year bonds rose above its January peak to its highest level since 1997, as high energy prices added to inflationary pressures globally.
Asian stocks recovered early losses after the White House confirmed that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang would join President Donald Trump’s trip to China to lift chipmaker futures.
Flows under crypto are still positive. CoinShares reported global crypto fund inflows of $858 million last week, with Bitcoin products taking in $706 million, ether $77 million, solana $48 million and $XRP 40 million dollars.
The biggest data point was the $14 million outflows from Bitcoin short positions, the largest weekly unwind of 2026. Money is leaving bearish bets on Bitcoin even as the macro band becomes more unstable, which is the kind of positioning shift that typically precedes upward moves rather than capitulations.
FxPro chief market analyst Alex Kuptsikevich said the broader sentiment index has stabilized just below the midpoint of its range, recording readings of 47, 48 and 49 over the past three days, suggesting the bears still have a slight advantage.
Bitcoin “lost its upward momentum as it approached the 200-day moving average,” he said in a note, referring to the long-term trendline that dampens short-term price noise.
“Although this line is trending downward, the market has failed to breach it over the past six days. On the other hand, since the decline is quite modest, it looks like nothing more than a pause after a rally.”
CoinShares also noted that last week’s surge in inflows was accompanied by a compromise on the treatment of stablecoin yield under the CLARITY Act, which the Senate Banking Committee is expected to consider next week. Regulatory progress is one of the few tailwinds the market has seen since the start of the Iran war, and it is showing up in flow data rather than price action.
For now, bitcoin holding $81,000 after such a hot CPI and tight Treasury yield pattern is the kind of structural behavior that suggests buyers are still active below the price. The next test will be whether this holds through next week’s Senate markup and the next round of macroeconomic data.
