On Friday, Bitcoin was trading sideways. At the time of writing, the price of BTC is hovering at $19,022.

According to CoinMarketCap, over the past 24 hours, the price of Bitcoin reached a low of $17,995 and a high of $19,030.

On Thursday, the asset broke through $18,000 for the first time since mid-December 2022. The key reason for the rise was lower inflation in the United States.

On Thursday, it became known that at the end of December, the annual consumer price level in the country slowed to 6.5% from November's 7.1%, which fully coincided with the preliminary forecasts of analysts. In month-on-month terms, the indicator sagged by 0.1%, while the market had expected it to be unchanged compared with November.

The publication of strong inflation statistics gave traders from around the world hope for a softening of the US Federal Reserve's further stance on monetary policy.

According to the latest survey by the largest North American market of financial derivatives CME Group, more than 90% of experts project an increase in the key interest rate in the US by 0.25 points in February, to 4.5-4.75%.

Notably, as part of the December meeting, the US central bank raised the interest rate by 50 basis points to 4.25-4.5%. At the same time, the rate has reached the highest level since 2007. In December, Jerome Powell, the chairman of the US Federal Reserve, said that the regulator would continue to tighten monetary policy until consumer prices return to the target level of 2%.

Yesterday, the strong performance of US exchanges supported the crypto market. Thus, on Wednesday, amid investors' expectations of positive news on inflation in the US, the Dow Jones Industrial Average index rose by 0.80%, the S&P 500 gained 1.28%, and the NASDAQ Composite added 1.76%.

Since the beginning of 2022, analysts have increasingly emphasized the high level of correlation between the US stock market and digital assets against the background of the tense expectations of both the consequences of the geopolitical conflict in eastern Europe and the further steps of the US Federal Reserve.

Earlier, the experts of the investment company Arcane Research have already stated that the correlation between BTC and tech stocks has reached the maximum level since July 2020.

In addition, analyst platform TradingView's economists said that the correlation of the cryptocurrency market with the US stock market in the past quarter has reached 70%.

Altcoin market

On Friday, Ethereum, Bitcoin's main competitor, was also moving sideways. Yesterday, the altcoin broke through the important key level of $1,400, reaching a two-month high. At the time of writing, the coin is trading at $1,412. In the past 24 hours, the value of the asset soared by 6.7%.

As for cryptocurrencies from the top 10 by market cap, all but a few stablecoins showed strong growth overnight. The best results showed BTC, adding 3.41%. The worst performance was demonstrated by XRP. The altcoin lost 0.12%.

At the end of last week, all cryptocurrencies from the top 10, except for some stablecoins, also showed strong gains. Cardano topped the growth list and added 19.77%.

According to CoinGecko, the world's largest aggregator of digital asset data, over the past 24 hours, among the top 100 most capitalized digital assets, first place in the list of top gainers went to token Aptos that increased by 18.67%, while in the top loser was Nexo, plummeting by 5.39%.

At the end of last week, among the top 100 digital assets, the worst results showed the UNUS SED LEO, losing 1.68%, while Gala showed the best performance, adding 114.17%.

According to CoinGecko, as of Friday morning, the total crypto market capitalization was able to fix above the important level of $800 billion and stands at $867.06 billion. Despite this, it has more than tripled since November 2021, when the figure exceeded $3 trillion.