Cryptocurrency prices were relatively mixed on Monday morning ahead of the upcoming US PCE report. Bitcoin remained stuck at $52,000, where it has been at in the past few weeks as data points to slowing ETF inflows. Ethereum, on the other hand, has moved above $3,000 as investors anticipate a spot ETH ETF approval.
Top cryptocurrency gainers
Still, there have been some popular cryptocurrencies in the market recently. For example, Uniswap (UNI) rose by over 50% since Friday after a proposal in the network sought to reward the UNI token holders and stakers. This is an important move because Uniswap is the biggest and most profitable DEX in the world. It generated millions in revenue in the past 12 months.
Other decentralized finance (DeFi) tokens have also jumped sharply recently following the news. This is happening as investors predict that they too will follow that trend set by Uniswap in the next few months. Some of the top DeFi performers were the likes of Compound (COMP), Vertex Protocol (VRTX), and Lido DAO.
Meanwhile, some of the other top-performing altcoins were Cartesi (CTSI), COTI, and Digibyte (DGB). Cartesi surged to a high of $0.3968, which was over 268% above its lowest point in 2023. This increase brought its total market cap to over $284 million.
Cartesi is a blockchain project that aims to solve some of the challenges faced by most EVM networks by providing a full – not shared – CPU for each dApp. It also has the Cartesi Virtual Machine, which gives developers a full suite of code libraries.
COTI price has also gone vertical in the past few days. It has risen in the past four days, reaching its highest point since March 2022. The token has soared by over 520% from its lowest point in December last year. It has more than doubled in the past few days. COTI is a network that aims to bring privacy to Ethereum.
DigiByte’s (DGB) price also jumped to a high of $0.0133, its highest level since August 22nd. It has soared by more than 128% from its last year’s low.
US PCE data ahead
The most important report this week will be the upcoming PCE data from the United States that will come out on Friday. This is a crucial report since it is the Fed’s favorite inflation gauge. As a result, the figure will have a role in determining the next action by the Federal Reserve.
The recent PCE report showed that this gauge rose by 2.9% in December, the first time it was below the 3% mark in months. There is a likelihood that it moved back above 3% in January as housing and insurance costs rose.
Therefore, if the figure comes hotter than expected, it could be a sign that the Federal Reserve will maintain a hawkish tone for longer. This is in line with last week’s minutes, which showed that most officials expect the Fed to maintain a restrictive tone since inflation remains red hot.
Higher rates tend to have an impact on Bitcoin and other risky assets like COTI, DigiByte, and Cartesi.
