Bitcoin Falls Below $82,000 After U.S. Inflation Tops Forecast

Bitcoin fell below $82,000 after U.S. consumer-price inflation exceeded forecasts. BTC dropped to $81,926 on Bitstamp after the data was released Wednesday.

The Consumer Price Index rose 3.7% in September from a year earlier, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, compared with the 3.6% forecast. Gasoline prices increased 9.1% year over year and accounted for more than half of the monthly rise in the overall index. The energy index climbed 5.2% in September after rising 2.1% in August.

Core inflation, which excludes food and energy, rose 2.6% year over year. That was 0.1 percentage point above the forecast.

Bitcoin, gold and U.S. stock futures fell after the report, while bond yields rose. Gold declined to about $4,079 per ounce. The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield reached 5.329%, about three basis points below a new 24-year high.

“The only surprise is that investors keep getting surprised by broad-based inflation,” Sonu Varghese, chief macro strategist at Carson Group, said. He added that the effects of higher diesel prices and increased activity linked to artificial intelligence had not fully appeared in the data.

Traders changed their expectations for Federal Reserve policy after the report. CME Group’s FedWatch Tool showed a 53.7% probability of a 25-basis-point rate hike at the Fed’s Oct. 27-28 meeting, up from 22.1% the previous day. The probability of another 25-basis-point increase in December was 50%.

Theresa Sheehan, an economic analyst at Econoday, said the inflation data and weak September payroll figures could leave the Federal Open Market Committee on hold at its October meeting while maintaining a bias toward a December hike.

The U.S. Producer Price Index for September was scheduled for release Friday, Oct. 16. Bitcoin traded near the $82,500-to-$83,400 range, which analysts were monitoring as a possible support zone.