• Stronger inflation data and hawkish comment from Federal Reserve’s James Bullard helps the US dollar to edge higher.
• Chainalysis says “Ransomware operators are attacking bigger targets and stealing more funds than ever.”
• According to the Fundstrat firm Fsinsight, BTC price could increase to around $200K per unit in 2022.

On Friday Asian trading session, Bitcoin traded low against the US greenback.  The US dollar traded high as the greenback preserves its strength on Friday. Stronger-than-expected inflation data from the US and the hawkish comments from the Federal Reserve’s James Bullard.

The US Bureau of Economic Analysis reported on Thursday that annual inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) had made a jump to its highest level since 4 decades at 7.5% in January. which is high than the market expectation of 7.2% and thus provided a boost to US Treasury bond yields and in turn favored the greenback.

Moreover, hawkish comments from Federal Reserve’s James Bullard also boosted the sentiment for a 50bps rate hike in March. The aggressive comments from Bullard favored the US dollar after he said the “data had made him dramatically more hawkish” Bullard now wants a full percentage point of interest rate hikes by July 1. He even said that the Fed could raise rates at inter-meetings.

On the other hand, A report from blockchain data firm Chainalysis found that ransomware gangs are going after increasingly larger targets  and getting better at extorting big sums of cryptocurrency. The surge in payment sizes, according to the Chainalysis, is due to the growing sophistication of ransomware groups. Attacks have become more precise and efficient as hackers have leveraged third-party tools to take on a “big game hunting” strategy to make larger attacks on bigger targets. This recent news could have a negative impact on the oldest crypto – Bitcoin.

On contrary, According to the Fundstrat firm Fsinsight, BTC could increase by almost 500% from the current price point to around $200K per unit. The BTC price prediction stems from Fsinsight and the firm’s head of digital asset strategy, Sean Farrell. Both Fsinsight and Fundstrat are bullish about the upside potential of crypto assets as Fundstrat Global Advisors’ head of research recently insisted bitcoin still has “exponential growth ahead” of it.

BTC/USD 4 Hour chart:

Support: 42708.4 (S1), 41657.0 (S2), 40107.7 (S3).

Resistance: 45309.1 (R1), 46858.4 (R2), 47909.8 (R3).

The Stronger US inflation favors the greenback against its rivals. We expect a bearish trend for BTC/USD.