The leading cryptocurrency has declined early on Monday and hovered at $18,678 at the moment of writing.

According to CoinMarketCap, Bitcoin peaked at $20,087 over the past 24 hours.

BTC lost 7% on Friday and closed near $18,232.

The leading cryptocurrency slid down following the release of the latest US CPI data by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Inflation in the US decreased to 8.3% in August from 8.5% in July. Economists expected inflation to reach 8.1%.

Fed policymakers will meet on Wednesday to decide on another interest rate hike. The regulator will examine inflation data particularly carefully. The slight decline of CPI is unlikely to deter the Fed from hiking the interest rate by 75 basis points, analysts say. Last week, Fed chairman Jerome Powell said the US central bank was ready to act decisively against record high consumer prices.

Traders are pricing in a 90% chance of a 75 bps increase this week, with a 50 bps move now considered to be unlikely.

According to analysts at Kaiko, Bitcoin's volatility is notably tied to the results of FOMC meetings.

The high correlation between Bitcoin and the Fed's monetary policy has first been observed in the summer of 2021, which indicates that the crypto market has long been influenced by key macroeconomic indicators.

For example, BTC surged above $40,000 in May 2022, when the Federal Reserve increased its interest rate to a target range of 0.75-1%. On the same day, Bitcoin dropped below $36,000 and entered a lengthy period of downward correction.

In June, Bitcoin immediately surged after the Fed raised the interest rate to a target range of 1.5-1.75%.

In the upcoming few months, policy moves by the world's central banks would have a stronger impact on the digital assets market, as interest rate hikes would significantly limit the ability of market players to invest into risky assets such as cryptocurrencies.

Altcoin market

Ethereum, Bitcoin's main competitor in the crypto market, also declined on Friday. At the moment of writing, ETH was trading at $1,300. Over the past 24 hours, the altcoin lost 10% and finished the session at $1,280.

Early on Thursday, September 15, Ethereum successfully transitioned to the proof-of-stake algorithm (PoS) from the proof-of-work algorithm (PoW), as part of its major update titled The Merge. The first block on the PoS network, which no longer requires mining, has already been created. The reward for this block was 45 ETH.

Bitcoin's main competitor advanced following the update, but reversed course and declined by 8.2% afterwards.

Last Thursday, founder of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin confirmed that the transition to PoS was successful, and that there were no technical issues during The Merge. Earlier, the Canadian-Russian programmer stated that the transition to PoS, which would reduce transaction fees to 2 cents, would make digital assets more popular. Rising transactions fees have pushed down the popularity of crypto payments, Buterin noted.

As the long-awaited update concluded, trading volume at crypto exchanges increased significantly to $28.6 billion on Friday from $18.1 billion on September 6.

Out of the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, most currencies were in negative territory over the past 24 hours, with the exception of a few stablecoins. The worst-performing cryptocurrencies were Ethereum (-10.28%) and Cardano (-9%).

The top 10 cryptocurrencies had similar performance over the past week, with most coins posting losses except a couple of stablecoins. Ethereum lost 26.62% and was the worst-performing cryptocurrency of the past week.

According to CoinGecko, the best-performing cryptocurrency out of the top 100 coins by market cap was Chiliz (+0.15%), while the worst-performing currency was Ethereum Classic (-17.14%).

Chiliz was also the biggest gainer of the past week – the cryptocurrency jumped by 12.55% over the previous 7 days. The biggest loser of the past week was Terra, which slumped by 47.71%.

The overall market cap of the crypto market is currently at $925 billion, the lowest level since September 7.

The market cap has declined almost three-fold from November 2021, when it stood at more than $3 trillion.