At 8:30 a.m. in New York, the world paused for the January U.S. inflation data, and it landed with a soft thud.
Headline CPI printed +2.4% year over year, a shade under the +2.5% estimate that had been floating around ahead of the release. Core inflation, the version that strips out food and energy, rose 2.5% year over year, right on the expected line.
On the month, prices kept moving at a pace that felt familiar. Headline inflation rose 0.2% in January, and core rose 0.3%, seasonally adjusted. It reads like calm, and it still carries a lot of texture when you look at where the pressure lives.
Shelter rose 0.2% on the month, and the BLS pointed to shelter as the biggest driver of the overall increase. Energy fell 1.5% in January, and gasoline fell 3.2% on a seasonally adjusted basis. Airline fares jumped 6.5% on the month, used cars and trucks fell 1.8%, and motor vehicle insurance slipped 0.4%..
Over the year, the direction of travel stayed intact. The all-items index rose 2.4% over the 12 months ending January, after 2.7% in December, and core held at 2.5% year over year. Shelter rose 3.0% over the year, food rose 2.9%, and energy slipped 0.1%.
There’s a quiet complication inside the official record.
The BLS noted that CPI data for October and November 2025 remain unavailable due to the lapse in appropriations, and the Cleveland Fed’s Cleveland nowcasting page highlights the missing October 2025 CPI release, which was delayed by last year’s government shutdown. When the record has holes, models and proxies take on a larger role, and confidence becomes part of the story.
Then the number leaves the government website and hits the market. Short-term interest rates start absorbing it, and the rest of the risk world leans in.
One simple gauge is the 2-year Treasury yield. The most recent data from Feb. 11 sat around 3.52%, up from 3.45% the day before, per FRED. That yield competes directly with risk appetite, it sets a baseline return for doing very little, and it changes how expensive it feels to reach for upside.
Crypto feels that shift fast, and the plumbing tells you why. DefiLlama’s tracker puts total stablecoin market cap around $307 billion, a pool of cash-like liquidity that traders use to rotate into volatile assets.
When that pool grows, it often shows a market that wants optionality, and when it stalls, it often shows a market that wants yield and certainty.
Bitcoin obliged in absorbing some of that stablecoin liquidity by climbing 6% intraday to threaten $70,000 once more. However, after multiple failed attempts to breach $71,500, there’s a big question mark around its ability to sustain upward momentum beyond a brief relief rally.
The Fed is holding steady, and the vote shows where the pressure sits
The Federal Reserve has been telling a steady story, and its January meeting kept the tone consistent. In its Jan. 28 statement, the FOMC held the federal funds rate target range at 3.5% to 3.75% and said inflation “remains somewhat elevated.”
The vote inside that decision is the part worth lingering on.
Two officials, Stephen I. Miran and Christopher J. Waller, dissented and preferred a quarter-point cut at that meeting, according to the same Miran-named record of the decision. That is a glimpse of the internal push and pull, and it gives markets permission to keep asking the timing question out loud.
Now the calendar tightens the narrative. The next major checkpoint is the March 17–18 meeting, with the statement and press conference set for March 18. That meeting lands after the next CPI report, and it lands in a year when policymakers have already sketched a path that points toward lower rates over time.
That path lives in the Fed’s projections. The Summary of Economic Projections showed a median expectation for the fed funds rate at 3.4% at the end of 2026 and median core PCE inflation at 2.5% in 2026. In plain English, officials see rates drifting down as inflation cools gradually, and the range of outcomes stays wide enough to keep every data point meaningful.
This is why a 2.4% headline CPI print matters. It supports the idea that inflation continues moving closer to the target zone, and it keeps the market focused on how soon the Fed can move from holding to easing.
The next print is already on the board
Markets rarely wait for the next release, they start pricing it the moment the last one lands. That is where nowcasts come in, especially with the data gap sitting in the background.
The Cleveland Fed’s nowcast, updated Feb. 12, put February 2026 CPI at 2.36% year over year and core CPI at 2.42% year over year, and it penciled in month-over-month estimates of 0.22% for headline and 0.20% for core. These are model estimates, and they shape expectations in real time, and expectations shape positioning.
The official next date is set too. The BLS schedule shows the February CPI report arriving Wednesday, March 11, at 8:30 a.m. ET, and that single morning will set the tone going into the March Fed meeting. Traders will keep circling that date in bright ink, and so will anyone trying to guess how quickly rates can ease.
Between now and then, the story stays grounded in the same everyday categories. Energy can cool quickly, gasoline can slide in a week, airline fares can spike and unwind, and shelter moves more like a tide. In this report, shelter still rose on the month, and shelter still rose 3.0% over the year, both spelled out in the January Shelter details.
That’s why the human experience of inflation often lags the headline. Rent and housing-related costs tend to linger in the body, even when the top-line number looks calmer.
Zooming out, the global backdrop keeps the shelf life on this story
U.S. inflation data always feels local, and it always lands global. Money moves across borders faster than most narratives can keep up with, and a softer U.S. inflation trend changes the temperature of global risk.
The IMF projects global growth at 3.3% in 2026 and 3.2% in 2027, and it expects global inflation to fall while U.S. inflation returns to target more gradually. That sets a baseline where the world keeps moving forward, and central banks keep scanning for the spots where prices reheat.
The OECD strikes a similar tone, projecting global GDP growth easing from 3.2% in 2025 to 2.9% in 2026, and it also notes that stretched valuations and the rapid growth in crypto-asset market capitalisation deserve attention from a financial stability angle. When the macro backdrop carries both resilience and risk, speculative markets tend to move in waves, and every CPI print becomes a way to measure which wave is building.
Three paths from here, and why crypto keeps caring
This simple framework is a way to stay grounded when every new number tries to hijack the narrative.
- The first path is steady cooling. Headline inflation drifts toward the low twos, core follows gradually, shelter continues easing, and the Cleveland Fed Cleveland nowcast sits in that neighborhood today. In that world, rate cuts become easier to justify later in the year, and financial conditions loosen, and crypto tends to benefit from the emotional shift from bracing to deploying.
- The second path is sticky inflation. Services categories keep printing firm month to month, shelter stays persistent, energy stops helping, and the Fed stays cautious, a posture embedded in the January rates decision. In that world, yields stay competitive, liquidity stays selective, and crypto can still rally, with sharper pullbacks when the opportunity cost of holding risk feels high.
- The third path is a growth wobble. Inflation cools, the real economy softens, and policy easing arrives sooner, and risk appetite goes through a more emotional ride along the way. The global tone in the IMF view leaves room for resilience and shocks, and that uncertainty becomes part of the trade.
Across all three paths, stablecoins matter as a simple scoreboard for crypto liquidity. A roughly $307 billion base is a lot of potential buying power, and it is also a lot of capital that can sit in cash-like form when yields look attractive.
The human takeaway
A 2.4% CPI print sounds like a clean headline, and it does two things at once. It calms the macro mood, and it leaves plenty of people still feeling the grind of shelter and other stubborn costs.
Most people experience inflation through the categories they touch every day. Shelter creeps, food stays elevated, insurance feels personal, travel swings, and those little bursts of price pressure land right where life requires.
Crypto sits downstream from that same reality, and it trades the mood around rates and liquidity with a hair-trigger. When inflation cools, the conversation around cuts gets louder, the front end of the curve reacts, and the cash pool inside crypto, the stablecoin base, becomes more willing to take risk.
The next dates are close enough to plan around.
March 11 brings the next CPI release, and March 17–18 brings the next Fed meeting, with the schedule anchored on the Fed and March dates.
Between now and then, the market will continue to monitor shelter, yields, and stablecoins, and decide what kind of year these numbers add up to.
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