Crypto markets threw a nice head fake this week by rallying into resistance on a “positive” Consumer Price Index (CPI) report, before retracing the majority of those gains right after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell took on a surprisingly hawkish tone during his post-rate-hike presser. The Fed hiked interest rates by 0.50%, which was well within the expectation of most market participants, but the eyebrow-raiser was the Federal Open Market Committee consensus that rates would need to reach the 5%–5.5%+ range in order to hopefully achieve the Fed’s 2% inflation target. This basically threw cold water on traders’ lusty dreams …
The Federal Reserve’s strategy to hike interest rates may continue, making it difficult for the crypto industry to bounce back. For crypto assets to become the hedge against inflation, the industry needs to explore ways to decouple crypto from traditional markets. Decentralized finance (DeFi) can perhaps offer a way out by breaking away from legacy financial models. How Federal Reserve policies are affecting crypto In the 1980s, Paul Volcker, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, introduced the interest hiking policy to control inflation. Volcker raised interest rates to over 20%, forcing the economy into a recession by reducing people’s …
The U.S. stock market approaches a crucial turning point as uncertainty over inflation rises after hotter-than-expected economic data released in February. Despite mounting investor worries, the economy is showing signs of resilience that could protect against a significant downside move. The escalating risk-off sentiment in the market is also creating volatility for Bitcoin (BTC). The leading crypto asset, which has had a strong correlation with the U.S. stock market, moved oppositely to the stock market in February. The correction between BTC and Nasdaq turned negative for the first time in two years. However, with the crypto bulls pausing at the …
On Oct.4 and Oct. 5 Bitcoin (BTC) took another step through the $20,000 mark, bringing the price above a long-term descending trendline that stretches all the way back to Apr. 22, or Nov. 15 depending on one’s style of technical analysis. Some traders might be feeling a bit celebratory now that price trades outside of the descending trendline, but have any relevant metrics or macro factors changed enough to support a bullish point-of-view for Bitcoin price? In reality, BTC price simply “consolidated” its way through the trendline by trading in a sideways manner where price has been range bound between …
Undoubtedly, 2022 was one of the worst years for Bitcoin (BTC) buyers, primarily because the asset’s price dropped by 65%. While there were some explicit reasons for the drop, such as the LUNA-UST crash in May and the FTX implosion in November, the most important reason was the U.S. Federal Reserve policy of tapering and raising interest rates. Bitcoin’s price had dropped 50% from its peak to lows of $33,100 before the LUNA-UST crash, thanks to the Fed rate hikes. The first significant drop in Bitcoin’s price was due to growing market uncertainty around potential rate hike rumors in November …