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The Federal Reserve held the federal funds rate at 3.5%–3.75% on Wednesday, in what was described as likely the final meeting as chair for Jerome Powell. The decision passed by an 8-4 vote, underscoring internal divisions within the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC).
Bitcoin traded near $76,000 by late Wednesday in New York, down from about $77,000 earlier in the session. The move extended a roughly 40% drawdown from October 2025’s all-time high near $126,000.
The article described the transmission mechanism from Fed policy into Bitcoin’s price as operating through liquidity and risk appetite. In this framework, a rate hold in an environment of sticky inflation sustains the real opportunity cost across dollar-denominated assets, reducing the incremental liquidity speculative positions in high-beta assets require to attract marginal capital.
It also pointed to the 2022 episode as an empirical reference point, when Bitcoin fell about 65% in line with the Federal Reserve’s most aggressive tightening cycle in four decades, as duration-sensitive risk assets repriced together.
While the Fed’s decision was not described as tightening, the article said it also did not provide the monetary easing that a $250,000 bitcoin price thesis had been pricing in. The committee cited “developments in the Middle East” as a material source of uncertainty, which the article characterized as code for an oil supply shock affecting central bank flexibility.
According to the article, Brent crude has been pinned above $110 per barrel for most of April. It also noted that the Strait of Hormuz—through which roughly 20% of seaborne oil flows—has continued to disrupt shipping.
The article added that the US national average gas price reached $4.22 a gallon this week, up 6.2% over the past month.
CME FedWatch data cited in the article showed traders pricing rates on hold through December.
The article argued that the FOMC vote structure matters because markets price certainty. It described the dissent pattern as informative but not decisive: Governor Stephen Miran pushed for an immediate cut, while three others dissented against easing language. The resulting vote was presented as signaling genuine disagreement rather than a committee moving coherently in one direction.
It also quoted Jerry Tempelman, a former senior analyst at the New York Fed and vice president of economic and fixed-income research at Mutual of America Capital Management, who characterized the disruption as potentially “prolonged pricing stress that trickles through the market,” concluding that a 2026 cut looks unlikely absent a severe energy or labor-market shock.
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