Bitcoin is under selling pressure ahead of today’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) interest‑rate decision, the first meeting under new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh.
The leading cryptocurrency slipped below $65,000 after hovering near $67,000 just a day earlier, according to CoinDesk data. The broader market, measured by the CoinDesk 20 Index (CD200), has fallen 1.2% since midnight UTC, with all but four tokens posting losses.
“The primary focus this week is the FOMC meeting under new leadership, with market expectations of interest‑rate hikes already priced in through 2027,” Laser Digital wrote in its weekly note.
Traders expect no change to the fed funds rate at this meeting; instead, attention will turn to Warsh’s post‑meeting press conference for clues on his inflation outlook. Warsh has previously criticized the Fed’s frequent press conferences and detailed forecasts, and may face probing questions about his stance.
Among the notable gainers, Uniswap’s UNI token rose another 20% over 24 hours, buoyed by Standard Chartered’s bullish projection of a $100 price by 2030. Meanwhile, NEAR, INJ and several stablecoin‑related assets fell as much as 8%.
Derivatives positioning
- The market remains calm ahead of the Fed decision. Crypto futures volume dropped 20% in 24 hours to $165 billion, and open interest fell 2.3% to $110 billion. Liquidations decreased to roughly $310 million, down 44%.
- This calm is also reflected in BVIV, Bitcoin’s 30‑day implied volatility index, which hovered near an annualized 39%—a level not seen since June 2, before a spike to nearly 59% a few days later. Ether’s volatility index shows similar stability.
- Cardano’s ADA stands out among altcoins. Open interest has climbed to 2.26 billion tokens, nearing the record 2.32 billion set on June 6 and recovering from the June 13 low of 2 billion.
- The rebound indicates renewed capital deployment in leveraged ADA markets, though it isn’t necessarily bullish. ADA’s price slipped from over 18 cents to under 17 cents in two days, alongside a negative 24‑hour cumulative volume delta, suggesting aggressive market‑order trading rather than passive limit orders.
- ZEC and SUI were the other notable open‑interest gainers over the past 24 hours, while NEAR and BCH led the losers.
- NEAR has dropped over 9%, and the decline in open interest suggests traders are unwinding leverage rather than adding new short positions.
- Most major tokens, except TRX and CC, show negative 24‑hour CVD, pointing to broad bearish dominance in trade flows.
- In options markets, BTC puts continue to dominate 24‑hour volume rankings, though the $80,000 call expiring March 26 2025 also saw notable activity. For Ether, calls lead the volume rankings.
Token talk
- UNI has risen for a seventh consecutive day, its longest winning streak since August 2023, when it posted an eight‑day run. The token trades near $2.75, erasing its June losses after jumping more than 10% earlier in the week.
- The catalyst was a Standard Chartered note. The bank’s digital assets head, Geoff Kendrick, initiated coverage on June 15 with a $100 price target for 2030—about 40 times the current level—arguing that tokenized real‑world assets such as stocks and bonds will flow into DeFi, positioning Uniswap as core market infrastructure. He also projects a path to $6.50 by year‑end.
- Two fundamentals underlie the bullish call: Uniswap’s fee switch, live since late 2025, routes a portion of trading fees to buy back and burn UNI, having removed roughly 106 million tokens (over 10% of supply) and turning the governance token into a deflationary asset.
- Additionally, tokenized stocks launched on the protocol earlier this month have already seen more than $9.1 billion swapped through its real‑world‑asset pools.
