Bitcoin faces selling pressure ahead of today’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) interest rate decision at the first meeting under new Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh.
The largest cryptocurrency retreated below $65,000 after trading near $67,000 just a day earlier, CoinDesk data shows. The broader market CoinDesk 20 Index (CD200) has lost 1.2% since midnight UTC, with all but four tokens down.
“The main focus of the week is the FOMC meeting under new leadership, with market expectations of rate hikes already priced in through 2027,” Laser Digital said in its weekly note.
The market is pricing in no change in the fed funds rate at this meeting. Instead, the focus will be on Warsh’s post-meeting press conference to signal his views on inflation. Warsh has criticized the Fed’s frequent press conferences and detailed forecasts and may face questions about his stance.
Among standout winners, Uniswap’s UNI token surged another 20% in 24 hours, supported by Standard Chartered’s bullish forecast of $100 in 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. Activity has slowed, with crypto futures volume down 20% in 24 hours to $165 billion and open interest down 2.3% to $110 billion. Liquidations fell to about $310 million, down 44%.
- The calm is also evident in BVIV, bitcoin’s 30-day implied volatility index, which was hovering near 39% year-on-year at the time of writing – a level not seen since June 2, just before rising to nearly 59% a few days later. Ether’s volatility index shows similar stability.
- Cardano’s ADA stands out among altcoins. Open interest has risen to 2.26 billion tokens, approaching the record of 2.32 billion set on June 6 and recovering from the June 13 low of 2 billion.
- The recovery points to renewed capital deployment in leveraged ADA markets, although the movement is not necessarily bullish. The token’s price has fallen from over 18 cents to under 17 cents in two days, along with a negative 24-hour cumulative volume delta. The combination leans bearish and points to aggressive trading with market orders rather than passive limit orders.
- ZEC and SUI are the other notable open interest gainers over the past 24 hours, while NEAR and BCH led the losers.
- NEAR is down over 9%, and the drop in open interest suggests traders are unwinding leverage during the selloff rather than piling into fresh shorts.
- Most major tokens, with the exception of TRX and CC, show negative 24-hour CVD, indicating broad bearish dominance in trade flows.
- In the options markets, BTC puts continue to dominate the 24-hour volume rankings, although the $80,000 call that expires on March 26 next year also saw notable activity. In ether’s case, calls lead volume rankings.
Token talk
- UNI is up for a seventh straight day, its longest streak since August 2023, when it went eight. The token is trading near $2.75, erasing its June losses after rising more than 10% earlier this week.
- The accelerant was a Standard Chartered note. The bank’s head of digital assets, Geoff Kendrick, initiated coverage on June 15 with a price target of $100 for 2030, around 40 times current levels, arguing that real-world tokenized assets, meaning stocks and bonds issued on-chain, will flow into DeFi and Uniswap will capture the flow as core market infrastructure. He predicts a path through $6.50 by the end of the year.
- Two fundamental elements underlie the call. Uniswap’s fee shift, live since late 2025, directs a portion of trading fees to buy back and burn UNI and has removed about 106 million tokens, more than 10% of the supply, turning a purely governance token into a deflationary one.
- Separately, tokenized shares launched on the protocol earlier this month have already seen more than $9.1 billion exchanged through its real-world pools.
