Bitcoin steadies above $64,000 as crypto looks to Fed interest-rate decision
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- Bitcoin rose 0.75% to $64,328 after a volatile 48 hours that saw it spike to $66,700 before crashing to $62,400, with markets in a holding pattern ahead of the Fed decision
- Inflation at 4.1% supports the case for the first Fed rate hike in three years, though a pause in Iran-U.S. hostilities has eased oil prices and trimmed hike odds
- XRP led altcoin gains at +1.72% to $1.086 with ADA up 1.48%, while FET fell 4.60% as AI tokens continued unwinding July gains and PUMP shed 5.14%
- Jupiter (JUP) rose 5.79% to lead DeFi recovery, and UNI open interest climbed to 68.53M tokens — the most since July 13 — after BlackRock brought its tokenized Treasury fund to the Uniswap DEX
- Derivatives positioning is almost perfectly balanced: OI held near $113B with volume up 10% to $205B, but BTC puts at $62K, $60K, and $54K strikes dominate Deribit options volume
- Implied volatility sits near recent lows even though traders assign a 35% probability to a Fed hike — unusual since markets typically reach consensus before the decision
- Binance held roughly 55% of user funds and 24% of spot market share, drawing net inflows in early July while the broader tracked market saw outflows
Why it matters: Traders are pricing a 35% chance of the first Fed rate hike in three years — unusually high this close to a decision — yet implied volatility sits near recent lows, meaning options markets aren't pricing in the risk that implied odds suggest. BTC puts at $62K, $60K, and $54K dominate Deribit volume, so a hawkish surprise could compress leveraged long positions.
