How strong is the Fed’s effect on Bitcoin?
Sep 15•9 min read
In this patch of your weekly Dispatch:
- ETH ETFs outperform
- Clarity Act approaches voting
- Monetary policy maneuvers
Market cast
BTC: Bulls pause, resistance remains
On the weekly chart, bullish momentum has slowed slightly, with price still hovering around the 50-period SMA. The Stochastic, a momentum oscillator, is in overbought territory, while the RSI, another momentum oscillator, is neutral. The MACD, a trend and momentum indicator, keeps its histogram positive but falling, pointing to mild momentum exhaustion, and the ADX, which measures trend strength, is also falling but still holding above the 25 threshold.
On the daily chart, price remains range-bound, hovering between the middle and lower Bollinger Bands, a volatility-based indicator. The RSI shows no significant signal, the MACD histogram is negative but converging toward the zero line, and the Stochastic is on the verge of turning up out of oversold territory.
Key levels to watch: on the downside, immediate support sits in the $76,000–$77,000 zone, with the next level near $75,000. To the upside, resistance comes in around $80,000, followed by $82,000, with the weekly 50-period SMA also acting as dynamic resistance along the way.
The big idea
What a Fed hike has actually meant for Bitcoin
At its final meeting of 2025, the Fed cut rates for a third straight month. It signaled more easing ahead — another cut projected for 2026, one more in 2027. Nine months later, none of that has happened. The Fed hasn't cut once in 2026. Wednesday's meeting is expected to deliver the opposite: the first hike since 2023.
Why the odds moved so fast: Futures now put the odds near 87–90%. That's the highest conviction the market has held on any Fed meeting in years, and it hardened fast, on two data points. August payrolls, released September 4, beat consensus threefold — 162,000 versus a forecast of 53,000. That release also erased the weak July print that had been the strongest case for patience, revising it from -23,000 up to +21,000. Then, on September 11, CPI landed in line with forecasts, but still at 3.4% headline. Services inflation ran hot enough underneath it that the Fed's preferred gauge is now tracking well above target. A labor market that just re-proved its strength, and inflation that isn't falling on its own: that combination is what removed the Fed's excuse to wait. Worth keeping in mind, though — odds this high tend to feed themselves. A Fed that disappoints a market already pricing near-90% conviction risks a worse reaction than the hike itself. Some of this week's certainty is the market pricing itself, not new information.
The Bitcoin read: That's also why the obvious read on crypto — hike coming, so brace for a selloff — deserves a second look. Bitcoin has already pulled back from near $82,000 on September 4 to $76,840. A real share of the hawkish outcome is already in the price.
We ran the numbers on every Fed decision since 2015. The short-term pattern is real: across 20 hikes and 11 cuts, Bitcoin averaged -6.1% in the 30 days after a hike, versus -1.7% after a cut. But give it 90 days, and that gap almost disappears — +5.6% after hikes, +6.1% after cuts. Statistically, that's a wash. Across the full data set, the monthly correlation between Fed rate moves and Bitcoin's returns runs close to zero. The sample is thin, and the two hiking cycles inside it — 2016–18 and 2022–23 — played out in very different markets, so this isn't proof that rate direction doesn't matter. But it's a real, data-backed reason to doubt that a hike mechanically means a sustained drawdown. It argues for judging the reaction on a longer window than the first month.
There's a structural reason the pattern softens, too. Higher front-end yields feed the collateral side of crypto — stablecoins, tokenized Treasuries — even as they weigh on trading and leverage. And this rally has looked more built on allocation than borrowed exposure, which makes it sturdier against a rate move than the last two cycles were. Sturdier, not immune.
A second catalyst: One more date worth circling: the Senate holds a cloture vote on the CLARITY Act on September 15 — the day before the Fed decides. It's a procedural vote, not passage: 60 votes needed just to open floor debate, and odds of the bill becoming law this year have fallen from 82% in February to somewhere near 10–16% now. Nobody's pricing a surprise here. Which is exactly what would make one worth watching — a crypto-specific catalyst landing a day ahead of a macro one that's already fully priced.
What Wednesday actually decides: The 25 basis points is close to fully priced. What it actually decides is whether this is a one-off correction or the start of a cycle, and whether the vote is unanimous or splits again as July's did. That's the detail that moves yields, the dollar, and digital assets from here.
Ethereum
Ethereum's quiet divergence
Ether was one of only two top-ten assets in the green over the past week, while Bitcoin, BNB, XRP, Solana, Zcash, and Hyperliquid all posted losses, several over 3%. But the more telling divergence is in the ETF flows, not just the price. Last week, US spot Bitcoin ETFs saw $463 million in net outflows — a four-day losing streak that ended their strongest three-week inflow run of the year, with $282.7 million leaving in a single day, the largest since July. Spot Ether ETFs moved the opposite direction, pulling in $197 million over the same stretch. That's a real rotation, not just Ethereum holding up better on its own.
Part of the explanation is structural rather than narrative: Bitcoin ETFs pay no yield, and institutions chasing income have started rotating into Ethereum staking ETFs, which pay 3–4%. The other part is the Wall Street and AI settlement-layer thesis Fundstrat's Tom Lee has pushed for months, with BitMine backing it toward a 4.9% ETH stake. Worth treating this as an open question rather than a conclusion: one week of flow data is a rotation, not yet a trend, and the next few weeks will tell us which explanation is doing the real work.
TradFi trends
The Clarity Act: “Not priced in”
A few more thoughts on the CLARITY Act. Senate Republicans released what they're calling the final draft late Sunday, incorporating 126 changes Democrats had requested, including President Trump agreeing to most of the proposed ethics restrictions. Polymarket odds of passage this year jumped from around 22% to 32% overnight, with Kalshi odds climbing above 30% as well.
Bernstein's note makes the point directly: a positive surprise here simply isn't priced in, and if the bill actually clears Tuesday's vote, current positioning leaves plenty of room for the market to move further than it has so far.
Macroeconomic roundup
A key week for global monetary policy
While the Fed could be the biggest market mover this week, the hiking story actually began last week with the ECB, which raised its deposit rate to 2.50% and its main refinancing rate to 2.65% — its second hike since the Middle East conflict began. It won't be the last central bank to move: three more decisions land inside 48 hours of each other.
Fed Interest Rate Decision (Sept 16): The hike itself is priced in; the guidance on what comes next, and whether the vote is unanimous, isn't.
Bank of England Interest Rate Decision (Sept 17): A hold at 3.75% is the base case, but three MPC members already voted for 4.00% last time.
Bank of Japan Interest Rate Decision (Sept 18): A 25bp hike to 1.25% is consensus; a larger move would hit the yen and global risk appetite, Bitcoin included.
The week's most interesting data story
The flexible hands of holders
Long-term holders spent most of August distributing straight into the rally — net position change bottomed at -20,182 BTC per day on August 28, even as price climbed from the low $60,000 toward $80,000. That reversed hard at month-end: net position change turned positive on August 31 and has climbed almost every session since, reaching +20,843 BTC per day by September 13, even as spot pulled back from its September 3 high of $81,262 to under $77,000. The 7-day average has swung to +17,632, a sharp turn from the -732 30-day average that August's selling still weighs down. That lines up with what sits underneath: the heaviest concentration of holder cost basis in the range is at $75,426, right under current spot, while the $82,814 ceiling above it has barely moved in a month. Holders sold into the rally, and now that price has pulled back to where most of them actually bought, they're accumulating again rather than capitulating.
The numbers
The week’s most interesting numbers
$1.7 billion — Spot XRP ETFs' cumulative net inflows hit a fresh all-time high, a ninth straight green week.
30% — Roughly 36.6 million ETH, a record share of total supply, is now locked in staking contracts, pulling tens of billions out of liquid circulation.
5.96 million ETH — BitMine's total Ethereum holdings after buying another 27,180 ETH last week, closing in on its 5%-of-supply target.
5.23 million BTC — Bitcoin whale holdings have sat flat over the past week, as large holders wait out the Fed decision.
$620 billion — The size of India's corporate bond market that SEBI and the RBI just began tokenizing with their new "Demat 2.0" pilot.
Hot topic
What the community is discussing
Goldman Sachs on why a rate hike is ahead.
Some reasoning against the hike.
Could the Fed vote be the strongest signal?
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