Bitcoin (BTC) is lingering at $66,000 while altcoins turned red today. The excitement around the Fed’s interest rate decision announcement in a few hours is palpable in the crypto market. Although interest rates are expected to remain unchanged, Powell’s statements will be critical. What are the predictions of QCP Capital experts?
Crypto Expert Opinions
The BTC price, which dropped to $65,300, is currently about $800 above the bottom. However, continued closures below $68,200 and Microsoft’s earnings report falling short of expectations have put extra pressure on crypto due to its correlation with stocks today.
QCP Capital experts wrote:
“Macro volatility has intensified. The Magnificent 7 retreated while NASDAQ fell 10% from its peak. Long USDJPY and short USDMXN forex carry trades are unwinding as volatility increases. VIX peaked at 19.50 after trading in the 12-14 range for the past two months.
Several factors contribute to this increased market uncertainty:
Value at Risk (VaR) Shocks. Risk managers are forcing investors to reduce positions. Increased selling leads to falling prices, which in turn increases volatility in a feedback loop.
High Stock Valuations and High Earnings Targets. When companies miss their targets, participants start to second-guess their future projections. A recent example is Microsoft’s miss on AI cloud revenues, causing its shares to drop 8% in hours.
Global risk-off sentiment. AUDUSD and NZDUSD collapsed despite the recent weakness in USD. Commodities like Oil and Copper fell 10-15% throughout the month due to rising global slowdown fears.
We expect volatility to increase ahead of tonight’s FOMC. We do not expect a rate cut and place more importance on Powell’s statement and the subsequent press conference. Our base scenario is for one rate cut each in September and December. We remain cautious against a deviation from current expectations that could trigger risk-off moves in all assets, including crypto. Such a scenario would indicate that the Federal Reserve perceives increasing economic challenges.”
Will Cryptocurrencies Rise?
Powell now needs to adopt and reinforce a dovish stance. It is uncertain how lenient Powell will be towards risk markets as they tumble after a single bad data point following a series of good ones. Despite this, QCP Capital experts maintain hope for a rise in ETH while BTC hovers in a narrow range.
“In the crypto space, we finally saw a net inflow of $33.7 million into ETH spot ETFs. This provided much-needed support to ETH prices, which lagged behind BTC last month. However, we foresee continued outflows from ETHE over the next two weeks.
The recent movement of 30,000 Silk Road BTCs by the US government added uncertainty to the crypto market.
BTC failed to surpass the 70,000 level for the 6th time. We maintain our view that BTC will continue to trade within a range. As ETHE outflows decrease over the next two weeks and ETH catches up with BTC, ETH longs are preferred. We aim to break the 2024 high of 4000.”
