The Federal Reserve held its policy rate at 3.75% to 4% on Wednesday 28 October, but two of the twelve voters wanted a hike, and the bitcoin price after the Fed decision hardly moved. The statement came out at 18:00 UTC with a 10-2 vote: governor Lisa Cook and Cleveland Fed president Beth Hammack preferred a quarter-point increase, according to the Fed’s statement. Bitcoin traded at $80,763 on Coinbase at 17:59 UTC, touched $81,093 in the five minutes after the release, and was back at $80,670 by 18:10 UTC. Coindaro’s market snapshot of 18:43 UTC put it near $81,050, up 0.59% over 24 hours.
Part of the evening was not available when this was written. Chair Kevin Warsh began his press conference at 18:30 UTC; at 18:55 UTC no reliable outlet had reported what he said, CoinDesk’s decision story (updated 2:14 p.m. New York time) carried no quote from him, and the Fed had posted no transcript. We do not quote him. The US cash close (20:00 UTC), Wednesday’s ETF flows and the Microsoft and Alphabet results come later.
The question tonight: what did the US session and a hawkish hold do to crypto? Very little to the price. Treasury yields rose and a December hike stayed priced, the rate path that has capped bitcoin all month, yet bitcoin held a range of about $630 from the statement to 18:45 UTC. The last section lists what would change that reading before the next Fed meeting on 8-9 December.
A 10-2 hold, and two votes for a hike
The decision itself was no surprise. Before the release, CME’s FedWatch tool gave 90.6% odds of a pause, Cointelegraph reported on Wednesday, and Decrypt put the hold above 90% with prediction markets a few points higher. Our page on the 27-28 October FOMC meeting had the timing: statement at 18:00 UTC, press conference at 18:30 UTC.
The vote was the news. The statement says Cook and Hammack voted against because they “preferred to raise the target range for the federal funds rate by 1/4 percentage point at this meeting.” That puts two hawks on the record one meeting after the September hike, which was decided 12-0. In July, when the Fed last held, three members wanted a hike in a 9-3 vote, Decrypt recalled on Wednesday. Hawkish dissents have gone from three in July to none in September, when the Committee did hike, and to two now.
Set side by side with the 16 September statement, the text changes in two places only. Economic activity “is expanding at a strong pace”, where September said “a solid pace”. And the sentence that justified September’s hike (“Today’s policy action will support a timelier return” to 2%) is replaced by a wait-and-see line: “The accumulation of more information will help the Committee determine the policy stance appropriate.” The passages on uncertainty, productivity, jobs and “Inflation remains elevated” are word for word the same, and so is the closing “The Committee will deliver price stability.” There is no explicit hint about December.
The implementation note left interest on reserve balances at 3.90%, effective 29 October, with the standing repo rate at 4.0% and the reverse repo rate at 3.75%. The Fed keeps rolling over all maturing Treasuries and says it will buy Treasury bills “when appropriate” to keep reserves ample. Those balance-sheet instructions are identical to September’s note, so there is no tightening there either.
There were no economic projections this time; the next set comes in December, Decrypt noted. That leaves the dissents as the main new information, especially as Warsh gives little guidance. At his September press conference he said, as quoted by Decrypt: “I’m not going to prejudge any future decisions we make.”
Bitcoin price after the Fed decision: a $630 range
The five-minute candles on Coinbase show how small the reaction was. Bitcoin climbed slowly into the release, from $80,634 at 17:45 UTC to $80,763 at 17:59 UTC. The 18:00 UTC candle carried the only burst of volume of the hour, 173.8 BTC, against 10 to 50 BTC in most other five-minute windows, and set the statement high at $81,093. The candle closed at $80,862, and the rise was mostly gone ten minutes later.
| Five minutes from (UTC, 28 Oct) | Low | High | Close | BTC traded |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 17:45 | $80,601 | $80,717 | $80,695 | 11.5 |
| 17:55 | $80,718 | $80,882 | $80,763 | 32.4 |
| 18:00 (statement) | $80,616 | $81,093 | $80,862 | 173.8 |
| 18:05 | $80,652 | $80,938 | $80,670 | 48.1 |
| 18:15 | $80,600 | $80,736 | $80,678 | 16.5 |
| 18:30 (press conference) | $80,629 | $81,025 | $80,884 | 44.6 |
| 18:35 | $80,856 | $81,234 | $80,991 | 98.4 |
| 18:40 | $80,918 | $81,202 | $81,094 | 55.5 |
| 18:45 | $80,840 | $81,094 | $80,989 | 39.0 |
Source: Coinbase Exchange public BTC-USD candles, read by Coindaro at 18:52 UTC. The close of each row is the price at the end of its five minutes.
From 18:00 to 18:30 UTC bitcoin stayed between $80,600 and $81,093, a band of under $500. The second, slightly larger push came after the press conference began: a high of $81,234 in the 18:35 UTC candle, with 98.4 BTC traded. We cannot tie it to anything Warsh said, since we have no report of his words. The 18:45 UTC candle closed at $80,989.
The rest of the market moved the same way. Ether was $2,332 on Coindaro’s snapshot of 17:32 UTC and $2,357 at 18:43 UTC, up 0.52% over 24 hours. Solana went from $100.9 to $102 between those two snapshots, XRP from $1.31 to $1.33. Total crypto market value stood at $2.72 trillion at 18:43 UTC, bitcoin’s share at 59.5% and the Fear and Greed index at 51, neutral.
The bigger moves came earlier in the day, and not from the Fed. Decrypt’s morning newsletter had bitcoin around $81,300 with large coins up 2% to 4%, after a chip rally in Asia: the KOSPI closed 6.6% higher on SK Hynix’s results, Cointelegraph reported. Our Asia morning report had it near $80,870 at 05:51 UTC. Bitcoin then gave back its gains around the Wall Street open at 13:30 UTC, failed to hold above $81,687 and fell as low as $80,297 on Bitstamp, according to Cointelegraph.
Yields did the moving: 5.025% on the 10-year, 4.78% on the 2-year
If anything reacted to the Fed, it was the bond market. The 10-year Treasury yield rose 4 basis points to 5.025% right after the statement and the 2-year rose 4.6 basis points to 4.78%, CoinDesk reported. Yahoo Finance had the 10-year at 5.05% at 18:16 UTC, the top of its 4.99% to 5.05% day range.
After the statement, markets “fully price in” a hike at the early-December meeting, CoinDesk wrote. Before it, Decrypt put the December odds at 75% to 80%. We could not get a FedWatch percentage after 18:00 UTC, so we give CoinDesk’s description rather than a number.
Stocks barely noticed: the S&P 500 went from 7,735.66 at 17:40 UTC to 7,730.51 at 18:32 UTC, on Yahoo Finance’s quotes. The dollar index was 102.28 at 17:28 UTC, Tuesday’s level; we have no reading after the decision.
| Market | Level | Time (UTC) | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin | about $81,050 (24h +0.59%) | 18:43 | Coindaro snapshot |
| Ether | $2,357 (24h +0.52%) | 18:43 | Coindaro snapshot |
| 13-week Treasury bill | 4.003% | 18:07 | Yahoo Finance |
| S&P 500 | 7,730.51 (+0.10%) | 18:32 | Yahoo Finance |
| Nasdaq Composite | 26,452.23 (-0.10%) | 18:32 | Yahoo Finance |
| 10-year Treasury yield | 5.05% | 18:16 | Yahoo Finance |
| 2-year Treasury yield | 4.78% (+4.6 bp) | 18:00 to 18:14 | CoinDesk |
| Dollar index | 102.28 (-0.03%) | 17:28 | Yahoo Finance |
A 10-year above 5% is the backdrop that matters for crypto. It peaked at 5.31% on 5 October, Decrypt noted, and the macro numbers behind it have not softened: consumer prices up 3.7% over a year in September, oil near $100 with the US-Iran war, and only 29,000 jobs added in September against about 90,000 forecast.
Tuesday’s two signals: one in between, one hawkish
In Tuesday’s analysis of the US session we cited two signals that Vincent Ganne, quoted by Cryptoast, planned to watch: the vote split and the 2-year yield. Both now have an answer.
The vote landed in the middle. Ganne read a 12-0 vote as good for bitcoin and a 7-5 split as making a December hike nearly certain. A 10-2 vote is neither, which fits the market’s shrug.
The 2-year gave the hawkish reading. It was 4.733% at 17:46 UTC on Tuesday on CNBC’s quotes and 4.78% after the statement on CoinDesk’s, above Tuesday’s 4.747% high. In Ganne’s framework a rising 2-year confirms the hike.
Yet bitcoin did not fall. On Tuesday we wrote that a hawkish Fed with a rising bitcoin would undermine our view that bitcoin trades the rate path, and set three conditions. Two are met: dissents for a hike and a 2-year above 4.747%. The third, bitcoin above $81,300, is not: the high was $81,234 in the 18:35 UTC candle. The test stays open, and Thursday’s data will settle it more than the statement did.
Why crypto barely reacted
The result was priced. The hold stood above 90% and Decrypt described the consensus before the meeting as a “hawkish hold”, which is roughly what the vote delivered.
The options market had also charged for the event. In a piece published at 14:40 UTC, CryptoSlate’s Liam Wright noted, citing Laevitas data from 26 October, that seven-day at-the-money implied volatility had risen to 36.5% from 32% a week earlier. He set seven-day implied volatility of 36.1% against realised volatility of 26.9%, a premium of 9.2 points, and added: “The 9.2-point spread cannot be assigned entirely to the Fed.” A move of under 1% in the hour after the statement suggests option buyers paid for more movement than they got, at least so far.
And leverage was light going in. Binance’s bitcoin perpetual funding rate was +0.0100% per eight hours at 17:56 UTC on 27 October and fell to 0.0054% at the 00:00 UTC settlement on Wednesday, as our morning report noted. Crypto liquidations over the 24 hours to Tuesday midday New York time were $133 million, less than $20 million of it in bitcoin, according to CoinGlass via Bitcoin.com News. We found no liquidation or open interest figure for Wednesday afternoon.
After Warsh’s Jackson Hole speech in August, about $481 million of crypto positions were liquidated within 24 hours, more than $360 million of them longs, Decrypt recalled. This Fed day, so far, produced nothing of the kind.
ETF flows: one fund still does the work
The flows that came in before the decision were positive, but narrow. US spot bitcoin ETFs took in a net $175.99 million on Tuesday 27 October, according to SoSoValue data reported by Bitcoin.com News: $151.46 million into BlackRock’s IBIT and $24.54 million into Fidelity’s FBTC, with no fund reporting outflows. Monday’s $110.34 million had gone entirely to IBIT. After about $774 million of withdrawals on 22 and 23 October, net outflows for the month narrowed to about $26 million, Cointelegraph reported.
Fidelity’s inflow is the only sign of breadth so far. CryptoSlate, citing a Coinbase Institutional report of 23 October, says IBIT drew about $6 billion since 1 August against about $500 million for every other US spot bitcoin ETF combined. In October alone, through 26 October, IBIT gained $866 million while rival funds lost more than $1 billion.
Ether funds went the other way: a net outflow of $60.22 million on Tuesday, with BlackRock’s ETHA losing $93.28 million, and October withdrawals of $1.32 billion through Tuesday, per Cointelegraph. Solana ETFs lost $19.16 million, all from Grayscale’s GSOL.
Galaxy Research offers an explanation for why the big funds left, and it ties directly to rates. In a report by Alex Thorn summarised by Decrypt, nine firms including Millennium, Brevan Howard, Goldman Sachs and Tudor cut about 68,000 BTC of ETF holdings between the end of September 2025 and June 2026. Their trade was cash-and-carry: own the ETF, short the CME future, collect the gap. Galaxy says the annualised front-month basis averaged 7.9% in the 30 days before bitcoin’s all-time high, against 4.8% in the 30 days to 21 October, only 0.6 points over three-month bills. Thorn’s line: “That arithmetic, not the price, is why the multi-strategy desks left.” The 13F data stop in June, so the picture is four months old.
Our reading, not Galaxy’s: a Fed that holds at 3.75% to 4% and leaves a December hike priced also keeps bill yields near 4%, which keeps that trade unattractive. The buyers left are the directional ones, and Galaxy counts 87,000 BTC of ETF purchases since the June low as that kind of demand. DWF Labs, cited by Bitcoin.com News, found a correlation of just 0.03 between daily ETF flows and bitcoin returns over the next five days, so flows tend to confirm moves rather than predict them.
Options and Friday’s expiry
Glassnode data cited by CryptoSlate on Wednesday put one-month implied volatility near 35%, in the bottom 7% of readings since 2019, and futures open interest near $37.5 billion. The one-standard-deviation band over seven days was about 4.8%, or $76,100 to $83,900 from the $80,007 close of 26 October. The skew readings differ by vendor: Glassnode’s 25-delta skew rose to 10.4% from 8.9%, while Laevitas had 30-day skew at -4.64, the 49th percentile over a year. The two vendors measure skew differently, so the figures are not comparable.
The monthly Deribit expiry comes on Friday 30 October at 08:00 UTC. As we reported on Tuesday, it covers about 135,400 BTC (roughly $10.9 billion), with the largest open interest at the $95,000, $100,000 and $90,000 call strikes. Crypto Briefing put the “max pain” price, where option buyers lose the most, at $78,000 to $79,000 in a page dated 8 October, so the figure is stale. With those call strikes $9,000 to $19,000 above spot, the expiry matters mainly through dealer hedging close to the current price.
The levels: a 50-day line at $81,831 and bids at $78,000
Bitcoin is still under its 50-day simple moving average, $81,831, which rejected it on Wednesday, Cointelegraph reported. An analyst it cites as Alan said a four-hour close under $80,565 would make a retest less likely. Bitcoin stayed above that level through the statement hour, with a low of $80,600 at 18:15 UTC.
CryptoSlate, citing Coinbase Institutional, places the average cost of ETF buyers at $81,300, just above Wednesday’s afternoon high of $81,234. On the downside, Glassnode order-book data cited by Cointelegraph show $3.4 million of bids at $80,000 and the largest block, about $42 million, between $78,000 and $79,000, up from about $24 million in mid-October. The 24 October low was $79,145, per Cointelegraph. Galaxy’s own line in the sand is the 50-week average, $76,540.
Tuesday’s Bitfinex bands, supply from $81,000 to $82,500 and support from $77,500 to $80,000, still frame the market: Wednesday’s afternoon range straddled the lower edge of that supply band.
Earnings: Microsoft and Alphabet tonight, Coinbase and Strategy on Thursday
Microsoft and Alphabet report third-quarter results after Wednesday’s close, Cointelegraph said; we had no results when writing. Meta already reported on 21 October.
Thursday is the crypto company day. Coinbase reports after the US close, with a Q&A at 21:00 UTC. Analysts disagree widely, CoinDesk reported: JPMorgan expects $173 billion of trading volume, Barclays $147 billion and Oppenheimer $141 billion, for transaction revenue of $578 million to $694 million. JPMorgan sees $320 million of stablecoin revenue. Strategy reports the same evening, after spending $205 million on STRC buybacks rather than bitcoin, according to Cointelegraph.
Robinhood set a weak tone on Tuesday: its crypto revenue fell 55% from a year earlier to $120 million, as our report on Robinhood’s third quarter detailed.
What would change the picture before December
No rate decision is due until 8-9 December, but the calendar before it is full.
| When | Event | Why it matters here |
|---|---|---|
| Wed 28 Oct, after 20:00 UTC | US cash close; Wednesday’s ETF flows; Microsoft and Alphabet results | Whether the calm holds after the press conference |
| Thu 29 Oct, 12:30 UTC | US Q3 GDP (advance) and September PCE inflation | PCE was 3.4% over a year last month (Cointelegraph) |
| Thu 29 Oct | ECB decision | A hold is priced at 99% on Polymarket (CryptoSlate) |
| Thu 29 Oct, after the US close | Coinbase and Strategy results | Trading volumes, stablecoin income, Strategy’s buying |
| Fri 30 Oct, 08:00 UTC | Deribit monthly options expiry | About 135,400 BTC of contracts |
| Tue 3 Nov | US midterm elections | Policy risk not priced, per Material Indicators |
| Fri 6 Nov, 08:30 New York time | October jobs report | September added only 29,000 jobs |
| 8-9 Dec | FOMC with new projections | A hike fully priced, per CoinDesk |
Keith Alan of Material Indicators put the election risk this way, as quoted by Cointelegraph: “Markets may have priced in no rate change, but they haven’t priced in the election outcome.” Our FOMC December 2026 event page has the date and the projections due then.
Five outcomes would change the reading in this piece, each one checkable on public data.
Bitcoin closes a day above the 50-day average of $81,831, then above $82,500, while the 10-year yield stays at 5% or higher. Buyers would then be looking through the rate path, and our view that rates cap bitcoin would be wrong.
The 2-year climbs above about 4.85%, or the 10-year above Wednesday’s 5.05% high, and bitcoin closes a day under $80,000. Then rates are in charge, and Wednesday’s calm was only a delay.
Thursday’s September PCE comes in below the previous month’s 3.4% annual rate and CoinDesk or FedWatch show December hike odds clearly under “fully priced”. The rate story would then turn in bitcoin’s favour; if bitcoin still does not rise, rates are not the cap.
Spot bitcoin ETFs post net inflows on at least three of the next five sessions with a third fund, beyond IBIT and FBTC, taking money. Tuesday was the first day in the data we read where Fidelity joined; a third fund would show demand broadening.
Bitcoin breaks the 24 October low of $79,145 and the $78,000 to $79,000 bid block while yields hold steady. That would point to selling that the Fed does not explain.
For readers in France and Italy, the statement came at 19:00 in Paris and Milan, and the ECB decides on Thursday. US clocks change on 1 November, so the 6 November jobs report lands at 14:30 in Paris and Milan (13:30 UTC).