- The cryptocurrency market has enjoyed gains since the year began, with Bitcoin price hitting a six-month high of around $25k.
- Bitcoin and Ethereum prices have added less than 2 percent in the last 24 hours following the FOMC minutes that revealed a weaker dollar.
The cryptocurrency market led by Bitcoin and Ethereum has edged higher in the past 24 hours following the release of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). According to our latest crypto market data, Bitcoin price is exchanging around $24.4k on Thursday, up approximately 1.2 percent in the past 24 hours. The second largest digital asset, Ethereum, has gained about 1.8 percent to trade around $1,668 today.
The FOMC meetings data revealed that most participants supported a hike of 25 basis points (bps), except for a few officials who favored or could have supported a hike of 50 basis points (bps). Consequently, the market did not have much volatility to showcase from the data released.
#FOMC minutes showed quite divergent opinion hence the muted response in the market. Some officials calling for a higher 50 bps rate rise, while others were concerned about recession looming. This difference of opinion created a balance that is yet to be resolved by data #Evai pic.twitter.com/NdSDjkO3sd
— Matthew Dixon – CEO Evai (@mdtrade) February 22, 2023
According to Fed Chair Jerome Powel, the monetary policies may remain unchanged until the inflation rate drops to 2 percent. Moreover, the consumer price index recently indicated more pain to the dollar despite the tightening of monetary policy. The Fed noted.
[….]participants agreed that, while there were recent signs that the cumulative effect of the Committee’s tightening of the stance of monetary policy had begun to moderate inflationary pressures, inflation remained well above the Committee’s longer-run goal of 2 percent, and the labor market remained very tight, contributing to continuing upward pressures on wages and prices.
The weakening of the United States dollar is a win for Bitcoin and other crypto assets with deflationary tokenomics. Furthermore, the Fed has been printing out more cash in the past few years than in the past decades to revitalize the economy from Covid-19’s devastations.
Bitcoin and Ethereum Price Action
The cryptocurrency market has enjoyed gains since the year began, with Bitcoin price hitting a six-month high of around $25k. Ethereum price, on the other hand, has scaled to its five-month high after hitting $17k earlier last week. Crypto analysts closely monitor Bitcoin price to see if it will breach the $25k resistance level and convert it to support.
On the daily Bitcoin price, a golden cross between the 50 and 200 MA has some traders believing a rally continuation is plausible. However, a death cross on the weekly timeframe, which is the first in the history of the Bitcoin market, has most traders worried about more choppy days.
The neutrality of Bitcoin price has pushed more crypto traders to low-cap altcoins with higher volatility and already in an identified market trend. Meanwhile, the possibility of Bitcoin price rallying towards $30k has motivated whale traders to continue accumulating more coins.
Moreover, the Bitcoin halving is a year away, and the event has triggered all crypto bull markets. As a result, the chances of Ethereum hitting $2,000 by the end of February cannot be ignored.
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