Last night's Federal Reserve FOMC meeting was also nothing new; keeping interest rates unchanged was expected. Powell's hawkish remarks afterward were also anticipated, and even this confrontation with Trump was still somewhat positive for the market, as what the market wants is a statement from the Fed Chair to let everyone know that the Federal Reserve remains an absolutely independent institution, and that dollar assets are still trustworthy. This reassures everyone to hold onto dollars, U.S. Treasuries, and stocks, making the entire financial system more stable, which is a positive sign.
Will the Federal Reserve not cut rates and still surge?
This rise should still be event-driven. On one hand, the U.S. is unbinding AI chips and has made some progress on tariffs. On the other hand, after the first New Hampshire state passed, two more states have successively passed legislation related to cryptocurrency strategic reserves.
1. Oregon SB167 has been signed into law, updating the state's Uniform Commercial Code, providing much-needed clarity on how to handle digital assets (e.g., legally recognized as collateral).
2. Arizona HB749 has been signed into law, which, while not allowing direct investments, transfers unclaimed assets, airdrops, and staking rewards into reserves.
3. Arizona SB1373 is on the governor's desk, and after the passage of HB749, it can be felt that Governor Hobbs is willing to issue legislation supporting cryptocurrency. SB1373 is also a strategic reserve, just not utilizing pension funds.
Of course, there are also factors unfavorable to the market, such as the expectation of an interest rate cut being pushed from June to July. This may delay the market's speculation on the benefits of a rate cut until the third quarter. However, before the end of the year, CME still expects 3-4 rate cuts, which means starting in July, there will almost be a rate cut every month. Therefore, the cryptocurrency market will still be impacted by the rate cut benefits in the second half of the year.
Tonight at 10 PM, Trump said he would announce something very significant. The market interprets this as signing a trade agreement with a major country. Since the afternoon, there have been constant updates from the UK, indicating that the tariff agreement with the UK has been finalized. This is certainly a positive thing for the market. If a successful negotiation with China can happen within a few weeks, then investors' confidence may truly return.
Additionally, the Ethereum upgrade has been completed, and today's price has followed Bitcoin's rise. However, from the current technical perspective, Bitcoin is in a strong upward channel, and the short term shows a healthy structure of volume breakout + bullish moving averages, but several indicators (RSI, TD, SMI) have entered overbought or topped areas.
If there are no other positive factors afterward to push the volume above the 100,000 mark, then the current rally is likely a trap to lure in more buyers. So, is this round of Ethereum's rise related to the upgrade? Not much; it was purely driven by Bitcoin and the U.S. stock market, combined with good market washing, like a spring at the bottom, directly linked to Bitcoin's release. In contrast, this upgrade is certainly a long-term benefit, but before and after the upgrade, it has basically no effect.
So there's no need to attribute this sudden surge to the completion of the upgrade. From another perspective, raising the staking limit from 32 ETH to 2048 ETH doesn't provide much benefit to the vast majority.
It's still beneficial for institutional operations, so in the short term, and even long term, we need to closely monitor the inflow situation of Ethereum ETFs. Once institutional trading volume increases, it indicates that institutions are slowly accepting this staking model, and the price will also reflect that, but currently, such a surge in trading volume has not appeared.
Since there are no expectations of interest rate cuts in May and June, we need to keep a close eye on the upcoming macro events. The first is Trump's speech at 10 PM tonight, and the second is the dot plot in June. Every time this dot plot appears, it is a turning point.
Altcoins should continue to wait for the profit effect to appear!
Everyone come to the chat room!
