Wednesday’s Fed rate decision and a potential US-Iran deal on Thursday matter less for crypto prices than headlines suggest, according to Bitwise. The real market drivers right now are diverging ETF flows and rising AI-related tokens.
Commenting on this week's market outlook, Marco Poblete, Regional Director Nordics at Bitwise, states:
“Bitcoin reacted with cautious optimism to the peace news, but a previous ceasefire collapsed within days. Since the conflict began, Trump has announced a deal 38 times without a single one holding. This means the initial price reaction since the war started tells us less about where the market will actually end up than the headlines imply.”
The rate decision itself is not expected to move the market significantly either, as the outcome is practically priced in. What could influence crypto prices, however, are Chair Powell’s comments during the press conference and the Fed’s updated projections for the remainder of the year. If interest rates and the Iran deal matter less than expected, entirely different forces below the surface are driving development for the coming week.
Beneath the surface, the picture is more interesting than the aggregate index movements suggest. Last week, funds for ethereum, other altcoins, and broad crypto indexes saw net inflows. Bitcoin, on the other hand, was the week’s laggard, with capital outflows dragging down the aggregate net figures.
At the same time, an intense period of upcoming IPOs is draining liquidity and volatility from the crypto market. Bitwise notes that tech giants including Anthropic and OpenAI are expected to go public in the coming months. Since altcoins have yet to find their own momentum, the company believes there is reason to expect Bitcoin’s market dominance to continue rising.
On the downside, Bitwise is monitoring levels that have historically acted as support: the realized price level around $53,000, and long-term investors' average cost basis at around $45,000.
The only subsector in the crypto market currently moving in the opposite direction is AI-related tokens. These are up around 25% on a monthly basis, while DeFi, layer-1 blockchains, and gaming-related tokens have fallen between 15% and 23% over the same period, according to Bitwise.
The driving force comes from projects building decentralized training and inference for AI models. This theme gained fresh relevance this week after US authorities ordered Anthropic to halt access to its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models for foreign users, citing national security.
Regardless of how one views the decision, Bitwise argues it illustrates the exact value proposition of open and decentralized AI: ensuring that control does not reside with a single entity capable of shutting off or restricting access—even if the path forward and the technical challenges remain significant.
Kilder: Bitwise (Marco Poblete, Regional Director, Nordics)
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