- Bitcoin (BTC) regained the $68,000 mark today after a week-long correction.
- The recovery of the leading cryptocurrency by market cap was fueled by the Federal Open Market Committee’s (FOMC) retention of interest rates between 5.25% and 5.5%.
Bitcoin Rallies From FOMC’s Decision
The important announcement of FOMC pushed Bitcoin to peak at $68,199.99 in the past 24 hours from a low of $62,082.55. As of this writing at 8:30 AM UTC on Thursday, BTC is now trading in the $67,300 range with a 7% gain within the same frame. However, its transaction volume is down by 17% as the flow slid to $58.21 billion.
The rally brought back the market cap of the 19.66 million BTC in circulation to $1.32 trillion. This brings the digital asset back to the 9th place among the top assets in the world by overall value as it overtakes Meta Platforms’ $1.29 trillion market cap.
The all-time high of Bitcoin remains at the $73,750.07 it achieved seven days ago before heavy profit-taking by investors wiped the gains and tanked prices within the $61K territory. Today’s price is around 8% away from BTC’s latest historic high.
FOMC Keeps the Interest Rates Unchanged
The FOMC is a branch of the Federal Reserve System (FRS) tasked with determining the direction of the USA’s monetary policy. The committee is composed of 12 members who are scheduled to meet at least eight times annually within closed doors.
The recent meeting of the group kept interest rates 5.25% to 5.5%, which no longer came as a surprise for market watchers, considering that the latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) data reflected a 3.2% spike in inflation for February compared to January’s 3.1%. The new figures moved further away from Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s 2% target for a soft landing.
Despite that, some analysts anticipate rate cuts coming in by June. Powell remains confident as well that the readings could eventually enter their target.
“The other thing is, in the second half of the year, you had some pretty low readings, so it might be harder to make that 12 month window forward,” the Fed chairman said in a news briefing following the FOMC meeting. “Nonetheless, we’re looking for data that confirm the low readings that we had last year and give us a higher degree of confidence that what we saw was really inflation moving sustainably down to 2%.”
The conclusion of the FOMC meeting saw all major indices close at a record high not seen since November 2021. Nasdaq was up by 1.03%, S&P gained 0.89%, and Dow Jones jumped by 1.25%.