Bitcoin’s Record High Retreats as Rate Hikes Spook Risk Appetite
Just when crypto bulls thought the party would never end, Bitcoin tumbled from its all-time peak—proving once again that nothing kills a speculative frenzy faster than the Fed’s interest rate hammer.
Risk assets got smacked as Treasury yields jumped, sending traders scrambling for cover. The crypto king’s flash pullback shows even decentralized assets can’t escape macro gravity.
Wall Street’s rate hike addiction strikes again—turns out ’digital gold’ still bleeds when traditional finance sneezes. Maybe Satoshi should’ve coded a Fed-proof algorithm.
Time bomb
The Nasdaq tumbled 1.5% in just an hour shortly after the news, while the S&P 500 declined 1.3%.
"This is a ticking time bomb, swept under the rug,” said Josh Mandell, a longtime fixed-income veteran turned bitcoin analyst, prior to this afternoon’s poor bond sale.
“We used to talk about the disaster that WOULD ensue if ever there was a ‘MISSED AUCTION’ in 30-yr bonds,” Mandell said. “A missed auction means that there were not enough bids to cover the offering… Were it not for the Fed, we would be experiencing a failure to roll over bonds right now which leads to default.”
Kirill Kretov, trading automation expert at CoinPanel, said that liquidity from exchanges has been significantly removed since late 2024, "making the market thinner and more reactive," leaving bitcoin’s price vulnerable to wild swings.
"Structurally, there’s room for explosive upside," he said, but "a sharp correction can happen at any moment."
The $110,000 level has emerged as a key battleground in the current market structure, well-followed crypto trader Skew noted in an X post, describing it as the critical zone between a local high and a potential breakout point.
According to Skew, there’s a noticeable concentration of supply around this level, with Binance perpetuals showing a skewed ask-side order book and a buildup of short positions.
"All point to a huge amount of liquidity here, usually pivotal for the market," Skew said.
