The price of cryptocurrencies rises through Coinmarketcap.com

As reported by CNN Business, Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal, the Federal Reserve is set to raise interest rates for the first time since 2018, to combat inflation.

Crypto markets and the S&P 500 rallied in response to the news, suggesting investor confidence has improved and fears of a bear market or recession amid the Ukraine-Russia crisis may finally have subsided.

FOMC meeting

‘We believe that the US economy is very strong. As I looked around the table at today’s meeting, I saw a committee acutely aware of the need to return the economy to price stability and determined to use our tools to do just that.‘ – Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.

The Federal Reserve has several FOMC Meetings throughout the calendar year, the last one taking place in January. FOMC stands for Federal Open Market Committee.

The Fed announced that it will raise interest rates by 25 basis points: one basis point is equal to one hundredth of a percentage point, which means that the Fed raised rates by 0.25%. Powell acknowledged to reporters at a post-meeting news conference that inflation is too high and the central bank will address it.

Yahoo Finance quoted Grant Thornton chief economist Diane Swonk: ‘The Fed has now waged a war on inflation. They want to lower inflation with the most aggressive rate hike in decades.’

Crypto Market Bombs

While more ‘risk-free’ assets like gold and the US dollar lost value, stocks and Bitcoin, along with Ethereum and altcoinshave seen a price rally, suggesting that buyers entered the ‘risk on’ markets.

Some of the biggest gainers in the last 24 hours include altcoins that outperformed BTC:

Bitcoin price is up 1-2%, currently above $41,000.

in another part of the market defi coins such as AAVE and ATOM also rose in price as investors show interest in decentralized finance projects.

Sheets related to the metaverse and non-fungible tokens (NFT) as MANA are also in the day.

altcoin season

Alternatives to Bitcoin, or ‘altcoins’, outperforming major coins could hint at an upcoming ‘altcoin season’ as money moved into Bitcoin trickles down to smaller market cap coins.

Small-cap coins tend to pump harder: Lucky Block’s native token topping the list, LBLOCK, is a relatively new project ranked 3,129th on coinmarketcap.

Ethereum is up about twice as high as Bitcoin on the day, with many altcoin projects running on the layer 1 Ethereum blockchain. ETH-leading BTC is often another indicator of a potential alt season.

bull market signals

The total cryptocurrency market capitalization has now surpassed $1.8 trillion again. Crypto markets in general are a sea of ​​green.

However, confirmation of a new bull market structure would require Bitcoin to break the $45,000 resistance level that was rejected earlier this month.

That would also see Ethereum price retrace the $3,000 level and could signal an altcoin season heading into Q2 2022.

Both have been stuck in a sideways trading range for the past two months, and it remains to be seen whether this was consolidation and accumulation before a move higher, or distribution before a move lower. This week’s positive FOMC news makes an uptrend more likely.

The next FOMC meeting is scheduled for May 3-4.

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