Bitcoin Price Rallies Despite Fed Rate Hike as SEC, CFTC Roll Out Crypto Rules

Bitcoin, Ethereum and altcoins shrugged off the Fed's first rate hike since 2023, rallying instead on new crypto rules from the SEC and CFTC. Here's why.

• Bitcoin price rallied above $81,700 and Ethereum above $2,600, shrugging off the Fed's first interest-rate hike since 2023.

• The Federal Reserve raised rates 25 basis points in a unanimous 12–0 FOMC vote — its first hike since 2023 — ending the cutting/pause cycle that had pulled rates to 3.50%–3.75%.

• Within 48 hours of the failed CLARITY Act cloture vote, the CFTC filed a crypto-markets "prerule" and the SEC unveiled a five-year "innovation exemption" for US tokenized stocks, catalysts that reignited the rally.

Bitcoin (

), Ether (

), Solana (

), Hyperliquid (

), and the wider crypto market shook off the major setbacks of the week by rallying back toward their respective range highs.

The past week saw a flurry of significant events for the crypto market. The US Federal Reserve raised rates by 25 basis points, a decision all 12 members of the Federal Open Market Committee supported. In the Senate, the CLARITY Act's procedural cloture vote failed.

Both major US regulators also took action. The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed its "Regulation Crypto Asset Transactions and Regulation Crypto Asset Markets" prerule with the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, and the US Securities and Exchange Commission revealed its "innovation exemption," which allows limited onchain trading of tokenized US stocks through qualifying venues.