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First Mover Americas: Bitcoin Pushes Above $29K After Fed Rate Hike
The latest price moves in crypto markets in context for May 4, 2023.
Updated May 4, 2023, 3:57 p.m. Published May 4, 2023, 12:21 p.m.
This article originally appeared in First Mover, CoinDesk’s daily newsletter putting the latest moves in crypto markets in context. Subscribe to get it in your inbox every day.
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Bitcoin has pushed above $29,000 following the U.S. Federal Reserve’s 25 basis point interest rate hike on Thursday, with some analysts speculating on a strong break to the upside after over a month of trade in a narrow wedge. The move over $29,000 came a few hours after the Fed hike as a report indicated another U.S. bank failure could soon be at hand. Crypto services provider Matrixport has said that if Thursday’s rate rise proves to be the last of this cycle, bitcoin could rally 20% to $36,000. Despite trading volumes declining slightly, the “path higher sees only limited resistance,” Matrixport said in a research note on Thursday. The end of the recent earning season will see stock buybacks restart, which will “continue to be a tailwind for stocks and risk assets,” the note added.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) decided not to include a definition of digital assets in its latest hedge fund ruling, in what could have been a sign of positive intent toward clearer regulation of the crypto sector. The SEC had included the definition of assets that “use distributed ledger or blockchain technology,” in its 2022 proposal to overhaul mandatory disclosures for hedge funds, but has now pulled that wording. The agency said it is “continuing to consider this term and [is] not adopting ‘digital assets’ as part of this rule at this time.” Anne-Marie Kelley, a former SEC official and now a partner at Mercury Strategies, suggested the commission may have deleted it as “any recognition of digital assets’ uniqueness weakens their litigation stance that digital assets are securities.”
The WallStreetBets token (WSB), which is linked to the WallStreetBets subreddit, dropped 90% in the last 24 hours following a big run higher that had seen its market cap jump to $50 million in under three days. The plunge came after one of the insiders connected to the project, @zjzWSB, dumped a large amount of tokens in return for 334 ETH ($635,000). Blockchain sleuth @ZachXBT flagged the transactions on Twitter, which seemed to trigger the mass selling, bringing about the 90% crash. Users had previously received an airdrop of nearly seven ether worth of WSB tokens for simply pasting their crypto wallet addresses on Twitter. This helped the tokens go viral on Crypto Twitter, forming part of the ongoing meme coin frenzy, which has also spawned the likes of PEPE.
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- The chart shows U.S. recession probability based on the Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell's preferred indicator, the so-called near-term forward spread – which tracks the difference between expected yields on three-month Treasury bills in 18 months and the current three-month yield.
- The probability has surged to 94%, the highest ever, surpassing the peaks seen ahead of the coronavirus-induced crash, the sub-prime crisis and the dot-com bubble.
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What to know:
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
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Coinbase Sees Crypto Recovery Ahead as Liquidity Improves and Fed Rate Cut Odds Climb
The crypto exchange also took note of a so-called AI bubble that continues to go strong and a weaker U.S. dollar.
What to know:
- Coinbase Institutional is seeing a potential December recovery in crypto, citing improving liquidity and a shift in macroeconomic conditions that could favor risk assets like bitcoin.
- The firm's optimism is driven by rising odds of Federal Reserve rate cuts, with markets pricing in a 93% chance easing next week, and improving liquidity conditions.
- Several recent institutional developments, including Vanguard's crypto ETF policy reversal and Bank of America's greenlighting of crypto allocations, have contributed to bitcoin's rebound from recent lows.
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