Consolidation of Monday, nerves on edge. Bitcoin is trading around $63,445 this Monday, August 17 at the time of writing, in a daily range between $62,667 and $63,512 according to CoinGecko. No clear crossing of $64,000 for the moment, resistance is holding strong. Over seven days, Bitcoin fell further, a slide that today's small recovery was not enough to erase.
Bitcoin: a consolidation that does not end the red week
The calculation is quickly done. A stable session does not make up for a weekly decline built over several days. Traders mainly seem to be waiting for Wednesday's deadline before resuming a real direction, rather than reviving a bullish conviction.
The rest of the market tells the same story, only darker. Ethereum lost 1.92% over the week and struggled to hold the $1,920 resistance, XRP fell 3.81% and defended as best it could the psychological threshold of the dollar, according to TradingView. Solana is doing a little better, with a weekly decline limited to 0.99%, around $75.
ETF flows tell the story of a market split in two. Five sessions in a row brought $853.5 million to Bitcoin funds, more than 80% of which went to BlackRock’s IBIT. Then the tide turned: 144.6 million dollars came out on August 10, 61.1 million more on the 12th, or around 198 million net outflows over three sessions. A market that literally hesitates between two doors.
FOMC: the real back-to-school meeting
This is why no one is talking about this consolidation on Monday. The minutes of the Fed's July 28 and 29 meeting are released Wednesday, August 19 at 2 p.m., according to the official Federal Reserve calendar.
Two deadlines not to be confused: these minutes are only a detailed report of a meeting that has already passed, not a new rate decision. The real decision, the one that will set the rate level, will only come on September 15 and 16, during the next FOMC meeting.
What Wednesday's minutes can change is the market's reading of this September meeting. This July meeting saw three officials vote in favor of a rate hike, unheard of in months, and traders want to know how close the internal debate was before approaching the next deadline. Nothing to do with the usual bets on a rate cut: this time, it is the risk of a turn of the screw that is worrying.
The probabilities confirm it. On CME FedWatch, the probability of a rate hike at the September 15-16 meeting has fallen to around 31%, compared to almost 55% in early August, an accelerated decline after July's poor employment figure. The market now expects a nearly 69% chance of a status quo on this date. Each line from Wednesday's minutes can tip the scales one way or the other for this September meeting, and with it, the appetite for risk assets like Bitcoin.
The calendar doesn't end there. Kevin Warsh, now head of the Fed, is scheduled to speak at Jackson Hole a few days later, a symposium that markets watch every year to predict the monetary course of the following months. Between the minutes of Wednesday and this annual meeting, volatility has good reasons to remain high on crypto as on equity indices.
