Bitcoin Lags Stock Rally After Hawkish Fed Hold

Crypto closed out July on the back foot, sitting out Friday's stock rally as the Federal Reserve's hawkish stance and stubbornly high inflation pushed the rate cut that bulls were counting on further out of reach.

Bitcoin fell 3.5% over 24 hours to $62,464, CoinGecko data shows, while the S&P 500 climbed 1.7% to 7,437 and the Nasdaq gained 2.8%. Ether dropped 3.1% to $1,863, and total crypto market capitalization slipped 2.3% to $2.24 trillion. Bitcoin still gained 4.3% in July, bouncing from under $58,000 early in the month, and the broader CoinDesk 20 index posted its first positive month in three, but the market is limping into August.

Warsh Draws the Line

The Federal Reserve held rates at 3.50%–3.75% on Wednesday, its fifth consecutive hold, on a 9–3 vote in which all three dissenters — Beth Hammack, Neel Kashkari and Lorie Logan — preferred a hike, the first trio of same-direction dissents since 2016.

Chair Kevin Warsh, in his second meeting leading the committee, was blunt: "There is no soft inflation target, there is no soft implicit target — not on this Committee's watch," he said, adding that "this Fed will not waver."

The data backed him up a day later. June PCE inflation came in at 3.7% year-over-year, down from 4.1% on falling energy prices, with core at 3.3%, but far above the 2% target.

Second-quarter GDP grew 3.0%, beating forecasts, and the White House confirmed finalized tariffs of 10% to more than 40% on dozens of countries take effect Aug. 7.

With growth solid and inflation sticky, nothing in the data forces the Fed's hand. The backdrop rewards equities on earnings strength and leaves crypto without its catalyst.

ETF Bid Fades

Spot Bitcoin ETFs took in a net $233.1 million on Thursday, the strongest day in more than three weeks, snapping a four-day outflow streak that drained $526.5 million, Farside Investors data shows. Even so, July is on track for the products' smallest monthly net inflows since launch. Ether funds have held up better: in the week ended July 24, ETH ETFs pulled in $103.9 million, roughly three times Bitcoin's haul.

Options traders are positioned for a rough August. After Friday's $10 billion expiry on Deribit, the $60,000 Bitcoin put is the largest open interest position at $1.17 billion notional, displacing the $70,000 and $72,000 calls that dominated before the Fed meeting. History argues for caution too: since 2013, Augusts that follow a positive July have delivered a median 7.5% decline.

UNI Rallies, WLD Dives

Uniswap's UNI was the standout among large-cap gainers, up about 13% on the week to $4.30 after the DEX unveiled Launches, a web app feature that aggregates tokens across launchpads, while stock token volume on Uniswap-powered Robinhood Chain climbed to $250 million. The v4 fee switch, which the DAO activated through the UNIfication proposal in December, gives the rally a structural underpinning: protocol fees now buy and burn UNI, so every uptick in volume tightens supply. UNI open interest climbed to 75.8 million tokens, its highest since BlackRock listed its tokenized Treasury fund BUIDL on the DEX in February.

Worldcoin's WLD went the other way, down 18.5% on the week to $0.31 after the World Foundation raised $52.5 million in a Pantera-led round that included a WLD token sale, stoking supply concerns that a 43% cut to daily issuance last week failed to offset.

Elsewhere, PUMP rose about 11% on the week on continued buybacks, shrugging off Friday's report that Pump.fun laid off staff ahead of token vesting, while privacy coins cooled from a strong run, with ZEC down 8% over seven days.

Corporate holders offered no support. Strategy reported an $8.22 billion second-quarter net loss on Thursday as its roughly 846,000 BTC — acquired at an average cost of $75,578 — sits underwater, and the firm disclosed it has sold about $218 million of Bitcoin this year to fund preferred dividends.

A separate blow to sentiment landed Friday: a key-generation flaw in Coldcard hardware wallets let an attacker drain 594 BTC, about $38 million, from roughly 500 wallets in a 25-minute sweep.