NEW YORK, June 18, 2026, 08:48 EDT
- Bitcoin dropped 1.1% to $64,215, moving between $63,666 and $66,316 during the session.
- The Federal Reserve kept interest rates steady at 3.50%-3.75%, but raised its median forecast for year-end 2026 to 3.8%, up from 3.4%.
- U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs saw a net outflow of roughly $82.2 million Wednesday.
Bitcoin dropped toward $64,000 on Thursday, losing most of its recent gains after the Federal Reserve indicated that U.S. interest rates might increase. The CoinDesk 20 Index, which tracks major digital assets, fell over 1.2%.
The reversal is important because bitcoin briefly hit over $67,000 earlier this week after a temporary U.S.-Iran deal eased worries about oil supply and pushed investors toward riskier assets. The recent pullback shows that this geopolitical easing hasn’t led to lasting demand for crypto.
The Fed held its benchmark rate steady on Wednesday but boosted its inflation and interest-rate forecasts. The move was hawkish, signaling that policymakers are more likely to maintain high rates or raise them further to tame inflation, dropping the chance of rate cuts soon that had supported speculative assets.
“This Fed decision was brief but tough,” said Karl Schamotta, chief market strategist at Corpay. Lee Hardman, senior currency analyst at MUFG, said the update looked like it could spark a bullish breakout in the U.S. dollar. The dollar index hit 100.71, its highest level since May 2025. Reuters
Bond markets echoed that message. The spread between two- and 10-year Treasury yields tightened to 28 basis points, a yield-curve flattening that happens when short-term rates draw closer to longer-term rates. Skanda Amarnath, executive director of EmployAmerica, called it “the clearest market signal that the Fed is getting more hawkish.” CoinDesk
U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs, which hold the token directly, saw $82.16 million withdrawn on Wednesday. These outflows are notable since ETF buying has been a key part of institutional demand; continued redemptions push the market to rely more on traders and corporate buyers.
Options markets show a tense period ahead. Around $10.6 billion in notional open interest, which is the total face value of outstanding contracts, expires on June 26. About 80% of that is out of the money now, so those contracts would expire worthless at current prices.
Ether fell 0.3% to near $1,748. Shares of Strategy, the biggest corporate holder of bitcoin, dropped 5.2% in premarket. Strategy owns 846,842 bitcoin following its most recent disclosed buy, tying its stock price tightly to bitcoin’s performance.
The sequence seems more like a repricing of the cost of money than a fresh crypto-specific shock. Bitcoin climbed when oil prices and geopolitical risks eased, then stalled as the dollar and short-term rate expectations rose — acting more like a high-risk macro trade than a standalone safe haven.
The path isn’t one-way. A sustained drop in oil might ease inflation and bring back talk of rate cuts, while fresh ETF inflows could push prices up. The downside risk points to around $62,000, where traders bought a lot of short-dated put options — these gain if bitcoin falls — as a hedge against another weekend drop.
