Bitcoin Retakes $35K After FOMC as Solana's SOL Leads Sharp Altcoin Rally
The Federal Reserve pulled no surprises on Wednesay as it kept policy on hold but promised a continued focus on bringing inflation to heel.
Led by solana's (SOL) 16% surge, altcoins rallied sharply throughout the session Wednesday, while a late move higher in bitcoin (BTC) pushed its price to a new 17-year high above $35,500.
Bitcoin at press time was changing hands at around $35,400, ahead 1.7% over the past 24 hours and firmly breaking above the $35,000 level which has capped its upward move over the last two weeks.
Solana (SOL) continued its remarkable rise, soaring 16% over the past 24 hours to a 14-month high. Native tokens of layer 1 blockchains such as Avalanche's (AVAX), Polkadot's (DOT) and Near Protocol's (NEAR) rose 6% to 10%.
Decentralized finance (DeFi) tokens – which were laggards during October – also popped, with uniswap (UNI) and aave (AAVE) advancing 15% and 10%, respectively.
Ether (ETH), the second largest crypto by market cap, was up nearly 2%, outperforming bitcoin by a few basis points.
The CoinDesk Market Index (CMI), a proxy for a broad basket of digital assets, was up 2% over the past 24 hours.
Checking the downside, SafeMoon's token SFM plummeted over 50% today as the Department of Justice (DOJ) arrested the project's executives for fraud and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed unregistered security offering charges
FOMC Meeting
The U.S. Federal Reserve's Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) left its benchmark fed funds rate range steady at 5.25%-5.50% on Wednesday, which was widely anticipated.
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said at the post-FOMC press conference that a run-up in U.S. Treasury yields have contributed to tightening financial conditions, but left the option open for an additional rate hike if necessary.
"Fed's likely done after back-to-back holds kept rates at a 22-year high," Edward Moya, market analyst at OANDA, noted in a newsletter.
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