Bitcoin and Crypto Markets in Turmoil as Fed Plans to Reduce Balance Sheet

The past 24 hours have been particularly tumultuous throughout the entire cryptocurrency market. The selling pressure also spread out through Wall Street as the Fed revealed plans to reduce its balance sheet.

• Over the last day, the cryptocurrency market lost some $200 billion of its capitalization, which currently sits below $2.2 trillion.
• Bitcoin’s price is down 8.1% in the past 24 hours and currently sits around $43K.

Chart by TradingView

• Altcoins are no exception, as most of them are also well in the red. Ethereum is down 11%, BNB – 9.4%, Solana – 12.4%, and so forth.
• The negative sentiment is also present on Wall Street as the S&P 500 futures trade at a 0.15% loss as the spot index closed yesterday’s trading session down 2%. The NASDAQ Composite index, as well as the Dow Jones Industrial Average, are also in the red.
• The current market downturn came as the US Federal Reserves reportedly plans to reduce its bond holdings in the coming months to combat inflation.
• According to the Fed’s meeting minutes, officials failed to make any determination about when exactly the Fed will start rolling off its Treasury and mortgage-backed securities, but the process might begin in 2022 and possibly even in the next few months.

Almost all participants agreed that it would likely be appropriate to initiate balance sheet runoff at some point after the first increase in the target range for the federal funds rate. – The minutes read.