Federal Reserve Chair Walsh's first round of personnel appointments after taking office selected two central bank veterans with nearly 30 years of experience. One specializes in financial stability and credit markets, while the other's model shows that soft landing has given way to high inflation plus weak growth. This is not just a change of personnel, but a signal reset of the policy framework.

The market is still focused on PCE and ETF outflows, but what's more worth thinking about is: Walsh was already known as a hawk when he was a Fed governor, and now he is forming a team and setting up a working group to review communication methods and portfolio management, indicating that he is dissatisfied with the current interest rate path. The median of Reuters surveys has pushed the expectation of rate cuts to the end of 2027—a year later than a month ago.

For crypto, a high interest rate plateau means that risk-free returns remain attractive, and the arbitrage space for stablecoins and RWAs will be compressed, not expanded. The consecutive net outflows of ETFs are not just a matter of sentiment; institutions are repricing the cost of holding. Bitcoin rebounded from 60k to 59.7k, and fluctuations of this magnitude are more like short covering than a trend reversal.

The downside risk is that if Walsh's team ultimately pushes for more aggressive balance sheet reduction or raises long-term interest rate targets, the crypto market may face a more persistent liquidity drain than in 2022. After all, there were rate cut expectations to support it back then, but now even that anchor is loosening.

$btc #defi # rwa #稳定币 #etf