Powell "conduit in the fog": the crypto market facing global monetary uncertainty

The Federal Reserve has just cut its rates by 25 basis points to 3.75%-4.00%, but here’s the thing: it’s not really a loosening; it’s a “preservation of options.” Powell sent a clear signal to traders: slow down, visibility has vanished.

Why? The U.S. government shutdown means that the Fed is operating practically blind, with no access to key data. And the expectations for rate cuts? They have collapsed. The yield curve is flattening, the market is digesting a painful shift: from “data-driven” to “paralyzed by the absence of data.”

The “Hunger Games” of liquidity

Here is the dark table: what determines the performance of assets is no longer productivity, it is liquidity itself. Passive funds and algorithms dominate the game, volatility is dictated by positions, not by fundamentals. The result? Valuations inflate while credit to the real economy dwindles.

Small investors are playing a speculative survival game in a system shaped by structural inequalities and self-reflexive policies.

AI and the Capital Trap

The shockwave of AI is pushing big tech towards post-cyclical industrialization. Currently fueled by liquidity, this expansion faces major future risks:

• Record financing: Meta raised $25 billion in bonds, a milestone
• Pressure on margins: “light cash machines” are becoming heavy infrastructure players.
• Refinancing risks: the inflation of energy costs (+11.7% for natural gas, the driver of data centers)

The real risk: the erosion of trust

Service inflation is slowing down (3.6%, the lowest since 2021), overall inflation is moderating at 3%, but the real danger? It's institutional fatigue. Every political rescue reinforces the largest players, concentrates wealth, and erodes public trust in the fairness of markets.

Negative net migration to the US: potential first demographic decline in a century. Immigrants represent 38% of Nobel Prizes and ~50% of trillion-dollar startups. If this trend reverses, it will slow down the American innovation engine.

The macro watch

Key moments this week:

• Mt. Gox extends the reimbursement deadlines to 2026 (4 billion $ in frozen BTC)
• Bitwise Solana ETF: $338.9M in the first week (record)
• ConsenSys aims for a 2026 IPO at $7 billion (JPMorgan + Goldman underwriters)
• Mastercard acquires Zerohash for up to $2 billion
• Circle Arc testnet public: 100+ institutions (BlackRock, Visa)
• Western Union launches USDPT on Solana in 2026
• Tether: $135 billion in US Treasuries, annual yield >$10 billion

The sentiment: The bond market anticipates lower yields and an economic slowdown. But the real risk is the breakdown of the institutional feedback mechanism—data delays, political indecision, collapse of public confidence. This is the true systemic fragility of the 2020s.

The real question: will future stability depend on political clarity or will it remain hostage to liquidity?