On March 20, 2026, Eastern Eight Time, the Federal Reserve continued to maintain the expectation of three interest rate cuts within the year in its latest communication, reigniting the narrative of the linkage between traditional assets and the crypto market. On one hand, interest rates are expected to enter a downward channel, while on the other hand, the reality of the crypto industry chain presents a mixed situation: BitFuFu recorded a revenue of $475.8 million in 2025 but still incurred a loss of $57.4 million, and the cash flow pressure of mining companies has not eased due to the expectations of monetary easing; Polymarket surpassed 150,000 daily active users, with a trading volume reaching $1 billion in two weeks, embracing uncertainty with a “betting on the future” approach; meanwhile, Ant Group is preparing for an IPO in Hong Kong and emphasizes that blockchain settlement allows for real-time fund availability, with traditional financial giants accelerating their entry. The story of easing has been written in advance, but behind the scenes in the crypto world, who is under pressure, who is benefiting, and how is the arbitrage space across markets and structures quietly built in the time difference?

Federal Reserve's Consistent Stance: The Boundaries of Three Rate Cuts

Baumann maintained a consistent cautious attitude in her March speech: on one hand, the Federal Reserve continues to provide the expectation of three interest rate cuts in 2026 at the dot plot level, supporting the market; on the other hand, she emphasized that “regulatory reform must consider the differences in types of banks,” placing regulation and the interest rate path within the same narrative framework — this means that monetary easing will not be simply and crudely comprehensive, but rather “conditional easing” linked to the stability of the financial system. Against the backdrop that inflation has not fully returned to a comfortable range, the three rate cuts appear more like a technical retraction from prior intense tightening rather than a starting point for a new round of flooding liquidity.

This mild shift is driven by several interrelated macro forces: first, government supply-side spending continues to support growth, eliminating the need for particularly aggressive easing to maintain expansion; second, the structural contradictions in the labor market remain fundamentally unresolved, with labor shortages in certain sectors coexisting with inadequate employment in others, forcing the Federal Reserve to balance growth with social stability; third, the leverage level related to artificial intelligence is under regulatory scrutiny, limiting the financial system's space to "add leverage and dream" in the new technology cycle. These constraints collectively dictate that even if interest rates decline, the pace and extent will be bound by institutional “brakes.”

Under this framework, the sentiment in the bond market and risk assets forms a divergence. On the government bond side, the expectation of three rate cuts is being traded repeatedly, with long-term yields fluctuating within an “area of high-level retreat but difficult to plummet.” On the risk asset side, there is a tug-of-war between the imagination of “liquidity warming” and the reality of “regulatory and structural constraints.” For crypto assets, this incomplete easing is especially critical — it provides a reason for revaluing while not being strong enough to mask the structural divergence within the industry, laying the groundwork for the differentiated performances of mining companies, DeFi, and prediction markets discussed later.

Mining Companies Can't Be Saved by Interest Rates: The Metaphor of BitFuFu’s Financial Report

If we only look at the surface numbers, BitFuFu achieved a revenue of $475.8 million in 2025, seemingly catching a tailwind from the previous price rebound and hashrate expansion. But the reality is that this mining company still incurred a loss of $57.4 million during the same period, showing a clear disconnect between revenue growth and profitability. This combination of “high revenue + loss” is itself the best note of the mining business model being under pressure in a high-cost, cyclical environment. Even if the market is already trading on the future three rate cuts, the real-life mining companies still struggle to squeeze profits under the current burden of debt costs, equipment depreciation, and energy expenses.

At the intersection of the end of the high-rate cycle and the expectation of rate cuts, mining companies can indeed hope for a easing of financing costs over the next few quarters: a new round of debt refinancing might come with lower coupon rates, and some expansion plans could progress at lower thresholds when capital costs drop. However, these "improvements on paper" are not enough to reverse the fundamental industry landscape because the core of mining profitability pressure lies not merely in interest rates, but in the endogenous structure of hashrate competition, energy costs, and halving cycles. Even if the financing environment improves marginally, if the cryptocurrency price and transaction fees do not increase accordingly, the revenue per unit of hashrate will still struggle to cover equipment upgrades and operational expenses.

Under this kind of pressure, the typical choice for mining companies is to accelerate mergers and acquisitions and clear out: some leading players are gaining scale advantages and better power resources through M&A consolidation; meanwhile, some marginal players are being forced to exit under the dual pressure of tight cash flow and rising refinancing difficulties. Research briefs have pointed out that the financial pressures of mining companies themselves drive industry consolidation; however, due to the lack of specific acquisition targets and timelines, we can only see trends rather than details. This precisely amplifies the time difference between the expected easing and the cash flow dilemma of mining companies — the interest rate story comes first, while balance sheet recovery lags.

For traders, this time difference means that structural arbitrage opportunities are forming: among the assets that benefit from “interest rate cut expectations,” heavily leveraged and capital-intensive mining companies may still lag behind lighter asset and more flexible spending on blockchain agreements and service projects for a long period. The interest rate expectations provide the “discount factor” for valuations, but who ultimately can turn the discounted future cash flows into reality will determine the relative performance of different sectors.

The Other Side of Declining Interest Rates: DeFi Rates and Energy Shock

Unlike the “interest rates can’t cure the disease” situation on the mining company side, in the on-chain world, interest rate itself is a product. Once the three anticipated rate cuts are gradually implemented, the risk-free rate will subsequently decline, forcing traditional monetary market tools and government bond yields to pull back; however, during this time, many on-chain lending and staking agreements’ annualized returns may remain relatively high for a while — partly due to risk premiums, and partly due to the inherent volatility and built-in incentives of crypto assets. This mismatch between “offline interest rates going down, on-chain rates still high” provides a natural logic for cross-market capital movement.

Under the expectation of three rate cuts, mining companies and institutional funds can work simultaneously on both ends of the balance sheet: on the liability side, they wait to refinance at a lower cost; on the asset side, they gradually increase the weight of on-chain asset allocation, turning some dollars or cash-like assets into participation in DeFi lending, staking, and bill-type agreements, thus earning a higher spread than traditional monetary markets. For large funds that are conditionally participating in on-chain activities, the price gap between DeFi rates and traditional rates is becoming the core variable of a new round of arbitrage. Of course, this arbitrage also accompanies regulatory and compliance uncertainties and cannot be amplified without limits.

At the same time, the mining side faces an underestimated external variable: energy prices. Research briefs show that Qatar’s LNG exports cut by 17% has triggered a rise in European gas prices, and such supply contractions will transmit through natural gas and power prices to mining costs, especially in Europe and regions that depend on the international energy market. While declining interest rates can ease financial expenses, they cannot directly offset rising energy prices, which suffices to erode the already dwindling cash flow of mining companies.

Therefore, between hashrate stocks, hashrate contracts, and on-chain yields, a complex network of cross-market arbitrage and mismatches has formed:

● For hashrate stocks, investors need to price the interest rate path and energy costs simultaneously, where the two directions may offset each other; while hashrate contracts primarily lock in the relative relationship between cryptocurrency prices and hashrates, showing relatively less sensitivity to physical energy shocks.

● On-chain, yields are driven more by market sentiment, collateral demand, and protocol incentives, and have limited connection to actual power prices, allowing some funds to short or avoid hashrate stocks in the secondary market while earning relatively independent returns on-chain. The decline in interest rates brings about a decrease in funding costs and expansion opportunities for this whole set of cross-market strategies.

More People Are Betting on the Future: Polymarket and the Premium of Uncertainty

In a stage where the macro path is unclear and policy differences are intensifying, one of the most direct market responses is: more people are willing to pay for “future information”. Research briefs show that the prediction market platform Polymarket has surpassed 150,000 daily active users, and the trading volume reached $1 billion in two weeks, both creating historical highs. This explosive growth is less about the success of a single platform and more about the concentrated release of demand for pricing current uncertainty — interest rates, inflation, elections, regulations, each node can change the underlying parameters of asset pricing.

Within the Federal Reserve, views on the pace and extent of rate cuts are not entirely uniform, and the market keeps speculating on “whether it will follow the script for three cuts, or be earlier, later, or fewer,” providing natural material for prediction markets. The higher the uncertainty of the macro path, the stronger the trading motivation of the prediction market: participants turn their judgments on future information into prices by buying and selling contracts of different outcomes. On Polymarket, macro themes like interest rate decisions, inflation data, and key election results often become targets of concentrated liquidity, which, in turn, affect the narratives and flows of crypto assets — when the “next step policy” is packaged as a tradable game, macro expectations are no longer just words in a researcher’s report but become subjects of on-chain capital games.

For some traders, the price of the prediction market itself serves as an alternative hedging or betting tool: if a portfolio is highly exposed to a certain macro outcome (like faster rate cuts or stubborn inflation) in traditional markets, establishing positions in the opposite direction on Polymarket can hedge against losses brought by “policy surprises” to some extent; conversely, if one believes that the market has priced a specific scenario inadequately, they can use the prediction market as a place to amplify macro views with leverage. As daily activity and trading volume climb, Polymarket is shifting from a “fringe speculative platform” to a liquidity pool for macro expectations, and its price signals are starting to be observed by some crypto and traditional institutions as leading indicators of sentiment and expectations.

Ant Group Goes On-Chain: Traditional Giants Entering the Settlement Battlefield

Unlike the “bottom-up” paths of mining companies and prediction markets, Ant Group represents the “top-down” entry of traditional giants. Research briefs show that Ant Group is preparing for an IPO in Hong Kong and is publicly emphasizing that blockchain settlement technology can achieve real-time fund availability. This statement by Shi Wensheng clarifies a key point: in cross-border payment and settlement businesses, time is cost, and the improvement in settlement efficiency directly translates to a decrease in operating capital usage, which happens to be one of the most manageable points for blockchain infrastructure to release value within the traditional financial system.

This also means that financial technology giants like Ant Group are engaging in direct competition with native crypto projects in the field of cross-border payment, clearing, and settlement. One side comprises traditional institutions with licenses, client bases, and clearing networks, while the other side offers open protocols and unrestricted access as selling points for public chains and crypto payment solutions. The former can embed blockchain technology into existing businesses at a lower marginal cost under compliance frameworks; the latter relies on token incentives and open ecosystems in attempts to penetrate mainstream payment scenarios from the margins. This is not a simple "on-chain vs off-chain" competition, but rather a race between compliant finance on-chain vs native crypto infrastructure.

The entry of traditional institutions brings with it compliance, scale, and cost advantages:

● On compliance, the ability to connect with regulators and licenses makes it easier for them to gain recognition from cross-border regulatory authorities, resulting in less resistance during extensive capital inflows and outflows.

● On scale, the existing network of users and merchants makes any settlement technology upgrade amortize costs over a large transaction volume quickly, leading to a rapid drop in marginal costs.

● On costs, by connecting directly with banks and clearinghouses, in conjunction with their blockchain or consortium chain architecture, they can achieve a settlement experience close to “centralized” efficiency without fully relying on public chains. This path creates substantial pressure on public chains, stable value carriers, and cross-chain protocols: when cross-border funds can flow “on-chain-like” within the traditional financial system, the demand for some native protocols will inevitably weaken.

In a scenario of accelerated “traditional finance on-chain,” native crypto protocols can only break through through three lines: openness, asset coverage, and yield. Openness means permissionless access and global developer participation, which remains an advantage that large institutions find hard to fully replicate in the short term; asset coverage requires native protocols to accommodate a wider range of on-chain and synthetic assets to provide genuinely differentiated risk exposure for institutional funds; as for yield, it serves as a comparative standard — if the products offered post a traditional finance on-chain are attractive enough in terms of yield and risk-adjusted returns, native protocols must respond in terms of innovative structures and risk premiums, or they may easily be passively devalued amid the institutional wave.

Under Easing Expectations: Who Can Catch the Next Round of Liquidity

Reassembling these clues: on one end, mining companies like BitFuFu are under pressure, bearing a loss of $57.4 million under a revenue of $475.8 million, reflecting the reality that interest rate expectations cannot instantly repair heavy asset business models; on the other end, the resilience of DeFi rates suggests that while the upcoming three rate cuts may lower the risk-free rate, on-chain yields are likely to remain relatively high, opening up new spreads for cross-market capital; simultaneously, the explosion of Polymarket suggests that macro uncertainty itself is being financialized, with the prediction market becoming a bridge connecting macro narratives with on-chain flows; and traditional finance players like Ant Group going on-chain are forming a siege around native crypto infrastructure in the settlement and cross-border payment battlefield.

The natural time difference in the Federal Reserve’s transition from verbal easing to implementation exists: from “three rate cuts written on the dot plot” to real interest rate environments and improved financing conditions usually spans multiple quarters. This time window is critical for capital layout and cross-market arbitrage — mining companies may continue to adjust passively under cash flow pressure, while on-chain protocols will have the opportunity to first enjoy the positive influence of declining interest rates on valuations and risk appetite; prediction market prices continuously update collective judgments on the macro path during this period, while traditional institutions quietly restructure clearing patterns using on-chain technology.

In the coming quarters, what truly determines the winners of crypto assets will not just be simply “whether there will be a rate cut,” but how the three main lines intertwine: how the interest rate path will affect the relative valuations of different risk assets, how energy prices will reshape the cost curves of mining and hashrate-related assets, and how the rhythm of regulation and the speed of traditional finance on-chain will determine the power distribution between native protocols and institutional platforms. In this game ignited by interest rate cut expectations, which far surpasses the rates themselves, those who can catch the next round of liquidity will undoubtedly be participants who both understand the macro script and can occupy advantageous positions amid structural mismatches and time differences.

Join our community for discussions and empowerment!
Official Telegram community: https://t.me/aicoincn
AiCoin Chinese Twitter: https://x.com/AiCoinzh
OKX Benefits Group: https://aicoin.com/link/chat?cid=l61eM4owQ
Binance Benefits Group: https://aicoin.com/link/chat?cid=ynr7d1P6Z

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。