Original Author: ChandlerZ, Foresight News
On April 22, the U.S. asset market once again fell into the eye of the storm. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 971 points, the Nasdaq fell over 2.5%, and the S&P 500 index lost the 5200-point threshold. The seven tech giants all declined, with Tesla and Nvidia dropping more than 5.7% and 4.5%, respectively. The VIX fear index surged by 14%, breaking through 33 points, indicating that the market's systemic risk aversion sentiment is rapidly intensifying.
The U.S. dollar index also suffered, falling below 98 and hitting a new low not seen in a year and a half. The ICE Dollar Index and Bloomberg Dollar Index both recorded one of their worst monthly performances since 2009. Meanwhile, gold strongly broke through $3,400, reaching a new historical high. Bitcoin briefly surpassed $88,000 in the early morning but retreated to around $86,300 following the decline in U.S. stocks. However, after the U.S. stock market closed, it displayed a different strong posture, rising above $88,800, while altcoins generally did not return to their early morning highs.
According to Coinglass data, in the past 24 hours, the entire network saw liquidations of $261 million, with long positions liquidated at $14.1 million and short positions at $12.1 million. Among them, Bitcoin liquidations amounted to $88.578 million, and Ethereum liquidations totaled $67.5928 million.
Price changes are merely the result; more fundamentally, they reflect a collective re-evaluation of the global asset anchoring structure and the historic return of non-sovereign assets emerging from institutional cracks.
The Independence of the Federal Reserve Faces Political Restructuring
Trump has once again publicly criticized Federal Reserve Chairman Powell, demanding "immediate interest rate cuts, or the economy will slow down." The market's confidence in the Federal Reserve's political neutrality is facing unprecedented challenges. This is the second time in just a few days that he has publicly pressured the monetary policy path, not only directly pointing out "overly tight policies" through a post on Truth Social but also hinting on multiple occasions that he is "considering replacing Powell."
According to Bloomberg, Trump's team is currently exploring whether they have the legal authority to dismiss Powell. On April 18, Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council, publicly confirmed that Trump and his advisory team "are examining relevant options."
This move touches on the most sensitive red line for global investors: whether the Federal Reserve remains an independent central bank free from electoral politics. For 40 years, the Federal Reserve has played a core role in the global asset allocation system.
However, the question of "whether Powell can keep his position," which was once considered non-existent, has now become one of the core variables of concern for global financial capital. As a result, risk-averse funds are accelerating their flow into non-sovereign assets.
It is worth noting that this sell-off is not a reaction to the short-term interest rate path but rather a feedback on the "uncertainty of decision-making rules." When investors cannot determine whether interest rates are still based on economic fundamentals rather than political cycles, the credit anchoring of the dollar begins to loosen.
Over the past decade, global capital has widely allocated U.S. Treasury bonds and dollar assets, driven by trust in the Federal Reserve's professional judgment and independence. However, once this trust is eroded, U.S. Treasuries will no longer be considered unconditional safe-haven assets, and the dollar will no longer inherently possess premium attributes. This will trigger a reassessment of the entire global asset anchoring system.
Why Gold and Bitcoin Rise in Resonance: The "Anchoring Reconstruction Mechanism" in the Gap of Institutional Trust
For a long time, the core asset structure of the global financial system has relied on an implicit assumption of institutional trust, namely that the Federal Reserve maintains policy neutrality, the U.S. government fulfills its credit obligations, and market rules are stable with symmetric information.
It is this institutional trust that gives U.S. Treasuries their status as risk-free rates and qualifies the dollar as a global reserve currency. However, when executive power frequently intervenes in monetary policy, this assumption is challenged, and the first reaction of global capital is not to observe the Federal Reserve's next interest rate decision but to actively reassess what constitutes truly credible assets.
Gold has been a medium of value storage for thousands of years, and its price has never been merely a response to inflation but also a vote on institutional stability. Historically, every rapid rise in gold prices has been accompanied by a retreat in trust in the traditional political monetary system:
In 1971, following the collapse of the "Bretton Woods System," gold prices surged after decoupling from the dollar;
After the 2008 global financial crisis, gold prices rose rapidly, reaching historical highs;
Currently, as the Federal Reserve faces political intervention and scrutiny, gold has once again reached new highs.
This pattern has not changed, as gold's essential advantage lies in its independence from national credit, lack of policy interference, and absence of default risk. In a context where institutions are politicized and policies are short-term, gold provides a form of temporal independence and historical stability.
The reason Bitcoin has begun to rise in sync with gold is not because it possesses central bank attributes, but precisely because it is not an appendage of any central bank.
Its currency issuance follows mathematical rules, with the total supply encoded and unaffected by any political term, election cycle, or fiscal deficit pressure. The rise of Bitcoin is an expression of distrust in the "human-controlled monetary system."
When the independence of the Federal Reserve is questioned and the dollar is forced to accept executive intervention, a portion of the funds in the market begins to view Bitcoin as a "depoliticized store of value candidate."
Especially when U.S. Treasury credit is constrained (due to unsustainable fiscal policies), gold prices are overheated (high premiums may weaken risk-adjusted returns), and the compliance channels for crypto asset ETFs are gradually opening up (increasing accessibility), Bitcoin will play a mixed role as both "digital gold" and "decentralized dollar alternative."
Signals of Regulatory Shift: Atkins' Appointment and Systemic Adjustment of Financial Governance Framework
While Trump continues to pressure the Federal Reserve, Paul S. Atkins has been sworn in as the 34th chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Although this appointment appears procedurally compliant, it actually sends a strong policy signal. Atkins, a prominent advocate of the "financial market liberalization" ideology during the Bush era, has always argued that regulation should serve the market rather than dominate it. His appointment signifies that the governance philosophy of the U.S. capital market may enter a new turning cycle.
In the current context of crypto assets, this shift is particularly crucial. If Atkins maintains his consistent stance, the future of crypto assets may welcome an unprecedented period of policy easing in areas such as ETF compliance approval, RWA token issuance, and value distribution mechanisms in token economic models.
However, this laissez-faire tendency may also bring structural risks. While it releases positive expectations in the short term, it will also lead to ambiguity in regulatory consistency and long-term behavioral expectations. The market is originally built on a compliance framework with clear rules, defined thresholds, and measurable boundaries, and the softening of regulatory claims can easily disrupt this institutional perception, causing disorder in market participants' judgments. The crypto industry is already on the regulatory edge, and now this edge is not only not clarified by rules but may also exacerbate its institutional uncertainty due to the oscillation of policy tendencies.
In other words, Atkins' appointment marks a subtle reconstruction of the U.S. financial governance framework: in the decentralized handling of traditional regulatory tools, the space for market autonomy is greatly expanded, but it may also lose the last line of defense for governance unity. For the crypto asset industry, this represents both an opening of a compliance opportunity window and a high-stakes game during a period of institutional evolution.
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