In June 2026, these three "dark lines" were almost simultaneously tightened: on one side, Kevin Walsh chaired the FOMC for the first time as the Federal Reserve Chairman, and UBS reminded the market that there was a lack of certainty about whether he leaned hawkish or dovish and how he would balance inflation and growth, leading to an unusually fragile interest rate expectation curve; on the other side, gold prices were basically flat in Wednesday's early trading, with New York gold futures retreating, and despite easing inflation pressures—traditionally unfavorable for non-yielding assets—traders were still focused on whether the temporary peace agreement between the U.S. and Iran could be realized, hesitant to fully shed their safe havens while reassessing gold's weight in safe assets; at the same time, bipartisan leaders in Congress reached an agreement on an updated version of the "21st Century Housing Act," but a key additional clause was inserted into the housing affordability-related legislation, banning the Federal Reserve from issuing or creating a CBDC before December 31, 2030, effectively pushing back the timeline for the formal introduction of the digital dollar. The combination of unclear interest rate paths, the rewriting of traditional safe asset pricing, and the legislative pause on the official digital dollar is forcing capital to rethink the hierarchical relationships among "risk-free rates," "safe assets," and "digital dollar substitutes," quietly repricing BTC, ETH, and all dollar-denominated positions that rely on on-chain infrastructure.

Walsh's Debut Approaches: Interest Rate Path Becomes the Biggest Blind Spot

Above the misalignment among interest rates, safe assets, and "digital dollar substitutes" lies a larger black box that the market must contend with: how Kevin Walsh deals with the trade-off between inflation and growth. UBS has made it clear that there is currently insufficient certainty regarding Walsh's policy stance, and his monetary policy reaction function is almost impossible to characterize; thus, this FOMC meeting is seen as a crucial window to observe his policy tendencies. The result is that where the terminal rate will settle, when the rate-cutting cadence will begin, and under what inflation and employment combination the path will change—variables that could have been delineated through the "dot plot + past behavior"—have now transformed into general probability clouds rather than tradable center scenarios.

In this setup, regardless of whether Walsh ultimately leans hawkish or dovish, pricing risks could arise: hawkishness means that the space for actual yields to rise is reopened, while dovishness may trigger market concerns over the "lagging curve," leading to a repricing of future, more aggressive tightening. The uncertainty surrounding interest rates and actual yields heightens the time value and volatility premium of risk assets, making it harder to lock in the dollar interest rate curve, forcing a frequent rewriting of the discount rate assumptions for stocks and bonds, and accelerating the pace of capital switching between dollar cash, bonds, and high-beta assets.

Historical experience has repeatedly shown that the prices of crypto assets are highly sensitive to U.S. real interest rates, dollar liquidity, and risk sentiment. During periods of unclear interest rate paths, this sensitivity is amplified rather than diminished. For BTC and ETH, macro traders find it more challenging to place directional bets in size, tending to reduce leverage and compress duration risks, hedging extreme scenarios on both sides of the meeting outcomes through options, thus pushing up implied volatility and elevating short-term prices. Meanwhile, dollar-denominated positions that rely on on-chain infrastructure must reserve higher margins and liquidity buffers, reluctant to easily take "one-sided long positions," leaving overall risk preference nominally "cautious" while essentially allowing for "volatility room," which means that every utterance and implication about interest rate prospects from Walsh before and after his debut could trigger rapid rebalancing of funds across BTC and ETH markets.

Gold Hesitates: Easing Inflation Hedging Geopolitical Risks

Before and after Walsh's debut, gold prices were essentially flat in Wednesday's early trading, while New York gold futures fell slightly, as if being pulled by two opposing forces: on one end, a relief from global inflation pressures over the past period, and on the other, the still-high geopolitical uncertainties in regions like the Middle East. Mitsubishi UFJ analyst Soojin Kim's assessment is straightforward—when inflation declines and concerns about actual purchasing power lessen, the relative appeal of gold as a "non-yielding asset" is weakened; yet at the same time, whether the U.S. and Iran can sign a temporary peace agreement remains unresolved, with energy supply and oil price expectations in a sensitive range, compounded by an overall cautious sentiment among investors which provides a "sentiment support" for gold prices. The result is that gold prices are neither rising nor falling, as everyone is waiting for Walsh to provide clearer guidance on inflation and interest rate prospects.

In the moments of gold's indecision, safe-haven funds do not collectively exit; instead, they quietly navigate between "physical safety cushions" and "digital gold." Some funds that originally used gold to hedge macro tail risks, seeing marginal cooling of inflation and limited upside elasticity in gold prices, may attempt to shift part of their positions to BTC: once Walsh signals a more accommodative outlook, BTC's beta as a high-elasticity asset could amplify; but if U.S.-Iran tensions flare up again, leading to a rise in gold prices, funds would reduce their BTC holdings and return to traditional safe havens. The narrow fluctuations in gold essentially reflect the market's pricing of the "mutual offset" between inflation and geopolitical risks, and this tug-of-war also adds a more complex dual attribute to BTC's safe-haven narrative—acting as a high-volatility alternative when gold hesitates, yet could see rapid repositioning due to abrupt shifts in inflation expectations or geopolitical situations.

CBDC Ban in Housing Bill

Around the same time that the market was watching Walsh's debut and calculating the next interest rate path, Congress settled on a constraint directly related to "what money looks like." Senate and House leaders reached a bipartisan agreement on the updated version of the "21st Century Housing Act," which originally focused on housing affordability reform, but an additional clause was slipped in at the final negotiating stages: banning the Federal Reserve from issuing or creating any form of central bank digital currency (CBDC) before December 31, 2030. The legislative text does not discuss technical routes and does not leave any gray space for the Fed's so-called "pilot projects before decision-making," instead using a clear calendar date to lock the imagination of the digital dollar beyond the next four years, essentially putting the pause button by Congress rather than the FOMC.

In contrast, many central banks have already entered the stages of development, testing, or piloting CBDCs, while the U.S. has yet to introduce a digital dollar and has now officially postponed the timeline, narratively resembling a cautious or even defensive posture: as other countries accelerate their digital sovereignty narratives, Washington chooses to bind its own central bank's hands first. For the crypto market, this means that before 2030, there will be a temporary absence of direct competition from "official digital dollars," while dollar-denominated on-chain assets remain the front window of U.S. monetary digitization, but it also releases a signal—that Congress can rewrite the boundaries of digital currency through cross-domain legislation at any time. This political constraint will be long-term embedded in the pricing framework for crypto asset valuations and regulatory premiums, becoming an institutional variable that investors must repeatedly assess.

In the Absence of a Digital Dollar, the Window for Dollar Stablecoins

The clause stating "no CBDC shall be issued or created by the Federal Reserve" is written in stone, yet intentionally avoids touching upon the legal status of dollar-denominated tokens like USDC and USDT. As a result, before 2030, the U.S. presses pause on the "official digital dollar," forcing on-chain demand for dollars to continue to be funneled toward these private tokens: cross-exchange settlements, DeFi collateral, futures margins, and even OTC hedging can only roll over onto existing vessels like USDC and USDT. Ironically, Congress's reasons for opposing CBDCs are rooted in privacy and excessive government surveillance, yet they effectively hand over the digitalization front of the dollar to companies and offshore structures with varying degrees of compliance and transparency, forcing global funds seeking dollar assets to choose between "dollars without central bank backing" and "digital dollars that Congress distrusts."

This tension of "banning central banks, not banning private entities" directly reflects on regulatory premiums and risk pricing: on one hand, dollar tokens close to U.S. regulation and verifiable reserve quality gain higher payment premiums and liquidity premiums in the absence of competition from digital dollars, and their interest rate products and on-chain dollar money markets are likely to continue serving as the benchmark risk-free curve in the crypto world for the next few years; on the other hand, the market is also forced to factor in institutional risk into prices—Congress has already demonstrated that it can redraw the boundaries of digital currency within a housing bill and can similarly incorporate private dollar tokens into stricter licensing, reserve requirements, or even payment system access restrictions at some future political window. For BTC and ETH, this means an extended "dollar-denominated gold era": their pricing, leverage, and derivative structures continue to revolve around dollar tokens like USDC and USDT, but all valuation models based on on-chain dollar interest rates must leave an additional discount to hedge against the potential for the U.S. to suddenly rewrite the rules post-2030.

From Washington to On-Chain: What Three Signals to Watch Next

Returning to these three main threads: the unfamiliarity with Walsh's reaction function, the oscillating gold sentiment between easing inflation and geopolitical unease, and the digital dollar being "paused" by the housing act, together they are rewriting the macro trading framework of the crypto market—from "looking at levels" to "looking at combination scenarios." The first signal is Walsh's communication trajectory regarding inflation and interest rates. As Soojin Kim noted, the market is waiting for the Fed to provide guidance on the outlook: if Walsh leans increasingly hawkish after his debut, true expected real interest rates would rise, with gold and BTC being treated more as liquid positions to be monetized, while the risk premium of ETH and high-beta on-chain assets widens, and the interest rate curve of dollar-denominated tokens is repriced; if the communication is dovish, extending the "low real interest rate" narrative under the premise of easing inflation pressures, gold and BTC could benefit simultaneously, but the recovery elasticity of ETH and on-chain leverage structures would be greater. The second signal is the trajectory of U.S.-Iran relations and broader geopolitical situations: once a temporary peace agreement is reached and seen as sustainable by the market, oil prices and inflation premiums would recede, weakening the logic of safe haven, favoring a rotation from gold and defensive assets toward the ETH ecosystem and risk tokens; if negotiations break down and risks resurface, the "traditional safe-haven" label of gold would be reinforced, and BTC could still draw some funds narratively, but ETH and on-chain leverage would face higher selling pressure. The third signal is the subsequent path for the CBDC ban in Congress: if the "21st Century Housing Act" passes smoothly, solidifying the ban before 2030, the "de facto standard" position of dollar-denominated tokens in global settlements would be locked in longer, and the trading structures for BTC and ETH would continue to be deeply tied to on-chain dollars; if the bill is weakened in negotiations or related clauses are loosened, the likelihood of digital dollars returning to the agenda would increase, leading the market to preemptively reassign "sovereign risk discounts" among BTC, ETH, and on-chain dollars. For crypto traders in the coming quarters, the real focus should not be on single interest rate decisions or isolated war rumors, but rather on how these three signals interplay among hawkish and dovish, easing and tightening, solidifying and loosening bans to redefine the boundaries of risk and safe-haven roles for BTC, ETH, and on-chain dollars.

Join our community to discuss together and become stronger!
AiCoin exclusive Hyperliquid benefits: https://app.hyperliquid.xyz/join/AICOIN88
AiCoin exclusive Aster benefits: https://www.asterdex.com/zh-CN/referral/9C50e2
On-chain Telegram community: https://t.me/AiCoinWhaleData
On-chain community: https://www.aicoin.com/link/chat?cid=N6OVMor5g
AiCoin on-chain Twitter: https://x.com/aicoinwhaledata

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。