Trump continues to urge Powell to cut the rates, but it’s highly unlikely.

With just hours left until the US Federal Reserve publishes its decision whether it will change in any way the key interest rates, BTC’s price has dived by roughly two grand in minutes, dropping to a multi-day low of under $72,500.

This would be the second-to-last FOMC meeting before the Fed’s chair, Jerome Powell, leaves office as his four-year term expires on May 15.

FOMC Today: What to Expect

The general consensus among experts and prediction platforms is that there will be no changes to the interest rates today. According to most reports, Powell will likely keep them the same, as the war in the Middle East has only increased uncertainty, with gas prices jumping worldwide.

“Heading into the March [Federal Open Market Committee] meeting, the key question for the Fed is how to handle oil price shocks,” wrote Morgan Stanley economists in a recent note as cited by NBC News.

At the same time, economists at UBS reaffirmed the narrative that the Fed will not pivot on its most recent monetary policy. BeiChen Lin, a senior investment strategist at Russell Investments, also believes there won’t be any changes today, but noted that “any hints Chair Powell might drop about the path of future interest rates will be key.”

US President Trump continues to request that Powell cut the rates, which has brought him little to no success over the past several months. It appears he would have to wait for his nominee, Kevin Warsh, to replace Powell in mid-May.

As reported yesterday, the central banks for the UK and the European Union will also have such meetings in the near future, but the landscape in those jurisdictions is rather identical, as the market does not expect any changes.

Bitcoin Slips

Bitcoin became one of the top-performing assets since the war started on February 28, and jumped from a then-low of $63,000 to $76,000 marked yesterday morning. Although it was stopped there, it managed to hold above $74,000 until a few hours ago.

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That’s when it started to lose value rapidly, dropping by around two grand in 90-120 minutes. The asset has a long history of reacting with intense volatility to Powell’s speeches, and more fluctuations are expected today, even if the Fed indeed leaves the rates as they are.

Opinion by: Vikram Arun, co-founder and CEO of Superform

Crypto cards aren’t the future of payments. They’re a temporary interface for a world that hasn’t fully accepted cryptocurrencies.

They rely on banks as issuers, Visa or Mastercard as gatekeepers, and compliance rules that look exactly like TradFi. 

In most cases, crypto is sold into idle USD, the assets stop earning and every swipe creates a taxable event. 

That’s not innovation. That’s a debit card with extra steps. 

As digital banks built with blockchain rails scale, crypto cards that behave like debit cards will become obsolete, replaced by systems that treat cards as a thin interface on top of robust onchain credit.

The problem with current crypto cards

To understand why this shift is necessary, consider what happens with current crypto cards. When systems force users to liquidate holdings to spend, they reinforce the paradigm crypto was meant to escape: the false choice between liquidity and ownership. 

Debit-style crypto cards recreate this same trade-off because they require assets to become spendable balances, which halts yield and makes the system structurally negative-sum without subsidies. 

The IRS treats converting cryptocurrency to fiat currency as a taxable disposal, meaning each coffee purchase triggers capital gains reporting and permanently removes assets from productive use. Card issuers typically earn 1% to 3%, plus a flat fee per transaction, from interchange fees. The infrastructure looks decentralized on the surface, but the dependencies run deep.

Onchain credit fixes these issues

Instead of selling assets to spend, onchain credit enables people to deposit yield-bearing assets, open a credit line and spend against it. When people swipe the card, their debt increases, but their assets keep earning. Nothing is sold unless the person fails to repay. If the position falls below governance-defined parameters, liquidation is deterministic and transparent. This shift toward wallet-native credit shows onchain credit moving from concept to practice. 

In this model, spending doesn’t reduce ownership; it increases debt. Collateral continues to compound until the credit line is repaid or liquidated. There are no forced conversions and no idle balances. Yield-bearing stablecoins currently offer about 5% yield, and DeFi protocols range from 5% to 12%, depending on demand and token incentives.

Users holding these assets in credit accounts keep earning while maintaining spending power.

Any earning asset can be collateral

This shift from debit to credit fundamentally changes what’s possible. Once credit becomes the primary primitive, the question stops being “what can I spend?” and becomes “what can safely secure my credit?” Eligibility is no longer about whether an asset can be instantly liquidated into cash. It’s about whether it can be priced continuously, risk bounded and unwound deterministically.

This allows productive assets to compete for inclusion. Vault shares, yield-bearing dollars, US Treasury-backed assets and strategy positions are first-class collateral that don’t need to be converted into idle balances. These assets remain productive until liquidation becomes required. When assets keep earning, users don’t have to choose between liquidity and yield, credit lines become cheaper to maintain and protocols earn from management and performance, not interest spreads.

The card is just an interface

The card is not the product. A card is simply a consumer-facing compatibility layer, a thin authorization surface, and not the source of truth. What actually matters is the credit line itself: the ability to price a user’s onchain balance sheet and decide, in real time, whether a spend should be allowed.

Related: Visa crypto card spending soars 525 percent in 2025

Cards serve merchants and consumers. Once credit is the primitive, however, interfaces become interchangeable. Software and autonomous agents can already request payment programmatically. Whether through cards or APIs, the underlying question is the same: Is this spend authorized against the user’s credit?

If credit logic lives within the card, people remain locked into interchange fee structures, closed payment rails and rigid KYC requirements. If credit lives onchain, cards become optional. Collateral stays in user-controlled accounts, spending is authorized in real time and liquidation is deterministic. 

Managing risk through transparency

Of course, this system raises questions about safety. The most immediate objection is volatility. If collateral can fluctuate in value, what protects people from being liquidated while they are buying groceries?

Governance sets conservative loan-to-value ratios in advance, ensuring users can only borrow against a fraction of their collateral. As collateral earns yield, this buffer grows automatically. Pricing happens continuously, not at arbitrary intervals, and liquidation triggers are transparent from the beginning.

Traditional credit obscures risk through adjustable interest rates, surprise fees and terms buried in legal documents. Onchain credit makes risk explicit. Governance-set parameters mean the community decides what’s acceptable, not a bank’s risk committee behind closed doors.

The path forward

The answer to managing this risk lies in how the system is governed. Governance controls which assets can be used as collateral, how they’re priced, acceptable risk levels and when liquidations occur. People opt in by depositing collateral, and from that point on, the protocol enforces the rules without blanket access to funds or quietly changed parameters.

Crypto cards will not disappear because they failed. They will disappear because they succeeded by bridging crypto into a world that still runs on legacy rails. As wallets improve and crypto-native payments become standard, spending won’t require banks, issuers or card networks at all. Interfaces will change. Payment rails will evolve. But onchain credit will remain: the ability to spend without selling, to keep assets productive and to enforce risk transparently.

Cards are an interface. Credit is the system.

Opinion by: Vikram Arun, co-founder and CEO of Superform.