Citadel bets on a Fed rate hike Wednesday as bitcoin (BTC) analysts call a hold.

Crypto is trading on a cautious note. The upswing in bitcoin, the leading digital asset by market value, has stalled since last Wednesday, with prices pulling back to just under $64,000 from the high of nearly $67,000.

July hike to end forward guidance

Citadel’s rate hike call is less about where the data land and more about tactics, specifically, why Warsh has more to gain from raising rates today than from waiting until September.

A surprise hike Wednesday, Frank Flight, head of macro strategy at Citadel Securities, writes, “would emphatically end the forward guidance era in which every policy move is pre-signaled and act as a cleansing event, forcing markets to price what the data imply the central bank should do rather than what they expect it will do.”

It would also “clearly underline Federal Reserve independence after two years in which it has been repeatedly questioned.”

Forward guidance is a tool central banks use to signal how they expect interest rates to evolve over the coming months, helping households and businesses adjust consumption, investment, and borrowing without sudden shocks.

Over time, however, forward guidance has, according to many, including Warsh, distorted the market’s reaction function to the point where assets began trading off expectations of how the Fed might respond to news and data, rather than on the underlying data itself.