Crypto World
Congress wants to ban lawmakers from prediction markets
While the crypto market burned through the early days of June 2026, a quieter but consequential fight was unfolding in Washington.
Summary
- The Senate has already banned senators and staff from trading on prediction markets.
- House lawmakers want to add prediction-market restrictions to a broader congressional stock-trading ban.
- Lawmakers can possess private information and directly influence the outcomes these markets price.
- Polymarket and Kalshi support the restrictions as a way to strengthen market credibility.
Congress is moving to ban its own members from betting on crypto prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi, the platforms that let users trade contracts on the outcomes of elections, policy decisions, and real-world events.
The Senate already did it: on April 30, 2026, senators unanimously passed a rule barring themselves and their staff from trading on prediction markets, effective immediately.
Now the House is preparing to follow, with Representative Bryan Steil working to attach prediction-market restrictions to a broader bill banning lawmakers from trading individual stocks, and a vote possible this summer.
The driving concern is stark and specific: members of Congress have access to non-public information that moves the very outcomes these markets price, from legislation to policy to national security, which makes their participation a form of insider trading hiding in plain sight.
The strangest part of the story is who supports the ban. Polymarket and Kalshi, the platforms that would lose these users, are publicly cheering it on.
This piece explains what is being proposed, why it is happening, the real cases driving it, and what it means for the prediction-market industry.
What is actually being proposed
The push is not a single bill but a cluster of overlapping efforts at different stages, and understanding the landscape requires separating what has already happened from what is still in motion.
The furthest-along action is already done. On April 30, 2026, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a rule barring senators and their staff from trading on prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket, effective immediately.
Unanimous passage in a chamber as divided as the Senate is itself remarkable, signaling that concern about lawmakers betting on prediction markets crosses party lines completely.
The Senate move came amid rising worry about insider trading on these platforms and about event contracts that can involve sensitive outcomes, and it applied to senators and their offices right away instead of waiting on a lengthy implementation process.
The House is the current battleground. Representative Bryan Steil, who chairs the House Administration Committee, is working with Republican leadership to bring the House in line with the Senate.
His chosen vehicle is H.R. 7008, a bill that would prohibit members of Congress, their spouses, and their dependents from buying individual stocks, and that would require lawmakers to publicly disclose an intent to sell at least seven days before completing a transaction.
Steil’s plan is to attach prediction-market language to this stock-trading ban, extending the same logic, that lawmakers should not trade on markets their decisions can move, from stocks to prediction contracts.
The stock-trading bill was reported out of committee and placed on the House calendar, making it eligible for a floor vote that Steil expects could happen during the summer.
Violations would trigger penalties of either $2,000 or 10% of the investment’s value, whichever is larger.
Around these two main efforts sit several parallel proposals that show how broad the concern has become.
The PREDICT Act would bar the president, vice president, and all 535 members of Congress from prediction-market trading, a scope covering roughly 537 federal officials.
Representative Ritchie Torres introduced the Campaign Funds Integrity Act of 2026, which targets the use of campaign funds for prediction-market gambling with criminal penalties of up to five years imprisonment, enforced through the Federal Election Commission and referrals to the Department of Justice.
A separate bipartisan Senate bill from Senators Adam Schiff and John Curtis takes aim at a different target entirely, seeking to ban prediction markets from listing sports-betting and casino-style contracts.
The common thread is a Washington that has suddenly decided prediction markets need guardrails, with lawmaker participation as the most urgent piece.
Why this is happening now
Prediction markets have existed for years, so the obvious question is why the crackdown is arriving in 2026.
The answer is a combination of the markets’ explosive growth, their unique insider-trading problem, and a series of concrete incidents that made the abstract risk undeniable.
The growth is the backdrop. Prediction markets surged in prominence around the 2024 U.S. election, when Polymarket in particular drew attention for reflecting real-time political sentiment more accurately than some traditional polls, and the sector’s volume has since reached records.
As these markets grew from a niche curiosity into a multibillion-dollar arena where serious money rides on political and policy outcomes, the stakes of who is allowed to trade on them grew accordingly.
A market small enough to ignore became a market large enough to demand rules.
The insider-trading problem is what makes lawmakers specifically dangerous.
Prediction markets price the probability of future events, and a huge share of the most-traded contracts are about exactly the things members of Congress control or influence: whether a bill passes, what a policy decision will be, the outcome of a confirmation, or the direction of a regulatory action.
A lawmaker trading on these markets is, in many cases, betting on the outcome of their own work, with access to non-public information about what is likely to happen.
This is structurally worse than the stock-trading problem that the STOCK Act tried to address, because with prediction markets the lawmaker does not just have inside information about an event, they often have direct power over the event itself.
They can bet on an outcome and then vote to make it happen. That is not a hypothetical conflict of interest; it is a mechanism for converting political power directly into trading profit.
The concrete incidents turned the theoretical risk into a visible scandal.
Kalshi suspended and fined one U.S. Senate candidate and two House candidates for political insider trading on their own campaigns, betting on races where they had non-public knowledge of their own positions.
More dramatically, a U.S. Army Special Forces master sergeant was charged in an indictment accusing him of using classified information to make Polymarket bets related to the American military mission that captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, a case that linked prediction-market betting directly to the misuse of national-security secrets.
These cases gave lawmakers and the public a tangible picture of the danger: people with privileged information, whether about their own campaigns or classified operations, turning that information into prediction-market profit.
Once the risk had names and indictments attached, the legislative response accelerated.
The twist: the platforms support the ban
The most counterintuitive element of the story is that Polymarket and Kalshi, the platforms that would lose these high-profile users, are not fighting the bans.
They are actively endorsing them, and understanding why reveals how the industry is thinking about its own future.
When the Senate passed its ban, both companies publicly cheered.
Polymarket said it was “in full support,” noting that its rulebook and terms of service already prohibited such conduct and calling codification into law “a step forward for the industry,” while offering to help move it forward.
Kalshi co-founder Tarek Mansour was equally enthusiastic, saying Kalshi already proactively blocks members of Congress and enforces against insider trading.
He called the Senate rule “a great step to increase trust in our markets by making it an industry standard,” before urging the House to follow.
These are not grudging acceptances. They are endorsements from the companies the legislation targets.
The strategic logic is clear once you think about what these platforms actually want.
Prediction markets are fighting for mainstream legitimacy and regulatory acceptance, trying to establish themselves as serious, trustworthy financial infrastructure, not gambling dens or vehicles for manipulation.
Their biggest existential threat is not losing a few hundred lawmaker accounts. It is being seen as rigged, as places where insiders profit at the expense of ordinary participants.
An insider-trading scandal involving a member of Congress would be far more damaging to the industry’s legitimacy than the loss of those members as customers.
By supporting the ban, the platforms get to position themselves as responsible actors who want clean markets, removing a source of scandal risk while earning goodwill with the regulators who hold their future in their hands.
There is also a competitive and verification angle.
The platforms already claim to block and enforce against this conduct, so a legal ban mostly codifies what they say they already do, costing them little while giving them a public-relations and regulatory win.
It lets them argue that prediction markets are self-aware about their risks and willing to accept guardrails, which strengthens their case in the larger, more consequential regulatory fights over whether and how prediction markets should be allowed to operate at all.
In effect, the platforms are trading a small, scandal-prone user segment for enhanced legitimacy, which is an easy trade when their central challenge is being taken seriously.
The lawmaker ban is the cheap, popular reform that buys credibility for the harder regulatory battles ahead.
How prediction markets actually work
To understand why lawmaker participation is so fraught, it helps to understand the mechanism these platforms use, because it is precisely that mechanism that turns inside information into a clean profit opportunity.
A prediction market is, at its core, a marketplace for contracts that pay out based on whether a specified event happens.
A contract on “Will this bill pass by year-end” might trade at 40 cents, reflecting a market-implied 40% probability, and it settles at $1 if the bill passes and zero if it does not.
Anyone who believes the true probability is higher than the market price can buy the contract and profit if they are right, and anyone who thinks it is lower can effectively bet against it.
The price of the contract becomes a real-time, money-backed estimate of the event’s likelihood, which is what makes these markets useful.
They aggregate the views of many participants, weighted by how much money each is willing to risk, into a single probability that often outperforms polls and pundits.
This is the legitimate appeal that has drawn serious interest, including the praise Polymarket received for tracking the 2024 election more accurately than traditional forecasting.
But that same mechanism is what makes inside information so valuable on these platforms.
In a normal financial market, having private information about a company is useful but indirect, because many factors move a stock price.
In a prediction market, the contract pays out based on a single, specific outcome, so private knowledge about that exact outcome translates almost perfectly into profit.
If you know with certainty that a bill will pass because you control the vote, a contract priced at 40 cents is a near-guaranteed 150% return, with none of the noise that complicates stock trading on inside information.
The directness is the problem.
Prediction markets convert specific knowledge about specific outcomes into specific payouts, and no one has more specific knowledge about legislative and policy outcomes than the legislators and officials who determine them.
This is why the lawmaker issue is structurally distinct from the stock-trading concerns the STOCK Act addressed.
A member of Congress trading stocks on inside information is exploiting an information advantage.
A member of Congress trading prediction markets on the outcome of their own legislation is exploiting both an information advantage and a control advantage, because they do not just know what will happen, they decide what will happen.
They can take a position and then act to make it pay off.
That combination, knowledge plus control plus a mechanism that pays out directly on the specific outcome, is what makes prediction-market participation by lawmakers uniquely indefensible.
It is also why the Senate’s ban was unanimous and the platforms themselves endorse the restriction.
The global and enforcement problem
Even if the lawmaker bans pass cleanly, two harder questions sit underneath them: how to enforce the rules, and how to handle the parts of the prediction-market world that operate outside U.S. reach.
Enforcement is hard, especially for the crypto-native platforms.
A centralized, regulated venue like Kalshi can identify its users through know-your-customer requirements and block or flag members of Congress, which is why Kalshi can credibly claim it already enforces against lawmaker trading.
But Polymarket operates on the Polygon blockchain as a more decentralized, crypto-native platform, and the pseudonymous nature of on-chain activity makes it far harder to verify who is actually behind a given wallet.
A lawmaker determined to evade a ban could, in principle, trade through a wallet not linked to their identity, and the platform might have no straightforward way to detect it.
This raises the uncomfortable question of whether the bans would force decentralized prediction-market protocols to implement identity verification, which would cut against the permissionless design that defines them.
Analysts judge it unlikely that the lawmaker-focused bills would target platforms directly, since their enforcement mechanism is aimed at the officials through congressional ethics rules and potential criminal penalties rather than at the venues.
However, the verification problem remains a real gap between a ban on paper and a ban in practice.
The global dimension compounds it.
Prediction markets operate across borders, and capital and contracts can flow through jurisdictions outside U.S. control.
Congress has been debating whether additional restrictions should apply to prediction markets operating outside the U.S., recognizing that a purely domestic rule can be circumvented by routing through offshore or decentralized venues.
This mirrors the broader challenge of regulating crypto generally: the technology is global and permissionless, while regulation is national and jurisdiction-bound.
Rules written for U.S.-regulated venues like Kalshi may simply push activity toward platforms and structures that are harder to reach.
The lawmaker bans are most enforceable precisely where they matter least, on the compliant, identity-verified platforms that already block such conduct, and least enforceable where determined evasion is easiest, on decentralized and offshore venues.
These enforcement and jurisdictional gaps do not undermine the case for the bans, which remain a clear integrity improvement, but they do temper expectations about what the bans can accomplish in practice.
A determined bad actor with inside information and technical sophistication may find ways around a rule that catches the casual or compliant.
The bans should therefore be understood as raising the barrier and setting a standard rather than as an airtight solution.
The real value may be as much normative as practical: codifying into law that lawmakers must not bet on the outcomes they control establishes a clear ethical line and a basis for prosecution, even if perfect enforcement remains elusive.
That is meaningful, but it is not the same as making the conduct impossible.
The gap between the two is where the harder, less settled parts of prediction-market regulation will continue to play out.
The bigger regulatory picture
The lawmaker bans are the most advanced piece of a much broader regulatory reckoning with prediction markets, and the lawmaker issue is in some ways the easy part of a far more complicated set of questions.
The harder questions concern the markets themselves rather than who trades on them.
Prediction markets occupy an awkward regulatory position: they use futures and commodity-contract mechanisms that fall under federal oversight by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which lets them offer event contracts nationwide, sidestepping the state-by-state regulation that governs traditional sports betting and gambling.
This has created tension on multiple fronts.
The Schiff-Curtis bill targets the sports-betting and casino-style contracts that critics argue are gambling dressed up as financial trading, exploiting the federal-oversight loophole to offer nationwide what would be tightly regulated if done through traditional channels.
Congress is also debating whether additional restrictions should apply to prediction markets operating outside the U.S., and how to handle decentralized, crypto-native platforms that are harder to regulate than centralized venues.
Polymarket’s own regulatory history illustrates the complexity.
The platform settled with the CFTC in 2022 and has been unavailable to U.S. users, operating on the Polygon blockchain as a crypto-native, decentralized-leaning venue, which raises questions a centralized exchange like Kalshi does not.
Kalshi operates as a CFTC-regulated designated contract market, fully inside the U.S. regulatory perimeter.
The two leading platforms therefore sit in different regulatory positions, and the various bills affect them differently.
A particularly thorny question is whether any of this legislation could force decentralized prediction-market protocols to implement identity verification.
However, analysts judge it unlikely that the lawmaker-focused bills would target platforms directly, since their enforcement mechanism is aimed at the officials rather than the venues.
The political timing adds pressure.
As with the CLARITY Act and other crypto legislation, the prediction-market bills are racing against a crowded congressional calendar and the approaching midterm elections, which shorten the window for action.
Steil expects a possible House vote on the stock-and-prediction-market bill this summer, but broader market-structure bills governing how prediction markets operate would fall under the House Agriculture or Financial Services Committees and could take much longer.
The likely near-term outcome is that the narrow, popular, bipartisan lawmaker ban advances while the harder questions about the markets’ fundamental legality and scope remain unresolved, pushed into a future session.
The lawmaker ban is the reform everyone can agree on. The structural questions are where the real fights will happen.
What it means
Pulling it together, the lawmaker prediction-market bans are significant both for what they directly do and for what they signal about the broader trajectory of prediction markets as an industry.
What they directly do is close an obvious and indefensible loophole.
Allowing members of Congress to bet on prediction markets pricing the outcomes of their own decisions was a conflict of interest so clear that it produced unanimous Senate action, a rarity in modern Washington.
The bans, where they pass, mean that the roughly 537 most powerful federal officials cannot convert their privileged access to non-public information and their direct power over outcomes into prediction-market profit.
That is a genuine integrity improvement, and the real insider-trading cases, the fined candidates and the charged Special Forces sergeant, show it addresses an actual problem, not a theoretical one.
What it signals is that prediction markets have arrived as a serious enough financial arena to warrant federal attention, which cuts both ways for the industry.
On one hand, regulation is a form of legitimization: markets that are being carefully regulated are markets that are being taken seriously, and the platforms’ eager support for the lawmaker bans reflects their understanding that accepting guardrails is the path to mainstream acceptance.
On the other hand, the lawmaker bans are the leading edge of a regulatory wave that includes much harder questions: about sports betting, the federal-oversight loophole, decentralized platforms, and whether these markets are financial instruments or gambling.
Those questions could constrain the industry far more than a ban on a few hundred officials ever would.
The easy reform is passing. The consequential ones are coming.
For anyone watching the prediction-market space, the practical takeaway is to distinguish the lawmaker bans from the broader regulatory fight.
The lawmaker bans are popular, bipartisan, supported by the platforms themselves, and likely to pass in some form, and they are good for the industry’s legitimacy.
The deeper questions, about what these markets can list, who can operate them, and how decentralized venues fit into the U.S. regulatory perimeter, are where the industry’s future will actually be decided.
Those fights are just beginning.
The image of Polymarket and Kalshi cheering on a ban of their own most prominent users captures the moment perfectly: an industry trading short-term customers for long-term legitimacy, betting that accepting regulation now is the price of survival later.
Whether that bet pays off depends not on the lawmaker bans, which are nearly settled, but on the harder battles over the markets themselves, which are only starting.
Congress wanting to ban lawmakers from prediction markets is the easy, obvious first move in a much longer game.
This article is for informational purposes and does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice. The figures and analysis described reflect data available as of June 2026. Always do your own research and consult with qualified professionals before making decisions.
Bitcoin (BTC) has regained some poise, recovering from Asian session lows despite signs of worsening risk aversion in equity markets.
The leading cryptocurrency by market value traded at around $63,500 as of this writing, up from the low of $63,065 in Asia, according to CoinDesk data. Prices are still down by 0.3% since midnight UTC and by nearly 3% over the past 24 hours.
In the meantime, e-mini futures tied to Nasdaq have slipped to 27,930 points, the lowest since May, and are down 1.2% for the week, having peaked near 31,000 in June. On Monday, shares in NVDA, the index heavyweight, fell by nearly 5%.
Earlier today, South Korea’s Kospi index tanked by 10%, alongside relatively more measured declines in other regional indices, such as Japan’s Nikkei.
Readiness matters because quantum computing poses a real long-term risk to the cryptography that underpins modern finance. Banks are especially vulnerable to “harvest now, decrypt later” attacks, which the Bank for International Settlements’ Project Leap has flagged as an immediate threat to the financial system.
The harvest now, decrypt later means that malicious entities could be stockpiling encrypted banking data today, waiting for the quantum hardware to catch up. Blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum face the same risk, which could leave modern finance exposed to a long-term security risk.
While practical, large-scale quantum machines capable of breaking bank security and blockchains such as Bitcoin do not exist today, estimates for when that risk could become real start in as early as 2029.
The HKMA is aiming for a perfect 10 on the Quantum Preparedness Index by 2030. To get there, the regulator is rolling out practical tools: a post-quantum cryptography toolkit being developed with Hong Kong University of Science and Technology’s business school, plus a series of workshops to help banks build skills, improve crypto agility and explore quantum opportunities responsibly.
It’s not alone. President Donald Trump recently signed two executive orders. One aims to accelerate U.S. quantum computing development, with a goal of producing a machine powerful enough for scientific research by 2028. The other calls for the federal government’s migration to post-quantum cryptography by 2030-31.
Bitcoin traded near $63,490 on July 28 after falling below $64,000 during a broad risk-off move across Asian markets.
Summary
- Bitcoin traded near $63,490, down 2.85%, as South Korea’s KOSPI triggered a circuit breaker Tuesday.
- $11.64 million left U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs Monday, while IBIT posted the largest fund outflow.
- Wallets holding 10 to 10,000 BTC accumulated 19,696 coins during the latest eight-day period tracked.
According to crypto.news market data, BTC dropped about 2.85% over 24 hours, with a daily range between approximately $63,055 and $65,546 at the time checked.
The decline began after U.S. markets closed Monday and accelerated as South Korean technology shares sold off. Bitcoin dropped from nearly $65,000 to around $63,200 before recovering slightly, while ether, XRP and solana also weakened.
The move places BTC back inside the lower half of its recent $60,000–$66,000 range. Technical momentum has softened, although compressed volatility, whale accumulation and the approaching Federal Reserve decision leave the next direction unsettled.
Asian equity losses added pressure to Bitcoin price
South Korea’s KOSPI fell more than 8% on Tuesday morning, forcing the Korea Exchange to suspend marketwide trading for 20 minutes. The Level 1 circuit breaker was activated after the decline remained above the required threshold for one minute.
Selling continued after the halt. The KOSPI fell almost 10% during the session, while Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix lost more than 12%. Concerns centred on heavy AI spending, financing risks and growing competition from Chinese semiconductor companies.
Japan’s Nikkei also fell about 4%, following a 2.2% decline in the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index during Monday’s U.S. session. Nvidia had dropped 5%, adding another negative signal for technology-linked risk assets.
Bitcoin often trades alongside equities when selling is driven by interest rates, liquidity or broad macro concerns. However, the relationship is not constant. Bitcoin may decouple when pressure is limited to company earnings or sector-specific capital-spending concerns.
Tuesday’s price action suggests traders initially treated the Asian selloff as a wider risk event. It does not prove that the KOSPI decline alone caused Bitcoin’s fall, because Fed expectations, ETF flows and geopolitical developments were moving simultaneously.
Bitcoin remains trapped between $60,000 and $66,000
The BTC/USDT daily chart places Bitcoin near $63,500 after repeated failures to establish support above $65,000–$66,000. Price has consolidated since June’s sharp decline, but it remains in a broader downtrend from the previous peak above $100,000.
The relative strength index on the supplied chart stands at 46.77, below its moving average of 53.49. An RSI reading below 50 shows that short-term momentum has moved slightly towards sellers, although it remains well above the traditional oversold level of 30.
Bitcoin price chart, source: crypto.news
The moving average convergence divergence indicator has also weakened. Its histogram is negative at about minus 104.93, while the MACD line near 219.58 remains below the signal line around 324.51. That structure shows that the earlier July recovery has lost momentum.
Ali Martinez said Bitcoin’s three-day Bollinger Bands were beginning to squeeze. Bollinger compression usually reflects falling realised volatility and can precede a larger move, but it does not establish whether the eventual break will be higher or lower.
Crypto Patel separately argued that BTC had broken trendline support, retested approximately $65,600 and faced rejection. His bearish scenario targets the 0.618 Fibonacci area near $61,000 while price remains below reclaimed resistance. That level is an analyst projection, not a confirmed destination.
The chart therefore presents three immediate zones. Bitcoin must recover $65,000–$66,000 to improve its short-term structure. The $61,000 area is the first lower support identified by the bearish Fibonacci setup, while $60,000 remains the main floor of the broader consolidation.
A sustained daily close below $60,000 would weaken the range and expose the June lows near $58,000. Conversely, a close above $66,000 would invalidate part of the short-term bearish setup and place the July resistance near $67,181 back in focus.
Bitcoin reclaimed $65,000 on July 27 as falling oil prices briefly supported risk assets. That recovery failed to produce a breakout above the wider resistance band.
ETF selling conflicts with whale accumulation
U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded combined net outflows of $11.64 million on July 27, according to SoSoValue data. BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust recorded the largest individual fund outflow at $8.82 million.
Bitcoin spot ETF net inflow, Source: SoSoValue
The daily total was modest compared with the $240.08 million withdrawn on July 24. However, another negative session shows that institutional demand remains uneven rather than firmly returning to sustained inflows.
ETF activity has become an important source of marginal Bitcoin demand. Persistent inflows require authorised participants to create shares and source underlying exposure, while extended outflows can reduce that source of buying.
One session should not be treated as a trend. The four-week flow direction offers a more useful measure because individual daily totals can be affected by portfolio rebalancing, market making and settlement timing.
On-chain data present a different picture. Santiment said wallets holding between 10 and 10,000 BTC added 19,696 BTC over eight days. The analytics firm also said wallets holding less than 0.01 BTC showed weaker dip-buying activity.
The divergence suggests larger holders have accumulated while very small accounts have shown less urgency. Still, wallet cohorts do not map perfectly to individual investors. Large addresses can represent exchanges, custodians, funds or several customers rather than one whale.
Whale accumulation may provide support if those coins remain off exchanges. It becomes less constructive if large holders begin transferring inventory to trading platforms during price rebounds.
Fed, GDP and core PCE create a volatility window
The Federal Open Market Committee is meeting on July 28 and 29. At its previous meeting on June 17, the Fed kept the federal funds target range at 3.5%–3.75% and said inflation remained above its 2% goal.
Interest-rate markets assigned a roughly 38% probability to a 25-basis-point increase before the decision. That estimate represents market pricing and can change quickly before the announcement.
The July meeting is not marked as one accompanied by a new Summary of Economic Projections. Traders will therefore focus on the rate decision, the statement and the central bank’s language about inflation, energy prices and future tightening.
Thursday brings two major U.S. releases at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time. The Bureau of Economic Analysis will publish its advance estimate of second-quarter gross domestic product and the June Personal Income and Outlays report, which contains the Fed’s preferred personal consumption expenditures inflation measures.
A rate increase or a more restrictive statement could lift Treasury yields and the dollar, conditions that often weigh on Bitcoin and other assets without fixed cash flows. Under that scenario, the $61,000 and $60,000 zones would become more exposed.
A rate hold accompanied by less restrictive guidance could help BTC challenge $65,000–$66,000 again. Cooler core PCE data on Thursday could support that move, while stronger inflation or GDP figures could renew expectations that rates must remain higher.
The outcomes should not be considered in isolation. A hold on Wednesday could initially lift Bitcoin, only for hotter inflation data to reverse the move on Thursday. Likewise, a restrictive Fed decision could be partly offset by weaker economic data the following day.
As previously reported, Bitcoin entered July with the Fed meeting and ETF flows as its main external catalysts. The earlier analysis identified $58,000 as major downside support, while the market has since established a nearer resistance zone around $65,000–$67,181.
Bitcoin needs confirmation outside the current range
Bitcoin’s immediate trend remains neutral to mildly bearish while price trades below $65,000–$66,000. The negative MACD histogram and sub-50 RSI support that reading, but neither indicator confirms a full breakdown while $60,000 remains intact.
A bullish confirmation would require a sustained close above $66,000, preferably accompanied by stronger spot volume and renewed ETF inflows. That would return attention to $67,181 and the higher resistance area near $68,000.
A bearish confirmation would require a decisive close below $60,000. Such a move would break the current consolidation and bring the late-June low near $58,000 back into view.
Until either boundary fails, Bitcoin remains range-bound. The Bollinger Band squeeze suggests that volatility may expand soon, while the Fed decision, GDP release and core PCE data provide clear events capable of triggering that expansion.
FAQs
Why is Bitcoin falling today?
Bitcoin weakened as South Korean and Japanese technology shares sold off, U.S. semiconductor stocks declined and traders prepared for the Federal Reserve decision. Fresh ETF outflows added another negative signal, although no single factor fully explains the move.
Is $60,000 the key Bitcoin support?
Yes. Bitcoin has repeatedly traded between approximately $60,000 and $66,000 since the June selloff. The $61,000 level may offer earlier Fibonacci support, but a daily close below $60,000 would represent a clearer range breakdown.
Does the Bollinger Band squeeze predict a rally?
No. A squeeze shows that volatility has contracted. It can precede a strong price move, but it does not predict the direction. Price confirmation above resistance or below support is still required.
When are the Fed, GDP and core PCE events?
The Fed’s two-day meeting ends Wednesday, July 29. The advance second-quarter GDP estimate and June Personal Income and Outlays report are scheduled for Thursday, July 30, at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time.
It’s highly unusual for the largest derivatives exchange operator in the U.S., the CME Group, to be at war with its regulator, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) — but that’s now happening in a situation brought about by the agency’s decision to allow blockchain-based perpetual future products.
Last month, the CME sued the CFTC and its chairman, Mike Selig, challenging his decision to let the prediction markets platform Kalshi and cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase (COIN) list crypto perps, decentralized derivative contracts that allow users to speculate on the price of an asset with leverage and no expiration date.
Now, both sides await federal court action that could have significant influence on how the U.S. approaches the rapidly growing arena, with non-U.S. perps volume reportedly growing to $60 trillion in volume last year.
CME claims the agency is mislabeling the products, and therefore misapplying the law. Futures need an end date, and the products known as perps are designed for traders to be able to take a financial position on an asset’s future without any deadlines. The lawsuit argues these perps are harmful to its long-dated futures products and alleges that the CFTC’s sudden embrace of them did not consider the ramifications.
Mounting tension between the two entities ramped up around the start of Iran conflict, which saw interest spike in perpetual contracts on oil prices traded 24/7 on off-shore decentralized finance (DeFi) exchanges like Hyperliquid, as well as blockchain prediction markets hosting trades tied to the oil markets.
Those on the side of the CFTC’s reforming agenda in this highly politicized schism are voicing frustration, if not outrage.
“It is unbelievably unusual to see the largest exchange in America attacking its own regulator, where the regulator is basically saying everybody who’s registered, including the CME, can offer these types of products, and the CME says no one should be allowed to offer them,” said Jake Chervinsky, CEO of Hyperliquid Policy Center (HPC) in an interview.
HPC is a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit focused on creating compliant DeFi in the U.S, heavily focused on perps and on-chain financial infrastructure, and backed by a $28 million initiative from the Hyper Foundation.
Not long after CME filed suit, this disagreement took another turn, when the exchange made a bid to fast-track 24/7 trading for crude oil futures but was blocked by the CFTC. CME Group’s attempted 24/7 West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil contract is a traditional expiring futures product rather than a crypto-style perpetual swap. The CME had cited investors’ desire to manage their positions “whenever news breaks.”
Representatives of the CFTC declined to comment. At the time, CFTC Chair Mike Selig said on X that “CME’s decision to disregard the Commission’s effort to undertake a reasoned analysis of the critical issues at stake is wholly inappropriate.”
CME, which played a significant role in getting bitcoin futures listed and was helpful in getting crypto accepted and adopted in the U.S., has a deep influence over commodities that the exchange has successfully wielded in Washington D.C. over the years, thanks in large part to its outspoken chairman, Terry Duffy.
“The definition of a swap is pretty clear,” he said in an interview with CoinDesk. “When two parties exchange payments to each other, that is deemed a swap,” he said. “When you’re dealing in swaps contracts, that comes with obligations to maintain five-day margin and register with the CFTC as a participant in the swaps market.”
As such, the CFTC did not follow the protocol which is effectively the law of the land, Duffy claimed, adding a complaint that the CFTC may not be prepared to enforce its emerging perps policy properly, such as blocking non-U.S. traders from trading on Kalshi or other CFTC-regulated platforms. “What are you doing to police U.S. participants from not participating in something that it’s illegal for them to do?” Duffy asked.
“I’ve not seen an answer to that yet, but yet they’re holding up my 24/7 contract of self certification,” he said.
Duffy had tangled with opponents in the digital-assets space before, once debating then-FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried on the industry’s efforts to cut out intermediaries months before Bankman-Fried’s company collapsed and he was imprisoned on a conviction tied to fraud.
During the CME’s recent Q2 earnings call, Duffy addressed the growing market presence of perpetual futures, stating that institutional clients do not use perpetuals for hedging. He said that CME has “the full technical and operational capabilities to launch perpetual futures” but “have not heard demand from our customers for these products.” Duffy went on to describe competitors’ perp markets as “an incubator system that I’m not paying for.”
When it comes to the way futures contracts work on traditional commodities, the structure differs from crypto, according to Liz Davis, partner and co-chair of the financial services practice at the law firm Davis Wright Tremaine.
“These perpetual contracts that started out in the crypto space are a different type of product than, say, pork bellies or crude oil,” Davis said in an interview. “There’s an underlying tension with these new types of products being offered on traditional commodities. Here you have delivery issues, and it really isn’t traded 24/7, because you have monthly contracts that you roll from month to month.”
Davis said there’s a lot to consider in a market in which the commodities the perps are tied to can be limited to trading only five days a week and set to only change hands within certain hours, as opposed to being always on.
“You just need to think through the various issues in terms of marginal liquidity and custody over the weekend; staffing and resources; your surveillance now needs to go over to the weekends and holidays, etc.,” she said.
Duffy’s crypto perps stance is viewed by crypto natives and DeFi enthusiasts as typical of the way large incumbents handle innovation that might threaten their dominance.
“It’s really going to come down to this sort of policy fight between this massive incumbent and the regulator who is trying to allow challengers to that incumbent, allowing competition that the incumbent doesn’t want to see happen,” HPC’s Chervinsky said, adding:
“The issue with the CME isn’t whether they’re pro or anti-crypto. It’s an incumbent using regulation to hold off competition, and they’re willing to take opposite positions depending on the moment to try to beat back the competition.”
So the future of CFTC-driven perps remains on a bubble as the CME readies its case, which includes claims that the agency rubber-stamped the Kalshi application, which had been submitted a day before approval.
“The CFTC approved perps despite a history of arguing they are swaps and without issuing a regulation despite seeking public comment in April 2025,” noted Jaret Seiberg, a financial policy analyst with TD Cowen, arguing the CME may have the “upper hand” in this legal dispute. “This distinction matters as the regulatory and tax regimes for swaps and futures are different.”
Though the CFTC is meant to be a five-member commission, Chairman Selig currently occupies the leadership as its lone member, so his is the lone voice of the agency. And he wanted the regulator to clear a path for U.S. perps in the crypto space, signing off on a Kalshi product and approving customer activity at Coinbase.
“It’s interesting that this is being done with a single-person commission,” Davis said. “When you have a five-person commission, the rulemaking doesn’t go as quickly, because of the counter view. So you’re sort of getting deprived of that counter view, other than the CME bringing suit and their commentary.”
Representatives of Kalshi and Coinbase declined to comment about the perps regulatory situation.
So far, Selig’s agency is opening up this U.S. market through a policy statement — not a new rulemaking that gives interested parties a chance to comment and try to steer the outcome. It’s much the same crypto approach as its sister agency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, which has issued a wide array of new policy statements without yet pursuing formal and durable rules.
The CFTC determined that a case-by-case review process was suitable for perps. As a result, Kalshi’s debut offering emerged last month, and the company said it reached more than $1 billion in trading volume in less than a week.
OKX has returned to South Korea’s Google Play Store after a four-day suspension, while Bybit’s app remains unavailable in the country.
Summary
- OKX’s Android app has returned to South Korea’s Google Play Store after about four days, allowing new downloads and updates again.
- Bybit remains unavailable on the Korean Google Play Store after its app was blocked earlier this month.
- Digital Asset previously found that 29 overseas crypto exchange apps had been restricted on Google Play under Google’s policy for unregistered VASPs.
According to a July 28 report by Digital Asset, the OKX: Trade Bitcoin & Crypto app once again appears in search results on South Korea’s Google Play Store, allowing users to install the application or update existing versions after it disappeared from the platform on July 24.
The publication verified that the exchange’s Android app had resumed normal distribution as of 8:00 a.m. local time on July 28. The restoration comes roughly four days after South Korean users lost access to new downloads and updates through Google Play.
Bybit, however, remains in a different position. Digital Asset said the exchange’s app, which became unavailable on July 10, was still blocked from search results and installation at the time of publication.
OKX becomes the first recent exchange to regain Play Store access
Only days earlier, Digital Asset had reported that the OKX app could no longer be found on South Korea’s Google Play Store, preventing Android users from installing or updating the application. At the time, other major overseas exchanges, including Binance and Bitget, continued to appear normally in search results and remained available for download.
The latest development makes OKX the first of the recently restricted overseas exchanges to return to the platform.
The restoration also changes part of a picture outlined by Digital Asset in a separate investigation published on July 24. In that report, the outlet found that at least 29 overseas cryptocurrency derivatives exchange apps had become unavailable on the Korean version of Google Play.
According to the investigation, 17 apps could no longer be found through search, six displayed an “Unavailable” notice, and another six showed a message stating that the service was not available in the user’s region.
At the time, both OKX and Bybit were included among the affected exchanges, with OKX becoming inaccessible on July 24 and Bybit on July 10.
Google’s restrictions have extended beyond the FIU’s enforcement list
Digital Asset’s earlier review also found that the affected exchanges fell into two categories.
Fourteen of the blocked platforms had already been identified by South Korea’s Financial Intelligence Unit as unreported virtual asset service providers and referred to law enforcement. The group included exchanges such as KuCoin, MEXC, BingX, XT.COM, LBank and CoinW.
The remaining 15 exchanges, including OKX, Bybit, Gemini, WhiteBIT and BitMEX, had not been referred to law enforcement by the FIU but were still unavailable through Google Play.
Based on those findings, Digital Asset reported that Google’s enforcement appeared to extend beyond the FIU’s published enforcement list. The publication said Google had indicated the restrictions were made under the company’s own policies rather than as a direct requirement from South Korean authorities.
Even while Android app availability changed, the July 24 report noted that affected users could still access the exchanges through their websites or Apple’s App Store.
Earlier policy changes laid the groundwork for the restrictions
The latest restoration comes against the backdrop of South Korea’s continuing oversight of overseas crypto businesses operating without local registration.
According to Digital Asset, the FIU classified overseas crypto firms that had not registered under the country’s Special Financial Information Act as unreported VASPs earlier this year. Google later introduced a policy to limit downloads and updates for such exchange apps on Google Play.
Although the policy had been scheduled to take effect earlier, Digital Asset noted that enforcement was not implemented immediately after the announced timeline. Restrictions instead appeared gradually, with multiple overseas exchanges becoming unavailable during 2026.
South Korean regulators have also increased enforcement across the digital asset sector beyond app distribution. Earlier this month, Financial Services Commission Chair Lee Eog-won said authorities had investigated more than 40 suspected cases of unfair crypto trading during the first two years of the Virtual Asset User Protection Act, referring more than 30 cases to investigative agencies while expanding AI-based market surveillance.
OKX continues expanding in other regulated markets
The app’s return to South Korea comes as OKX continues to grow its regulated operations outside the country.
Earlier this month, OKX Europe launched a one-way conversion service allowing customers across 30 European Union and European Economic Area countries to deposit USDT and voluntarily convert their holdings into MiCA-compliant USDC after European exchanges tightened support for Tether’s stablecoin.
The company has also continued building its institutional business. On July 20, former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo joined OKX’s board of directors after advising the exchange since 2023 on U.S. regulatory and institutional strategy. OKX has also been expanding its presence in the United States following the relaunch of its U.S. exchange and self-custody wallet in 2025.
Apple is facing a lawsuit from three customers who say they lost a combined $1.8 million after downloading a fake Bitcoin wallet app from the App Store.
The complaint, filed Friday in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges Apple failed to adequately review and monitor apps despite promoting the App Store as a trusted marketplace, according to a copy of the filing obtained by MacRumors.
The plaintiffs, James Ramirez, Christopher Ellis and Jalen Delgado, said they entered their seed phrases into the fraudulent app, allowing scammers to transfer their Bitcoin. They reported losses of about $875,000, $840,000 and $120,000, respectively, during 2025, according to the complaint.
Sparrow Wallet is available on Windows, macOS and Linux. Its developer, Craig Raw, has previously criticized Apple over fake versions of the app appearing in the App Store. The wallet has no official iOS app.
Apple told MacRumors that it has removed apps impersonating Sparrow Wallet and terminated developer accounts linked to those apps. The company said developers and users can report apps that violate its guidelines, adding that it takes action against apps that do not comply with App Store rules.
Related: Binance disappears from Google Play in certain EU countries
Fanatics agreed on July 27 to acquire Water Street Labs and CX Clearinghouse from BGC Group, giving the sports platform a federally regulated exchange and clearinghouse for its prediction markets business.
Summary
- Fanatics agreed to buy two CFTC-registered entities, gaining direct control of exchange and clearing infrastructure.
- Water Street Labs received CFTC designated contract market status on July 16, 2026, records show.
- Fanatics Markets currently operates across 23 states and four U.S. territories, according to company disclosures.
Financial terms and a closing date were not disclosed. The deal has been announced but has not been described as completed.
Once ownership transfers, Fanatics intends to list event contracts through Water Street Labs and settle them through CX Clearinghouse rather than relying entirely on an outside exchange and clearing partner.
Fanatics prediction markets move in-house
Fanatics Markets launched in December 2025 through a partnership with Crypto.com Derivatives North America. Fanatics had also acquired Paragon Global Markets, a CFTC-registered introducing broker and National Futures Association member, in July 2025.
The new transaction would add the remaining core market infrastructure. Fanatics said owning the exchange and clearinghouse would let it directly list and clear contracts across a wider range of events. The service is currently available through mobile apps and the web in 23 states and four U.S. territories.
As previously reported, Fanatics initially explored entering prediction markets through Crypto.com before launching the service in December. The acquisition would reduce its reliance on third-party infrastructure, although existing partner arrangements may continue separately.
The acquired firms hold separate CFTC registrations
The CFTC designated Water Street Labs as a contract market on July 16, eleven days before the acquisition announcement. A designated contract market is a federally supervised exchange that operates under the Commodity Exchange Act and CFTC rules.
CX Clearinghouse has been registered as a derivatives clearing organisation since April 2010. Its current CFTC order permits it to clear fully collateralised futures, options on futures and swaps. The business was previously known as Cantor Clearinghouse.
Those registrations do not remove product-level oversight. CFTC guidance says designated contract markets must file new contracts and certify that they comply with federal law, or request formal approval where required.
BGC will remain a prediction market data partner
Fanatics and BGC also plan to create data products combining prediction market sentiment with BGC’s traditional financial-market information. The companies did not provide a product name, release schedule or pricing model.
BGC said the arrangement would pair its institutional trading and analytics experience with Fanatics’ retail audience. Fanatics said the combination could connect consumer event trading with institutional participants. These are company objectives rather than completed services.
BGC shares last traded at $11.79, up about 1.2% from the previous close. Fanatics is privately held, so there was no public share-price reaction for the buyer.
Competition and legal risks remain
The acquisition moves Fanatics closer to competitors that control or closely align with regulated exchanges. Coinbase expanded Kalshi-powered prediction markets across all 50 U.S. states, while Robinhood has pursued contracts from several exchanges to broaden its product range.
Owning a CFTC-registered exchange does not settle the dispute between federal derivatives oversight and state gambling laws. In related coverage, Kalshi and Polymarket are fighting a state-by-state legal battle involving cease-and-desist orders, lawsuits and conflicting court decisions.
Fanatics may face similar questions as it expands sports-linked contracts. Its exchange and clearinghouse would remain subject to CFTC supervision, while states could still challenge individual products under gambling and consumer-protection laws.
The next steps are completion of the acquisition, any necessary ownership and rule filings, and the first contracts listed through Water Street Labs. Fanatics and BGC must also develop the proposed market-data products. Neither company announced a launch deadline, and the release did not mention crypto or blockchain integration.
Pennsylvania lawmakers have introduced a bipartisan bill that has proposed insider-trading rules for prediction markets while preventing sportsbooks and other gambling companies from supplying liquidity or acting as market makers for those platforms.
Summary
- Pennsylvania lawmakers have introduced a bipartisan bill that would bar gambling companies from acting as liquidity providers or market makers for prediction markets.
- The proposal would also add insider trading rules, consumer protections, and age restrictions without creating a state licensing system.
- A separate Pennsylvania bill would require prediction market operators to obtain state licenses and pay a 22% tax on revenue.
- The legislation comes as sportsbooks expand into prediction market infrastructure and legal disputes over federal and state authority continue.
- Neither prediction market bill has received a committee hearing or vote in the Pennsylvania House.
The proposal, House Bill 2711, was introduced on July 22 by Democratic Rep. Tarik Khan and referred to the House Consumer Protection, Technology and Utilities Committee. Backed by 24 lawmakers, including 20 Democrats and four Republicans, the measure would regulate prediction markets through conduct standards and consumer protections instead of creating a licensing system or banning the products outright.
Pennsylvania bill targets sportsbook role in prediction markets
At the center of the proposal is a provision that would prevent a prediction market provider from operating in Pennsylvania if its liquidity provider or market maker knowingly conducts gaming activity in the ordinary course of business, regardless of whether that activity occurs inside or outside the state.
The restriction would also extend to parent companies, subsidiaries, affiliates, joint ventures, employees, and entities acting for another company’s financial benefit. In addition, prediction market operators would be barred from entering contracts or revenue-sharing arrangements with businesses that ordinarily engage in gaming.
The legislation does not define what constitutes “gaming activity” within the new prediction market chapter. It also leaves unanswered how the restriction would apply to exchanges connected to sportsbook operators, creating uncertainty over how regulators or courts could interpret the provision if the bill becomes law.
The timing is notable because several gambling companies have expanded beyond traditional sports betting into federally regulated event contracts. DraftKings recently launched its proprietary DKeX exchange after acquiring CFTC-registered Railbird Technologies, while both DraftKings and Flutter have pursued market-making operations tied to prediction markets.
If interpreted broadly, the proposal could prevent sportsbook-controlled firms from providing liquidity for prediction contracts offered to Pennsylvania residents. It could also complicate commercial arrangements in which prediction exchanges share revenue with casino operators, sportsbooks, or affiliated gambling businesses.
Unlike bills introduced in several other states that seek to prohibit prediction markets altogether, HB 2711 would regulate their conduct while separating their trading infrastructure from companies engaged in gambling.
Consumer protections accompany the liquidity restriction
Alongside the market-making provision, the legislation would establish several operating requirements for prediction platforms.
Participants would have to be at least 21 years old, while operators would be required to block self-excluded individuals, company employees, employees connected to settlement sources, and anyone possessing material nonpublic information.
Providers would also need commercially reasonable safeguards against fraud, market manipulation, and the misuse of confidential information.
The proposal would prohibit contracts tied to high school sporting events, sporting competitions involving minors, individual health conditions, and so-called “death markets,” which the bill defines as contracts related to a person’s death, assassination, attempted killing, or mass-casualty events.
Athletes, coaches, officials, political candidates, campaign workers, and others capable of influencing an outcome could face liability if they trade contracts connected to those events.
Rather than creating a licensing framework, the bill would give enforcement authority to the Pennsylvania Attorney General, who could investigate violations, seek penalties, and stop platforms operating outside the proposed rules.
Companion proposal would create licensing and taxation
The conduct-focused legislation follows a separate prediction market proposal already pending in the Pennsylvania House.
Earlier this year, Rep. Danilo Burgos introduced House Bill 2497, which would require prediction market operators to obtain licenses from the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board instead of relying solely on federal oversight.
HB 2497 would impose a $1 million initial licensing fee, require another $1 million annual renewal payment, and tax gross prediction wagering revenue at 20%, together with a 2% local share assessment.
The combined 22% rate would remain below Pennsylvania’s existing tax rates on licensed gambling businesses, which pay 36% on sports wagering revenue and 54% on online slot revenue.
Burgos has argued that platforms offering event contracts as financial derivatives bypass consumer protections and regulatory requirements already imposed on casinos and sportsbooks.
Although the two bills take different approaches, they have advanced along parallel tracks rather than replacing one another. Burgos circulated his licensing proposal in March, while Khan introduced the conduct-focused legislation in April. Khan is a co-sponsor of both measures, allowing the proposals to complement each other if lawmakers choose to move forward with both.
The approach resembles other recent Pennsylvania legislative efforts involving emerging technologies. In June, Gov. Josh Shapiro introduced the state’s GRID Standards for large data centers, pairing economic incentives with compliance requirements, while previous crypto-related proposals have similarly relied on targeted regulatory measures instead of outright prohibitions.
Neither HB 2711 nor HB 2497 has received a committee hearing or vote.
Federal dispute over prediction markets continues
The latest proposal also arrives while prediction markets remain at the center of a growing conflict between state regulators and federal authorities.
The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board told the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission in May that sports event contracts amount to illegal gambling under state law and argued that federally regulated exchanges function as unlicensed sportsbooks that remain accessible to people younger than 21.
Pennsylvania also joined a coalition of 40 states urging the CFTC to leave sports event contracts under state gambling oversight.
Federal courts, however, have reached a different conclusion in an important case.
In April, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled 2-1 in KalshiEX LLC v. Flaherty that the Commodity Exchange Act preempts state gambling laws when applied to sports event contracts listed on CFTC-registered exchanges. The ruling upheld an injunction preventing New Jersey from enforcing its gambling laws against Kalshi and now serves as binding precedent for federal courts in Pennsylvania.
Judge Jane Roth, writing in dissent, argued that Kalshi’s contracts were “virtually indistinguishable” from products offered by DraftKings and FanDuel, highlighting the overlap between prediction markets and sportsbooks that Pennsylvania’s latest proposal seeks to address through its liquidity restrictions.
The state proposal also follows fresh legal battles elsewhere. As crypto.news previously reported, the CFTC recently asked a federal court to expedite its ruling against Minnesota before that state’s prediction market ban takes effect on Aug. 1, arguing that federally regulated exchanges fall under the Commodity Exchange Act rather than state gambling laws.
At the same time, the agency has tightened oversight of event-contract listings by requiring exchanges to provide contract-specific disclosures instead of relying on broad self-certification filings.
Citadel Securities expects the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates on Wednesday. The firm’s case centers on a quarter-point increase, against a market consensus favoring a hold.
Frank Flight, the firm’s head of macro strategy, laid out the case in a client note. He argued that traders have not fully priced the hawkish turn at the central bank.
Why a July Rate Hike Would Matter More Than September
Flight said acting this week would carry more weight than waiting. He said the development may shift market expectations around the Fed’s approach to tackling inflation.
An earlier hike would also shape how businesses set prices and how workers frame wage demands. That sequencing matters because it could reduce the total tightening needed later. It would also reinforce Warsh’s pledge to restore price stability.
“The market may once again be underestimating the extent of the hawkish shift at the Fed,” Flight noted.
Despite softer payroll and inflation data reducing expectations of a July rate cut, Flight argued the broader picture still points to persistent inflation risks and a stable labour market.
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How Traders Are Pricing Wednesday’s Fed Decision
Meanwhile, traders still favor a hold, though hike odds have climbed sharply. The size of that shift varies by venue.
CME FedWatch put the odds of a 25 basis point increase at 37.9% on Tuesday. That figure stood at 25.7% the previous week.
Prediction markets remain more cautious. Kalshi priced the same outcome at 28%, while Polymarket priced it at 27.5%.
Both venues repriced sharply in the past day. Kalshi’s hike contract gained 8 points and has drawn more than $45 million in volume, while Polymarket’s July decision market has traded over $107 million.
Economists lean the same way. Reuters polled 104 forecasters between July 17 and July 21. None expects a move at this meeting.
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The post Citadel Sees Surprise Fed Rate Hike as Odds Hit 37.9% appeared first on BeInCrypto.
Crypto World
WTI Analysis: Gap Breaks Short-Term Trend as Price Remains Trapped Between the POC and Profile Boundary
WTI crude oil plunged by more than 7% on 27 July 2026 after the US suspended a series of strikes against Iran over the weekend, raising hopes of a diplomatic solution and the reopening of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, according to CNBC. Brent crude also fell below $90 per barrel. Meanwhile, Bloomberg reported that Yemen’s Houthi movement had claimed attacks on Saudi Aramco facilities in Jizan and Yanbu, suggesting that the conflict remains far from resolved.
WTI Technical Analysis
Since the beginning of July, XTIUSD had been developing a short-term uptrend. A rebound from the $68 area on 2 July evolved into a sustained rally, supported by an ascending trendline. This trendline held until the market peaked near $94.2, but it was broken on 27 July following a sharp gap lower. Since then, the price has been attempting to move through two key levels within the current market profile: the POC at $84.7 and the lower profile boundary at $82.7. If this area fails to hold and the decline continues, the green support level at $80.5 could become increasingly important. Notably, the gap occurred on relatively modest trading volume considering the scale of the price move.
Above current levels lies the upper boundary of the market profile at $90.3, which could become the next upside target if the market reverses. Beyond that, traders will be watching the red resistance level at $94.2. The RSI + MAs indicator currently reads 36, 55 and 60, suggesting that the market remains unbalanced and is still searching for equilibrium.
Summary
The relatively low trading volume accompanying the gap suggests that the sell-off may have been driven largely by emotion, leaving room for buyers to return if the geopolitical risk premium begins to rebuild. For now, oil prices remain confined to a narrow range between the POC and the lower boundary of the market profile, where momentum for the next significant move may be building.
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This article represents the opinion of the Companies operating under the FXOpen brand only. It is not to be construed as an offer, solicitation, or recommendation with respect to products and services provided by the Companies operating under the FXOpen brand, nor is it to be considered financial advice.
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