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The Fed’s Next Move Hangs on Four Numbers This Week. What Crypto Traders Must Watch

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Four U.S. economic releases between Wednesday and Friday will test whether Bitcoin (BTC) can hold above $67,000 or breaks lower into a deeper correction.

The sequence begins with the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) minutes on Wednesday, followed by February Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) inflation and Q4 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) data on Thursday, and ends with March Consumer Price Index (CPI) on Friday.

Why This Week’s Data Matters for Bitcoin

BTC entered April trading around $69,000, down roughly 23% year-to-date after the worst opening quarter for digital assets since 2018.

Bitcoin Price Performance
Bitcoin Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto

The Crypto Fear and Greed Index has hovered between 8 and 14 for over a month, registering deep extreme fear territory.

The Federal Reserve held rates steady at 3.50-3.75% at its March 18 meeting, while the updated dot plot projected just one cut before year-end 2026. PCE inflation expectations for 2026 were revised upward to 2.7%.

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Meanwhile, the Middle East conflict and closure of the Strait of Hormuz have sent oil prices surging roughly 50% since late February.

The Energy Information Administration revised its 2026 WTI forecast upward by $20 per barrel. That energy shock now feeds directly into this week’s inflation prints.

How Each Release Could Affect BTC

Bitcoin’s 24-hour correlation with the S&P 500 recently hit 0.94, confirming its behavior as a high-beta macro asset. That linkage means every inflation surprise or policy signal this week flows directly into crypto pricing.

FOMC Minutes, Wednesday 2 PM ET

The minutes from the March 17-18 meeting will reveal how officials debated tariff inflation, oil prices, and a weakening labor market.

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Traders will scan for hawkish language around persistent inflation versus dovish acknowledgment of growth risks.

Historically, BTC has shown a consistent sell-the-news pattern around FOMC events. The pioneer crypto dropped after eight of nine FOMC events in 2025, with post-event declines of 5-10% common as positioning unwound.

Bitcoin FOMC Sell The News
Bitcoin FOMC Sell The News. Source: BeInCrypto

After the January 2026 minutes were released in February, BTC underperformed, while the dollar and bonds rallied.

A hawkish tilt this time would reinforce delayed cuts, pushing real yields higher and strengthening the USD.

A dovish surprise acknowledging transitory shocks could briefly lift BTC, with the pioneer crypto potentially going above $70,000.

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February PCE Inflation, Thursday 8:30 AM ET

The Fed’s preferred inflation gauge carries consensus forecasts of 0.4% month-over-month and 3.0% year-over-year for core PCE.

US Economic Releases This Week
US Economic Releases This Week. Source: MarketWatch

Returning to a 3-handle on core PCE is both symbolically and practically significant for rate expectations.

A hotter print above 3.0-3.1% year-over-year would reinforce the higher-for-longer narrative, tightening financial conditions further.

A cooler reading below consensus would boost rate-cut odds and could push BTC 2-5% higher, similar to the February 2026 soft print that lifted BTC roughly 2.75%.

Q4 2025 GDP Final Estimate, Thursday 8:30 AM ET

The third estimate carries a consensus of 0.7% annualized, already sharply revised down from the advance reading of 1.4% and Q3’s strong 4.4%.

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Further weakness would signal an economy losing momentum, which paradoxically supports crypto by raising expectations for Fed easing.

GDP surprises typically drive smaller BTC reactions than inflation data, in the range of 1-3%. However, they amplify when they shift policy expectations alongside other releases on the same day.

March CPI, Friday 8:30 AM ET

This is the week’s most anticipated print. Consensus forecasts a headline jump to 3.3% year-over-year and 1.0% month-over-month, up sharply from February’s 2.4%.

That would represent the largest single-month acceleration since the 2022 energy crisis, driven almost entirely by gasoline and energy prices.

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Core CPI consensus sits at 0.3% monthly and 2.7% annually. The market reaction hinges on that core figure. If core holds at or below 0.3%, traders will likely treat the headline spike as a transitory energy event.

If core prints 0.4% or higher, the transitory narrative collapses, and rate cuts could get repriced out of 2026 entirely.

Hot CPI prints have consistently pressured BTC short-term through higher rate expectations. Misses spark relief rallies. With expectations already elevated, any deviation in either direction becomes highly market-moving.

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What Comes Next

The sequencing matters. Wednesday’s FOMC tone sets up Thursday’s PCE and GDP reaction, which then frames Friday’s CPI interpretation.

A dovish week with soft PCE, weak GDP, and contained core CPI would favor upside for crypto amid renewed liquidity hopes. A hawkish sweep with hot inflation prints risks a leg down toward the $65,000 support that BTC tested earlier in 2026.

Spot Bitcoin ETF flows offer one stabilizing factor. ETFs absorbed approximately 50,000 BTC in March, the highest monthly pace since October 2025.

That institutional bid provides a floor, but overall 30-day apparent demand remains deeply negative as large holders distribute aggressively.

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CME shifts and the DXY-BTC correlation will serve as real-time gauges of how each data point reprices rate expectations.

Fed Interest Rate Cut Probabilities
Fed Interest Rate Cut Probabilities. Source: CME FedWatch Tool

With BTC trapped between institutional accumulation and macro headwinds, this week’s four numbers will likely determine whether April lives up to its historically bullish seasonality or extends Q1’s pain.

The post The Fed’s Next Move Hangs on Four Numbers This Week. What Crypto Traders Must Watch appeared first on BeInCrypto.

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Every 5 Minutes: Korea’s New Rule for Crypto Exchanges

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South Korea’s financial regulator has ordered all crypto exchanges to verify user asset balances every five minutes, following a massive overpayment incident that shook market confidence earlier this year.

One botched reward payout exposed systemic cracks across the entire industry.

What Triggered the Rules

In February, Bithumb accidentally sent 2,000 BTC per person instead of 2,000 Korean won ($1.40) during a promotional event. The error amounted to roughly $42 billion in misallocated crypto. The Financial Services Commission (FSC) launched emergency inspections across all five major Korean exchanges immediately after. What they found went far beyond a single human mistake.

Most exchanges were only reconciling their books once every 24 hours. Three had no automatic kill switch to halt trading when discrepancies appeared. Four lacked multi-step approval systems for high-risk manual transactions. Two exchanges hadn’t even separated their general accounts from high-risk transaction accounts — a basic safeguard.

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What Exchanges Must Now Do

The FSC announced a three-pillar reform package on April 6. Exchanges must run automated balance checks every five minutes, with alerts and automatic trading halts triggered by major mismatches. Monthly external audits replace the previous quarterly schedule, and public disclosures must now include asset-by-asset blockchain holdings rather than a simple coverage ratio.

For manual, high-risk transactions such as event payouts, exchanges must use separate accounts, deploy validity-check systems that automatically reject mismatched inputs, and require cross-verification by a third party before execution.

The FSC will also require exchanges to appoint dedicated risk management officers and establish risk management committees — standards already expected of traditional financial firms. Compliance checks move from annual to twice-yearly, with results reported to regulators.

DAXA, the industry body, will complete self-regulatory amendments this month, with systems built out by May. Key provisions will feed into Korea’s forthcoming second-phase Digital Asset Act.

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The post Every 5 Minutes: Korea’s New Rule for Crypto Exchanges appeared first on BeInCrypto.

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Chaos Labs Leaves Aave Due to Budget, Risk Disagreements

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Chaos Labs Leaves Aave Due to Budget, Risk Disagreements

Chaos Labs has parted ways with the Aave ecosystem after serving as the crypto lending protocol’s main risk service provider for three years, citing a budget dispute and disagreements over how Aave should manage risk.

“This decision was not made in haste,” Chaos Labs founder Omer Goldberg said in a post to X on Monday. “We worked in good faith with DAO contributors. Aave Labs was professional and supported increasing our budget to $5m to retain us. However, we are leaving because the engagement no longer reflects how we believe risk should be managed.”

Source: Omer Goldberg

Aave Labs CEO Stani Kulechov said that Chaos didn’t depart on bad terms, but claimed that Chaos pitched a proposal seeking to become the sole risk provider and thus force out other partners — a compromise Aave wasn’t willing to accept.

Chaos played a key role in Aave’s back-end infrastructure, from pricing loans and managing risk in the Aave V2 and V3 markets since November 2022, during which Aave’s total value locked rose fivefold to $26 billion.

Risk has been a major talking point in the Aave community after a user lost $50 million in a trade while interacting with Aave’s interface on March 12. The following week, Aave said it would introduce an “Aave Shield” protection feature to deter users from high-risk trades.

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As for Chaos’ departure, Goldberg said there became an increasing misalignment over how the parties thought risk should be managed. He noted that some Aave contributors had left, raising its workload, while also arguing that Aave V4’s expanded functionality introduced additional operational and legal risks that fell on Chaos’ shoulders.

“While Aave Labs is optimistic about a swift migration to V4, history suggests these transitions take months and even years,” Goldberg said. “Until V4 fully absorbs V3’s markets and liquidity, both systems need to be operated and managed simultaneously. The workload during the transition doesn’t halve. It doubles.”

Weighing the risk of a protocol failure, Goldberg said, “There is no regulatory framework, no safe harbor, and no settled law that answers the question of what a risk manager or curator owes when a protocol fails. If things work, the work is invisible. If things break, the blame is not.”

As such, “We are walking away from a $5 million engagement,” Goldberg said.

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Chaos wanted Aave to boot LlamaRisk, Chainlink: Kulechov

Aave Labs CEO Stani Kulechov told a slightly different story, stating that Chaos wanted to be the sole risk manager and use its price oracles instead of Chainlink’s.

Following that request would have forced Aave to push out its other risk protocol partner, LlamaRisk, and thus abandon its two-layer economic risk model.

Related: DeFi lender Aave launches on OKX’s Ethereum L2, X Layer

Kulechov added Aave was unwilling to integrate Chaos-built price oracles, citing Aave’s “track record” with Chainlink’s services, which its “users are currently more comfortable with at scale.”

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He also said Chaos was already “exploring winding down its risk consultancy services,” and that Aave had offered to double its payment to $5 million to retain them.

Cointelegraph reached out to Chaos Labs for comment.

Kulechov noted that Chaos’ departure hasn’t disrupted the Aave protocol, its smart contracts, token listings or network integrations.

Moving forward, Aave said it “will work closely with LlamaRisk to ensure a smooth transition” and maintain its two-layer economic risk model. 

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Source: LlamaRisk

Chaos’ departure comes amid a protocol-wide feud over how much funding and revenue control Aave Labs should receive versus Aave’s decentralized autonomous organization.

Despite the internal issues, Aave crossed the $1 trillion mark in cumulative lending volume in late February, marking a first in the DeFi industry.

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