The Weekly Wrap: Fed Leaves Rates Unchanged, Choppy Week for Crypto & Onchain News

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This Week’s Top Stories

“Federal Reserve Leaves Rates Unchanged.” – Wednesday, 29 April 2026 

• On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve announced its interest rate decision, leaving the upper bound at 3.75 percent, in line with expectations. The decision was unusually divided, as there were four dissents on the Fed’s pause. The last time this happened was back in 1992.
• The meeting was likely the last with Chair Jerome Powell at the helm. He is due to step down from the top job in mid-May, although his term as a Fed governor does not expire until January 2028, and he mentioned during the news conference that he plans to stay on the Board of Governors for an indefinite period.
• Markets had been widely expecting the hold and, in fact, are pricing in no changes for the rest of this year and well into 2027. Fed officials at the March meeting indicated they foresee one cut this year, then another in 2027, putting the funds rate down to its expected “neutral” level around 3.1 percent.
• The Fed’s decision marked the third consecutive meeting at which the committee chose to keep rates unchanged, following three consecutive cuts last year.
• Earlier in the day, the Senate Banking Committee, in a party-line vote, advanced Trump’s nomination of Kevin Warsh as the next Fed chair. The full Senate is widely expected to follow suit, setting up the Fed’s first leadership change since Powell took over in 2018.

A choppy week for crypto & new all-time highs for US stocks 

The crypto market traded sideways this week and appears to be consolidating below key resistance levels, with Bitcoin trading around $77K, Ethereum just below $2.3K, and Solana around $83 at the time of writing. These prices are slightly down from last Friday, and the week was accompanied by a couple of up-and-down moves, while the short-term structure for most major crypto assets appears to look like a downward trend, with a couple of lower highs on Monday and Wednesday this week. 

Both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq, on the other hand, continued their upward trend and reached new all-time highs this week, with the S&P 500 trading above 7’250 for the first time in history. 

Oil is trading significantly higher than last week, while gold and silver both lost some ground. In the FX market, the Bank of Japan appears to have intervened to prop up the yen against the US dollar yesterday, which would be its first official currency action in nearly two years. The dollar initially fell to 155.5 yen after the move, its lowest level since March 2. It was last down 2.5% at 156.355 yen, on track for its largest single-day drop since December 2022.

IBIT, the chart Institutions see 

Bitcoin spot ETFs launched at the beginning of 2024, and it is worthwhile looking at the IBIT chart every once in a while, since many of the investors in the largest Bitcoin spot ETF are likely watching the specific chart of BlackRock’s IBIT. Bitcoin is currently trading above the 2024 highs. As the IBIT chart below shows, IBIT reclaimed the 40-41 level over the past few weeks and is currently managing to hold above it. In April last year, IBIT closed the weekly candle just below 44 and is currently fighting this level. A break above it would likely be interpreted as a bullish signal for the market.

PUMP Burn, Crypto Hacks in April & Polymarket Chain Migration? 

Pump.Fun announced that it burned 39 percent of the circulating supply, worth $370 million, this week. It also communicated a new programmatic buyback-and-burn program using 50 percent of revenue for the next year. Up until now, it has used almost 100 percent of revenue for buybacks, which has now been cut in half. The market initially reacted positively because of the news of the burn but then quickly realized that the amount of revenue allocated to the buyback-and-burn mechanism had been cut in half, which led to a sharp sell-off. At the time of writing, PUMP is trading at roughly the same price as before the announcement. 

Last week, the VP of Engineering at Polymarket teased plans for a potential chain migration, as the traction Polymarket has seen has massively outpaced its infrastructure, and they have not done nearly enough to scale to keep up. He did not mention which chain it is moving to. Beyond the migration, there are a number of other changes coming up. On-chain data latency is being overhauled to make it near-instant, and cancelled transactions have a fix incoming. 

DeFi hacks made headlines recently, and looking at April’s total value hacked reveals that the month was accompanied by one of the largest crypto hacks in history. In terms of hacking incidents, April saw the most incidents on record, while the total amount of crypto stolen by hackers was $635 million. The Bybit hack last spring, with almost $1.5 billion stolen, and the $3.5 billion LuBian heist were the only significantly larger exploits in history.

$1.2 billion in net inflows last week 

Last week, digital asset investment products saw $1.2 billion in net inflows, with Bitcoin leading with $933 million, while Ethereum recorded almost $200 million. Regionally, the US dominated with US$1.1 billion in inflows. Germany saw US$61.7 million, more than double the prior week, while Switzerland reversed last week’s US$138 million in outflows with US$35.2 million in inflows. 

When looking at this week, Bitcoin spot ETFs started with three days of net outflows, with yesterday being the only day with small net inflows. Ethereum is on its fourth day of net outflows this week, and it looks like the weekly streak of net inflows is coming to an end this week. 

While the Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs are still the clear leaders in terms of absolute flows, when we look at the assets under management of the ETFs as a percentage of the market cap of the assets, we see that other altcoins, such as SUI and SOL, are very close to the two leaders, BTC and ETH, and that some of the altcoins have seen significant increases over the past few months, while Bitcoin and Ethereum have stagnated or even decreased slightly at times.

Crypto back in Fear, while Stocks are Greedy 

The sentiment for US equities continues to stay in greedy territory at 67, while crypto market sentiment is back in fearful territory at 26. AAII members are still feeling bullish, but not as much as last week, as the number of bullish members has dropped from 46 percent to 38 percent since last week.

• Kalshi said it has completed its first ever bespoke block trade, with Jump Trading providing liquidity for the prediction market exchange. – Link

• MegaETH launched their $MEGA token this week. – Link 

• Hyperliquid is now live in Trust Wallet with 0 percent markup on fees for 3 Months. – Link 

• Colombia’s largest pension fund manager Porvenir has launched a crypto portfolio that offers indirect Bitcoin exposure via IBIT. – Link

US Equities at ATHs, Crypto at Inflection Point? 

US equities are trading at all-time highs, and Bitcoin is consolidating below an important resistance level around $79-80K. It appears that as long as BTC holds above $76K, traders will continue to expect higher prices over the coming days and weeks, while losing this level, March’s monthly high, would likely change the mood of many investors, forcing them to switch their mid-term bias. 

With the situation in Iran still unresolved and oil prices increasing sharply again this week, uncertainty persists, as the FOMC meeting this week also revealed. Meanwhile, the earnings of major US companies within the Magnificent Seven surprised many positively, and stock prices of Google, for example, exploded to the upside, reaching new all-time highs, up more than 10 percent since last Friday. 

Signals continue to be mixed, but as long as stock prices continue to increase, the crypto market should follow suit. 

Below, you can find some of the key data releases and events to watch out for next week. 

Tuesday, 5 May 2026 

Switzerland – CPI   

U.S. – ISM non-Manufacturing PMI  

U.S. – JOLTS Job Openings 

Tuesday – Thursday, 5-7 May 2026 

Consensus Miami 2026 

Wednesday, 6 May 2026 

Eurozone – PPI (Economy) 

Thursday, 7 May 2026 

Switzerland – Unemployment Rate 

U.S. – Initial Jobless Claims 

Japan – BoJ Monetary Policy Meeting Minutes  

Friday, 8 May 2026 

U.S. – Unemployment Rate 

U.S. – Non-Farm Payrolls