Federal Reserve opened its easing cycle as Bitcoin whipsawed near $60,000

The Federal Open Market Committee cut its target range for the federal funds rate by 0.50 percentage point to 4.75%–5.00% on September 18, 2024, opening a U.S. easing cycle that immediately became the dominant macro event for digital-asset markets. Bitcoin briefly moved to about $61,000 after the 2:00 p.m. EDT announcement before slipping back below $60,000, according to CoinDesk’s contemporaneous market report.

The policy decision was verifiable and unusually consequential. The prior 5.25%–5.50% range had been in place since July 2023, and the September move was the first reduction since 2020. For crypto, the significance was not that a rate cut mechanically set a token price. It was that the world’s largest dollar funding market had changed direction after an extended tightening campaign, altering the discount-rate and liquidity backdrop against which investors priced bitcoin and other risk assets.

What the Fed actually decided

The Federal Reserve’s statement said policymakers had gained greater confidence that inflation was moving sustainably toward the 2% objective and judged the risks to employment and inflation to be roughly balanced. The FOMC also said it would continue reducing its holdings of Treasury securities, agency debt and agency mortgage-backed securities. The action therefore combined a lower policy-rate range with continued balance-sheet runoff; it was not a blanket return to emergency-era monetary accommodation.

The vote was 11–1. Governor Michelle Bowman dissented in favor of a 0.25 percentage-point reduction. That split mattered because it showed the size of the opening cut was not automatic even inside the committee.

The accompanying Summary of Economic Projections put the median participant estimate for the federal funds rate at 4.4% at the end of 2024, compared with 5.1% in the June projection. These were individual conditional projections, not a binding schedule. The same document explicitly warned that the economic outlook and the appropriate policy path were uncertain.

Bitcoin’s first reaction was volatile, not decisive

CoinDesk’s market report, first published at 2:10 p.m. EDT on September 18 and updated at 3:29 a.m. EDT on September 19, said bitcoin rose 1.2% in the minutes after the decision to roughly $61,000, then fell below $60,000 and was approximately flat over the preceding 24 hours. Those figures describe CoinDesk’s observed BTC price and rolling window, not a universal consolidated close. Crypto trades continuously across venues, so another exchange, currency pair or timestamp can produce a different high, low or percentage change.

The reversal cautioned against assigning a simple bullish or bearish meaning to the cut. A lower policy rate can support risk-taking by reducing the return hurdle on cash and short-duration instruments. A larger-than-expected cut can also be read as evidence that policymakers see rising economic risks. On September 18, both interpretations were plausible, and the intraday move alone could not establish causation.

What was knowable on September 18

The defensible event-day conclusion was narrow: U.S. monetary policy pivoted toward easing, and bitcoin reacted sharply around the announcement without sustaining a clear immediate direction. Two days later, Coinbase Institutional characterized the move as a relative surprise to economists but narrowly aligned with futures-market pricing, and argued that the broader reaction reflected communication about the policy path. That September 20 assessment is later context, not evidence that traders on September 18 shared one explanation.

The next questions were whether subsequent inflation and labor data would validate the Fed’s confidence, whether projected cuts would occur, and whether crypto prices would respond to realized liquidity conditions rather than the announcement alone.