Bitcoin's price briefly flipped positive for the year on Tuesday, lifting the broader crypto market ahead of a closely watched Federal Reserve meeting. The move helped push ether back above $3,300 for the first time in nearly a month, while a wave of short liquidations added fuel to the rally.
Total levered short liquidations exceeded $260 million over the past four hours, according to CoinGlass data, marking one of the largest bursts of forced buying in recent weeks. At publication time, bitcoin traded around $94,00 while ether sat around $3,380.
The surge comes one day ahead of the U.S. Federal Open Market Committee's December meeting, where another interest rate cut is largely expected by market participants. Analysts at both Nansen and BRN said rate cuts are priced in, according to earlier reporting by The Block, making Fed Chairman Jerome Powell's forward guidance more important than a cut itself.
If Powell delivers a hawkish speech, the likelihood of a Santa rally for Bitcoin diminishes, according to investment analyst Nic Puckrin. However, he said this in and of itself isn't proof that the bear market has arrived.
"With ultra-dovish Kevin Hassett looking like the frontrunner to replace Powell next year, markets could very quickly switch from depression to euphoria in 2026," said Puckrin, who is also co-founder of The Coin Bureau. "For digital assets, there’s also the promise of additional regulatory clarity with the Market Structure bill and growing adoption by institutions. So Bitcoin’s new all-time high likely hasn’t been cancelled – just postponed."
Among the 10 largest cryptocurrencies by market cap, XRP was up about 4.5% while Solana and Dogecoin each rallied more than 8%, The Block's price data shows.
Regulatory tailwinds
Regulatory developments may have had a hand in Tuesday’s bullish session.
The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency issued Interpretive Letter No. 1188, which confirmed that permissible national banks may engage in "riskless principal" transactions in crypto-asset transactions.
"Such transactions involve a bank acting in its own name to execute offsetting crypto trades between two customers without holding any crypto assets in inventory, serving solely as an intermediary," OCC said. Back in July, the OCC, Federal Reserve Board, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) issued a joint statement setting out how existing rules apply to banks holding crypto on customers' behalf.
Earlier, Standard Chartered analysts cut their year-end bitcoin price target to $100,000 but remain bullish in the long term, saying this is "not a crypto winter, just a cold breeze."
And on Capitol Hill, senators signaled fresh momentum behind a long-running market-structure bill, with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand saying “nothing is holding up this bill” as negotiators push to finalize a draft this week.
