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Points of Focus
- Ethereum regained $2,400 the same day the Fed hiked rates by 25 bp.
- The hike was the Fed’s first since July 2023, ending part of last year’s cuts.
- Six moving averages still show downward signals, unchanged from two days ago.
Ethereum (ETH) is trading at $2,405.64, up 0.32% intraday at the time of writing, and has regained the $2.4K level lost two days ago.
The move comes the same day the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points to a range of 3.75%-4.00%, the first hike since July 2023 and a reversal of part of last year’s easing cycle.
The Fed made a very clear statement today.
Not only did they hike interest rates, but it was a 12-0 unanimous decision.
This marks the first unanimous Fed decision since May 2025, amid calls from President Trump to cut rates.
And, the Fed concluded their policy statement by…
— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) September 16, 2026
Fed hikes rates for the first time in three years
The Federal Open Market Committee’s decision, under Chair Kevin Warsh, was unanimous, undoing one of the three rate cuts the Fed delivered last year. The hike followed a hawkish Jackson Hole speech from Warsh in August and persistently elevated inflation, with core CPI at 2.4% annually and core PCE at 3.3%, driven partly by energy costs tied to the ongoing Iran conflict.
The move had been building for months. At the Fed’s July meeting, the committee held rates steady in a 9-3 vote, with three members already dissenting in favor of a quarter-point hike. September’s unanimous decision closes that gap.
Markets had largely priced this in beforehand: CME FedWatch data showed a 91-93% probability of a 25-basis-point move heading into the decision, which explains why ETH’s reaction has been muted rather than sharply negative despite a hawkish outcome that would typically pressure risk assets.
Bank of America economist Stephen Juneau told Yahoo Finance he expects additional 25-basis-point hikes in October and December, calling it the start of the Fed ‘basically going to undo what they did last year.’
Why the hawkish surprise did not hit Ethereum harder
The Fed’s dot plot, released alongside the decision, shows the median official expects one more rate hike this year, a detail that matters more for forward positioning than today’s already-anticipated move. Warsh’s press conference, scheduled for 2:30 p.m. ET, is the next event markets are watching for guidance on the pace of further tightening, since Warsh has so far been deliberate about withholding explicit forward guidance.
A hike that arrives exactly as priced in removes uncertainty rather than adding it, which is a distinct market event from a surprise move of the same size. Ethereum’s modest gain today reads as consistent with that dynamic rather than as a market dismissing the hike’s significance.
The broader rate backdrop still matters for how Ethereum competes for capital. The 10-year Treasury yield touched roughly 5% in the days before this decision, its highest level since 2007, giving yield-seeking investors a risk-free alternative that competes with Ethereum staking returns.
A higher-for-longer rate environment, as BofA’s Juneau suggested with two more hikes penciled in for this year, keeps that competition in place regardless of how markets absorbed today’s specific announcement.
Ethereum’s technical structure is largely unchanged
The moving average (MA) stack looks close to where it stood yesterday: the 10-day and 20-day simple and exponential averages, the 30-day simple average, and the 9-day Hull average all still show downward signals, six in total, while the 30-day, 50-day, 100-day, and 200-day exponential averages remain on upward signals.
The relative strength index (RSI) has ticked back above the 50 midline to 52.45, a modest improvement from 49.90 two days ago, though not yet a decisive reversal.
Momentum (10) remains negative at -89.83. However, it has improved from -122.30, and the moving average convergence divergence (MACD) level sits at 58.62, still a downward signal but higher than the 56.03 recorded yesterday. None of these shifts amount to a broken downtrend; they read more as stabilization after the sharper deterioration that followed the CLARITY Act’s failure and ETH ETFs’ record outflow day.
What to watch after today’s rate decision
The classic pivot table puts resistance at $2,748.31, about 14.2% above spot, and support at the pivot point, $2,284.54, about 5.0% below spot, both unchanged this week.
Bull Bear Power continues to show an upward signal despite a deeply negative value (- 119.76), the same tag-versus-value gap flagged before: the action reflects trend and zero-line position, not the raw number.
With the rate decision now resolved, Warsh’s afternoon press conference and any change in the dot plot’s pace of future hikes are the more consequential signals left for markets to digest today.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Cryptocurrency prices are highly volatile. Always conduct your own research before making investment decisions.
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