Bitcoin News Today: Fed's Rate Cut Sparks Caution as Bitcoin Balances on Precipice

The crypto market navigated a pivotal week following the Federal Reserve's 25-basis-point rate cut, with Bitcoin (BTC) stabilizing just above $108,000 despite heavy liquidations totaling $550 million in the 24 hours preceding the announcement, according to a Yahoo Finance report. The Fed's decision to lower the federal funds target range to 3.75%-4.00% aimed to ease financial conditions, yet traders remained cautious, with many adopting defensive positions ahead of the policy statement. Derivatives trader Killa (@KillaXBT) noted Bitcoin's range-bound nature, warning that a break above the CME gap could reignite momentum, while a drop below $108,000 risks accelerating losses.

Meanwhile, Zcash (ZEC) made headlines by surpassing Shiba Inu (SHIB) and Monero (XMR) in market capitalization, reaching $6.22 billion after a 14.8% surge in 24 hours, according to a U.Today report. This milestone, driven by renewed interest in privacy-focused assets and endorsements from figures like Helius CEO Mert Mumtaz, positioned ZEC at 21st globally, just $1 billion shy of Litecoin. Upcoming integration with Solana via light-client technology—facilitated by the SIMD-0388 upgrade—promises enhanced cross-chain privacy features, with Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko publicly applauding the development.

Ethereum's ecosystem also saw significant advancements as co-founder Vitalik Buterin highlighted the ZKSync Atlas upgrade in a Coinotag article, targeting 15,000 transactions per second (TPS), 1-second finality, and near-zero fees. The upgrade, described as unlocking broader programmability for layer-2 networks, could reshape capital efficiency and composability across the Ethereum network. Industry observers emphasized that successful deployment hinges on security audits and mainnet milestones.

In the presale crypto arena, BlockDAG (BDAG) emerged as a standout project, having raised $434 million in its presale and achieving 1,400 TPS on its Awakening Testnet, according to TheCoinrise. With a projected 3,233% return on investment ahead of its $0.05 launch price, BDAG's hybrid architecture—combining Bitcoin's Proof-of-Work with DAG's parallel processing—positions it as a benchmark for scalability. Competitors like LivLive ($LIVE) and Bitcoin Hyper ($HYPER) also gained traction, though BDAG's verifiable performance metrics and partnerships, including the BWT Alpine F1 Team, solidified its leadership in the 2025 presale landscape.

Price predictions for Bitcoin remained bullish despite its recent pullback to $111,000–$115,000. MicroStrategy's Michael Saylor and Robert Kiyosaki both forecasted the asset could reach $150,000–$200,000 by year-end, according to a Yahoo Finance article. Saylor cited MicroStrategy's continued Bitcoin accumulation, while Kiyosaki emphasized emotional resilience in investing, framing short-term volatility as a precursor to long-term gains.

As the market digested these developments, French lawmaker Éric Ciotti proposed a national Bitcoin Strategic Reserve, aiming to acquire 2% of the total supply over seven to eight years, noted in a TradingView report. The initiative, coupled with $931 million in inflows for Bitcoin investment products and a 98.3% probability of a Fed rate cut, underscored growing institutional confidence in crypto's macroeconomic role.