## Federal Reserve Decision: What Crypto Traders Need to Know

The **Federal Reserve** is almost certain to cut interest rates on Wednesday, with traders predicting a **97.8% chance of a 25-basis point cut**. However, the real game-changer for **Bitcoin** and crypto markets might be the potential end of **quantitative tightening (QT)**.

### Understanding Quantitative Tightening and Its Impact

**Quantitative tightening** occurs when the Fed reduces the money supply by letting its bond holdings shrink—effectively pulling cash out of circulation to cool the economy and fight inflation. This is the opposite of **quantitative easing (QE)**, where the Fed pumps money into the system by buying bonds.

Dr. Andre Dragosh, head of research in Europe for Bitwise, told Decrypt that ending QT could create a **"tailwind" for Bitcoin** by signaling a higher tolerance for inflation. **Bank of America** and **JP Morgan** have already indicated they expect the Fed to end QT soon, with Fed Chair Powell's recent statements supporting this likelihood.

### Current Market Conditions

At the time of writing, **Bitcoin** was trading flat around **$114,850**, having lost 0.1% in the past 24 hours. **Ethereum** fell slightly by 2.2% but remained above **$4,100**, up 2.7% from a week ago. Analysts believe investors have already priced in the rate cut, which historically supports crypto and other **risk-on assets**.

### Inflation Expectations and Monetary Policy

Dragosh emphasized that "the end of QT would certainly send a clear signal for higher inflation tolerations—closer to 3% over the medium term." He noted that past announcements of easier monetary policy, such as **QE1, QE2, and Operation Twist**, have led to significant increases in inflation expectations.

Prediction markets reflect this sentiment: Myriad users see a 90% chance of a Fed rate cut, while the CME FedWatch Tool shows a 97.8% probability, with an 89% chance of another cut in December.

### Bullish Outlook for Crypto

"Rate cuts add fuel to the already accelerating liquidity growth in the U.S. and globally," Dragosh said. "We are most likely looking at an extension of the current **bull market** well into 2026 and no imminent cycle top." He added that a relaxation in U.S.-China trade tensions could further strengthen this view, with gold's sell-off indicating a potential **risk-on scenario** that supports Bitcoin and crypto assets.

### Trader Caution and Risk Management

Jonathan Rose, CEO of BlockTrust IRA, cautioned traders against overcommitting. "In September, the market might have overestimated policy easing, leading to crowded positioning," he said. "We should go against the crowd, expecting a reversal if the market initially reacts positively to the rumor but then sells the fact."

Rose highlighted the importance of monitoring the **$111,000 to $115,000 range** for Bitcoin, as this area could be a starting point or a point of failure. "With high leverage involved, **risk management** is super important," he stressed. "If the Fed's message changes, we could quickly close positions."

### Additional Context: Bitcoin Leverage and Fed Vote

Bitcoin traders are building leveraged positions nearing **$40 billion** ahead of the Fed meeting, anticipating further cuts this year. The decision has become a focal point for investors expecting a quarter-point cut to bolster **risk assets**, including crypto.

### Key Factors to Watch

- **U.S.-China trade relations**: Uncertainty persists until Presidents Trump and Xi meet on Thursday.
- **Fed messaging**: Any deviation from expected policy could trigger rapid position closures.
- **Inflation tolerance signals**: Ending QT would indicate a shift toward higher inflation acceptance, benefiting Bitcoin.

Fed rate cut almost certain Wednesday—but ending QT could be the real Bitcoin catalyst as inflation tolerance rises.

Fed Rate Cut Looms: Could This Be Bitcoin's Next Big Catalyst?

## The Head of Firefox on AI in Browsers

Do you need an assistant for your online activities? **Multiple major players in artificial intelligence** are moving on from chatbots like ChatGPT and are now focusing their efforts on new browsers with deep AI integrations. Those could take the form of an agent that shops for you or an omnipresent chatbot that follows you around and summarizes what you’re seeing, looks up related stuff, or answers related questions.

Last week alone, **OpenAI released the ChatGPT Atlas browser**, and Microsoft showed off Edge’s new Copilot Mode, both of which heavily feature chatbots. At the start of October, Perplexity made its Comet browser free. In mid-September, Google rolled out Chrome With Gemini, integrating its AI assistant with the most popular browser in the world.

In the wake of these releases, I phoned the general manager of Firefox, Anthony Enzor-DeMeo, for his thoughts on whether AI-first browsers will catch on, if his own browser will go full AI, and whether users maintain any expectation of privacy in this new era of personalized, agentic browsing.

**[Read my Q&A with the head of Firefox.](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/28/firefox-ai-internet-anthony-enzor-demeo)**

## AI’s Presence Grows in Art and Our Everyday Lives

- **[‘I’m suddenly so angry!’ My strange, unnerving week with an AI ‘friend’](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/22/im-suddenly-so-angry-my-strange-unnerving-week-with-an-ai-friend)**
- **[US student handcuffed after AI system apparently mistook bag of chips for gun](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/24/baltimore-student-ai-gun-detection-system-doritos)**
- **[AI can help authors beat writer’s block, says Bloomsbury chief](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/oct/27/ai-authors-writers-block-bloomsbury-chief-book-publisher-shares)**
- **[Labor rules out giving tech giants free rein to mine copyright content to train AI](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/27/labor-rules-out-giving-tech-giants-free-rein-to-mine-copyright-content-to-train-ai)**

## SF’s Tech Billionaires Tell Trump to Call Off the National Guard on Their Home Turf

![A rally outside San Francisco city hall.](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/d7a5b6cff67302af7b634b2cb0300e041bc710a2/500_0_5000_4000/master/5000.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)

Last week, **Donald Trump said he would not deploy the US national guard to San Francisco** after proclaiming he would for weeks. What exempts SF from federal occupation but not Washington DC, Chicago, or Los Angeles? The presence of tech billionaire donors, going by Trump’s Truth Social Post.

“Great people like Jensen Huang, Marc Benioff, and others have called saying that the future of San Francisco is great. They want to give it a ‘shot.’ Therefore, we will not surge San Francisco on Saturday,” Trump wrote Thursday, referring to the threatened “surge” of national guard troops.

**Read more: [Trump says tech chiefs convinced him to call off troop ‘surge’ to San Francisco](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/23/trump-san-francisco-troops-silicon-valley)**

The Illinois governor, who has protested against the deployment of the national guard to Chicago for weeks, is also a billionaire. He is also an avowed Democrat and no friend of Trump. One can surmise why his phone calls to the White House didn’t have the same result as Nvidia’s Jensen Huang’s did.

Huang has traveled with the president to the United Arab Emirates to announce a gargantuan AI deal, agreed to pay the US government 15% of his company’s revenue from chip sales in China, and donated to Trump’s inauguration.

Marc Benioff has been at the center of the controversy from the start The co-founder and CEO of Salesforce said in a controversial interview with the New York Times that Trump should make good on his threat and send in the troops. That was at the start of Salesforce’s major yearly conference, Dreamforce, which takes over downtown San Francisco like a homecoming reunion takes over a college town in the US. A few days of backlash later, Benioff walked back the remarks and rationalized them by saying he was only worried about conference security. Then he intervened with Trump to prevent the national guard’s deployment. The image that emerges is a billionaire who wants to have his cake (be close to Trump) and eat it too (seem a savior to San Francisco).

The tech billionaires are getting what they paid for when donating to Trump, a direct line and an exemption for their home turf from his capricious use of force.

Around the same time Huang and Benioff were gabbing with Trump on the phone, the East Wing of the White House met the business end of a backhoe. Backing that demolition is a coalition of tech companies and billionaires gifting hundreds millions of dollars to Trump for his grand ballroom project. What special treatment will they request after paying for a direct line to the president?

## Read More About Trump and Tech

- **[Donors for Trump’s $300m White House ballroom include Google, Apple and Palantir](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/23/trump-white-house-ballroom-donors)**
- **[Trump pardons founder of Binance, world’s largest crypto exchange](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/23/binance-trump-pardon-changpeng-zhao)**
- **[Melania Trump’s meme coin architects accused of pump-and-dump fraud in lawsuit](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/23/melania-trump-cryptocurrency-lawsuit)**
- **[US and China reach ‘final deal’ on TikTok sale, treasury secretary says](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/26/us-china-tiktok-deal-scott-bessent)**

## What Caused Last Week’s Disastrous Amazon Web Services Outage?

![Cables of computer](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/e7a010d65d53ecec5a1305edb4536d90af2d67c4/500_0_5000_4000/master/5000.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)

Put succinctly, it was a bug in a piece of automation software. My colleague Josh Taylor reports on the cloud computing blackout that took everything from Signal to smart beds offline:

In a lengthy outline of the cause of the outage, Amazon revealed a cascading set of events that brought down thousands of sites and applications that host their services with the company.

AWS said customers were unable to connect to DynamoDB, an AWS database service that maintains hundreds of thousands of domain name system (DNS) records. It uses automation to monitor the system to ensure that records are updated frequently. The root cause of the issue, Amazon said, was an empty DNS record for the Virginia-based US-East-1 datacentre region. The bug failed to automatically repair and required manual operator intervention to correct.

**Read more: [Could the internet go offline? Inside the fragile system holding the modern world together](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/26/internet-infrastructure-fragile-system-holding-modern-world-together)**

## How to Decide If You Need a New Apple Product

- **[iPhone 17 review: the Apple smartphone to get this year](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/22/iphone-17-review-the-apple-smartphone-to-get-this-year)**
- **[Apple Watch Ultra 3 review: the biggest and best smartwatch for an iPhone](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/27/apple-watch-ultra-3-review-the-biggest-and-best-smartwatch-for-an-iphone)**

## Face-Scanning Is Creeping into Dating Around the World

![A close-up of dating apps on a phone.](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/a64b051e4c0571b59c7d640c2c098b94c22021e0/732_0_4203_3363/master/4203.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)

**Tinder made a face-scan a requirement for new users in the US last week.** Match Group, the app’s parent company, had already mandated facial verification when signing up in California.

The US requirement made headlines in the largely US-based tech press, but Match Group also rolled out its voluntary face check feature in Australia, Canada, and India. In each of those markets, Tinder ranks among the most popular dating apps.

Match, which also owns Hinge and a slew of dating websites, plans to roll out the face-scanning feature to its other dating apps soon, paving the way for facial verification to become a near-universal requisite for online dating.

Any pretense of anonymity on Tinder is gone. The change poses substantial questions of privacy but also promises significant safety benefits. If Tinder is hacked, facial scans can’t be changed like passwords. Biometric personal data is immutable. Or will law enforcement enjoin Match to hand over users’ faces en masse? On the other side of the coin, serial rapists have been able to use Tinder as a hunting ground, seemingly unhindered by the app’s safety features. Victims’ families have blamed Match for failing to verify users.

A face scan might have been a shocking requirement for a signup in 2012, when Tinder debuted. Apple’s Face ID didn’t launch until 2017, although Samsung phones featured facial recognition features as far back as 2011. Users’ expectations of privacy and their willingness to trade it for new, more personalized features evolve over time, as Firefox’s Enzor-DeMeo said.

**Read more: [Rape under wraps: how Tinder, Hinge and their corporate owner chose profits over safety](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/13/tinder-hinge-match-investigation)**

## The Wider TechScape

- **[More than a million people every week show suicidal intent when chatting with ChatGPT, OpenAI estimates](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/27/chatgpt-suicide-self-harm-openai)**
- **[Amazon plans to cut 30,000 corporate jobs in response to pandemic overhiring](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/27/amazon-corporate-jobs-cuts)**
- **[Amazon strategised about keeping its datacentres’ full water use secret, leaked document shows](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/25/amazon-datacentres-water-use-disclosure)**
- **[Ultra-HD televisions not noticeably better for typical viewer, scientists say](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/27/ultra-hd-televisions-4k-8k-not-noticeably-better-study)**
- **[‘People thought I was a communist doing this as a non-profit’: is Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales the last decent tech baron?](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/27/people-thought-i-was-a-communist-doing-this-as-a-non-profit-is-wikipedias-jimmy-wales-the-last-decent-tech-baron)**
- **[Tesla reports steep drop in profits despite US rush to buy electric vehicles](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/22/tesla-earnings-report-latest-drop-profits)**
- **[Google hails breakthrough as quantum computer surpasses ability of supercomputers](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/22/google-hails-breakthrough-as-quantum-computer-surpasses-ability-of-supercomputers)**

In this week’s newsletter: Silicon Valley billionaires have a hotline to the US president. Plus, the head of Firefox talks AI-integrated browsers, and more

Yesterday Bitcoin Articles Digested