Short-term sentiment around bitcoin and ether is deteriorating quickly after the Federal Open Market Committee meeting.

On June 18, blockchain media outlet Decrypt reported that prediction-market participants are more strongly leaning toward declines than gains in the next price move for the two assets.

The drop followed the first FOMC meeting chaired by newly appointed Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh. The policy rate was held, but markets sharply lowered expectations for rate cuts this year. On Polymarket, the chance of no rate cuts at all in 2026 was priced at about 80 percent, and CME FedWatch has even raised the possibility of a rate increase by year-end.

The shift showed up more clearly on Myriad's "Pump or Dump" market. The market asks whether an asset will move to a higher price range next or to a lower one. For bitcoin, the probability of a drop jumped by more than 10 percentage points over the past 24 hours. Participants now see about a 72 percent chance bitcoin slips to $55,000 before staging a strong rebound to $84,000.

Still, the broader market is not uniformly forecasting a collapse. Bitfire Research assessed bitcoin's current price zone as a "high-value entry" area. It means that while short-term sentiment is bearish, some analysts view the current range from a buying perspective.

The bearish outlook is stronger for ether. Prediction-market participants put the probability at about 83 percent that ether falls to $1,500 before rebounding to $3,000. That figure rose by about 4 percentage points over the past 24 hours and by more than 23 percentage points over the past month. The current price is about 12 percent above the $1,500 threshold, while it would need to rise about 78 percent to reach $3,000, adding weight to the bearish view.

Ultimately, the core of the market reaction is the shift in expectations for the rate path. Even with the policy rate on hold, expectations for cuts this year weakened and markets began to price in the possibility of a rate hike, curbing risk-asset appetite. As a result, declines in spot prices for bitcoin and ether fed into worsening sentiment on prediction markets, and in the short term the downside thresholds are being traded as more realistic targets.

The probabilities shown on Myriad do not guarantee actual prices, but are read as a signal of where market participants are placing larger bets. With $55,000 for bitcoin and $1,500 for ether emerging as the next inflection points, changes in expectations for Fed policy and the rate outlook are increasingly likely to drive the near-term moves of the two assets.