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News · Oct 1, 2026 · 4 min read

Bitcoin today: Fed hike odds fall to 37%, a Senate crypto tax bill, MetaMask exits validators

Traders cut the odds of an October rate hike from 71% to 37% in a week, Senate Republicans put a crypto tax bill on the table, and MetaMask began withdrawing validators after a security incident. Bitcoin sat near $83,500, and hashprice did not move.

Firsthand card: "Bitcoin today: Fed hike odds fall to 37%, a Senate crypto tax bill, MetaMask exits validators", with 37.1% marked as the odds of an October Fed hike on 30 September

Rate-hike bets almost halved in a week

Traders now put the chance of a Federal Reserve rate rise at the October meeting at 37.1%, according to Investing.com's reading of the CME FedWatch tool on 30 September. A day earlier it was 50.9%, and a week earlier 70.9%.

Two things moved it. New York Fed President John Williams said there was "no need for urgency" in raising rates, and that only one more hike was needed this year. And the data cooled: core PCE inflation rose 0.2% in August against the 0.3% expected, holding at 3.0% over twelve months, while job openings came in weaker than forecast.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury stood at 5.26% on 29 September, the latest day we hold, up from 4.96% on 22 September. Our Treasury yields chart shows the climb. A pause in hikes would take pressure off exactly that line.

Chart: US Treasury yields since August. The 10-year went from 4.96% on 22 September to 5.26% on 29 September; the odds of another Fed hike have since fallen. Open the chart

Senate Republicans put a crypto tax bill on the table

Senate Republicans introduced a crypto tax bill on 30 September, sponsored by Montana's Steve Daines and backed by Banking Committee chair Tim Scott and senators Cynthia Lummis and Bernie Moreno, 24/7 Wall St reports. It would make small stablecoin purchases tax-free and apply the 30-day wash-sale rule that stocks have to crypto.

Finance Committee chair Mike Crapo said he wants crypto tax legislation done before the end of the year, though Punchbowl notes hurdles ahead. Neither report says the bill covers mining. 24/7 Wall St says the House's version taxes mining and staking rewards as ordinary income, so what the two chambers settle on is the part for a miner to watch.

MetaMask begins pulling its validators

MetaMask said on 1 October that it is responding to a security incident affecting part of its infrastructure, and that there is "no immediate threat to MetaMask wallets". It is exiting the affected validators in its non-custodial staking on Lido, with the last due out by 7 October. It has not said what happened.

It is an Ethereum story, not a Bitcoin one. It is a reminder that the weak point is often the operator's infrastructure, not the chain.

Bitcoin drifted, and leverage stayed light

Bitcoin traded near $83,500 on 1 October in our data, a little under the $84,000 to $86,000 band it held for the previous week. The US spot ETFs took in $66.2 million on 29 September and $31 million on 28 September, small beside the $999 million of 21 September on our ETF flows chart.

Funding on the perpetual was about 2% annualised on 30 September, so traders are not paying to be long. Futures took out $60 million of shorts and $34 million of longs that day on our liquidations chart, a quiet day by the standards of this month.

Chart: Bitcoin futures force-closed each day: shorts above the line, longs below. 30 September was small beside the squeeze days earlier this month. Open the chart

What it means for miners

Network hashprice was $39.77 per petahash per day on 30 September on our hashprice chart, against $40.31 on 24 September. The 19 September difficulty adjustment rose 4.2% to 132.76 trillion, and mempool.space estimates the next, due around 3 October, at roughly 0.4% higher. A flat adjustment on a flat price leaves a miner's margin where it was.

Nothing today changes what a coin costs to make. The Fed pause is the one item that could, indirectly, by easing the yields that have been climbing all month. The coins a miner already holds are worth what they were yesterday.

Hashprice was $39.77 on 30 September, almost exactly where it stood on 24 September.

Sources and further reading

Disclosure

Firsthand Bitcoin sells and hosts mining hardware, including this machine. No manufacturer, distributor or affiliate programme paid for or reviewed this page and we take no commission on the links above. Historical figures are computed from daily bitcoin price and network hashprice, each day valued at its own prices. Nothing here is investment advice.