Dollar Hits 13-Month High as Bitcoin Whales Buck the Selloff

The US Dollar Index just touched its highest level in 13 months, and Bitcoin’s biggest wallets are buying anyway. The index sat at 101.3 on Monday after topping out near 101.5 the week before, its strongest run since May 2025, as traders priced in rising odds that the Federal Reserve raises rates on Wednesday instead of holding steady.

That single number is squeezing crypto in theory. In practice, the pressure is landing unevenly. Wallets holding between 1,000 and 10,000 bitcoin have been buying at their fastest pace in five months, even as smaller holders sell into the same dip, and even as Ether starts breaking away from Bitcoin’s script entirely.

Fed’s Wednesday Verdict Keeps Traders on Edge

The Federal Open Market Committee, the Fed’s rate setting group, meets Wednesday, July 29, with a decision due at 2 p.m. ET and a press conference from Chair Kevin Warsh half an hour later, according to CBS News.

As of July 27, futures tracked by CME’s FedWatch tool put the odds of a quarter point hike at roughly 34%, with a 65.7% chance the Fed simply holds its 3.50% to 3.75% target range steady. Those odds had climbed as high as 46.5% two weeks earlier, according to CNBC, as oil prices jumped alongside developments in the conflict between the United States and Iran.

Nigel Green, chief executive of the investment firm deVere Group, wrote in a July 23 note cited by CBS News that “the Fed will find holding steady a harder case to make than it looked even a few weeks ago.” Whether the committee’s models are even reading the labor market correctly is its own running argument; economist William Lee has pushed the Fed to rethink how it reads US jobs data well before this week’s meeting.

The Dollar Squeeze

A rising dollar drains liquidity from global markets. That mechanism is not new, and it is the same one that hit crypto earlier this year, when a hawkish pivot squeezed crypto through three separate liquidity funnels. Experts remain divided on how much further the rally runs, but the direction this summer has been clear.

• 101.3: the Dollar Index level as of July 27, per trading data showing the index just off its 13-month high.
• 34%: the market implied chance of a Wednesday rate hike.
• $65,000: roughly where Bitcoin has traded this week, down from an all time high near $103,500 reached before an 18% slide to $85,000 last November.
• $1,881: Ether’s price, off 2.2% in a day even as its ratio against Bitcoin breaks out.

Bitcoin’s slide from six figures to the mid $60,000s has been gradual, not a single crash, but the dollar’s latest leg higher is the backdrop against which every crypto move this week is being read.

Whales Buy What Dolphins Are Selling

Onchain data published by CryptoQuant shows a sharp split in who is doing the selling. Wallets holding between 1,000 and 10,000 bitcoin, the cohort CryptoQuant classifies as whales, added roughly 66,700 BTC over the past 60 days, the highest accumulation pace since February. Wallets holding 100 to 1,000 BTC, the smaller dolphin cohort, sold about 77,800 BTC over the same stretch.

Strategy, the corporate holder formerly known as MicroStrategy, paused its own purchases during the period and instead raised $263.5 million earmarked for future buying, a sign even the market’s most aggressive institutional buyer is waiting for a better entry rather than chasing this week’s price.

That divergence matters because it separates two stories that usually get told as one. A falling price with whales buying looks very different from a falling price with everyone selling, and right now the data shows the former.

Ether Breaks From Bitcoin’s Script

Ether trades near $1,881, but the more telling number sits in the ratio between the two coins. ETH/BTC has spent almost a year inside a descending channel dating back to August 2025, printing lower highs the whole way down. This month, the ratio finally closed above the top of that channel and now sits near 0.0289, with resistance overhead at 0.0316.

Fresh whale wallets added about 50,000 ETH this month as the ratio jumped 6%, even while Bitcoin’s overall share of the crypto market held near 60%. Longer term price calls still lean far above where Ether trades today. Standard Chartered’s Geoffrey Kendrick has a $12,000 target for Ether by the end of the year, and Fundstrat’s Tom Lee has floated a base case near the same level with a bull case reaching $22,000, both contingent on the ETH/BTC ratio expanding much further than this month’s move.

Where Is Bitcoin’s Real Bottom?

No single number commands agreement. Estimates range from a possible dip into the mid $40,000s to the idea that the cycle low already printed months ago, with the timing spread anywhere from right now to early October, depending on which analyst is asked.

Crypto analyst Kevin Capital said on a July 27 podcast that he has started dollar cost averaging into Bitcoin even though his own roadmap still points toward a possible decline to the $44,000 to $56,000 region. He argued Bitcoin is moving through a bear market bottoming phase running from July through October and said waiting for the exact low costs more than it saves.

• Kevin Capital, a crypto analyst, is buying gradually now while still expecting a possible drop toward $44,000 to $56,000 before the cycle turns.
• Zach Pandl, Grayscale’s head of research, has said the bottom may already be behind the market if the Fed avoids further hikes and growth holds up.
• Regression and Fibonacci based models point to a $44,000 to $47,000 floor arriving around early October, a pattern one analysis said echoes the 2022 cycle.

Those views cannot all be right at once, which is exactly why Wednesday’s decision carries more weight than a typical hold or hike would.

XRP and Sui Have Their Own Problems

Not every coin’s weakness traces back to the dollar or the Fed. XRP slipped to around $1.06 this week as investors waited on a US Senate vote tied to the CLARITY Act, legislation meant to settle long standing questions about how digital assets get regulated. Ripple’s push into institutional tools, including a product called Ripple Mint, has continued regardless of the wait.

Sui fell nearly 9% over the past week for a separate reason entirely: roughly 13.72 million tokens are scheduled to unlock on August 1, adding fresh supply into a market that is already showing short term bearish positioning and declining open interest.

Both slides happened during the same week the dollar hit its 13-month high, but neither one needed the Fed’s help to fall.

Wednesday’s 2 p.m. announcement is now the fixed point every one of these threads runs through, from the whales quietly adding Bitcoin to the traders still arguing over where its bottom sits.