Crypto analyst Kevin (Kev Capital TA) says Jerome Powell has effectively signaled the wind-down of the Federal Reserve’s quantitative tightening program—an inflection he argues has historically unlocked altcoin outperformance and could underpin the next broad crypto rally.

In a video analysis posted yesterday, Kevin framed Powell’s appearance at the National Association for Business Economics forum yesterday as unusually balance-sheet centric and tantamount to advance guidance: “This man came out today and literally sat there and spoke about the balance sheet the entire time… he telegraphed… we’re probably going to end the quantitative tightening program in the coming months.”

He added, “The Fed telegraphs what they’re going to do with monetary policy… they don’t want to come out in surprise rate cuts or surprise rate hikes.” Several experts like BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes and Walter Bloomberg confirmed the interpretation via X.

Start Of The Crypto Bull Run

Kevin’s core claim is unambiguous: durable altcoin cycles have required a neutral or expanding Fed balance sheet, and QT has marked their demise. “We know the correlation between the Fed’s balance sheet and durable altcoin outperformance is literally one-to-one… That’s it. That’s the correlation. It’s one to one. It’s 100% hit rate,” he said, pointing to a multi-year chart of “total others versus Bitcoin” that he has tracked “for years.” According to his read, every time QT has started, altcoins have entered a bear market against BTC; when the balance sheet has shifted to neutral or QE, “altcoin season is able to occur.”

The timing around last week’s violent cross-market liquidation reinforced his thesis, in his view. Kevin noted that “as soon as we see a 70–80% crash on altcoins on their USD pairs and then total others versus Bitcoin taps this major support level… three days after that, Powell comes out and telegraphs… we’re going to end [QT] in the coming months.” He stopped short of alleging intent—“I don’t like to go down the rabbit hole of manipulation… it just seems a little odd”—but argued the macro liquidity pivot now appears in sight: “All we know is that the Fed did telegraph that they are going to be ending QT, and that should be happening either by the end of the year or first thing next year.”

While his macro read is overtly constructive, Kevin emphasized he is not trading it blindly. ” In practice, he is waiting for validation across two pillars: Bitcoin’s higher-timeframe moving averages and the USDT dominance structure.

On Bitcoin, he repeated a rule he has used across cycles: “Anytime Bitcoin has lost the 2-day 200 SMA and EMA, the cycle was over. Anytime Bitcoin has lost the 50-week SMA on the weekly time frame, the cycle was over.” He located the current “cycle validators” around the rising band that, on his charts, spans “$102,000 to $96,500,” with $98,000/$96,000 the approximate line in the sand. “If you break $98K, slash $96.5K on multiple weekly closes… the cycle’s probably over,” he said.

The stablecoin gauge—USDT dominance—remains his market metronome. Kevin described a “classic textbook macro descending triangle” in USDT.D with a “flat bottom” near “3.9%–3.7%” and lower highs into two-week moving averages. “There’s a 70–80% chance that this descending triangle ends up breaking down and crypto goes higher,” he said, cautioning that a minority of such formations do break up. “I don’t plan on doing a thing until it does break… I ain’t going to be the guy who sat here this entire time tracking this incredible pattern… and then deviate away from it now.”

What To Watch Now

Beyond liquidity, Kevin addressed the perennial four-year-cycle debate head-on. By his dashboards—ROI since halving, ROI since cycle bottom—“you’re at the end of the cycle… the four-year cycle’s over.” But he argued that macro still governs whether price must top on schedule.

Running a “process of elimination,” he said the backdrop does not currently resemble 2021’s inflation shock or a clear earnings/bubble unraveling, though he acknowledged exogenous risks such as renewed US–China tariff escalation. “Unless something macro-related durably tops this market, there’s still a chance that it goes higher,” he said. “Crypto is not invulnerable to the macro… all markets are literally tied one-to-one to the macro. Period.”

Technically, he remains cautious on breadth. He highlighted persistent weekly bearish divergences on Bitcoin, Total2 (large-cap ex-BTC), and Total3 (ex-BTC, ex-ETH), and the failure to secure decisive weekly closes above “120K–125K,” which, in his words, produced “two weekly reversal candles [and] a monthly reversal candle” and “lower highs in the weekly RSI.” The August-to-present message, he said, has been consistent: “Be cautious… If you’re in altcoins from way lower, take some profits… Don’t buy anything right now… wait for a resolution.”

Still, the QT call is the pivot he’s watching most closely. “We are at a critical stage in the history of crypto… I want a definitive answer.”

At press time, the total crypto market cap stood at $3.79 trillion.