CoinShares: Bitcoin has performed relatively well this week, and its future trend still depends more on interest rate expectations According to TechFlow, on October 23rd, CoinShares' latest market update stated that despite the volatility of risk assets this week, Bitcoin as a whole still shows some resilience, mainly supported by the rebound in spot demand, improved stock market sentiment, and partial short covering. However, the market is shifting from simply pursuing AI narratives to focusing more on corporate profit realization. Some companies in the United States have reported lower than expected financial reports, which has caused severe fluctuations in the stock market, and Bitcoin has also been temporarily dragged down. On a macro level, the US real estate data has clearly weakened. The confidence index of US residential builders has dropped to 29, the lowest since June 2012; New housing construction in September decreased by 5.2% compared to the previous month, with an annualized rate of 1.221 million units; The sales index of completed home contracts decreased by 7.3% month on month to 66.0, hitting a new low since records began in 2001. CoinShares believes that this indicates that high borrowing costs are continuing to suppress economic activity. In terms of interest rates, the market still generally expects the Federal Reserve to maintain interest rates unchanged at its meeting on October 28th. As of October 20th, Polymarket has priced the probability of a 25 basis point interest rate hike at approximately 12%, while CME has priced it at approximately 17%, significantly lower than the level of over 40% a week ago; But the market's expectation for another interest rate hike in December is still close to 83%. CoinShares believes that the sluggish real estate market provides space for the Federal Reserve to temporarily postpone interest rate hikes, but the recent hot CPI and PPI data means that inflation remains the main constraint. CoinShares stated that Bitcoin remains highly sensitive to changes in interest rate expectations, and if there is an unexpected interest rate hike in October, the impact could be significantly greater than the December rate hike that has already been partially priced by the market. Overall, the current market is still in a delicate balance, supported by improved spot demand and Bitcoin resilience, but the direction of the cryptocurrency market in the next stage is still more likely to be determined by the interest rate path rather than a single industry catalyst. In addition, CoinShares also mentioned that Paul Sztorc's Bitcoin hard fork project eCash (ECX) is continuing to advance testing, with its main network target date still around October 31st, but the current ecosystem utilization and infrastructure maturity are still in the early stages.