Market Update: The Midyear Reset
The first half ended in a risk-asset shakeout. The second half begins with a different question.
The first half of the year is over, and it did not end quietly.
Crypto sold off hard, then began trying to repair. Bitcoin broke below sixty thousand, swept the floor everyone was watching, and then quickly reclaimed it. Ethereum and the rest of the risk curve absorbed more damage, then started lifting off capitulation-grade sentiment.
The dollar squeeze ran through the first half. Rates stayed dangerous. Housing kept absorbing the weight of restrictive policy. The war scare fed the inflation impulse, then began losing force at the exact moment a new Fed chairman was rewriting how the institution works.
That combination created the most important market question of the year, and it is the one sitting in everyone’s head right now:
Did the cycle break, or did the market just pass through the most violent part of the credibility squeeze?
Treating the crypto selloff and rebound as an isolated digital-asset event would be the mistake of the summer.
It happened inside a pressure stack: Fed transition, war shock, dollar strength, rate volatility, and forced repricing across the risk curve.
The second half begins with that stack changing shape.
And this week, quietly, the most important piece of it gave way.
Full breakdown below for Inner Ring subscribers.