Optimism returned across the cryptocurrency market on March 17 following a brighter economic forecast from the U.S. Federal Reserve and comments which hinted at the possibility of an interest rate hike in 2022 if employment and economic indicators continue to improve. 

Data from Cointelegraph Markets and TradingView shows that Bitcoin struggled below the $57,000 level during early trading hours until the announcement from the U.S. Federal Reserve sparked a rally which took BTC to an intraday high of $58,243.

Bullish momentum for the top cryptocurrency began to build after it was revealed that institutional banking giant Morgan Stanley will soon offer certain investors access to three funds that allow clients to own Bitcoin.

Further validation for a continuance of the current bull market came from Bitcoin’s stock-to-flow creator PlanB, who feels that BTC “will not stop” at $100,000 and could reach an average price as high as $288,000 with its all-time high registering even higher.

Traditional markets rally after Powell's comments

After subdued trading in the early hours on Wednesday, equities markets saw an uptick in activity following Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s comments which sparked rallies in stocks and the major indices.

The S&P 500, Dow and NASDAQ finished the day up 0.29%, 0.58% and 0.40% respectively. The 10-year U.S. Treasury note also saw an increase of 1.23% to 1.641

Altcoins get a boost as Grayscale provides exposure

Select altcoins also moved higher after Grayscale Investments announced that it had added five new products to its lineup, offering exposure to Basic Attention Token (BAT), Chainlink (LINK), Decentraland (MANA), Filecoin (FIL) and Livepeer (LPT).

The announcement sparked price rallies for all the projects involved, with Livepeer seeing the biggest impact as its price rocketed more than 260% from a low of $5.53 to a new all-time high of $20.21.

At the time of writing, FIL is up 40.7% to a price of $89, MANA is up 7.3% to a price of $1.01and BAT has increased by 44% to set a new all-time high of $1.36.

The overall cryptocurrency market cap now stands at $1.8 trillion and Bitcoin’s dominance rate is 60.9%.

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