Bitcoin’s sharp pullback after Gary Gensler left the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in January 2025 is making a once-popular narrative harder to defend. In the source, CoinDesk relays analyst commentary from Benjamin Cowen, who says the market did not respond the way many expected.
CoinDesk cites Cowen’s claim that in January 2025 Bitcoin traded around $109,000. It then says Bitcoin now sits closer to $75,000, following a period where the market had been trending higher after Gensler’s departure. The point from Cowen is not subtle. If regulation or “Gensler specifically” was the main brake, the post-departure move did not match that expectation.
Markets, not regulators, take the blame in the Cowen view
In the source, Cowen argues that crypto’s damage came from market participants losing confidence in the industry itself. CoinDesk reports that, in Cowen’s framing, Gensler’s exit opened the door to a “grift age,” with influencers and politicians launching memecoins and allegedly rug-pulling followers without repercussions. That led, according to Cowen as summarized by the source, to misallocated capital, with liquidity moving into speculative assets instead of strengthening the broader ecosystem.
The source also ties this view to future institutional trust. CoinDesk says Cowen connects the pattern to the Federal Reserve, noting that some people have celebrated Jerome Powell’s removal as chair. It then relays Cowen’s argument that celebrating in the short term could hurt credibility later, with participants eventually concluding the markets were better off with Powell than without him.
FOMC reactions stay unfriendly
On timing, CoinDesk points to a repeatable setup around Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meetings. The source says a crypto trader known as Max Trades highlighted a pattern from the last seven FOMC meetings, where Bitcoin dropped sharply after each decision.
The source adds more detail around how setups can form. It says that before the March meeting, price rallied into the event while sweeping local highs, then built liquidity below. CoinDesk reports that this structure marked a local top and was followed by a 13% correction that erased most of the prior move.
Heading into the current interest rate decision, CoinDesk says the same ingredients are present. It reports that Bitcoin is trading just below a major higher-timeframe resistance level, which the source frames as additional confluence for a downside scenario. It also says that if the sequence repeats, Bitcoin could set up another local top around the event.
What this adds up to
None of the above proves a cause-and-effect link between regulation and price. But the source’s takeaway is clear about the narrative being stress-tested. CoinDesk, via Benjamin Cowen and Max Trades, places heavier weight on market psychology, liquidity behavior around FOMC, and trust dynamics than on Gensler’s SEC tenure as the primary driver.