These days, Bitcoin is surging towards the $100,000 mark, but the market is tangled up in a personnel appointment.

In mid-January, President Trump signaled a new stance from the White House — he prefers to keep White House economic advisor Kevin Hassett in his position rather than appoint him as Federal Reserve Chair. This shift in attitude quickly elicited a market response.

On prediction platforms, the probability of Hassett becoming Fed Chair dropped accordingly, while his main competitor, former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh, saw his chances rise to nearly 60%. A change in a single candidate can trigger such a big ripple, indicating that the market has long been calculating the interests behind this.

The key point is — Hassett is considered to be more dovish. If he takes the helm, the expectation of rate cuts by 2026 would be stronger, which is positive for Bitcoin and various risk assets. On the other hand, Warsh is different; he belongs to the hawkish camp, meaning that high interest rate environments could be prolonged, which is not very friendly to cryptocurrencies in the short term.

Interestingly, Warsh himself has invested in crypto companies and has served as an advisor to Anchorage, an institutional-grade crypto bank, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s open to the crypto market. His monetary policy stance is clearly less dovish than Hassett’s, and that’s enough.

So, Bitcoin’s current rise and fall, to some extent, is a bet on the outcome of this personnel battle.