Bitcoin Volatility Alert: Trump Expected To Tap Kevin Warsh As Fed Chair Today

US President Donald Trump is expected to unveil his pick for the next Federal Reserve chair on Friday morning, with former Fed governor Kevin Warsh emerging as the clear market favorite, an event that could jolt rate expectations and, by extension, Bitcoin and crypto volatility.

Warsh met with Trump at the White House on Thursday, according to reporting from Reuters and the Wall Street Journal’s Nick Timiraos, after Trump told reporters he planned to announce his choice Friday. Trump added a pointed tease about the mystery candidate: “A lot of people think that this is somebody that could’ve been there a few years ago,” a nod to the fact he considered Warsh for the job roughly eight years ago before selecting Jerome Powell.

The fastest repricing has happened not in Treasuries, but in prediction markets. Polymarket’s contract on Trump’s Fed chair nominee is currently showing Warsh at 93%, with the market displaying roughly $302 million in volume, levels traders interpreted as a leak-driven stampede rather than a slow drift.

That surge dovetails with a Bloomberg report saying the Trump administration is preparing for a Warsh nomination, and with commentary from macro traders who see the process tightening into a single outcome.

Krüger conceded Warsh’s track record “is not the best,” while still arguing there is “unique credibility in a former inflation hawk advocating for aggressive cuts.”

For Bitcoin and crypto, one underappreciated angle is that Warsh has publicly described Bitcoin in surprisingly non-hostile terms. In a Hoover Institution interview published July 8, 2025, Warsh rejected the idea that Bitcoin threatens the dollar, while still treating it as a policy signal. “Bitcoin does not make me nervous,” he said. “I think of it as an important asset that can help inform policymakers when they’re doing things right and wrong. It is not a substitute for the dollar.”

Kevin Wash on Bitcoin, the white paper and its role alongside the dollar:

Warsh also cast Bitcoin’s role as a kind of feedback mechanism for central bankers: “I think it can often be a very good policeman for policy,” he said, before widening the lens to distinguish “real innovators” from “imitators” and “incompetents” in the broader proliferation of crypto tokens.

At press time, Bitcoin traded at $82,695.