Bitcoin Holds $78K Post-Fed Hike as Altcoins Rally, SEC Opens Door to Tokenized Stocks

Markets are showing remarkable resilience as Bitcoin trades near seventy-eight thousand dollars following the Federal Reserve's first rate hike since 2023. DeFi and Layer-2 tokens are leading a broad crypto advance with the DeFi Select Index surging over eight percent, while the SEC rolled out its long-awaited innovation exemption for tokenized securities venues. We break down why altcoins are outperforming Bitcoin, analyze the SEC's five-year framework for onchain stock trading, and examine why corporate treasuries have slowed Bitcoin purchases to just fifty-nine hundred coins over three months. Plus, regulatory pressure intensifies as the U.S. sanctions Iran's BitBank exchange for processing Hormuz Strait passage fees in crypto, and ECB President Lagarde allegedly blocked Binance's EU MiCA license. From Ethereum's Glamsterdam upgrade clearing critical testing to Zcash targeting November for twenty-five-second blocks, this briefing delivers the market-moving developments traders need to navigate today's session.