Fed minutes do little to shake crypto markets with BTC down 2.7%

Ad

Fed minutes in-brief:

• 2% tar­get­ed inflation
• Low unem­ploy­ment, 3.5%
• Fed funds tar­get rate, 4.5% to 4.75%.
• Debate among meet­ing par­tic­i­pants whether to raise inter­est rates by 50 basis points
• BTC remains sta­ble at around $23.8k, down 2.7% 24H.

Committee outlook

The Fed released its lat­est round of min­utes today, announc­ing that job mar­ket con­di­tions in the US remain restrict­ed in Decem­ber, as reflect­ed by the unem­ploy­ment rate reach­ing a his­toric low, tum­bling back down to 3.5% in December.

As expect­ed, the Fed also said the per­cent­age change in the price index for per­son­al con­sump­tion expen­di­tures (PCE) over the course of 12 months indi­cat­ed a decline in con­sumer price infla­tion dur­ing Novem­ber and Decem­ber. How­ev­er, despite the down­ward trend, the infla­tion lev­el remained high, at 5% in Decem­ber, the min­utes showed.

Dur­ing a meet­ing, some par­tic­i­pants expressed their sup­port for rais­ing the tar­get range for the fed­er­al funds rate by 50 basis points, as they believed it would achieve a suf­fi­cient­ly restric­tive mon­e­tary pol­i­cy stance, per the minutes.

How­ev­er, most par­tic­i­pants agreed that while the com­mit­tee had made progress in tight­en­ing the mon­e­tary pol­i­cy, infla­tion remained above the committee’s 2% tar­get, and the labor mar­ket was still tight, con­tribut­ing to upward pres­sures on wages and prices.

The par­tic­i­pants believed that mon­e­tary pol­i­cy should remain restric­tive until incom­ing data pro­vid­ed con­fi­dence that infla­tion was on a sus­tained down­ward path to 2%. They also stat­ed that future increas­es in the tar­get range should take into account the cumu­la­tive tight­en­ing of mon­e­tary pol­i­cy, the lags with which mon­e­tary pol­i­cy affects eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty and infla­tion, and eco­nom­ic and finan­cial developments.

Price of Bitcoin

At press time, the price of Bit­coin is $23,825.59, with a 24-hour trad­ing vol­ume of $30,541,075,235, down 2.70% since yesterday.