FED Pauses Its Hikes – Crypto Gets Five Dates to Watch
The Federal Reserve held its benchmark rate at 3.75%–4.00% on October 28, pausing after September’s hike while inflation runs hot and futures traders price a December increase.
Key Takeaways
- Rate range unchanged at 3.75%-4.00%.
- Cook and Hammack dissented, backing a hike.
- September CPI ran 3.7% on energy costs.
- Futures still price a December hike.
The Federal Open Market Committee’s statement, approved by a 10-2 vote, leaves policy where it landed after September’s quarter-point increase, the central bank’s first hike since 2023.
Two officials wanted to hike in October
The decision was not unanimous. Governor Lisa Cook and Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack voted against the hold, preferring to raise the target range by a quarter point at this meeting.
The statement does not name a date for the next move. After describing inflation as elevated, the Committee wrote: “The accumulation of more information will help the Committee determine the policy stance appropriate to ensure a timely return of inflation to the Committee’s 2 percent goal.” The paragraph ends with a five-word commitment: “The Committee will deliver price stability.”
Nothing in the growth assessment points to a slowdown that would argue against further tightening. Policymakers described activity as expanding at a strong pace, with resilient domestic spending, strong productivity growth and robust capital investment. Job gains have kept pace with the workforce, and unemployment has changed little. The one caution was elevated uncertainty, which the Fed attributed partly to geopolitical developments.
A pause, not a change of direction
Few traders expected anything else. Monday’s Bitcoin outlook cited a 90.6% probability of a hold on CME FedWatch, and a month earlier that figure had been closer to a coin toss.
What changed over those weeks was the calendar. Deutsche Bank economists argued before the meeting that the Fed might want to “stay out of the headlines for raising rates just ahead of a midterm election” where affordability dominates the debate. Most officials had already penciled in one more increase this year in their September projections, and December was the obvious slot for it.
That leaves the hold looking less like relief and more like postponement. According to CME FedWatch data earlier this week, futures traders put the odds of a December hike at roughly three in four, up from about 42% a month before.
The inflation numbers behind the hawkish lean
September’s consumer price index, published October 14, showed prices up 3.7% from a year earlier and 0.6% in that month alone. Gasoline jumped 9.1% and accounted for more than half of the monthly rise, as the US-Iran war kept crude near $100 a barrel.
Energy explains the headline, but not everything. Core CPI, which strips out food and fuel, climbed to 2.6% year over year from 2.4% in August, with shelter, airfares, medical care and used vehicles all moving higher. A rising core rate is harder for the Fed to look through than a gasoline spike.
| Indicator | Latest reading |
|---|---|
| Federal funds target range | 3.75%-4.00% |
| October FOMC vote | 10-2 (two votes for a hike) |
| Headline CPI, September (year over year) | 3.7% |
| Core CPI, September (year over year) | 2.6% |
| 10-year Treasury yield, October 27 | About 5.0% |
| December hike probability (CME FedWatch, this week) | Roughly 73%-75% |
Warsh isn’t handing out a roadmap
Kevin Warsh has made a point of refusing to pre-commit. Speaking at the IMF and World Bank meetings in Bangkok on October 16, he said “I don’t prejudge meetings” and declined to preview any decision for the rest of the year. He framed September’s move as removing some accommodation to secure price stability.
October’s meeting also came without a new Summary of Economic Projections. The next set of projections, including the dot plot of officials’ rate expectations, is due with the December decision.
With little guidance from the chair, other policymakers may say more. The pre-meeting communications blackout runs through October 29, so FOMC participants can speak publicly again from October 30. Hammack’s vote continues a pattern: in July, she dissented in favor of a hike alongside Minneapolis’s Neel Kashkari and Dallas’s Lorie Logan. This time Kashkari and Logan backed the hold while Cook joined Hammack, and the first speeches after the meeting will show how broad the case for a December move has become.
How the rate path reaches Bitcoin
Bitcoin went into the decision near $80,000. The channel to watch is yields: the 10-year Treasury traded just under 5% on Tuesday morning and the 30-year above 5.3%. When safe government debt pays that much, holding an asset with no yield costs more, and a firmer December outlook would add to that pressure through bond yields and the dollar.
September offers a useful reference. Bitcoin traded near $76,000 on the day the Fed raised rates and climbed above $85,000 by September 30, after a cooler inflation reading. The decision itself mattered less than the data that followed it.
Five dates between now and December 9
The midterm record needs context
For crypto companies, the election matters mainly through Congress: committee leadership and the fate of market-structure legislation depend on who controls each chamber.
The price history is weaker evidence. Coindoo’s earlier analysis found Bitcoin fell roughly 53%, 24% and 21% during late-summer stretches before the 2014, 2018 and 2022 midterms. All three came during wider crypto bear markets that overlapped with the halving cycle, so the pattern says more about those cycles than about voting.
The PCE and GDP figures land at 8:30 a.m. ET on October 29. By December 9, policymakers will also have the October jobs and CPI numbers in hand, and those four releases will carry more weight in December’s decision than today’s pause.
This article is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Policy expectations, economic data and political developments can affect cryptocurrency markets unpredictably.
Kosta has reported on cryptocurrency markets and blockchain infrastructure since 2020, bringing over six years of hands-on experience in the crypto industry built through daily tracking of markets, trends, and emerging blockchain developments. Specializing in Bitcoin on-chain analysis, institutional ETF flows, and digital asset price action, his work at Coindoo has been cited by other news agencies and consistently covers market developments with a focus on data-driven reporting across Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and XRP. Over the years, Kosta has contributed to multiple crypto media outlets in different regions, authoring over 6,000 articles across the sector. His reporting spans cryptocurrency markets and the broader fintech industry, tracking not only price action but also the technological and regulatory forces shaping the ecosystem. To support his analysis, Kosta actively leverages on-chain data and metrics from leading platforms such as Santiment, Glassnode, and CryptoQuant, enabling deeper, evidence-based market insights. He believes in the power of transparency and the data that underpins the blockchain ecosystem. His academic background in Marketing Management from Denmark further complements his analytical approach, adding a strong understanding of communication strategy and content positioning to his work.
