Marketsjul 29, 2026

Bitcoin Swings to $64,400 as Fed’s 9-3 Vote Leaves Rate-Hike Door Open

BTC whipsawed between $63,800 and $64,500 as the Fed held rates at 3.50%-3.75% with three dissents pushing for a hike.

Markets Editor. Marcus covers macro, ETFs and the

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Bitcoin Swings to $64,400 as Fed’s 9-3 Vote Leaves Rate-Hike Door Open

Bitcoin traded in a roughly $700 band on July 29 as the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee voted 9-3 to hold its benchmark rate at 3.50%-3.75%, its sixth consecutive pause. BTC had slumped $3,000 the previous day, rebounded to $64,500 before the decision, got rejected and fell under $63,800, then climbed back above $64,000 — touching $64,400, up more than 1% over 24 hours — once the statement crossed the wire.

The price swing mattered because the outcome was genuinely uncertain going in. CME FedWatch data and prediction markets had assigned only a 65% probability to a hold versus roughly 30%-38% odds of a quarter-point hike — a split described by traders as the widest pre-meeting gap since the COVID-19 shock in March 2020, when nearly every FOMC decision had carried 99% market consensus beforehand.

Three dissents complicate the “hold” narrative

The headline vote looked routine, but the internal split was not. Three FOMC members — reported as Beth Hammack, Neel Kashkari and Lorie Logan — voted against the majority, preferring to raise the fed funds range to 3.75%-4.00% immediately. That is a marked shift from June, when all twelve voting members backed leaving policy unchanged, and it signals that a September hike remains firmly on the table rather than off it.

The Fed’s statement said inflation “remains elevated relative to the Committee’s 2 percent goal,” pointing to supply shocks tied in part to energy prices, while describing economic activity as “expanding at a solid pace” amid uncertainty linked to the conflict in the Middle East. Labor market conditions were called stable, with job gains keeping pace with the workforce and unemployment little changed.

Warsh gives no fresh signal

Attention has now shifted to the press conference from Chair Kevin Warsh, who has previously been critical of the Fed’s reliance on traditional forward guidance. His remarks offered no explicit tip on whether the next move will be a hike or a cut, leaving traders to parse the three dissenting votes as the clearest hawkish tell available.

Equity and gold markets moved alongside crypto. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq trimmed earlier session losses following the decision, while gold rose 1.2% on the day — a pattern consistent with investors de-risking into the meeting and partially re-entering once the rate path stayed unchanged.

Why it matters for crypto holders

For bitcoin and ether traders, the takeaway is less about the hold itself and more about what the 9-3 split implies for the rest of 2026. A dovish pause with unanimous support would have removed near-term hike risk from crypto pricing models; instead, three officials on record favoring tighter policy keeps a September increase in play, which tends to weigh on risk assets priced against a higher discount rate. Bitcoin’s round-trip from $64,500 to under $63,800 and back to $64,400 in a single session illustrates how sensitive positioning remains to any shift in the Fed’s rate-path signaling, even when the headline decision matches consensus.