Disclaimer: This is not financial or investment advice. You are responsible for any capital-related decisions you make, and only you are accountable for the results.

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Key Takeaways:

• The Fed kept rates unchanged, although there were two dovish dissents; Waller and Miran.
• Powell didn't commit to future cuts, but suggested that the next move being a hike was very unlikely.

As was broadly anticipated, the Fed kept rates unchanged at yesterdays' meeting, although we did see 2 dissents (for a cut) from Waller and Miran. This isn't a surprise from Miran who has dissented at every meeting, for either a larger cut or a cut, when the Fed has paused. Perhaps the big question around this meeting was whether Governor Waller would dissent for a cut or not? Governor Waller is in the running to be Trump's nomination for the new Fed Chair role. A dissent at this meeting would keep Waller in the running for that job, and it would very likely rule him out of the running if he hadn't dissented, so we'd therefore take Waller's dissent with a 'pinch of salt'.

Aside from this, Powell was reluctant to commit to further rate cuts in the press conference. Powell upgraded growth forecasts whilst he said that the risks to the labour market had decreased slightly. This allows him and the Fed to keep the rate at 3.50%, which Powell deemed as 'close to neutral' and/or 'mildly restrictive', which is acceptable considering inflation remains in the high 2 percents - although Powell did state that he expects inflation to continue its downward trajectory to 2.00%.

Ultimately, with this setup, a Powell led Fed has likely delivered its last interest rate cut, and we likely won't get more cuts until a new Fed Chair takes over in mid-May.

Market Reaction: The press conference cemented the markets' view that we likely won't see another rate cut until June, and therefore there was a small pull back in risk assets, although minimal, whilst BTC pulled back from $89,500 to $88,200 as of this morning.

Cryptonary's Take:

Without the prospect of imminent rate cuts, Bitcoin and Crypto can likely remain in a lull for longer. However, we expect a new dovish Fed Chair to be forward guiding a June rate cut in April/May time. Therefore, we expect to be getting more aggressively positioned in core Crypto assets in February and March should we see pull backs in this 'lull' period - where we'd then expect to see substantial returns from late-Q2 onwards.

Simply put, in the short-term, we remain cautious, but active, and we're looking to buy any major pull backs that the market gives us.

For BTC, we're expecting a retest of the $80k-$82k region as a minimum. Should we get there, and should we see the metrics (LTH selling, ETF flows etc) improve at that point, we may look to get Long at the $80k-$82 region. Ultimately, we'll reassess again at the time (should it come) as to whether we pull the trigger or not.

Expected path for BTC: