#沃什年度讲话前瞻紧盯利率信号 The Fed suddenly turns hawkish! Bitcoin falls below $80k, while Jackson Hole sends three dangerous signals
The market had still been discussing when the Fed would cut rates, but the Jackson Hole meeting poured cold water on investors.
On August 28 local time, newly appointed Fed Chair Kevin Warsh delivered his first major speech since taking office at the Jackson Hole global central bank annual meeting.
After the speech, the market rapidly repriced: the probability of a Fed rate hike in September rose from 35.4% to 55.7%, the US 2-year Treasury yield surged, US stocks turned lower, the dollar strengthened, and Bitcoin briefly fell to around $77.4k.
One-sentence summary of the speech:
The Fed is now more worried about inflation remaining high than about an economic recession.
I. Why has the Fed suddenly started worrying about rate hikes again?
Warsh provided several highly significant data points in his speech. The US unemployment rate is currently only 4.1%, and the labor market as a whole remains stable; corporate capital expenditures are also growing rapidly, with more than half of the increase potentially coming from AI infrastructure construction. Meanwhile, US PCE inflation remains at 3.7% year over year, while its annualized growth rate over the past six months has reached 4.1%.
And what is the Fed's target?
2%.
Warsh explicitly stated that the Fed's 2% inflation target is a “firm, fixed target,” and emphasized that the current financial environment can hardly be called “restrictive.”
In other words, the US economy is showing no obvious recession, employment has not deteriorated significantly, companies are still investing heavily in AI, but inflation remains well above target.
Under these circumstances, the Fed has little reason to rush into rate cuts.
Warsh ended with a remark that the market has repeatedly analyzed:
If the Fed cannot be confident that inflation is returning to its target level quickly enough, then “we have work to do.”
Although he did not directly say, “I will raise rates in September,” Wall Street understood the message.
II. The market changes course immediately
After the speech, global assets rapidly repriced.
The US 2-year Treasury yield rose to 4.36%, while the 10-year Treasury yield rose to 4.728%; the US Dollar Index climbed 0.61% to 99.71.
In US stocks, the S&P 500 fell 0.25%, the Nasdaq fell 0.52%, and the more interest-rate-sensitive Russell 2000 dropped 1.4%.
Bitcoin, which had just climbed back above $80k, also quickly retreated; Reuters data showed that it fell as much as 3.34% that day to around $77,413.
The logic is actually very simple:
The higher the interest rate, the higher the returns on dollar assets, and the more expensive money becomes in the market.
Technology stocks, growth stocks, gold, and cryptocurrencies—assets that depend on liquidity—naturally come under pressure first.
So what will truly affect the market next is no longer “when will rates be cut,” but another question:
Will the Fed restart rate hikes?
III. There is another undercurrent at this year's Jackson Hole that deserves the crypto community's attention
The theme of this year's Jackson Hole meeting itself was highly unusual:
“Financial Innovation: Implications for Payments and Policy”—the implications of financial innovation for payments and policy.
This means that issues such as stablecoins, digital payments, and asset tokenization have officially entered the highest-level discussion framework of global central banks.
But the central banking system's attitude toward stablecoins is clearly not so optimistic.
Pablo Hernández de Cos, general manager of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), said at this year's Jackson Hole meeting that stablecoins are currently not a reliable tool capable of handling payment functions on a large scale.
His concerns include financial stability, anti-money laundering, interoperability between different systems, and the possibility that stablecoins could challenge the monetary sovereignty of some countries.
Compared with stablecoins, he believes that “tokenized deposits” issued by the banking system may be better suited to becoming the core of the future payment system.
This is also a major path battle in the future stablecoin industry that deserves close attention:
Will the digital dollar of the future be stablecoins such as USDT and USDC, or Tokenized Deposits within the traditional banking system?
There is still no answer.
IV. What really needs attention is not just whether rates will be raised in September
The biggest change at this Jackson Hole meeting is that the market's understanding of the Fed is changing.
Over the past few years, everyone has developed an instinctive way of thinking:
Falling inflation → Fed rate cuts → liquidity returns → risk assets rise.
But this script is now becoming more complicated.
US AI investment remains strong, corporate profits remain high, the labor market has not collapsed significantly, yet inflation has stayed above 2% for a long time. This means the US may be entering a “higher-for-longer interest-rate environment.”
For investors, what matters next more than guessing the outcome of a particular FOMC meeting is watching three data points:
Whether inflation can genuinely fall, whether employment will weaken significantly, and whether AI investment can continue to support US economic growth.
If the economy remains strong and inflation remains high, it will be difficult for the Fed to turn dovish.
And if the market was originally betting on “massive liquidity injections,” every adjustment in expectations could trigger more intense volatility in technology stocks, gold, and crypto markets.
The signal sent by Jackson Hole is already very clear:
The Fed in 2026, at least for now, is not ready to turn the liquidity tap back on.$BTC
