The Fed Just Had Its Most Divided Meeting Since 1992 and Crypto Markets Should Pay Attention

I have been watching central bank decisions for a long time now and the April 29th FOMC meeting was one of the more unusual ones I can remember in recent years. On the surface it looked routine. The Fed held rates steady at 3.5% to 3.75% for the third consecutive meeting and nobody was surprised by that. But underneath the surface something happened that the market has not fully priced in yet.

Four members dissented. Four. The last time the FOMC saw that level of internal disagreement was October 1992. And the reasons for the dissents were pulling in opposite directions which is what makes this genuinely interesting. Governor Stephen Miran wanted to cut rates by 25 basis points. Meanwhile Beth Hammack, Neel Kashkari and Lorie Logan were fine with holding but wanted the easing bias language removed from the statement entirely. So you had one person saying we should be loosening and three others saying we should not even be hinting at loosening. That is not a united committee. That is a committee that cannot agree on which direction the economy is heading.