#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 was still discussing when the Fed would cut interest rates, but the Jackson Hole meeting poured cold water on investors.
On August 28 local time, new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh delivered his first major speech since taking office at the Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium.
After the speech, the market rapidly repriced: the probability of a Fed rate hike in September rose from 35.4% to 55.7%, the 2-year U.S. Treasury yield surged, U.S. 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 cited several highly important data points in his speech. The U.S. unemployment rate is currently just 4.1%, and the labor market overall remains stable; corporate capital expenditures are also growing rapidly, with more than half of the growth potentially coming from AI infrastructure construction. Meanwhile, U.S. year-over-year PCE inflation remains at 3.7%, while its annualized growth rate over the past six months has reached 4.1%.
And what is the Fed's target?
2%.
Warsh made clear that the Fed's 2% inflation target is a “firm, fixed target,” and emphasized that current financial conditions are difficult to describe as “restrictive.”
In other words, the U.S. economy is not showing any obvious recession, employment has not deteriorated significantly, and companies are still investing heavily in AI, yet inflation remains well above target.
Under these circumstances, the Fed has little reason to rush into rate cuts.
Warsh ended with a statement that the market has repeatedly interpreted:
If the Fed cannot be confident that inflation is returning to the target level quickly enough, then “we have work to do.”
Although he did not directly say, “I will raise rates in September,” Wall Street got the message.
II. The market immediately changed course
After the speech, global assets rapidly repriced.
The 2-year U.S. Treasury yield rose to 4.36%, while the 10-year Treasury yield rose to 4.728%; the U.S. Dollar Index rose 0.61% to 99.71.
In U.S. stocks, the S&P 500 fell 0.25%, the Nasdaq fell 0.52%, and the more interest-rate-sensitive Russell 2000 fell as much as 1.4%.
Bitcoin, which had just climbed back above $80k, also quickly retreated, falling 3.34% at one point that day to around $77,413, according to Reuters.
The logic is actually very simple:
The higher interest rates are, the higher the returns on dollar-denominated assets, and the more expensive money becomes in the market.
Technology stocks, growth stocks, gold, and cryptocurrencies—assets dependent on liquidity—naturally come under pressure first.
So what will truly affect the market going forward is no longer “when will rates be cut,” but another question:
Will the Fed resume raising interest rates?
III. This year's Jackson Hole also contains a hidden thread worth watching for the crypto industry
The theme of this year's Jackson Hole meeting was particularly 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 discussion framework of the world's highest-level central banks.
But within the central banking system, attitudes toward stablecoins are 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 payments 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 “tokenized deposits” issued by the banking system may be better suited to becoming the core of the future payments system.
This is also a highly important debate over the future direction of the stablecoin industry:
In the future, will the digital dollar be stablecoins such as USDT and USDC, or Tokenized Deposits within the traditional banking system?
There is still no answer.
IV. What really needs to be watched is not just whether rates rise 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 a habitual way of thinking:
Inflation falls → the Fed cuts rates → liquidity returns → risk assets rise.
But that script is now becoming more complicated.
U.S. AI investment remains strong, corporate profits remain high, the labor market has not collapsed significantly, yet inflation has remained above 2% for an extended period. This means the U.S. may be entering a “higher-for-longer” interest-rate environment.
For investors, what matters more going forward than guessing about any single FOMC meeting is watching three data points:
Whether inflation can truly come down, whether employment will weaken significantly, and whether AI investment can continue to support U.S. 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,” then every adjustment in expectations could bring more violent volatility to technology stocks, gold, and the crypto market.
The signal from 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
