The much-awaited Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) for the month of December is just over. At the end of the meeting, the Federal Reserve’s chairman, Jerome Powell, confirmed the reports that the United States would once again raise the country’s interest rates by 0.25%.
Despite the fact that the raises have been decreasing since the second half of 2022, the Fed showed no indication that it will start decreasing them in the near future.
Raise by 25 Basis Points Due to Spending & Economy
Powell also spoke about how the recent indicators “point to modest in spending and production”, and that “job gains have been robust in recent months”. The chairman also confirmed that America continues to control a lower unemployment rate, which indicates a lesser risk of recession.
The Fed confirmed that inflation levels in the U.S. economy have “eased somewhat”, but the current level is still elevated — which explains the continuous raising of interest rates.
Part of the blame is put on Russia’s war against Ukraine, which is said to have caused “tremendous economic hardship” for the entire world’s economy.
How Bitcoin Reacted to The Report
So far, only an hour after Powel’s statement, neither of the two largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization showed any significant price movement.
Bitcoin became extremely volatile throughout the day, but neither buyers nor sellers were able to outwork the opposition. The asset is currently trading at around $23,366 — a level it reached over 10 days ago.
In the last 24 hours, BTC gained only 1.4% in value, while the daily volume increased from $14 billion to $26 billion.
However, exactly 35 minutes after the report, the chart showed an unusual movement, when $BTC jumped from $22,877 to $23,439 in the span of 15 minutes — indicating that at least for now, part of the investors reacted favorably to the new interest rate updates.
