Fed holds rates steady; Cook and Hammack favored a hike

The notable signal is not the hold itself but the direction of the dissent: at the margin, two policymakers preferred tightening rather than easing. That matters for rate-sensitive corners of crypto and tokenized real assets, where the debate has centered on when policy turns accommodative. A split like this keeps the policy path genuinely contested rather than settled. With no forward guidance disclosed, whether this hawkish minority persists into the next meeting is the open question worth tracking.