According to the latest minutes from the Federal Open Market Committee's December 9-10 meeting, Fed officials have significant disagreements on a core issue — which poses a greater threat to the US economy right now: inflation or unemployment?

From the minutes, most officials agree that as long as inflation continues to decline, further rate cuts are reasonable. But the questions are: when to cut? How much to cut? On these two issues, the decision-makers' opinions begin to diverge.

Interestingly, some officials leaning towards maintaining current rates believe that upcoming labor and inflation data, which will be released between the next few meetings, are key to determining whether a rate cut is truly necessary. In other words, they are adopting a wait-and-see attitude. This hesitation has indirectly increased market expectations that the Federal Reserve will keep rates unchanged at the January meeting.

Looking at November data, the unemployment rate jumped to 4.6%, the highest since 2021, which clearly supports the case for rate cuts. Meanwhile, consumer price increases were also below expectations. Theoretically, these two sets of data should help resolve internal disagreements, but in reality? Not really.

In simple terms, the Federal Reserve now feels like it is being pulled in two directions — on one side, persistent high labor costs; on the other, concerns that inflation has not yet fully subsided. Under this state, the scope for future policy adjustments is uncertain. For the crypto world, this kind of uncertainty often means volatility.