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The Daily Ledger: 8 October 2026

What FOMC minutes are and what the September record says: a unanimous hike, most officials expecting another by year end, and a bitcoin fall that came before the release. Plus Bitmine's 5 percent ether ceiling and Tether's Kazakhstan MoU.

By Adam, founder and chief editor · Educational analysis, independently sourced

Subject: The Fed's minutes say most officials expect another rate rise this year
Preview: What FOMC minutes are, why they arrive three weeks after the decision, why bitcoin barely moved on them, and Bitmine's 5 percent ceiling on ether.

THE DAILY LEDGER

8 October 2026
The September minutes show a unanimous hike and most officials leaning toward another, oil and yields push bitcoin below $84,000 before the release, and Bitmine says it will stop buying ether at 5 percent of supply.

Reporting window: 7 October 2026, 06:00 UTC to 8 October, 06:00 UTC (08:00 Europe/Stockholm). Data cutoff: 8 October, 06:00 UTC. Prices are CoinGecko 00:00 UTC daily snapshots compared against the previous day's 00:00 UTC snapshot, not a rolling 24 hours. This issue was published retrospectively on 16 October 2026 to fill a gap in the archive; it uses only information available at the cutoff.

What are FOMC minutes? They are the Federal Reserve's written account of a policy meeting, published three weeks after the decision, and they show how officials argued rather than only what they decided. The September minutes, released at 18:00 UTC on 7 October, say every participant backed the rise to 3.75 to 4.00 percent and most expect another increase by year end. Bitcoin had mostly fallen before they arrived.

1. The Day in Numbers

  • Bitcoin: $83,282, down 2.64 percent at 00:00 UTC on 8 October, against the previous day's 00:00 UTC snapshot. CoinGecko daily data.
  • Ether: $2,573.23, down 4.60 percent on the same basis.
  • Fear and Greed: 64, Greed, down 7 points from 71. Alternative.me daily reading.
  • US 10-year Treasury yield: 5.28 percent on 7 October, from 5.27 percent, per the Treasury par yield curve.
  • Spot bitcoin ETFs: $119 million of net inflows on Tuesday 6 October, per SoSoValue via CoinDesk. We could not confirm a complete Wednesday total published before our cutoff, so it is omitted.

2. What are FOMC minutes, and what did September's say?

The Federal Open Market Committee sets the US policy rate eight times a year, and each decision reaches the public in stages. The statement comes at 2:00 p.m. Eastern on decision day. At four meetings a year, the Summary of Economic Projections, the "dot plot", arrives with it. The minutes follow, as the Fed's release notes, generally three weeks later.

Minutes summarise the discussion without naming who said what. They use graded words such as "all", "most", "several" and "a few", which readers treat as an ordering, not a precise count. The September record says almost all participants saw inflation risks tilted to the upside, several viewed policy as "not restrictive or only mildly restrictive", and most judged another increase "would likely be appropriate by year end".

That last line was not news on its own. The projections had already put the median year-end rate at 4.1 percent, one more quarter point above today's midpoint. Minutes move markets when they change the expected rate path, and these mostly confirmed it. Our letter on what a Fed rate hike does to bitcoin covers that channel. The larger move came earlier, after Iranian attacks on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz pushed Brent crude above $101, CoinDesk reported. The next decision is due on 27 to 28 October.

Two panels. Left: the September 2026 Federal Reserve meeting in three documents. On 16 September at 18:00 UTC the statement announced a 25 basis point rise to 3.75 to 4.00 percent by a 12 to 0 vote and the projections put the median year-end 2026 rate at 4.1 percent. Twenty-one days later, on 7 October at 18:00 UTC, the minutes said most participants saw another rise by year end. The next meeting is 27 to 28 October. Right: hourly bitcoin prices from 7 October 00:00 UTC to 8 October 06:00 UTC, with a marker at the 18:00 UTC release. Bitcoin fell from 85,540 dollars to 83,134 dollars, about 2.8 percent, before the release, and was 83,282 dollars at 00:00 UTC on 8 October, about 0.2 percent higher than at the release.
Policy dates and figures from the Federal Reserve minutes and projections; prices from the CoinGecko hourly series. Timing alone does not establish cause.

3. Today's Headlines

Bitmine says it will stop buying ether at 5 percent

Chairman Tom Lee told Token2049 in Singapore that the company will stop accumulating once it holds 5 percent of ether's supply: "Now we're going to stop," CoinDesk reported. Its 5 October filing put holdings at 6,016,414 ETH, 4.9 percent of 122.1 million. Stopping purchases is not selling, but it removes a weekly buyer.

Tether and Kazakhstan's central bank sign an exploratory MoU

Tether, the National Bank of Kazakhstan and the Alatau City Authority agreed to study a stablecoin pegged to the tenge and to prepare a concept and pilot proposal, alongside a tokenisation pilot. A memorandum of understanding is a plan to explore, not a commitment to issue.

A Robinhood executive discloses a bitcoin holding

Johann Kerbrat said in an interview that Robinhood has added about $25 million of bitcoin to its balance sheet. CoinDesk said the company had not separately confirmed the purchase.

4. Security Note

On 7 October Europol published a report on quantum computing and cryptocurrencies. It says blockchains' hash-based integrity remains largely resistant and that wallets are "the primary point of exposure", because a capable future quantum computer could derive a private key from an exposed public key. No such machine exists today, and Europol expects adaptation rather than collapse.

The rule: use a fresh receiving address for every payment. Many common bitcoin address types reveal the public key only when coins are spent, so funds left at an address that has already spent sit behind an exposed key. Treat any message urging an urgent "quantum migration" through a link as a scam. Our UTXO explainer shows how addresses and change outputs work.

5. From the Academy Library

The bitcoin market cycles and macro guide explains how rate expectations reach crypto prices. New readers can start at Academy School.

Minutes rarely change a decision already made. Their value is in showing how wide the debate was before the next one.

Disclaimer: This publication is for education and information only. It is not financial, investment, legal, tax, or security advice.

Sources and further reading

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