Federal Reserve Board member Christopher Waller stated that the recent trend of declining inflation is encouraging, but whether to continue raising interest rates at the September meeting still depends on the inflation data for August. If price pressures continue to ease, he tends to keep current interest rates unchanged; if the data strengthens again, a further small increase in interest rates is still an option.

Waller said he is willing to observe inflation further.

In an interview with Reuters, Waller said that recent data indicates that inflation in the United States is moving closer to the Federal Reserve's target of 2%. According to him, if this trend continues, he would be willing to support no action at the Federal Open Market Committee meeting on September 15-16.

He mentioned that after excluding volatile items, the core inflation rate dropped to 3.05% by July, from 4.76% in February. This change indicates that short-term price pressures have eased, and it also provides decision-makers with more room for observation.

In September, it was decided to still refer to the data from August.

However, Waller did not rule out the possibility of another interest rate hike. He stated that if subsequent data continues to improve towards the 2% target, he supports keeping interest rates unchanged; but if inflation in August is higher than expected, it may be sufficient to justify another small increase in interest rates.

Compared to the previously hawkish internal discussions, this statement has a more moderate tone. The minutes of the July meeting, which were released earlier, indicated that some officials were still discussing whether further interest rate hikes were necessary if inflation remained high.

Oil prices still pose an upward risk.

The market reacted quickly. Reuters reported that after Waller's speech, traders reduced their bets on a rate hike in September, U.S. Treasury yields fell, and the dollar weakened.

Waller also mentioned that oil prices and other energy costs remain upward risks for inflation. If energy prices continue to rise, transportation and production costs may increase accordingly, thereby interfering with the Federal Reserve's efforts to bring inflation back down to 2%. For the crypto market, changes in interest rate expectations will continue to affect the performance of risk assets such as Bitcoin.