Live updates: Bitcoin edges higher ahead of Fed decision Wednesday afternoon.

The Bank of Canada raised its benchmark overnight lending rate by 25 basis points to 2.5%, in line with market expectations.

“Inflation is higher and more persistent than in the July Report,” wrote the bank in its policy statement. “Growth has picked up this year and is expected to recover further.”

The loonie has strengthened a hair on the news, but remains about flat versus the greenback on Wednesday.

It was hardly much of an advance to begin with, but bitcoin BTC$80,690.83 has slipped by about $1,000 in the past couple of hours, returning to about $80,600, where it sat Tuesday evening (U.S. hours).

Ether, solana, and XRP are little changed as well, though HYPE, DOGE, and LINK are higher by more than 1%.

Equity futures are off session highs too, the Nasdaq 100 up just 0.3% and S&P 500 up 0.2%.

Bond yields are flat and oil is higher by about 2%.

Today’s main event will be the Fed meeting results, and the conventional wisdom says the U.S. central bank will deliver a “hawkish hold,” i.e., policy unchanged, but stern official statement language and Warsh press conference to prep markets for a December rate hike.

“We've been tracking every broker/exchange that has reported Q3 and the obvious weak link is pricing,” wrote Matthew Siegel, head of digital assets research at Van Eck. “Robinhood HOOD$90.05 continued that today with weak-ish pricing power across options, equities and crypto.”

Plugging each of his brokerage earnings summaries into Claude, Siegel got this result: “Unit pricing is the weak link. Rates and FX products have the best mix of volume and price, helped by the rate backdrop. Everything driven by retail or micro-sized flow is growing volume but not revenue due to weakening pricing.”

HOOD is lower by 6.3% pre-market. Coinbase COIN$157.63 — which reports its third-quarter results on Thursday — is down 2%.

U.S. officials have told a number of Middle East countries about its possible intentions for a brief, but intense, renewal of military operations against Iran following next Tuesday’s midterm elections, reports the WSJ.

President Trump has previously said he would hold off on attacks prior to the elections, but the U.S. military in the region has spent recent weeks rebuilding depleted munitions.

Oil is adding to overnight gains, WTI crude now higher by 1.8% to $101.70 per barrel. Brent crude is up 1.6% to $111.16.

Smaller tokens, such as memecoins PEPE and M and and others like bitway (BTW) token are leading the crypto market bounce ahead of the pivotal Fed meeting.

As of this writing, BTW was up 24% on a 24 hour basis, while PEPE and M were up 15% and 11%, respectively. Market leaders bitcoin and ether traded higher by 2%.

The Fed is widely expected to keep interest rates unchanged in the range of 3.75% to 4%.

Bitcoin rose 2% to just above $81,000 as of Wednesday Asian morning hours, building on its recovery from Monday’s dip below $80,000 as traders positioned for the Federal Reserve’s rate decision later in the day.

HYPE led the majors, jumping nearly 6% to just above $81, while ZEC added 5% to hold about $1,300. DOGE gained 4%, and BNB and SOL each rose about 3%, with BNB just under $760 and SOL above $102. Ether climbed 2% to about $2,360 and XRP rose a similar 3% to $1.32. TRX lagged with a gain of about 1%, according to CoinDesk data.

It’s a cheerier tape than Monday’s, when selling hit nearly every major token and bitcoin slipped under $80,000 for the first time in more than a week.

The bounce follows a note from Galaxy on Tuesday saying now is the time to accumulate bitcoin. Alex Thorn, the firm’s head of firmwide research, said the bear market likely ended in June, when bitcoin traded under $58,000.

The bigger test comes later Wednesday. Traders will be listening to Fed Chair Kevin Warsh’s press conference for any hint of a December rate hike, which would make borrowing more expensive and tends to pull money out of riskier assets like crypto.

Monday showed how quickly traders sell when hike talk picks up, and Warsh gets his say later Wednesday.