USD/JPY rose 0.2percent at 104.31, GBP/USD dropped 0.2% to 1.3655, not helped by U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson indicating that the country's current lockdown to combat the coronavirus may last until March. The risk-sensitive AUD/USD was down 0.6% at 0.7613.

The principal equity indices on Wall Street saw their largest one-day percentage drops in three months during the preceding session, as hedge funds liquidated positions to raise liquidity after enduring losses on short positions in other stocks, amid highly insecure retail buying.

This helped boost safe-haven requirement for the U.S. currency.

Also helping was the downbeat tone in the U.S. Federal Reserve since it concluded its first policy-setting assembly of this Biden era. The central bank signaled concern about the pace of economic recovery.

"A slightly more downbeat assessment from the Fed re-affirms the view of stable policy in coming months," said analysts at ING, in a research note.

"But, if the vaccination program gains momentum and consumer spending rebounds sharply on re-opening, QE tapering will increasingly become a theme for markets"

Care will turn into the preliminary reading of U.S. gross domestic product in the fourth quarter, due in 8:30 AM ET (1330 GMT), to gauge the size of the slowdown in the world's biggest economy by the end of this past year.

Elsewhere, EUR/USD dropped 0.2% to 1.2083, following a European Central Bank member floated the idea of interest rate cuts to curb the common currency's current strength.

The euro's level"is something we naturally track very, very carefully," Klaas Knot, who heads the Dutch central bank, said in a Bloomberg TV interview on Wednesday. "It's among those variables, not the exclusive factor, but among those factors we take into consideration when arriving at our evaluation of where inflation is going to go."

Although the euro has edged lower Thursday, it gained nearly 9 percent against the dollar last year, the largest annual jump since 2017.