Bitcoin\u2019s meteoric run may have gotten a little extra push from an unlikely source: Federal Reserve Chair\u00a0Jerome Powell.<\/p>\n
In comments Wednesday about the cryptocurrency, the central bank leader noted that he does not and cannot own any himself. In addition, he said the Fed\u2019s role in regulating bitcoin and its competitors is limited.<\/p>\n
However, he also maintained that\u00a0bitcoin\u00a0is not a challenge for traditional currencies such as the U.S. dollar but rather for gold.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople use bitcoin as a speculative asset,\u201d Powell told CNBC\u2019s Andrew Ross Sorkin during the New York Times\u2019\u00a0DealBook Summit. \u201cIt\u2019s just like gold, only it\u2019s virtual, it\u2019s digital. People are not using it as a form of payment or as a store of value. It\u2019s highly volatile. It\u2019s not a competitor for the dollar, it\u2019s really a competitor for gold.\u201d<\/p>\n
For those who watch the crypto markets, the Powell comments, whether unwittingly, provided a sense of legitimacy for bitcoin and helped drive it another leg higher. Bitcoin jumped 3% in morning trade Thursday,\u00a0pushing over the $103,000 mark\u00a0before easing slightly.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe believe the Fed chair\u2019s comparison of bitcoin to gold is a significant development as it introduces another level of credibility to bitcoin as a major asset in global markets,\u201d said Joel Kruger, market strategist at LMAX Group, which runs an exchange for currency and crypto trading.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact that gold is still about 10 times larger than bitcoin should offer additional insight into how much more room there is for bitcoin to grow from current levels,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Bitcoin rose sharply to start the year then largely traded in a volatile but fairly tight range \u2014 until Donald Trump won the Nov. 5 presidential election. Since then, it has soared close to 50% as the president-elect\u2019s pro-crypto remarks fueled another price surge that took bitcoin past the $100,000 mark late Wednesday. By contrast,\u00a0gold\u00a0is about flat since the election, though it is up nearly 30% year to date.<\/p>\n
To be sure, how much Powell\u2019s comments helped propel the last move is unknown.<\/p>\n
The remarks comparing it to bitcoin came the same day Trump made formal his widely anticipated intention to\u00a0nominate financier Paul Atkins, also a strong crypto supporter, as chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission.<\/p>\n
The position is a key regulatory post and could provide a smoother market ride, particularly since the current SEC leader, Gary Gensler, has been an opponent of the crypto industry.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Bitcoin\u2019s meteoric run may have gotten a little extra push from an unlikely source: Federal Reserve Chair\u00a0Jerome Powell. In comments Wednesday about the cryptocurrency, the central bank leader noted that he does not and cannot own any himself. In addition, he said the Fed\u2019s role in regulating bitcoin and its competitors is limited. However, he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":12966,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}