TL;DR

• The US Gov. plans to sell $1.9B worth of seized BTC, but the market doesn’t seem to care (meanwhile, Jerome Powell’s ‘nothing burger’ speech helped push prices up).

Full Story

The Federal Government just slapped the crypto market across the face.

…right before giving it a hug.

The slap: when the feds took down Silk Road, they seized a whooole bunch of Bitcoin along with it…and on Tuesday, they transferred ~30,000 BTC (~$1.9B) to sell on Coinbase.

(And that level of potential sell pressure usually spooks the market into a sell off, in anticipation of the sale).

The hug: Yesterday, Jerome Powell (Chair of the Federal Reserve) spoke at Stanford.

And when J-Powell talks, market participants listen closely. Often, a little too closely...

(E.g. we’ve heard people talk — in all earnestness — about making trades informed by the color of Jerome’s tie).

Based on recent economic data, J-Powell had this to say:

“Recent readings on both job gains and inflation have come in higher than expected. Recent data do not, however, materially change the overall picture.“

Translation: yeah, inflation isn’t coming down in a straight line, but that’s expected. We still plan on lowering interest rates this year.

(Which will juice the economy by lowering everyone’s loan/credit repayments, giving them more disposable income).

Now, here’s the cool part!

The crypto market totally shrugged off the Gov’s potential ~$1.9B sale of Bitcoin, trading sideways on the news.

…but when J-Powell gave the most middle of the road ‘plans are unchanged’ speech — most major cryptocurrencies moved up on the news.

We’ll take it!