If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em… and then try to control ’em? Is that what’s happening right now? There appears to be a strong TradFi push in the direction of crypto, as Bitcoin cracks the US$30k mark again.

Elizabeth Warren and her “Anti Crypto Army” will not be best pleased with this week’s turn of events. Not sure yet about Gary “I Used to Teach a Blockchain Course at MIT, You Know” Gensler.

The big news of the morning so far appears to be this: US Fed Chair Jerome Powell LOVES CRYPTO.

Okay, that’s definitely untrue, but he did at least say the following, according to reports: crypto “appears to have staying power as an asset class”.

Powell was speaking in Washington at a hearing on monetary policy  primarily discussing inflation and whatnot – which, by the way, was a little hawkish with the indication that the Fed is not yet done with its interest rate hiking this year. Still “work to be done” on hitting its 2% inflation target, yada yada.

But the conversation shifted to crypto and stablecoins, thanks to a steer from the House Financial Services Committee’s Patrick McHenry, who famously grilled SEC chair Gary Gensler recently regarding the agency’s treatment of crypto.

Here’s what Powell thinks of stablecoins, too, by the way: “We do see payments stablecoins as a form of money”.

Hmm, promising. Although, he did caveat: “It would be appropriate to have a robust Federal role in what happens in stablecoins going forward… Leaving us with a weak role in allowing a lot of private money creation would be a mistake.”

 

Valkyrie goes BRRR

In OTHER news, the “TradFi” push into crypto appears to be surging ahead ever since the Illuminati Overlords of Finance, BlackRock, applied for a spot Bitcoin ETF.

Now, another notable financial services firm, Valkyrie Digital, has rejoined the Bitcoin ETF queue, with, somewhat amusingly, a filing for an exchange traded fund that has the ticker “BRRR”. (‘Tis a reference to the Fed’s money printing, which went into overdrive in the early days of the pandemic).

BlackRock, Citadel Securities, Fidelity, Charles Schwab, WisdomTree… all this sudden interest in Bitcoin again from huge financial players, is, to some observers, signalling “absolutely the start of the bull run”.

 

Top 10 overview

With the overall crypto market cap at US$1.22 trillion, up about 5.4% since this time yesterday, here’s the current state of play among top 10 tokens – according to CoinGecko.

What’s perhaps most curious about this crypto surge today is the fact that Wall Street had something of an overnight selloff, with tech stocks largely affected. Historically, Bitcoin and the crypto market has been pretty tightly correlated to the movement, up and down, of US stonks.

As Eddy “Market Highlights” Sunarto noted this morning:

Overnight, tech stocks led the dip in New York as Fed Chairman Jerome Powell testified before Congress. The S&P 500 closed -0.52% lower, and the Nasdaq fell by -1.21%.

In his semi annual report, Powell told the House Financial Services Committee hearing that nearly all FOMC participants expect that it will be appropriate to raise interest rates further by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, we like this quote from Oanda analyst Edward Moya, regarding the crypto regulations turmoil in the US: “Who needs regulatory clarity if you see BlackRock making a move?”

Just a friendly reminder: none of the information presented and replicated here represents anything remotely resembling financial advice.

 

Uppers and downers: Even $PEPE is surging again

Some of the biggest 24-hour gainers and losers at press time. (Stats accurate at time of publishing, based on CoinGecko.com data.)

PUMPERS (11-100 market cap position)

• Pepe (PEPE), (market cap: US$576 million) +30%

• Bitcoin Cash (BCH), (market cap: US$2.64 billion) +23%

• Flow (FLOW), (market cap: US$577 million) +16%

• Conflux (CFX), (market cap: US$512 million) +12%

• NEO (NEO), (market cap: US$634 million) +12%

 

Again, there’s not much slumping today in the top 100 cryptos by market cap, so here are some…

LOWER-ORDER PUMPERS

• BEPRO Network (BEPRO), (market cap: US$9 million) +31%

• Gods Unchained (GODS), (market cap: US$36 million) +30%

• Wojak (WOJAK), (market cap: US$10 million) +14%

 

Around the blocks

Some pertinence and randomness that stuck with us on our morning moves through the Crypto Twitterverse.

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