Lael Brainard, a member of the Federal Reserve’s board of governors, encouraged the United States to be a leader in research and policy regarding central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, due to potential international developments. In remarks prepared for the U.S Monetary Policy Forum in New York on Friday, Brainard said the People's Bank of China’s pilot program for its digital yuan could have implications on the dollar’s dominance in cross-border payments and payment systems. However, a digital dollar could allow people around the world to continue to rely on its fiat counterpart. “It is prudent to consider how the …

The Federal Open Market Committee, or FOMC, has approved rules which would ban senior officials at the Federal Reserve from purchasing and holding cryptocurrencies and other investments. In a Friday announcement, the FOMC said that starting on May 1, senior Federal Reserve officials already working at the agency would have one year to “dispose of all impermissible holdings,” while new officials would have six months to do so. The new rules specify that Fed senior officials, which include Reserve Bank first vice presidents and research directors, FOMC staff officers, the System Open Market Account manager and deputy manager, Board division …

The CEO and founder of leading blockchain venture fund Pantera Capital, Dan Morehead, stated that digital assets will be the “best place” to store capital following the potential fallout of interest rate hikes from the U.S. Federal Reserve. Investors across stock and crypto markets are currently fixated on the direction the Fed might take to combat rising inflation which topped 7.5% as of this month. Bitcoin and crypto markets have often moved in correlation to trends in the stock market, however, Morehead argued in his Feb. 16 newsletter that bonds, stocks, and real estate will cop the brunt of the …

An uptick in Bitcoin (BTC) supply to whales' addresses witnessed across January appears to be stalling midway as the price continues its intraday correction toward $42,000, the latest data from CoinMetrics shows. Whales, fishes take a break from Bitcoin The sum of Bitcoin being held in addresses whose balance was at least 1,000 BTC came to be 8.10 million BTC as of Feb. 16, almost 0.12% higher month-to-date. In comparison, the balance was 7.91 million BTC at the beginning of this year, up 2.4% year-to-date. Notably, the accumulation behavior among Bitcoin's richest wallets started slowing down after BTC closed above …

The cryptocurrency market remains in a state of flux as investors are once again focused on what steps the U.S. Federal Reserve might take to combat rising inflation and markets wobble as the situation in Ukraine remains tense. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that the price of Bitcoin (BTC) has hovered around the $44,000 support level and traders are hopeful that an inverse head and shoulders chart pattern will lead to a sustained bullish breakout. Here’s a survey of what several analysts in the market are keeping an eye on moving forward as global issues from inflation …

Bitcoin (BTC) fell into the Wall Street open on Feb. 16 as markets held their breath over upcoming comments from the United States Federal Reserve. Trader: Chop then breakout "makes sense" for Bitcoin Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView tracked a swift decline for BTC/USD around the start of trading, with lows of $43,312 appearing on Bitstamp. The pair had managed to hit $44,500 overnight, these gains dissipating as traders awaited cues from the Fed on inflation, asset purchase tapering and the all-important interest rate hike schedule. With Bitcoin and altcoins highly correlated with stocks, any testing times for …

The Super Bowl advertisements by crypto companies including Coinbase, FTX, and several others ruled the social media and news headlines for their out-of-the-box approach. However, The United States Senate Banking Committee chief Sherrod Brown was not impressed and blasted the ad-makers for not including appropriate warnings and risks involved. Brown, during the Tuesday Senate hearing on stablecoins, brought in the topic of popular crypto advertisements that aired during the Super Bowl. He said most of these ads failed to tell people about the downsides of investing in cryptocurrencies. The companies failed to mention the wild price swings and prevalent scams …

Members of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee have reportedly divided along party lines regarding President Joe Biden’s pick of Sarah Bloom Raskin as vice chair for supervision for the Board of Governors at the Federal Reserve. According to a Tuesday report from Reuters, Senator Pat Toomey, the ranking member on the Senate Banking Committee, said he had asked the 12 Republican senators on the committee to not attend a meeting in which members were expected to vote on President Biden’s nominees for the Fed. Toomey reportedly said that Democratic leadership can proceed with “five of the six nominees” put forth …

Bitcoin (BTC) hodlers, a class of crypto investors that hold onto their bitcoin tokens for at least 155 days, have been dumping them lately. The price recovery witnessed in the Bitcoin market across the last two weeks coincided with a rise in hodlers and speculative investors selling their coins, according to data provided by researcher Willy Woo. Nonetheless, BTC's price ability to withstand the selling pressure meant there was buying pressure coming from elsewhere. As Cointelegraph reported earlier this week, so-called Bitcoin whales are accumulating BTC at current price levels. "This selling is contrasted by exchange data showing sophisticated passive …

Analysts and pundits will scramble to find some angle to explain intra-day price action whenever important economic numbers are published and this practice is commonplace in the crypto sector. When the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a 7.5% increase in the consumer price index (CPI) on Feb. 10, traders rushed to find some connection to the crypto price action. However, historical correlation data shows investors should actually closely scrutinize whether there is even a relation between Bitcoin (BTC) and major economic indicators. General investment advice would suggest that traders ignore the intraday movements, especially considering that most assets …

The world recently got a sneak peek at what a digital dollar, or at least one component of a hypothetical United States central bank digital currency (CBDC), might look like, courtesy of Project Hamilton, a collaborative effort of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and the MIT Digital Currency Initiative. The results of the project’s first phase were originally expected last summer but were released on Feb. 3. The project, announced in 2020, is named in honor of Alexander Hamilton, the first U.S. Treasury secretary, and Margaret Hamilton, an MIT staffer who contributed to NASA’s Apollo program. Researchers developed two …

Bitcoin (BTC) addresses holding at least 1,000 BTC, the so-called whales, have started accumulating more tokens during the recent market recovery. As of Feb. 10, the total supply in these addresses was 8.096 million BTC versus 7.95 million on Jan. 24, according to data from Coin Metrics. Bitcoin whales and institutional inflows The buying sentiment among the richest crypto investors picked momentum during Bitcoin's recovery in the past two weeks as BTC rebounded from its 2022 low of $33,000 on Jan. 24 to around $43,500 on Feb. 11. Small Bitcoin investors, addresses that hold less than 1 BTC, so-called "fishes," …