By Matt Hussey
3 min read
Whoever said Bitcoin was beyond politics clearly didn’t know what happens when politicians try to regulate crypto.
On Wednesday, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib announced the Stablecoin Tethering and Bank Licensing Enforcement (STABLE) Act, a proposed bill that said anyone who ran a stablecoin would require a banking charter approved by the Federal Reserve.
Crypto Twitter, naturally wasn’t very happy, and the bill seems highly unlikely to become law. But no sooner had the bill been proposed, Bitcoin plotted a course northward as its price climbed aggressively in the early hours of Thursday morning.
Bitcoin had been flitting between $18,900 and $19,200 for 12 hours before a sudden surge took it above $19,450. At the time of writing, the price is softening a smidge, but the surge was particularly noticeable.
Now, it’s entirely possible the surge wasn’t connected to the bill, there was a bevy of positive news for Bitcoin investors yesterday. These include bullish statements on crypto’s future from the likes of Visa and PayPal.
Bitcoin even got the seal of approval from Larry Fink, the CEO of asset management firm BlackRock which presides over a $7 trillion investment fund.
But in the aftermath of these announcements Bitcoin reacted with a giant “meh”. Could it be something to do with the sell-off of US dollars? The US Dollar Index (DXY) - a tool that measures USD’s value in relation to a basket of other currencies - reached 90.22 on Thursday, its lowest level since April 2018.
That led Mark Wilson, Morgan Stanley’s chief investment officer to predict on Bloomberg that the US dollar will slide 10% in the next year. We’ve already seen Bitcoin suck cash out of gold, is the greenback next?
US stock markets continued their bull run from November into December. The S&P 500 hit another all-time closing high with the Dow and Nasdaq also faring well.
The performance appears to be in connection with a bipartisan relief proposal doing the rounds among US lawmakers. A stimulus package has been on the cards for months, and indeed we’ve been writing about the idea for months. But sentiment around this new proposal of $908 billion, which is less than half the Democrats original $2 trillion proposal, seems optimistic.
While Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has dug his heels in over the size and scale of the stimulus, the White House has added weight to the proposal by signing the plan.
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