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Bitcoin Reverses Downtrend as Investors Digest Trump’s Crypto Comments, Central Bank Meetings
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Cryptocurrencies fell early in the last week of July as traders processed a series of political developments over the weekend and awaited central bank meetings later this week.
Bitcoin fell more than 1% on Monday, trading at $67,264.00, according to Coin Metrics. Previously, it had risen as high as $69,982.00. Ether also pared gains, but rose more than 1% to $3,311.28. Bitcoin closed last week with a 1% gain and ether fell 7%.
Traders are keeping a close eye on the Federal Reserve, the Bank of Japan and the Bank of England, which will meet this week. Eyes are particularly on Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, with hopes that his comments will confirm a rate cut in September.
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Bitcoin Rises at the Beginning of the Last Week of July
Elsewhere, former President Donald Trump delivered a highly anticipated speech over the weekend at the Bitcoin Conference in Nashville, taking aim at Democratic lawmakers including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler, and the Biden administration overall. Trump criticized officials for ways he said they have harmed the industry by failing to provide rules and regulations for it to function and thrive.
He also said his policy would be to retain 100% of the bitcoins currently held by the U.S. government (about 210,000 bitcoins), serving as the start of a National Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. In remarks that drew the loudest roar from the public, Trump vowed to replace Gensler “from day one.”
That same day, pro-bitcoin Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis from Wyoming announced that she would introduce a bill in the coming days that would pave the way for a bitcoin reserve, implementing a program to purchase 1 million bitcoin units over a set period of time to capture a total share of approximately 5% of the total bitcoin supply.
Bitcoin’s price fell about 1% during the speech, but rebounded into positive territory shortly afterward. Noelle Acheson, an economist and author of the newsletter “Crypto is Macro Now,” said she doubts the weekend’s events are driving action for long-term investors, at least at this point.
“Both Trump’s comments and Lummis’s bill are going to be really tough to get through Congress,” he said. “More overlooked but potentially more impactful is the news that [Vice President Kamala Harris’] The team is reaching out to representatives from the cryptocurrency industry.
“This signals a likely more significant shift in policy, especially if it leads to Vice President Harris distancing herself from the old guard of Senator Warren et. al. In other words, the likelihood that SEC Chairman Gensler will soon be replaced has just increased,” Acheson added.
Over the weekend the The Financial Times reported that Harris’s advisers are turning to cryptocurrency firms to “‘reset’ relations between her Democratic Party and an industry that has proven to be a major backer of Donald Trump.”
Cryptocurrencies have become a growing topic of interest in the upcoming US presidential election. Trump’s team hopes that the niche but growing crypto vote will help him get elected, given mainstream Democrats’ hostility to the sector.
However, the sector enjoys growing bipartisan support in Congress.
Over the weekend, more than a dozen Democratic members of the House and several other candidates for congressional seats signed a letter to the Democratic National Committee encouraging a “forward-looking approach” to cryptocurrencies, which would include adding “pro-digital asset language” to the party’s platform and selecting an SEC chairman who would promote innovation in the cryptocurrency space.