Ether (ETH) and Bitcoin (BTC) pulled back on Wednesday as investors awaited fresh guidance from the United States Federal Reserve. ETH’s price slipped by 0.57% to $2,857, while the BTC/USD prices were up 0.68%, changing hands at $39,739 at around 10:30 am EST. Nevertheless, both pairs reached their current levels following a downside correction from their respective intraday highs of $2,391 and $40,925, respectively. Traders raised their exposure in the cryptocurrency market after Tesla’s Elon Musk, Ark Invest’s Cathie Wood and Twitter’s Jack Dorsey spoke in favor of Bitcoin during “The ₿ Word” conference last week. More tailwinds came amid …

Rich Checkan, president of Asset Strategies International (ASI), has described central bank digital currencies (CBDC) as a product that was “concocted in hell by Satan himself.” ASI was founded in 1982 and deals in alternative assets, such as precious metals, foreign currencies and pre-1933 United States gold coins, and offers a precious metals trading platform. Speaking during an interview with streaming financial news provider Kitco News on Tuesday, Checkan slammed CBDCs due to the threat they posed to individual privacy, noting they give the state the ability to monitor every transaction you make and track your entire life. “I think …

A recent sell-off in the Bitcoin (BTC) market pushed its prices below the key psychological support of $30,000. While the cryptocurrency's move downhill prompted many analysts, including Luno exchange's Vijay Nayyar and Kinetic Capital's Jehan Chu, to predict a further depressive move below $25,000, Anthony Pompliano offered a contrasting bullish outlook. The Morgan Creek Digital Assets founder pitted risk-on markets against the fears of the fast-spreading Delta variant of COVID-19. He noted that governments, on the whole, would introduce "more aggressive monetary stimulus" programs should the new coronavirus strain spread at the scale of its Alpha version. "History is not …

The Federal Reserve’s ongoing research into central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, has broadened to include stablecoins and whether they can be effectively regulated. In their paper, which was published in SSRN’s eLibrary on July 17, Gorton and Zhang argue that “privately produced monies” such as stablecoins are “not an effective medium of exchange because they are not always accepted at par and are subject to runs.” The authors then go on to propose solutions to address what they consider to be “systemic risks created by stablecoins.” After taking a deep dive into the history of private money, beginning with …

Bitcoin (BTC) bears should watch out for a potential blow as the number of margined short positions on the Bitfinex exchange crashes by roughly 25%. The dataset dropped to 11,066 BTC as of 12:20 GMT Saturday, compared to 14,897 BTC at the session's open. Meanwhile, the drop came as a part of a bigger downside move that started on July 15. On the day, the total number of margined short positions had reached 17,053 BTC. In simple terms, BTCUSDSHORTS represents the number of margined bearish positions on Bitfinex, measured in BTC. Traders borrow funds from Bitfinex — their broker — …

Dollar traders have kept a close eye on a potentially bullish "inverse head-and-shoulders" pattern building in the U.S. dollar index (DXY) chart. Meanwhile, the smell of a stronger greenback is weakening Bitcoin's (BTC) upside case, especially as the flagship cryptocurrency struggles to break out of its current $30,000-35,000 trading range. Three troughs, one price ceiling In detail, the inverse head-and-shoulders (IH&S) pattern forms after a downtrend. It contains three successive troughs, with the middle trough (head) being the deepest than the other two (shoulders). Ideally, the two shoulders are of equal height and width. All three troughs hang by a …

Ethereum's native token Ether (ETH) reclaimed $2,000 in the early New York trading hours Wednesday as crypto traders assessed the Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell's prepared congressional testimony. The ETH/USD exchange rate surged 7.19% to reach its intraday high of $2,019.90. Likewise, Bitcoin (BTC), whose 7-day positive correlation with Ether stands at 0.84 above zero, climbed, albeit by a modest 0.75%, hitting $32,379. Powell gave his semi-annual monetary policy report to Congress on Wednesday, a day after the U.S. consumer price index report showed an increase of 0.9% between May and June, reaching 5.4% for the first time in three …

Bitcoin’s (BTC) price continued its downtrend Wednesday ahead of the testimony from United States Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. The spot BTC/USD exchange rate fell to its 17-day low of $31,600 following a 3.46% intraday dip. Meanwhile, CME futures tied to the pair plunged 3.41% to $31,515, extending their week-to-date losses to 9.5%. Bitcoin had powered to $35,000 at the beginning of July, as bulls continued to defend support levels around $30,000 against each downside attempt. Independent market analyst Will Clemente III noted that entities with a low history of selling kept absorbing Bitcoin at lower levels from speculative traders, …

Caitlin Long, founder and CEO of the pioneering bank for the crypto sector Avanti Bank & Trust, has declared that the regulatory crackdown on crypto “has begun.” In a lengthy tweet on Tuesday, the Wall Street veteran highlighted her thoughts on the current regulatory situation in the United States, predicting that authorities will not target Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) directly, instead opting to go after “intermediaries” and “access points” for U.S. dollars into the sector. “The issue isn’t #Bitcoin, #Ethereum, or other crypto protocols — they’re just fine. The risk comes from the banks’ operational processes.” She also noted …

Popular cryptocurrency trader Keith Wareing warned Bitcoin (BTC) traders about a critical bearish scenario brewing in the market. The trader spotted Bitcoin inside an inverse cup-and-handle pattern earlier this month, a bearish structure that forms during a price wave downward, followed by a stabilizing period. The technical design typically leads the price lower by as much as the size of the previous decline. Bitcoin topped near $65,000 in mid-April before reversing to the downside in later sessions. The cryptocurrency crashed to as low as $28,800 on June 22 after attempting to keep prices above $30,000 repeatedly. It successfully did so …

Prior to the Federal Reserve announcing it would release a discussion paper on a central bank digital currency, chairperson Jerome Powell met with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong. According to Powell's meeting calendar which was made public on Friday, the Fed chair held a 30-minute meeting with Armstrong as well as former House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan on May 11. The reason for Ryan’s presence is unclear — the former speaker left politics in early 2019 and is now with private equity investment firm Solamere Capital. While Powell’s schedule did not reveal the topics under discussion, Armstrong referenced the meeting …

Randal Quarles, vice chair for supervision of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, said he believed neither dollar-pegged stablecoins nor digital currencies issued by foreign central banks are likely major causes for concern for the U.S. dollar. In a prepared statement for the Annual Utah Bankers Association Convention Monday, Quarles said that foreign currencies — whether fiat or digital — would be unlikely to challenge the U.S. dollar’s role in the global economy. He cited the size of the U.S. economy, trade relationships with other nations, and “credible U.S. monetary policy” as reasons he believed even a central bank digital …