Musings from Bitcoin 2022: the Fed and Government Oversight
Neither this post nor any other on cryptofal.com should be taken as financial advice. It is not
This week, Miami is hosting the Bitcoin 2022 conference in a veritable who’s who of the Bitcoin community. Wednesday morning’s inaugural speaker, Mike Novogratz reiterated his prediction that when the Fed eventually pauses interest rate increases, BTC prices will skyrocket.
Whether or not you share Novogratz’ assumption, the path of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) remains clear and their April meeting minutes, released later that afternoon, further confirms that there’s no slowing the mission to stave off rising inflation.
On the FOMC meeting agenda for this month and next is tackling a nearly $9 trillion balance sheet of assets. The rate at which they plan to shed this amount will cap out at $95 billion a month. Additionally, the plan to raise the interest rates by 50 basis points is also looking likely after it was made clear that many of the FOMC members felt the increase last month should have reflected that number. The hopefuls subscribing to Novogratz predictions may need to wait a while before seeing BTCs price take off.
It seems that discussion of government oversight and regulation was on the minds of many coming into this week’s event. Later in the afternoon, Kevin O’Leary gave a keynote speech where he stressed the importance that policy will have to play for the growth of BTC and the crypto space. While oversight is a dirty word in the community, government involvement is inevitable.
The President’s Executive Order from last month gave many the impression that the government’s stance on crypto will be benign and accepting, but there are some who view that and the possible movement into a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) as a direct threat to crypto. O’Leary and Novogratz both seem to be of the same mind that whether or not the community agrees, policy and oversight is approaching.
The active participation of the industry is needed to not only educate politicians, but help influence the direction of the tide. This is especially important when one considers the influence crypto friendly policy here in the U.S. would have over the rest of the world.