Everyone enjoys a nice surprise. However, it won’t be surprising if Facebook and Libra have a different outlook on “surprises” at the moment.
Over the span of 7 days, Libra has faced dire criticism from not just many in the cryptocurrency community, but also the President of the United States, and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Today, United States’ Treasury Secretary joined the bandwagon against Facebook’s virtual asset. Steven Mnuchin held a press briefing where he spoke out about the issue of cryptocurrencies, claiming that they can be exploited to carry out “illicit activities.”
While many in the community had plotted Bitcoin’s performance in the aftermath of Trump and Fed Chair Powell’s comments, Mati Greenspan, eToro Senior Analyst, did the same after Mnuchin’s remarks. In his newsletter, Greenspan stated that there was significant activity recorded by the Bitcoin market during the briefing.
From the chart it can be observed that during the briefing, Bitcoin surged by around 5 percent in an hour, improving its valuation by almost $500. The price reaction in the market was speculated to be because of the fact that Bitcoin was not directly in the Secretary’s line of fire at the briefing.
Before the briefing started, it was expected that the entire virtual asset ecosystem would be under the gun following President Donald Trump’s recent comments on Bitcoin. However, the statement was pointed directly towards Libra alone. In fact, Bitcoin was identified as a speculative store of value; that is, if the asset complied with regulations.
Greenspan also spoke about Bitcoin’s current position in the market and claimed that the virtual asset had comfortably bounced off the support line at $10,000.
He stated,
“After testing the top twice and the bottom twice, we can now safely say that the market is trading in a range between $10,000 and $13,000.”
However, with the current volatility, the community remains unsure of how the price of Bitcoin will react to David Marcus’ Libra hearing on Tuesday in front for the Committee of Financial Services. Major exchanges like Binance and Bitstamp were already recording major BTC outflows due to “panic selling.”
Source From : Ambcrypto