"It goes up and down, I wonder where the price will be at the time of the halving?"
The price of the cryptocurrency king Bitcoin (BTC) last night fell to $61,680 amid Federal Reserve (Fed) Chairman Jerome Powell's statement regarding the future of interest rates.
This is because Powell outlined the need to continue a controlled monetary policy to achieve his inflation target of 2%, therefore higher rates could last longer than most investors and analysts expected.
The move followed a series of strong economic numbers, including job growth and retail sales where 303,000 jobs were added in March 2024 while retail sales rose 0.7% versus 0.4% as forecast.
Historically, BTC has been heavily influenced by interest rate movements following the digital asset's tendency to change the investment environment with capital flows more interested in riskier assets such as crypto.
Reinforcing a cautious approach, Fed Vice Chairman Philip Jefferson did not mention any interest rate cuts in his recent remarks but instead focused on a willingness to maintain tight monetary policy.
There is no denying that the approaching BTC halving event may have an impact on supply, but it has been neutralized by bearish sentiment driven by the Fed's policy outlook.
As of this writing, the price of BTC recovering to $63,903 has jumped by 0.20% in the last 24 hours with a market cap of over $1 trillion but is still down 7.23% over the last week.
