Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the U.S. economy remains strong and even commented on Bitcoin at the New York Times DealBook Summit on Wednesday.
The Details: "The U.S. economy is in very good shape right now. It's in remarkably good shape, we are sort of the envy of other large economies around the world, and I'm going to do everything I can to keep it there during the rest of my term, and I feel very good about where the economy is and where monetary policy is," Powell said.
Powell said the current state of the economy allows the Fed to exercise caution in moving rates back down to a more neutral level.
"We view this as slightly hawkish - but stopping well short of challenging the market's growing confidence that a December cut is the base case, which has been our view all along," Krishna Guha at Evercore said, per Bloomberg.
The Fed's next rate decision is scheduled for Dec. 18 and markets are placing about a 75% probability that the Federal Open Market Committee will cut its key borrowing rate by a quarter percentage point. According to CNBC, the expectation is that the Fed then skips the January meeting before cutting a few more times in 2025.
Powell on BTC: Powell also addressed Bitcoin at the DealBook Summit.
"People use Bitcoin as a speculative asset. It's like gold - it's just virtual and digital," Powell said during the discussion.
"It's not a competitor for the dollar. It's really a competitor for gold," he added.
The price of Bitcoin pushed higher, approaching the $100,000 level, after Powell's comments and crypto-proponents spoke out on social media.
Anthony Pompliano, CEO of Professional Capital Management, reflected on the crypto market's reaction to Powell's comments.
"Bitcoin is going up because people are realizing central banks and countries don't hate Bitcoin anymore. Poetic," Pompliano posted on X.