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Bitcoin Tumbles Below $21K After Powell’s Hawkish Remarks
The Federal Reserve chair said households and businesses should prepare for pain as the central bank works to bring down inflation.
By Helene Braun
Updated May 11, 2023, 6:21 p.m. Published Aug 26, 2022, 4:30 p.m.
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Bitcoin (BTC) dropped almost 5% in value in the two hours following Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s long-awaited keynote address at the Fed's Jackson Hole, Wyoming, economic conference Friday morning. Equity markets slid with crypto, with the S&P 500 index down more than 2%.
“The stock market had not priced this in except the last couple of days and it’s because the risk was that they would be hawkish, not the belief,” Bob Iaccino, chief strategist at Path Trading Partners and co-portfolio manager at Stock Think Tank, told CoinDesk.
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“[The market] is pricing it in now at least as much as it believes the Fed, but it's about Powell’s legacy and his credibility at this point,” he added. Iaccino further noted that markets had rallied ahead of the speech – perhaps anticipating more dovish remarks – thus likely exacerbating today’s decline.
From Powell’s address: “Reducing inflation is likely to require a sustained period of below-trend growth … While higher interest rates, slower growth and softer labor market conditions will bring down inflation, they will also bring some pain to households and businesses.”
Read more: Markets Should Prepare for Persistent Inflation and Continued Rate Hikes
The largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, bitcoin initially showed little reaction to Powell’s remarks, but has now turned sharply lower – to the current $20,700 from just shy of $22,000 ahead of the speech.
In addition to the S&P 500’s 2.15% decline, the Nasdaq is lower by 2.7% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average by 1.8%.
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Pudgy Penguins is building a multi-vertical consumer IP platform — combining phygital products, games, NFTs and PENGU to monetize culture at scale.
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Pudgy Penguins is emerging as one of the strongest NFT-native brands of this cycle, shifting from speculative “digital luxury goods” into a multi-vertical consumer IP platform. Its strategy is to acquire users through mainstream channels first; toys, retail partnerships and viral media, then onboard them into Web3 through games, NFTs and the PENGU token.
The ecosystem now spans phygital products (> $13M retail sales and >1M units sold), games and experiences (Pudgy Party surpassed 500k downloads in two weeks), and a widely distributed token (airdropped to 6M+ wallets). While the market is currently pricing Pudgy at a premium relative to traditional IP peers, sustained success depends on execution across retail expansion, gaming adoption and deeper token utility.
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Gold in 'extreme greed' sentiment as it adds entire bitcoin market cap in one day
Bullion ripped past $5,500 and sentiment gauges hit “extreme greed,” while bitcoin stayed pinned below $90K — a split that’s getting harder to ignore.
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- Gold’s surge above $5,500 an ounce has taken on the feel of a crowded trade, with its notional value jumping about $1.6 trillion in a single day.
- Sentiment gauges such as JM Bullion’s Gold Fear & Greed Index are signaling extreme bullishness in precious metals, even as similar crypto indicators remain stuck in fear.
- Bitcoin is lagging despite the “hard assets” narrative, trading like a high-beta risk asset while investors seeking a store of value are favoring physical gold and silver over digital tokens.
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