Fed's Powell Wins Forbes' Crypto Person of the Year Honors; Do They Give Awards for Snark?
A side effect of the Fed's medicine for the pandemic-stricken U.S. economy was to create conditions ideal for the rise of cryptocurrencies.
Dec 27, 2020 at 12:48 a.m. UTCUpdated Sep 14, 2021 at 10:48 a.m. UTC
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U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is the winner of Forbes' inaugural "Person of the Year in Crypto" award, an honor for which the central bank chairman is unlikely to make room on his mantel.
- Because Powell's Fed effectively printed more than $3 trillion in new money, almost doubling the central bank's balance sheet in the process, it helped create an atmosphere that converted many long-time crypto skeptics into believers, Forbes noted. Forbes quoted venture firm Pantera Capital as saying the Fed's actions created "two centuries of debt in one month."
- That spending spree and concomitant debt explosion led one of the judges, Anthony Pompliano of Morgan Creek Digital, to credit Powell with basically creating a "$3 trillion marketing campaign for bitcoin."
- Crypto investors have been betting all year the flood of government and central bank spending to fight the coronavirus-caused economic slowdown will eventually lead to inflation, against which bitcoin is viewed as a hedge.
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