Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell testified in front of the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday morning and is set to testify once more on Thursday in front of the Senate Banking Committee. Powell spoke on the Fed’s target inflation goal of 2% and why he believes the central bank needs time to review more inflation data before cutting interest rates.
Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), who sits on the Senate Banking Committee, joins Yahoo Finance to discuss what she plans to ask Powell, from quantitative easing to the effect of inflation on individuals. The senator also discusses regulations on bitcoin.
While Lummis is pushing for a regulatory framework for the cryptocurrency, she feels it is becoming a safer investment for consumers: “I do think that bitcoin’s going to be fine. The eleven exchange-traded funds that were approved earlier this year, including by some of the longest names in financial services that are very stable, are going to bring people into the bitcoin exchange-traded fund that will finally have a comfort level that that’s a place that they can get involved in bitcoin that doesn’t make them uncomfortable. The other thing that’s going happen with bitcoin is it’s going to go through halving in April, which means half as many bitcoins will be produced every ten minutes so the scarcity that’s built into the protocol for bitcoin is going to start kicking in its ability to go up in price because we’re going to have a more hardened asset.”
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Editor’s note: This article was written by Nicholas Jacobino
