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A central bank official quoted by the Wall Street Journal‘s Steven Russolillo and Andrew Jeong referred to bitcoin as the combination of a bubble, a Ponzi scheme, and an environmental disaster. That trifecta is only a symptom of the frenzied buying of bitcoin in recent months, followed by the somewhat predictable sell-off.
Central banks are likely to cut short any attempt to make bitcoin great again. The WSJ writes:
“If authorities do not act preemptively, cryptocurrencies could become more interconnected with the main financial system and become a threat to financial stability,” said Agustin Carstens, general manager of the Bank for International Settlements, a Basel, Switzerland-based institution that acts as a lender and think tank for central banks. He added that there is a “strong case for policy intervention.”
As of 4:30 a.m. New York time, the price of bitcoin traded around $6,500, according to CoinDesk. Bitcoin is currently “sitting in no-man’s land” with a support level around $6,200—its 200-day moving average, said Thomas Lee, managing partner at Fundstrat Global Advisors.
At around $6,000, bitcoin sports a market cap of about $109 billion, which is roughly one-third of the total cryptocurrency market, according to data provider CoinMarketCap.
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