The United States Federal Reserve has funneled the equivalent of half the entire Bitcoin (BTC) supply into the economy — but banks want even more money.
As the New York Fed confirmed on its website, so-called repurchase operations, or “repos,” totalled $89 billion on March 5 alone.
Coronavirus sparks liquidity scum
Repos are designed to provide temporary liquidity to lenders. As Cointelegraph previously noted, the practice is akin to conjuring fiat value out of thin air.
The Fed was reacting to economic weakness in the face of coronavirus, having already cut its interest rate target significantly this month.
Thursday’s liquidity spree was equal in value to approximately 9.8 million BTC — over half the total mined supply.
The overall demand for repo cash in recent weeks has meanwhile exceeded even the Fed’s own limit, the Wall Street Journal added on Friday.
Bitcoin commentators were already quick to sound the alarm over the health of the fiat economy, based on money that has no intrinsic value and which is not backed by any verifiable asset.
“Cut interest rates and print money. These are the tools of central banks,” Morgan Creek Digital co-founder Anthony Pompliano summarized last week.
More dollars, not more value
The coronavirus outbreak has highlighted the systemic instabilities of traditional markets. Stocks have seen historic volatility, while rate decreases and a drop in oil consumption saw many countries’ fiat currencies hemorrhage value.
Such fragility puts “hard” money such as Bitcoin in the spotlight. In a world which uses money with a verifiably limited supply which is impossible to manipulate, there is neither a need for foreign exchange markets, nor for “management” of the economy by central banks.
Bitcoin’s reliable supply means that it has a high stock-to-flow ratio. The creator of an accompanying model using stock-to-flow has shown that it is co-integrated with Bitcoin’s price and that that should, therefore, hit $100,000 at some point in 2021.
