Bitcoin price today
Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell has come under attack as the U.S. central bank grapples with a looming dollar crisis—which some expect to boost the bitcoin price.
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The bitcoin price has soared as the Fed kicked off an interest rate cutting cycle in September, while the price of gold rockets to fresh all-time highs as central banks around the world stock up due to geopolitical and economic uncertainty, leading Coinbase’s chief executive to predict exactly when the bitcoin price will flip gold’s $18 trillion.
Now, after Powell flung the door open for Wall Street to further adopt bitcoin and crypto, Tesla billionaire and leader of Donald Trump’s Doge department of government efficiency Elon Musk has backed bitcoin hero Ron Paul for Fed chair—author of 2009 book End The Fed.
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Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell has come under fire from president Donald Trump and his advisor … [+] Elon Musk—with Musk backing bitcoin hero Ron Paul for Fed chair.
Musk, responding to conservative commentator Charlie Kirk’s suggestion that former Texas Republican congressman Ron Paul be named as Fed chair, signaled his support.
“Great idea,” Musk posted to X, quoting Kirk’s post that read: “Ron Paul would make a great next chairman of the Federal Reserve. No other institution in American life has so eroded the purchasing power of working Americans as the Fed, and as a longtime critic and skeptic, Ron Paul would be a living and breathing forcing function to bring reform and accountability.”
“That would be amazing,” Musk had earlier posted, replying to U.S. senator Mike Lee who wrote: “Raise your hand if you’d like to see Ron Paul as Federal Reserve chairman.”
Musk also backed a suggestion that Doge and Paul carry out an audit of the Federal Reserve.
Paul, a fierce critic of the Fed whose End The Fed book called for its abolition, is a libertarian whose 2008 presidential bid was backed by bitcoin and crypto pioneer Nick Szabo and ethereum cofounder Charles Hoskinson.
Responding to suggestions he could be tapped to audit the Fed, Paul said any such audit would be done with intention of ending the Fed, pointing to the Doge investigation into the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) that’s resulted in Trump shutting down the agency.
“I want to audit as a process [that will result in] people demanding it ‘we need to end this,’” Paul said on his Rumble channel The Ron Paul Liberty Report. “Like what happened with USAID, they [Doge] investigated, they had the investigation, they had the audit.”
Speaking at the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami, Florida, Paul called for the Fed to be abolished, accurately predicted “[government spending is] going to work well for bitcoin,” and said bitcoin should be “considered seriously” as an alternative to the Federal Reserve System.
In January, Trump renewed his attacks on the Fed and chair Powell—appointed by Trump in 2017—following its decision to leave interest rates unchanged despite Trump’s public calls for them to be cut.
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The bitcoin price has surged over the last year, climbing along with the gold price as traders bet … [+] bitcoin and gold will protect them from geopolitical shocks.
“If the Fed had spent less time on DEI, gender ideology, ‘green’ energy, and fake climate change, inflation would never have been a problem,” Trump posted to his Truth Social platform, adding he will have to stop inflation by “unleashing American energy production,” and “reigniting American manufacturing.”
Last year, Trump suggested the U.S. president should have “at least” a say over setting interest rates, something that would end the Fed’s independence, though Powell has vowed to serve out his term, which is due to end in 2026, and Trump has said he doesn’t plan on attempting to fire Powell.
This week, Powell will appear before Congress as part of his scheduled semiannual testimony in an atmosphere described as “hyper-charged,” by Sarah Binder, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, in comments made to Bloomberg.
Scrutiny of the Fed has increased since the Covid pandemic and economically devastating lockdowns.
U.S. debt has soared over recent years, topping $34 trillion at the beginning of 2024, with Covid-era stimulus measures contributing to massive government spending and helping to send inflation spiraling out of control in 2022.
Inflation of over 10% forced the Federal Reserve to hike interest rates at a historical clip, pushing up debt interest payments and fueling fears of a “death spiral.”
