The co-founder of the Gemini exchange, Tyler Winklevoss, has addressed Janet Yellen‘s statements about Bitcoin.
Yellen, who was governor of the Fed until 2018 and is about to be appointed Treasury Secretary by the new President Biden, stated a few days ago that she believes that many cryptocurrencies are primarily used to fund illicit activities.
Although this does not seem to be the case in reality, the threat of a crackdown on the use of these coins coming from the future Treasury Secretary of the US government has had a significant impact on the crypto markets, generating fear and increasing selling pressure.
Gemini’s co-founder decided to take to Twitter to address not only Yellen’s statements, but also to take a stand against the Fed and central banks.
In reference to what Yellen said, he wrote:
“This is completely false. #Bitcoin is mainly used by citizens to protect themselves against the incompetence and gross negligence of central bankers”.
The reference is not to cryptocurrencies in general, but specifically to Bitcoin, while Yellen was not referring exclusively to Bitcoin.
In fact in this case it is worth making two different statements for Bitcoin and altcoins, since it is only Bitcoin that is the useful tool to defend against the expansive monetary policies of central banks.
Gemini, the defence of Bitcoin
It must be said, however, that during the Yellen presidency the Fed’s balance sheet has not expanded much.
The first Quantitative Easing was launched in 2008 when Yellen’s predecessor Ben Bernanke was in charge of the US central bank. The second was also launched by the Fed in early 2013, when Bernanke was still governor. Yellen became governor in February 2014, i.e. just before the second QE started to slow down and ended at the end of the year.
Moreover, last year’s huge dollar issuance took place under Yellen’s successor Jerome Powell, so Janet Yellen can hardly be blamed for the huge dollar printing that has taken place in recent years.
However, Winklevoss refers generically to ‘central bankers’, a category of which Yellen has been a member for four years, so his reasoning is not incorrect. Nonetheless, it is extremely difficult for the Gemini co-founder’s words to have more weight than those of Janet Yellen.
