Bitcoin Price At $5.9k as Interest Rates Went 0 Percent

In the past few hours, Bitcoin (BTC) price perked up and rallied 14.33%. It reached a daily high of $5,940. And the strong upside move lets the price break out of the tight $5,070 to $5,520 range. However, the price is pulling back under its previous trading range.

In addition to that, the boost in price happened shortly following the announcement of the U.S. Federal Reserve. They would cut interest rates to 0%, launch a $700-billion quantitative easing program, and the regulator gives more details regarding the kind of securities it would purchase.

Also, they designed the massive stimulus package to fight the market turmoil due to the novel Coronavirus. Immediately after the announcement, Dow futures fell 1,000 points. As a result, it triggered the unit down and hinting that the Monday open might see the Dow, S&P 500 and other major indices to put back the gains accrued at the market close last Friday.

The stinging pullback in futures markets indicates that despite strong intervention from the Fed, investors remain extremely worried about the long-term economic impact. And these are from numerous countries closing their borders, airline operators canceling operations, and mandatory self-quarantines, and curfews forcing millions of people to stop all activity and stay indoors.

Nonetheless, it seems like the surge of Bitcoin to $5,940 might be nothing more than an instance of price influenced by news. Recently, the price has declined below $5,400.

Aside from that, altcoin prices benefited from the Federal Reserve announcement. XRP added 3.47%, while Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC) gained 3.47% and 6.63%, respectively. Now, the overall cryptocurrency market cap stands at $154.7 billion. And Bitcoin’s dominance rate is 63.9%.

• Check-out Financebrokerage’s comprehensive review on Fundiza

Coinbase Launches BTC Transaction

Moreover, Coinbase, a major cryptocurrency exchange, recently disclosed a new feature on its platform designed to save users money on transaction fees.

The exchange released a blog post on March 13. They announced that Coinbase would quickly start offering Bitcoin transaction batching for its customers.

And this move taken needs no action from customers. It will enable single on-chain transactions of cryptos to be bundled into one. Also, the exchange assumes that this will diminish the load on the Bitcoin network and the resulting fees customers pay for sending money.

Coinbase product manager, Eli Haims, explained the move as one for which users could save on transaction fees. The said transaction fees would lower by an equivalent amount. And they will do this by chopping the load on the network by more than 50%.

Haims stated, “Supporting transaction batching is one way that Coinbase can help make Bitcoin more usable by lowering network fees overall and freeing up space on the blockchain.”

According to the product manager, this allows the network to add transactions throughout and helps to boost scalability.

Based on the CoinMetrics, the average fee for transactions on the Bitcoin network is currently around $0.30.

Furthermore, this latest feature has been in the works for Coinbase for quite some time. CEO Brian Armstrong tweeted last June 2019 that is was embarrassing the length of time it took to release transaction batching.