Yesterday, the United States announced its preliminary gross domestic product growth for Q4 2022. It came to a surprising increase of 2.9 percent, while most economists’ expectations were 2.6 percent. As a result, the US economy grew faster than expected.
What does this mean for Bitcoin?
The question, of course, is what exactly this means for Bitcoin. Initially not much, except that it is good news for the US central bank that the economy continues to grow. After all, they presented us with 4.25 percent interest rate increases last year. Normally that would hurt an economy quite a lot, but so far we feel very little of it in that sense.
This is striking, because most experts had foreseen a different scenario. Now it is hoped that inflation will slowly fall back to the target of 2.0 percent. If that succeeds and a recession does not materialize, there is a chance that financial assets will also do well again. As soon as inflation is back at the target of 2.0 percent, interest rates can also go down again. Lower interest rates, in turn, are good for the prices of financial assets.
Bitcoin didn’t really respond
Incidentally, Bitcoin did not really react to the US figures. Just like yesterday, the price is also trading around $23,000 today. Of course, it may be that Bitcoin is currently taking a breather after the fantastic first weeks of the new year. On the other hand, it is also a possibility that there was another bear market rally.
Everything depends on the further development of the US economy and inflation. An important indicator for the US economy is unemployment claims. They fell back somewhat on Thursday, so that the labor market also remains extremely strong. Unemployment in the United States is really at a historic low, making it difficult to speak of a recession.