Blockchain Association says Bitcoin investment and price to rise as economy ‘comes around’

Bitcoin (BTC) appears to stabilize in terms of volatility compared to other months, with the flagship digital asset now holding around the $19,000 price level in October. 

Speaking with CNBC’s Squawk Box, Kristin Smith, the executive director of Blockchain Association, shared her thoughts on the cryptocurrency market and Bitcoin relating to its latest price movements on October 21.

Smith noted Bitcoin has remained mostly stable for a few reasons. First, retail investors have largely exited from investing in Bitcoin owing to concerns about paying for gas and groceries; “they don’t have the ability to put extra money away invest in Bitcoin at the moment.”

However, she does believe that investors that are in there right now are holding out and in it for the long 

“As we start to see the economy come around, and people putting more risk into their investment portfolios, we’re going to see the investment in Bitcoin rise and subsequently the price.”

As thing stand, Bitcoin is currently trading at $18,952, down 1.13% in the last 24 hours and a further 4.11% in the last week, with a total market capitalization of $363 billion, according to data retrieved by Finbold from CoinMarketCap.

Crypto legislation 

Regarding regulation and legislation in the space, Smith said that congress is actively working on legislation that would provide additional regulation for the underlying digital commodity spot market, which would include the Bitcoin spot market. 

The executive director disclosed that the legislation has ‘a real chance of getting done’ before the end of the year the chair and ranking member of the United States Senate Agriculture Committee has introduced a new draft of the Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act (DCCPA) she noted: “this is a pretty good framework for regulating centralized exchanges at the spot market.” 

Although there still remains an outstanding issue around decentralization finance (DeFi), which operate differently from custodial exchanges.

“There’s a decent chance we could see legislation signed into law before the end of the year,” she said.

However, the DCCPA has recently come under fire from the crypto community, which condemned it as detrimental to DeFi after its draft text was leaked to the public.