A rotation of top candidates shook Polymarket’s bets on the next Federal Reserve chairman, but the new frontrunner, BlackRock’s Rick Rieder, argued that bitcoin would replace gold and recommended people have it in their wallets.
Rieder, BlackRock’s chief investment officer for global fixed income, has risen to the top of President Donald Trump’s list of likely picks in prediction markets, and he has often been supportive of cryptocurrencies.
He said as early as 2020 – in an era long before digital assets – that bitcoin would replace gold as a store of value, “because it’s much more functional than circulating a gold bar,” he said in an interview with CNBC. And more recently, he told the same outlet that bitcoin should be part of a smart investment mix, saying the leading digital token and gold were “things that give you a little bit of ballast in the portfolio.”
In that September interview, when bitcoin was still above $112,000, he predicted that “it’s going to go up.” The cryptocurrency is currently trading around $88,000, having recently fallen due to possible tariffs and other geopolitical unrest.
Trump has a choice to make before the term of Fed Chairman Jerome Powell – whom the president has portrayed as his economic enemy – expires on May 15. It was Trump who initially placed Powell, a Republican, in this central role, but the president has since regularly bemoaned his performance, calling him “stupid” and “stupid” and nicknames such as “Mr. Too Late.”
Meanwhile, Trump has often teased the frontrunners for his replacement, creating a volatile prediction market. Rieder said it was “an incredible honor to even be mentioned in this list.”
Rieder loudly shares Trump’s frustrations with the slow pace at which the Fed has cut interest rates. In a recent interview during the president’s trip to Davos, Switzerland, Trump called Rieder “very impressive,” and his ratings on Polymarket rose from less than 3 percent to nearly 53 percent at their peak, before sitting at 48 percent currently.
For the crypto sector, a Fed chair can pull several levers. In addition to having strong influence within the group that sets the federal funds rate, the president controls the board’s regulatory agenda. However, Powell defers to Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman for the Fed’s monitoring work.
So Rieder’s enthusiasm for crypto may not have a significant role in the rules that the Fed’s regulatory side writes for things like stablecoins or central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).
More than a political mechanism, a Fed chair has a quieter role as an outsized voice on the health and direction of the U.S. economy, and a staunch Bitcoin advocate in that position would be a first.
Although Powell is stepping down as chairman soon, his tenure as a regular governor on the Fed board continues, leaving open the question of whether he will follow the traditional route and leave the Fed after his term expires or if he will stay for another two years. Each board member automatically has a seat on the Federal Open Market Committee that decides U.S. interest rates, meaning Powell’s decision to stay would maintain her generally centrist position on that group and would not open up another seat for a Trump appointee.
Trump’s relentless criticism of Powell intensified last month when his Justice Department said it was investigating the central bank chairman for his public descriptions of renovations to Federal Reserve buildings in Washington. Powell issued an unusual and direct response.
“The threat of criminal prosecution is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the president’s preferences,” Powell said.
