Bitcoin (BTC) bulls were lambasting United States President Donald Trump this week as he called on the Federal Reserve to tax people'due south savings.

In a tweet on May 11, Trump renewed pressure on the Fed, which he has long suggested should "keep step" with Europe in lowering rates.

Trump: The U.S. needs negative interest rate "souvenir"

The Eu offset introduced negative interest rates in 2022.

Trump wrote:

As long as other countries are receiving the benefits of Negative Rates, the USA should as well accept the 'GIFT'. Big numbers!

Negative rates essentially involve charging banks — and therefore savers — to shop coin. Fed chair Jerome Powell has said he is against their introduction, but concluding month, an ex-official joined calls to send U.S. rates negative for the first fourth dimension in history.

"The U.Southward. Federal Reserve should fight a rapidly deepening recession by taking interest rates beneath zero for the first time ever," onetime Minneapolis Fed president Narayana Kocherlakota claimed.

Taxing savers, Bitcoiners say, has merely worsened since the coronavirus, every bit enforced economical shutdowns saw governments bond out large business while taking equity and wealth away from smaller players.

Fiat squeezes the savers

Trump's words were particularly poignant, coming on the day that Bitcoin "hardened" its coin supply and cut inflation to 1.viii% via its 3rd block reward halving.

Unsurprisingly, those in favor of the cryptocurrency had little time for the president's demands.

"Every bit the Fed adopts a controlled Weimar strategy, Bitcoin just completed its third halving," Gemini exchange co-founder Tyler Winklevoss responded.

Fifty-fifty gold bug Peter Schiff, famous for his dismissals of Bitcoin, was unimpressed.

"Negative rates are non a gift. They are a transfer of wealth from savers to debtors," he told Trump on Twitter.

But the inflation created to brand negative rates possible will injure wage earners too, plus the overall economic system will be less productive and living standards volition be lower equally a result.

Previously this week, critics decried the Fed pushing alee with plans to enter the exchange-traded fund market, while Virgin Galactic chairman Chamath Palihapitiya told CNBC that the dollar was heading for a "massive deflationary spiral."