First Mover: Bitcoin Hits $12K as Trump Orders Checks for Unemployed

Bitcoin climbed above $12,000 early Monday before dipping once more as traders weighed U.S. President Donald Trump's move to provide emergency aid amid new signs the labor market recovery is stalling.

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Lawmakers with the opposition Democratic party quickly panned the move as unconstitutional, but economists with Goldman Sachs said the president's runaround might pressure Congress to quickly approve a stimulus package worth at least $1.5 trillion, according to Yahoo Finance.

The determination to provide additional stimulus - at a time when trillions of dollars have already been pumped into the global financial system by governments and central banks - could feed into bitcoin bulls' bet that the cryptocurrency will benefit as a hedge against inflation, similar to gold.

"We remain firmly of the view that the surge in unemployment is a wage-crushing event, which will play itself out in the data once the recent huge distortions fade, helping to hold down core inflation," the economics forecasting firm Pantheon wrote Friday in a report.

As previously reported in First Mover, Deutsche Bank strategists have projected that the Fed could expand total assets by another $5 trillion to $12 trillion, from about $7 trillion now.

"The jobs data only seems to be relevant to the markets these days in that it may have an impact on the amount of stimulus provided," Mati Greenspan, founder of the foreign-exchange and cryptocurrency analysis firm Quantum Economics, wrote on Friday.

Trend: Bitcoin is struggling to establish a foothold above $12,000 despite a key technical indicator reporting the strongest bullish bias in 13 months.

The move had nearly reversed the entire pullback from $12,118 to $10,659 observed on Aug. 2.The weekly chart moving average convergence divergence histogram, an indicator used to identify trend changes and trend strength, is printing higher bars above the zero line, a sign of the strengthening of the upward momentum.