The second week of July has been exciting for the blockchain and cryptocurrency world. Perhaps the biggest news is that US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell commented on Bitcoin (BTC) somewhat positively. In his testimony to the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday, Powell focused on Facebook's (FB  ) Libra stablecoin project, saying the size of the tech giant's network means the stablecoin could be systemically important, like "too big to fail" banking institutions. Powell also noted that Bitcoin and other coins are not widely used for payments unlike stablecoins, but they are a speculative store of value as a gold alternative. The comments came one day after Powell warned of the vast economic dangers of returning to the gold standard. Many in the crypto community interpreted Powell's words to mean investors would be better off selling gold and buying cryptocurrency.

Here is the rest of the week in review:

On Thursday US President Donald Trump tweeted a critique of Bitcoin, crypto assets, and Libra, in a historic first mention by a US president. He said he does not like them because they help foster illegal activities and are not money. He added that Facebook must apply for and obtain a banking charter in order to succeed with Libra and that the most reliable and dominant currency in the world is the US dollar (USD). Trump has long slammed Facebook before for its supposed bias against conservative views. The crypto community largely argued against Trump's tweets, with the Bitcoin Magazine and Morgan Creek cofounder Anthony Pompliano replying that Bitcoin has stronger valuation and crime resistance than Trump thinks. Tron (TRX) chief executive Justin Sun invited Trump to join the July 25 luncheon with Warren Buffett and other crypto founders.

Bitpoint was hacked for $32 million worth of coins. CoinDesk reported Friday that Bitpoint, a Japanese exchange, halted all services after discovering questionable withdrawals from its hot wallet a day earlier. The exchange's parent company Remixpoint Inc. issued a statement saying that $23 million of the loss belonged to its customers. Though it is still unclear which coins were stolen, the exchange offered trading of Bitcoin, Bitcoin cash (BCH), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), and Ripple (XRP). The Bitpoint hack is the latest in a long history of breaches of Japanese cryptocurrency exchanges.

Crypto prices corrected heavily to around $290 billion this week, exhausted from the recent bull run. For the majors, all coins excepted Tether (USDT) closed negative, with Tether and Bitcoin posting the smallest losses and Bitcoin SV (BSV) and EOS posting large double digit losses. In the top 100, the biggest losers were SOLVE (SOLVE), down 35%, IOST (IOST), down 35%, and Ardor (ARDR), down 35%. The biggest gainers were Bezant (BZNT), up a whopping 381%, Egretia (EGT), up 62%, ICON (ICX), up 27%. Next week traders will watch for a bounce back toward $300 billion.

The author owns a small amount of BTC.