Trump Triumph Sends Bitcoin Soaring | Crypto Lobbyists Wins Big

From Marc Andreessen to the Winklevoss twins, crypto’s richest supporters throw their weight (and wallets) into the 2024 election.

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Nina Bambysheva Staff Writer, Forbes Money & Markets
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Steven Ehrlich Director, Forbes Digital Assets
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BITCOIN SOARS FOLLOWING BIG TRUMP WIN

Bitcoin quickly set multiple all-time highs in the days following Trump’s historic reelection. As of mid-day Friday, the asset is trading at $76,539, good for an 11% gain this week. The sudden surge arrested a sluggish pattern for the asset, which had been in a slow decline since March when the euphoria from the launch of the spot bitcoin ETFs initially wore off. The asset is currently in uncharted territory, as it had run up against a wall around $72,000 multiple times in recent years but could not break through.

Bitcoin’s surge also drove up the rest of the market. Major cryptos Solana and Ethereum are up 25% and 20%, respectively, on the week, and the entire crypto market cap is up 12.6%. Solana’s jump is particularly noteworthy because of expectations that the Securities and Exchange Commission will now approve spot Solana ETFs to trade alongside similar products for Bitcoin and Ethereum once Trump replaces crypto skeptic Gary Gensler as the regulator’s chairman with a more friendly face to the industry.

POLYMARKET PASSES A BIG TEST

While polls leading up to the election on November 5 consistently predicted a coin flip, prediction markets such as Polymarket expected a strong Trump victory. In the campaign’s closing weeks, Trump’s odds surged as high as 67% as more than $3.68 billion worth of bets was placed on the election. Questions remain about the accuracy and honesty of these markets–Polymarket was rife with accusations of wash trading and a few large traders causing large movements in the odds–but its prediction metrics were ubiquitous across financial and traditional media as the country eagerly rode the “poller coaster” in the runup to the election. Additionally, now that a federal judge has allowed prediction market operators such as Polymarket competitor Kalshi to target U.S. citizens, expect prediction markets to remain a key part of electoral discourse moving forward.

With the big presidential election bet now resolved, the biggest political betting pool remaining is who will win the popular vote ($619 million in volume). The pool is now giving Trump a 100% certainty, but through most of election day betters were only giving him a 28% chance of getting more votes than Harris. Other major pools look at who will win the Super Bowl in February ($705 million) and Champions League next May ($352 million).

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CURRENT PRICE OF TOP 5 COINS (7-Day % Change)

Coin

Price

Percent Change

Bitcoin (BTC)

$76,539

10.8%

Ether (ETH)

$2,926

16.8%

Tether (USDT)

$1.00

0.0%

Solana (SOL)

$200

20.5%

Binance Coin (BNB)

$595

4.4%

Sources: Forbes Digital Assets, CoinGecko. Prices as of 1 p.m. on November 8, 2024.

CRYPTO LOBBYISTS TAKE A BOW

Crypto was a big winner in this week’s election in more ways than one. Aside from bringing a crypto-friend into the White House, crypto firms, investors and luminaries such as Coinbase, Ripple, Andreessen Horowitz, the Winklevoss twins and Kraken founder Jesse Powell, raised more than $200 million in this election cycle for a pro-crypto PAC called Fairshake, of which it spent more than $170 million on down-ballot candidates.

The money went to good use, as it spent more than $40 million to unseat Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), who chairs the Senate Banking Committee and is a major impediment to any pro-crypto legislation being passed, with Bernie Moreno. But Fairshake did not just support Republicans. It supported Democratic senate candidates Elisa Slotkin (MI) and Ruben Gallego (AZ). At the time of this writing Slotkin has been named the winner of her race, while Gallego is leading against Kari Lake in Arizona, but the final result has not been called yet.

Regardless, crypto made its voice heard this election cycle. In a post on X on November 6, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong wrote “This next congress will be the most pro-crypto congress ever. “

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