Americans voting with their wallet is nothing new. But for pro-crypto voters, that approach to picking a candidate appears to have been elevated in this year’s U.S. presidential election as Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris.
Certainly, former President Trump, with his NFT collections, speech at Bitcoin 2024, the promise to fire long-time crypto antagonist Gary Gensler and posting a Bitcoin whitepaper birthday message likely all did their part in galvanizing voter turnout. Yet, at the end of the day, for many Bitcoin bulls, a Trump victory over Vice President Harris also held the promise that the price of their favorite digital asset would go up.
"Crypto supporters saw a Trump victory as very bullish for crypto, which you can see via election night price movement on BTC and DOGE," Plume Network CEO Chris Yin told The Block. "Now we’re all looking forward to a golden bull run."
At least in the short term, it appears Trump's victory has done what Bitcoin bulls had hoped—push the cryptocurrency's price higher. As election results began trickling in Tuesday night, bitcoin hit an all-time high, soaring above $75,000. As of 2:49 p.m. ET on Wednesday, bitcoin was changing hands at $75,587.52, about an 8% increase, according to The Block Price Page.
An October survey suggested some voters might decide who to vote for simply based on how it would move crypto. Pro-crypto venture capital firm Paradigm conducted a poll and found that 5% of all voters identified "themselves as single-issue crypto voters." Paradigm also said at the time that its polling showed voters had begun to feel they could trust Republicans more than Democrats on crypto policy.
MicroStrategy founder and Executive Chairman Michael Saylor, one of the market's highest-profile Bitcoin bulls, appeared celebratory on Wednesday as he posted to X, "We have a Bitcoin President." Saylor might have also been upbeat seeing MicroStrategy's bitcoin holdings increase in value by more $1 billion as Trump's victory spurred BTC higher.
And that's exactly how some predicted events would shake out if Trump somehow won.
Bullish bitcoin analysts like brokerage firm Bernstein's Gautam Chhugani have been prognosticating that a Trump victory would mean price gains for bitcoin. The day before the election, Chhugani and his colleagues predicted that bitcoin would hit a price target of $80,000 to $90,000 following a Trump win in the run-up to the inauguration on Jan. 20. Conversely, a Harris win would send bitcoin spiraling down to $50,000 over the same period.
Chhugani owns various cryptocurrencies.
Bitcoin advocate and entrepreneur Anthony Pompliano echoed Bernstein's sentiments on Wednesday. "A pro-bitcoin president will bring a tailwind to the asset," he said in a post to X.
Bloomberg Senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas said signs of a Trump victory being positive for the price of bitcoin have been apparent for weeks. He pointed to how a recent Iowa poll showing Harris up caused bitcoin's price to decline.
“Everybody flipped out and that’s when bitcoin went down, there was definitely a reaction to that,” Balchunas told The Block. “In this particular cycle, it had been pretty black and white that if Trump were to win, he’d have a more libertarian, regulatory approach to crypto and maybe even a positive one because he courted that vote.”
Balchunas said that, like the launch of the spot bitcoin ETFs by Wall Street giants BlackRock and Fidelity, Trump's embrace of crypto and easing regulations will likely further legitimize digital assets, which should push prices higher.
Despite having launched a handful of NFT collections that have generated millions of dollars in sales, Trump's stance on cryptocurrency didn't start to shift until May, when his campaign started accepting crypto as a form of donation. This marked the first time a major U.S. presidential nominee embraced cryptocurrency for donations.
Then, in July, Trump chose Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, as his running mate. In a disclosure, Vance said he owned between $100,001 and $250,000 in bitcoin as of 2022.
But Trump’s most impactful move came when he gave a keynote speech at Bitcoin 2024 in Nashville. There, he promised to end anti-crypto policies while drawing huge applause after twice promising to fire Gensler if elected. Gensler, who serves as U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission chair, has long been vilified by the crypto industry.
Even Galaxy Digital founder and CEO Mike Novogratz, a known Democrat, seemed to find a silver lining in Harris’s defeat, at least in the short term.
“It was a great night for the crypto industry,” said Novogratz during a CNBC interview on Wednesday when asked about crypto prices rising. “[Trump’s] agenda is very pro-crypto.”
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