Bitcoin broke through $81,000 and reached a new high, while the futures premium also soared, indicating investors believe Bitcoin can continue to rise, reflecting the expectation that candidates supporting cryptocurrency will be in power after the U.S. presidential and congressional elections.
Bitcoin broke through $81,000 and reached a new high, while the futures premium also soared, indicating investors believe Bitcoin can continue to rise, reflecting the expectation that candidates supporting cryptocurrency will be in power after the U.S. presidential and congressional elections.
At the popular cryptocurrency derivatives exchange Deribit, the size of open contracts betting on Bitcoin prices breaking $90,000 exceeds $2.8 billion. K33 Research's head of research, Vetle Lunde, stated:
The options market is heavily skewed towards sustained momentum. Call options are priced at a premium compared to put options, with out-of-the-money open contracts continuously increasing.
CME's derivatives trading offers Bitcoin futures contracts, which are favored tools for U.S. institutional investors to bet on the future price movements of Bitcoin. Vetle Lunde noted that last Friday, the average premiums for Ethereum and Bitcoin futures contracts were 14.5% and 14%, respectively. Before the election, these premiums were 7%, and for most of the past six months, they have been slightly below 10%.
Vetle Lunde said: "The recent surge is a significant deviation, highlighting the recent bullish capital." He pointed out that after the election results were clear, yields were more or less in double digits. He stated:
In addition to increased leverage, we have seen the first meaningful example of rising yields in offshore derivatives, highlighting that this is dominated by committed risk-takers positioning for further increases.
In the early stages of Bitcoin's rise, it coincided with a significant increase in open positions for perpetual swap contracts. Perpetual swap contracts allow buyers to speculate on what price levels they believe the asset will reach without a set expiration date.
However, Vetle Lunde pointed out that the liquidity in the cryptocurrency market over the weekend is usually worse than on weekdays, because futures and ETFs on the CME do not trade over the weekend. Therefore, when these markets reopen, the cryptocurrency trends may overreact and experience significant pullbacks.
Trump previously promised during his campaign to make the U.S. a "cryptocurrency hub." His multiple commitments to the cryptocurrency community include promoting a national cryptocurrency reserve, which includes Bitcoin that the U.S. government has previously seized and accumulated, exceeding $16 billion, and also cutting interest rates. Loose monetary policy typically benefits cryptocurrency prices by lowering financing costs.
The Federal Reserve announced a 25 basis point rate cut last week, and cryptocurrencies generally surged over the weekend, with Ethereum's weekly gain reaching 30%, outperforming Bitcoin. The market capitalization of the competing coin Solana (SOL) even briefly surpassed $100 billion.
Currently, the total market value of Bitcoin spot ETFs has surpassed $80 billion. Just in the past three trading days, the market capitalization of Bitcoin spot ETFs has increased by a total of $2.3 billion.
In the fintech sector, cryptocurrency concept stocks have performed exceptionally well. The stock price of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase surged 48% over the past week, marking the strongest performance since January 2023. During this election cycle, Coinbase was one of the largest corporate political donors, contributing over $75 million to the political action committee Fairshake and its related PACs, including a commitment of an additional $25 million in funding to support pro-cryptocurrency super PACs in the 2026 midterm elections.
Trump vowed to remove SEC Chairman Gary Gensler, which could be a good sign for firms like Coinbase that have been accused by the SEC of violating securities laws.
