Bitcoin is Trump’s next opportunity to beat Biden

Biden’s victory in 2020 aligned with a big rally for bitcoin — can Trump beat the Biden bump?

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Ivan Popovych/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks

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Biden dropped out of the presidential race too soon for Trump to get proper revenge for 2016, and he’ll have to settle for taking out his VP instead.

Luckily, there’s still time to beat Biden in perhaps the only popular vote that really counts: bitcoin.

Bitcoin already set record highs alongside the stock market around Trump’s win this week — the S&P 500 is up 4% in the past month to bitcoin’s 18%.

That’s much more than what happened after Trump’s win in 2016, which was good for a brief 5% jump. 

Obama’s win in 2012 meanwhile coincided with bitcoin’s price dropping by one-fifth in the leadup to Election Day, before recovering over following weeks.

But Biden’s victory in 2020 aligned with a far bigger rally. Bitcoin had risen 30% in the month heading into the vote and continued on for another 50% in the 30 days after. 

Each line is bitcoin’s price performance around Election Day, with the week either side shown by the shaded area

This was the start of bitcoin’s monstrous pandemic run from $10,000 to $60,000, as Trump was handing over the White House, which spanned September 2020 to March 2021.

Of course, bitcoin today is a much bigger beast. BTC’s market cap was under $300 billion at the time — now it’s almost $1.5 trillion. It takes much more to move the needle so far.

If it happened, it would be big. Bitcoin rallied up to 87% in the 60 days surrounding Biden’s election win. 

BTC has so far gone about 20% for Trump, and another 70% would put bitcoin at almost $130,000 before year’s end.

We’re gonna need bigger bulls.


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