On Tuesday night, the crypto markets went wild as investors got excited about the possibility of Donald Trump winning, pushing Bitcoin’s price close to $75,000. If it hits that mark, it would be a new record for the original cryptocurrency, which had previously peaked at $73,000 back in March but has struggled since then due to uncertainty surrounding the U.S. presidential election.
This summer, Trump and the Republican Party really got behind crypto, leading to a huge influx of support from the industry that had been feeling stifled by Biden’s stricter policies.
Crypto enthusiasts took to social media on Tuesday night to celebrate the price jump and speculate about Gary Gensler’s potential exit as Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission—many in the industry blame him for holding them back.
In Ohio, Republican Senate candidate Bernie Moreno managed to unseat Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown, who chaired the influential Banking Committee.
Moreno raked in millions from crypto supporters thanks to his pro-crypto stance while Brown became a target for his anti-crypto views.
The chance of a Trump win also seemed like a good sign for Polymarket, a crypto betting site where prediction markets have been leaning toward Trump for weeks. At the start of election day, they gave him about a 58% chance of winning, but by late Tuesday night that number shot up to around 90%.
Other cryptocurrencies were also on an upswing as election results came in—Ethereum (the second-largest) rose by about 7%, Solana (number three) jumped around 15%, and Dogecoin saw even bigger gains at nearly 20%.
A lot of this excitement can be traced back to tech billionaire Elon Musk—a known Dogecoin supporter—who recently joked about starting a Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE) if Trump wins.
This whole situation is looking pretty positive for publicly traded companies like Coinbase and MicroStrategy too since their stock prices often follow Bitcoin’s performance closely!