Crypto markets roared on Tuesday night as investors, anticipating a victory for Donald Trump, sent the price of Bitcoin towards $75,000. That amounts to an all time for the original cryptocurrency, which hit $73,000 in March, but has since traded below that in part due to uncertainty about the outcome of the U.S. presidential race.
Trump and the Republican party fully embraced crypto in the summer, resulting in massive financial support from the industry, which had chafed against the more restrictive policies of the Biden administration.
Crypto boosters gleefully took to social media on Tuesday night to hail the price surge and to predict the imminent departure of the Democrat-appointed Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Gary Gensler, who many blame for stifling the industry.
Bernie Moreno, the Republican Senate candidate in Ohio, also defeated Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown, who chaired the powerful Banking Committee. Moreno pulled in tens of millions of donations from the industry after running on a pro-crypto platform, while Brown became a target due to his anti-crypto stances.
The likelihood of a Trump victory also came as validation for the crypto-based betting site Polymarket, whose prediction markets have pointed to a victory for the Republican candidate for weeks. At the outset of election day, the site favored Trump by around 58% but, by late Tuesday evening, those odds had increased to around 90%.
Meanwhile, a host of other cryptocurrencies gained ground as the election results trickled in. Ethereum, the second biggest cryptocurrency, jumped by around 7% while No. 3 cryptocurrency Solana gained around 15%.
The novelty cryptocurrency Dogecoin posted the biggest gains, climbing nearly 20%. The surge is explained in large part by tech billionaire and Trump ally Elon Musk, who has long been a booster of Dogecoin and recently claimed he would operate a Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under a Trump Administration.
The election outcome is also good news for publicly traded companies like Coinbase and MicroStrategy, whose share price is closely tied to the performance of Bitcoin.
