Market observers are scrambling to explain the surge in Bitcoin and crypto prices after the shocking assassination attempt on United States presidential candidate Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Leaders of both major US political parties, as well America’s Western allies and others, expressed horror and relief on July 13 after an apparent assassination attempt on the former president’s life at a campaign rally.
The price of Bitcoin (BTC) soared minutes after the shooting, but by July 15, a different crypto story was emerging.
The price of Bitcoin had risen to $64,671 by 11:30 pm UTC on July 15, up 5.8% over the previous 24 hours and 14.2% for the week. Other cryptocurrencies followed suit. Bitcoin’s price has since peaked at around $65,000 but has fallen slightly to sit at $63,664 at the time of writing.
“Historically, attempted assassinations have led to an uptick in support for candidates,” Austin Campbell, founder and managing partner at Zero Knowledge Consulting and an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s School of Business, told Cointelegraph.
In the critical moment after shots were fired at about 6:11 pm local time on July 12, presidential candidate Trump emerged from a scrum of secret service officers “defiant,” Campbell recounted, and this was “captured in an iconic photograph even in the moment.”
The Republican standard-bearer “was able to project strength” and, thus, boosted his chances of recovering the presidency.
“Trump is seen as the vastly more pro-Bitcoin and pro-crypto candidate,” Campbell continued. “Therefore, the [BTC price] rally would be a logical response to the market expecting Trump’s victory odds just went up significantly.”
Assassination attempts on the lives of US presidents — or former presidents — aren’t common. The last, an attempt to kill Ronald Reagan, happened in 1981, more than 40 years ago.
They are rare, violent and a massive assault on the body politic.
Maybe these recent events have demonstrated Bitcoin’s value again during a crisis. When Silicon Valley Bank collapsed in March 2023 — the second-largest bank failure in US history — global stock markets wobbled. But BTC, contrary to expectations, rallied.
It’s all about election prospects
“I believe BTC is a safe-haven asset,” David Tawil, co-founder and president of ProChain Capital, told Cointelegraph. But Tawil doesn’t think that’s the principal reason Bitcoin surged on July 15.
“The overwhelming narrative is now that he is more likely to be elected,” continued Tawil, “which is incredibly bullish for crypto.” He believes it will likely lead to a “full recasting of crypto” in the US that would have happened earlier if not for the likes of Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler, Senator Elizabeth Warren, President Joe Biden and other crypto-skeptical Democratic Party stalwarts.
Recent: US Bitcoin miners hodl in expectation of BTC price rises
Tawil and others in the crypto sector anticipate that Hester Pierce, a crypto-friendly SEC commissioner, will likely replace Gensler as the agency’s chair under a new administration. He also expects to see a strong crypto price rally from now until election day on Nov. 5.
Winston Ma, co-founder of Dragon AI and an adjunct professor of law at New York University, agreed that the current upswing is better explained by US election function analysis than global uncertainty or something else.
“US lawmaking is more immediate, whereas geopolitics is a second-degree derivative,” he told Cointelegraph, adding:
“The crypto community probably links Trump and Republicans with ‘more business-friendly’ crypto law-making and regulation.”
Trump has promised to be the “crypto president,” after all, and his campaign has been accepting cryptocurrency payments — a first for a major US political party. Trump himself is scheduled to speak at the Bitcoin Conference in Nashville later this month.
A boost in crypto prediction markets
The view from overseas doesn’t look too much different. “I think the rise [in the price of Bitcoin] is directly correlated to the failed assassination of Trump,” Hong Kong-based Justin d’Anethan, head of business development for the Asia-Pacific region at crypto market maker Keyrock, told Cointelegraph.
D’Anethan noted that Trump’s odds to regain the presidency “shot up” on prediction markets immediately after the incident.
At political betting site PredictIt, for example, contracts for a Trump election victory traded at $0.70 cents on July 16, up from $0.60 on July 12. Contracts for Biden, by comparison, were trading at $0.26 cents on July 16.
“I suspect people think two steps ahead and assume that a Republican victory will be positive for market and business dynamics, and so lift risk assets — including crypto,” added d’Anethan.
For the record, shares of gun and ammunition stocks such as Smith & Wesson Brands also surged after the assassination attempt, as did the shares of crypto firms like Coinbase and Marathon Digital, while Trump Media and Technology Group, majority-owned by Trump, skyrocketed 30%, Reuters reported.
Recent: Switching from MetaMask? Here are 5 alternative crypto wallets
Not everything can be explained logically, however, especially while America seems to be fracturing politically.
“For a second, markets got shocked by this black swan event,” Vitali Dervoed, co-founder and CEO of onchain decentralized exchange Spark, told Cointelegraph. He further explained:
“We all, for a moment, thought: ‘What if there’s no Trump anymore?’”
That would be a “disaster” for large parts of the crypto community, he added. “Don’t get me wrong, I am sure that [Vice President] Kamala Harris is smart enough to have a very healthy crypto policy…”
“This event shocked the crypto community,” added Dervoed, “hence the panicking graphs.”