The price of Bitcoin jumped as much as 1.1% during a 90-minute presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, which saw Trump widen the gap between him and Biden on betting markets.
Bitcoin (BTC) was trading at $61,439 before the debate commenced and quickly jumped as high as $62,152 as Donald Trump and Joe Biden answered rapid-fire questions from CNN moderators. It has since fallen back to $61,362 at the time of publication, per TradingView data.
Data from prediction markets platform PredictIt showed Trump’s odds of winning the presidency surging. At the same time, Biden’s chances plummeted, as watchers noticed Biden stumbled through some answers and failed to finish some sentences throughout the debate.
Share prices reflecting Trump's odds on the platform spiked from around $0.53 to $0.63 within an hour, while Biden's fell sharply from $0.48 to $0.37 in the same timeframe — widening the gap between them to a 26-point difference.
Pundits on social media were quick to criticize Biden’s coherency and overall performance during the debate, with many — including former President Trump — noting that he trailed off at the end of his answers.
"I really don't know what he said at the end of that sentence, I don't think he knows what he said either," said Trump in response to one of Biden's statements concerning immigration.
This was the kill shot pic.twitter.com/kEYrVCTHNu
— Auron MacIntyre (@AuronMacintyre) June 28, 2024
Both Biden and Trump were reported to have made a series of false and misleading claims throughout the debate by fact checkers from CNN, with Trump making several misleading statements about abortion and other economic issues under Biden’s presidency.
Despite not being mentioned in the debate, cryptocurrency has become a hot-button election issue in recent weeks. On June 16, Trump said he would end Biden's "war on crypto" if elected President in November.
In March, Trump wrote on the conservative social media platform Truth Social that he intends to make the United States a global leader in terms of crypto technology and castigated Biden, saying the current President would see crypto "die a slow and painful death."
Related: Biden-Trump debate: Crypto goes completely unmentioned
On June 1, President Biden vetoed a resolution that would have repealed an SEC accounting guideline preventing banks from holding crypto assets on their balance sheets. Notably, the resolution passed both the House and the Senate with a majority vote of favor.
Biden said he refused to pass legislation that would "jeopardize the well-being of consumers and investors."
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