Many market experts chimed in to say that it did not matter who won the 2020 US elections, Bitcoin was always the winner. However, the latest polls conducted by a well-known crypto platform showed that the asset class did slightly favor incumbent President Donald Trump despite his loss.
58.9% of respondents of a Twitter poll conducted by the crypto analytic platform, Santiment, felt that Trump would win the election and Bitcoin would go up. Whereas 76.1% of people taking the poll felt that Bitcoin would go up [regardless of whether Biden or Trump won].
Notably, Bitcoin surged nearly 9% since election night on the 3rd of November further climbing more than 4% since the announcement of Joe Biden as the projected winner.
Shortly after the first poll, the platform once again asked its followers if their current perception of crypto as an investment has changed as a result of the election results. And not surprisingly, as Santiment mentioned, the results showed that most of the respondents’ expectations of crypto hadn’t changed based on the news of Biden winning the election. Furthermore, Santiment observed that many people had actually become more bullish than prior to the election results.
According to the platform’s insight, the high amount of people who believed that cryptocurrency was a more bullish asset class, mildly contradicted the first poll. It is fairly clear that most respondents believed that Trump would win, which does not looks be the case. Santiment explained,
“This can, of course, be an indication that people simply wanted the election to be put in the past so the country (and world) could move forward. But more likely, the crowd had already become significantly more bullish between election night #1 on Nov. 3rd (BTC at $14.1k) and Nov. 9th (BTC at $15.3k). This +8.5% price jump very likely had most people euphoric about crypto regardless of the candidate chosen.”
Another theory that was put forward was the cryptocurrency market was restricted sue to the election uncertainty and the prices were “ready to pop” regardless of the winner. While it is indeed a bit too early to draw a conclusion on how Biden’s impact on cryptocurrency asset class will be.
The contradiction: Biden’s Pick
Despite the fact that the president-elect has so far kept a tight lid on his stance on cryptocurrencies, Biden’s presidency is mostly viewed as a good thing for the industry. Here’s why. The current Vice-President elect and the former Attorney General of California, Kamala Harris might not have publicly mentioned her position on Bitcoin, her team, however, featured a crypto-friendly face – Ryan Montoya, who happens to be former CTO of the Sacramento Kings.
According to certain reports, Lael Brainard, who is an official at the Federal Reserve, is the frontrunner to succeed Steven Mnuchin as Treasury Secretary. It is important to note that the American economist has played an important role in researching how a potential digital dollar would work.
Additionally, Biden recently confirmed Gary Gensler to lead the financial policy transition team. This is significant because the ex–Goldman Sachs banker has closely studied the workings of the crypto industry and is also engaged in teaching courses on blockchain technology and digital currencies at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
The closest that Biden has ever gotten to talk about Bitcoin, was when his Twitter account was hacked and the perpetrators fraudulently offered to double any Bitcoin amount sent to the specified account within 30 minutes. While notifying that he did not have any Bitcoin holdings, he did urge his followers to chip in to help make Donald Trump a one-term President.
While it remains unclear as to how the Biden administration would treat the world of crypto, his approach is expected to be fairly different than Trump who said that “Bitcoin is based on thin air”.