Bitcoin has repriced rapidly since the US election result, in a move that some observers are calling the Trump trade, while others assert that gains were overdue anyway. And there seems to be truth in both points of view: the bitcoin halving cycle and BTC’s previous months-long sideways movement both pointed to an incoming bullish period, while rate cuts and increased liquidity are always fuel for bitcoin. At the same time though, the resolving of the election in favor of Donald Trump, by a very clear margin, looks like the emphatic catalyst that has kicked off that anticipated bullishness in explosive fashion.
This move has seen BTC rise to new all-time highs with a price currently around the $90,000 mark, and trading is occurring amid positive speculation around Trump’s many pro-crypto pledges, including the possibility of a strategic bitcoin reserve, and a change of leadership at the SEC that should end the Commission’s hostility towards the crypto industry.
However, it’s not only BTC that has been making strong moves, with spot ETH ETFs and many smaller coins also reacting sharply to the political changes now taking place in America.
Ethereum ETFs Wake Up
ETH may be the second largest crypto by market cap, but it has underperformed this year in comparison to BTC, and also when placed side by side with some other Layer-1 blockchains, most notably Solana. Additionally, the spot ETH ETFs that launched in July had a conspicuously slow start when compared with the spot BTC ETFs that launched earlier in the year.
However, those Ethereum funds finally started to move after the election, and since Trump's win was confirmed, the ETH ETFs have seen a cumulative $796.2 million in net inflows during the period from November 6th to November 13th. That said though, the price of ETH has yet to catch up with BTC in terms of yearly gains so far.
DOGE and Other Memecoins Make Moves
Second only to the positivity around BTC–the central mover from which the rest of the crypto market derives its energy–the next greatest levels of market exuberance are currently to be found further out along the risk curve, in the world of memecoins.
From the outside, these tokens–much like NFTs a few years ago–are difficult to get a handle on. Memecoins have zero utility and yet they are currently delivering some enormous returns, and what’s more–as the lines blur between crypto, current affairs, and traditional finance, we can now–remarkable as it might sound–find memecoins being referenced at the very highest levels of political leadership.
This is apparent in plans from the incoming Trump administration to establish an office purposed to streamline government bureaucracy, to be headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, and which is to be named the Department of Government Efficiency, or D.O.G.E for short. Musk is famously a long-time fan of DOGE the memecoin, which is the oldest meme token around and has soared in market cap from around $22 billion pre-election to around $60 billion now.
Over the last 2 years, the Supreme Court has ruled that the administrative state is behaving in wildly unlawful ways. But slapping the bureaucracy on the wrist won’t solve the problem, the only right answer is a massive downsizing. https://t.co/EfdJzd9XuT
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) November 13, 2024
What’s more, memecoins are increasingly making it onto major exchanges for spot trading, with Robinhood this week adding the Ethereum-based memecoin PEPE, and Coinbase listing PEPE and Solana-based token WIF, having previously only listed DOGE, SHIB, and BONK from the memecoin sector.
For the moment then, we’re seeing a barbell of interest: bitcoin is rising as a form of legitimized digital gold with institutional demand, while at the other tip, memecoin gains indicate consumer demand for the kind of rapid-fire, decentralized casino that only crypto can provide.
Robinhood Brings Back SOL, XRP, and ADA
As well as listing PEPE, it’s notable that this week also saw Robinhood relisting alternative Layer-1 tokens SOL, XRP, and ADA for spot trading. These tokens were all withdrawn from Robinhood in 2023, at a time when there was legal pressure on the crypto industry from the SEC, and so the reappearance of these coins signals a significant shift.
During election campaigning, Trump pledged to end anti-crypto actions from the authorities, and he is surrounded by crypto advocates, which on the whole adds up to an emerging new environment in which legal wrangles between the SEC and the crypto industry may become a thing of the past.
"Bitcoin is going to the moon" - Donald Trump pic.twitter.com/QTkg5UkJzR
— Altcoin Daily (@AltcoinDailyio) November 7, 2024
When the dust settles then, one question raised might be as to exactly why the SEC under still-current Chair Gary Gensler waged war on crypto, but for now all eyes are on the future: it’s not yet clear how crypto and traditional finance will eventually co-exist, but what appears to be occurring is a recategorization of the entire crypto industry, which no longer looks vulnerable to regulatory chokeholds in the US.
At the very least, that’s how it’s trading right now: with two months until Trump’s inauguration, and while the President-elect works with a strongly pro-acceleration, tech-friendly inner team.
This article was written by Sam White at www.financemagnates.com.
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