The price of bitcoin rose above $90,000 for the first time this week, as investors continued to bid up cryptocurrency prices in the wake of the 2024 election.
In the runup to the vote, analysts touted President-elect Trump as the more crypto-friendly candidate who had promised on the campaign trail to make the U.S. the “crypto capital of the planet” and a “bitcoin superpower.”
In a September note, Standard Chartered analyst Geoff Kendrick predicted a crypto breakout in the event of either candidate winning — but with a much higher target for a Trump victory.
All told, bitcoin, the largest and most widely traded cryptocurrency, has risen 30% since election night, and crypto experts say there could be more room to run in the near term.
“The next price target we’re looking at is the $100,000 mark,” says Federico Brokate, vice president and head of U.S. business at crypto ETF firm 21shares. “We think we could reasonably reach that by, quite frankly, Inauguration Day.”
Part of crypto’s upward price momentum stems from investor optimism in what a Republican-controlled government could mean for digital assets, Brokate says. But the long-term outlook for crypto would have been the same regardless of who took office.
“A Kamala presidency would have meant the same exact things for crypto and digital assets in four years’ time as a Trump presidency,” Brokate says. “This asset class is completely apolitical at the end of the day.”
Why the current environment is good for crypto
Some of what’s driving crypto’s recent rise has nothing to do with politics at all. Falling interest rates are playing a role, for instance, since lower rates typically provide a more attractive environment for riskier assets, including stocks and crypto.
What’s more, investors continue to pile in to the relatively new exchange-traded funds that track the spot price of bitcoin. After less than a year on the market, such ETFs now manage some $50 billion in investor cash.
But forward-looking investors say that the current market for crypto is barely scratching the surface of potential investor demand.
Crypto investors tend to fall into three buckets, says Andy Baehr, managing director of Coindesk Indices: professionals who work in the industry, avid investors and traders, and what Baehr calls “five percenters” — retail investors who want to dedicate a small portion of their portfolio to crypto.
While the “five percenters” have gained much greater access to the crypto market over the past few years thanks to online crypto brokerages and the availability of spot ETFs, there’s still a ways to go before crypto is as easy to own as more traditional assets, such as stocks or mutual funds.
“There’s still a lot of five percenter money that hasn’t found its way to a bitcoin ETF yet, much less anything else,” Baehr says. “There’s tremendous adoption scope available.”
That is, crypto advocates say, if the U.S. government provides a clearer regulatory framework for financial institutions to market and sell crypto and other digital assets to customers. That’s where some optimism over a Republican regime comes in.
“Clearly, some would favor a Republican control over the legislature and a Trump presidency, since that’s associated with appointees at regulators who might be more pro-business or perhaps easier to work with,” says Baehr. “That doesn’t mean pushovers. It just means that there would be enough dialog and construction of understood pathways, as there have been in other countries, to operate more diversified digital asset businesses legally and safely.”
Ideally, crypto enthusiasts say, the U.S. would eventually establish regulatory frameworks similar to the one that exists in Europe known as MiCA — Markets in Crypto Assets. “It does a couple things really well. First, it focuses on protecting investors and regulating stablecoins,” says Brokate. “It also creates a framework for how new and existing cryptocurrencies can be launched and traded in the market.”
Similar regulation in the U.S. could help clear the runway for financial institutions to offer more crypto products to institutional and retail customers and for fund companies to begin creating ETFs that hold diversified baskets of cryptocurrencies.
Such products are a crucial step in getting more retail investors on board with crypto, says Baehr, adding that building the regulatory framework for them to exist “takes will, prioritization, focused energy and investment.”
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