Crypto Booms As Trump Files Legal Challenges to US Election

Bitcoin, Ethereum and a host of other projects went on a tear overnight to push the global crypto market cap beyond the $400 billion mark. 

Earlier this week, a sharp correction wiped $15 billion from crypto coffers, suggesting the US election was having an effect on crypto investors. What a difference a day makes. 

With no clear winner in sight – although it looks like a Biden presidency seems likely – investors appear to be doubling down on crypto’s lack of correlation to other assets that are more sensitive to geopolitics. 

As Trump alleged fraud was rife in the states still counting mail-in votes, Bitcoin went on a charge rising 5% settling comfortably above $14,000. But it’s not like crypto is disinterested with politics. 

Over on prediction markets, Trump’s election odds dropped 50% as Biden flipped Michigan for the Democrats. Trump’s chances of winning, according to FTX, have dropped by 50%. At the time of writing, FTX is the most active prediction market on the US election, with more than $8 million in trading volume over the last 24 hours, per CoinGecko. 

But that wasn’t enough to dampen spirits. Ethereum rose 4% yesterday, pulling the rest of the market with it. The only project not to benefit from the boom was Monero. The privacy coin dropped 6.3%, continuing a trend that’s seen the price slump $10%. 

It seems investors haven’t gotten over the Internal Revenue Service’s $625,000 offer to anyone who can come up with a way of cracking Monero’s privacy features. While The blockchain intelligence firm Chainalysis and Texas-based blockchain analytics firm Integra FEC won the contract, they have yet to announce they’ve done it. 

But Monero’s price collapse seems to suggest that investors are confident one of the two projects will work out a way of cracking Monero so they’re high-tailing out of the privacy coin over to projects that haven’t stoked the ire of the IRS.  

Tech shares lead a market really

Investors across the world are embracing a Biden victory with markets in Asia and Europe hitting a two week high. The FTSE was 0.5% higher, Germany’s Dax was up 0.8%, while France’s CAC 40 rose 1%.

US markets seem to be following suit, with the S&P 500 up 1.11%, the Dow 0.8% and tech centric Nasdaq again jumping higher. 

The reason, according to market watchers is down to a Republican-controlled Senate. While Biden’s election manifesto promised tax rises, a Republican-controlled Senate means any hopes Biden may have to increase taxes will likely be kiboshed by the GOP. 

With Trump mounting lawsuits in Pennsylvania and Michigan, the verdict means that the policy environment will remain static as lawmakers attempt to sift through the mounting paperwork.

That means for companies looking to make key spending decisions have at least a couple of years before any new legislation would be passed. 

For investors at least, no movement is good for business.