Bitcoin’s election market moment has arrived

Predictions that the US election will fuel bitcoin’s price are set to be tested

article-image

Fuzail Khan MO/Shutterstock and Adobe modified by Blockworks

share


This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe.


Harry Potter ran headfirst into a brick wall at Platform 9¾ to transcend into the Wizarding World.

We’re about to do something similar with bitcoin.

This is it. After the next few days, there are no more immediate catalysts and prophecies to fulfill.

  1. The Bitcoin halving: The network cut issuance in half almost exactly 200 days ago. Cycle-maxis predicted it would inevitably lead to a supply shock one year later, as is tradition.
  2. US election: Always occurs six-to-eight months after the halving — and the past two elections have preceded a full bitcoin send to all-time highs.
This chart plots bitcoin rallies around the election against each other, as if they all started at once. The dotted line is Election Day (today), and the orange circles are halvings.

Bitcoin rallied from $720 to nearly $20,000 in the 400 or so days after Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016. That’s over 27x in a little over a year.

BTC then went 4.2x — from $16,300 to $69,000— in the year following Biden’s win in 2020.

Brainiacs would, however, quickly point out that only two or three halving-election cycles tells us nothing statistically significant about anything. 

Bitcoin’s massive rallies over the years are then just price discovery. And perhaps, elections and halvings are less significant than the global liquidity cycle, for instance (which, coincidentally, is headed for an uptrend!)

While the global liquidity prophecy plays out over the longer-term, Trump’s odds on Polymarket have been tipped as an immediate driver of bitcoin’s price.

A god candle is inevitable if Trump wins, the thinking goes

The chart above maps the price of bitcoin (the area in green) to Trump’s odds on Polymarket, in orange. The shaded purple areas indicate when Trump’s odds and BTC/USD were correlated.

They only align about half the time, which probably says they’re not really correlated at all. Although, the two have closely tracked each other since early October.

Still, we’re in uncharted territory. Bitcoin hit all-time high before the halving this time around, an apparent anomaly in the cycle prophecy — just like The Boy Who Lived.


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Research Report Templates.png

Research

Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) represent low-hanging fruit in a massive market ripe for Web3-driven disruption. The global CDN market was valued at ~$28B in 2024, and is projected to surpass $140B by 2034, (18.75% CAGR) underscoring the immense demand for efficient content delivery.

article-image

US dollars might technically be worth less, but it’s still good news

article-image

Apps are doing well, as is casino gaming, says Tom Schmidt of Dragonfly

article-image

Sponsored

Machine DeFi brings programmable peer-to-peer finance into contact with tangible machines that generate real-world value

article-image

What happens to your investment portfolio when the companies driving returns are no longer in it?

article-image

Wow, the ETF hype sure didn’t last long

article-image

The private sector lost 33,000 jobs in June; analysts had projected payrolls to add 100,000 positions