‘Trump bump’ driving bitcoin and other cryptos to new highs in post-election surge

Cryptocurrency values have been on a tear since former President Donald Trump secured his re-election victory last week — including bitcoin, which is up around 25% since election night and hit an all-time high of over $89,000 Tuesday before pricing cooled slightly.
Dogecoin, the so-called meme coin that has been previously championed by Trump supporter and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been riding the biggest valuation wave and was up over 100% as of midday Tuesday, per tracking by CoinGecko.
While Trump had historically expressed skepticism about crypto markets, he has since assumed a bullish stance on the digital currencies and made repeated campaign promises to create a friendly regulatory environment for the sector, including a pledge during a July keynote speech at a cryptocurrency conference in Nashville that, under his administration, “the rules will be written by people who love your industry, not hate your industry.”
“Bitcoin is the one asset that was always going to soar if Trump returned to the White House,” Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, a British online investment platform, told The Associated Press on the day after the election. “Trump has already declared his love of the digital currency and crypto traders now have a new narrative by which to get even more excited about where the price could go.”
And industry watchers say there’s a good chance cryptocurrency values will continue to rise in the near-term and many expect the $100,000 benchmark for bitcoin could be in sight.
“Bitcoin is now in price discovery mode after breaking through all-time highs early last Wednesday morning when it was officially declared that Trump won the election,” Mike Colonnese, an analyst at H.C. Wainwright, told CNBC. “Strong positive sentiment is likely to persist through the balance of 2024 and [we] see bitcoin prices potentially reaching the six-figure mark by the end of this year.”
The cryptocurrency market has exploded since bitcoin made its public debut in 2009 and the current portfolio of digital tokens numbers in the tens of thousands. Market volatility has been a benchmark of these virtual currencies as regulators in the U.S. and around the world have struggled to assemble a framework that suits the decentralized currencies.
Financial experts warn that even as bitcoin and other digital currencies appear to be on an upward swing, similar value jumps in the past have also been followed by downswings.
“Investors should only dabble in crypto with money that they can be prepared to lose,” Susannah Streeter, head of money and markets at Hargreaves Lansdown, told AP. “Because we’ve seen these wild swings in the past.”
What is cryptocurrency? If the world of cryptocurrencies is still seeming rather, er, cryptic, here’s a handy breakdown from Investopedia: