ND: Hello CoinDesk readers and welcome to our live coverage of the 2020 election results. Today Nikhilesh De, Bradley Keoun, Sandali Handagama and Sebastian Sinclair will be bringing you real-time updates as the elections are called for lawmakers important to our industry, as well as keeping you up to speed on what the prediction and futures markets are saying.
We’ll be tracking the price of Bitcoin through the night to see if traders are also watching this election or if any particular outcomes have an impact on movement.
Bitcoin’s price did not react at all to the 2016 election, rising a scant 1.8 percent in the 24-hour trading period, and given the crypto industry’s overall lack of engagement in this election, there’s no reason to believe this might change in 2020.
Of course, it is worth noting that Bitcoin embarked on the famous 2017 bull run just months after the election, rising to all-time highs close to $20,000 within a year and giving birth to an initial coin offering boom that regulators are still investigating and conducting enforcement actions against nearly three years later. At the moment, Bitcoin is slowly rising, hitting a nearly two-year high of $14,000 just the other day. And since the last election, its price has grown 19-fold.
Still, comparing the crypto industry now to the industry in 2016 would be foolish at best. The market has matured in many ways, with the U.S. space at least seeing the introduction of futures contracts and a greater number of regulated entities. Regulators have likewise gained a better understanding of the space, introducing new regulations or clarifying how cryptocurrencies fit into existing frameworks – to an extent.
The winners of this year’s election will get to decide how regulators are to proceed and whether new legislation is passed. CoinDesk will be here providing updates to watch it all unfold.