Bitcoin: there has always been a pump after the USA elections

Since its existence, the price of Bitcoin has always recorded a pump after the presidential elections in the USA. 

The thing might not be a mere coincidence, therefore in theory it could also happen again this year.

The first USA Bitcoin elections and the subsequent pump

Although the Bitcoin protocol was published in October 2008, the Bitcoin blockchain, and therefore the BTC, were launched in January 2009.

So during the 2008 US presidential elections Bitcoin in fact did not exist yet, because although its protocol had already been published, the asset had not yet been created.

The year after its creation, in 2010, BTC began to be traded on the first exchanges, so by the 2012 elections it was present. 

The presidential elections of 2012 in the USA were held on November 6, and saw the second victory of Barack Obama. 

On November 5th, the price of BTC on the exchanges was just below $11, and the day after the elections it hadn’t moved much. 

That year, however, the halving had yet to occur. 

In fact, the first Bitcoin halving occurred only on November 28, that is, a few weeks after the elections. On the day of the halving, the price had risen above $12, and in the following days, it did not react. 

However, it was precisely that small rise from $11 to $12 that triggered the first major bullrun of the price of Bitcoin.

To tell the truth, however, the following month the price stabilized at $13, but only to explode in January 2013. The growth at that point became continuous, so much so that by February it had already exceeded $20 and ended only in September above $180. 

Furthermore, after a brief pause, it resumed in October, reaching new all-time highs above $1,000. 

Practically in less than 12 months it recorded a x100. 

The pump of Bitcoin up to $20,000 after the second USA elections

In 2016 things had slightly changed. 

In fact, although Satoshi Nakamoto designed the Bitcoin protocol to have a halving approximately every 4 years, in reality the actual average time between one halving and the next has turned out to be shorter, about 3 years and 10 months. 

Satoshi set a halving every 210,000 blocks, creating an automatic mechanism that was supposed to keep the block-time between one block and the next at around 10 minutes. Instead, the actual average block-time turned out to be just over 9 and a half minutes, and this shortened the time between halvings. 

And so the second halving, scheduled for early 2017 or late 2016, instead took place on July 9, 2016. 

The presidential elections in the USA were held on November 8 of the same year, and Donald Trump won. 

In July, the price of Bitcoin remained substantially steady around $650, and even at the end of the month, it dropped a bit. The day before the elections, it had risen to $700, and the following day it had only climbed above $710. 

About ten days later, however, it had risen to $750, and in December it had easily surpassed $800. That rise continued almost continuously until December 2017, when it recorded the new all-time high at nearly $20,000. 

In about 12 months the price of Bitcoin had increased 20 times compared to the all-time high of the previous cycle. 

The third elections

Even in 2020, the presidential elections were held in the USA and there was the halving. 

The halving occurred on May 11, while the elections were held on November 3, with the victory of Joe Biden. 

However, that was also the year the pandemic began, with the collapse of financial markets in March and the enormous QE by the Fed. 

Despite the collapse of the financial markets a few months earlier, on the day of the halving the price of Bitcoin was around $8,600, and during the month it never exceeded $9,700. 

The day before the elections, however, it had already risen above $13,000, because that bullrun actually started in the second half of October. 

To tell the truth, even in 2016 it started in October, but the price was almost continuously rising even from October 2015. On the other hand, in 2014/2015 there was the worst bear-market in the entire history of the price of Bitcoin. 

So it should not be surprising that after the 2020 elections the price of BTC was already rising, so much so that the month closed at over $19,000. 

That rise, however, stopped earlier than usual, namely in mid-April 2021 with the new all-time high of $64,000. 

In May, in fact, there was the Chinese ban, which caused the price to drop to $30,000, although in November it recorded other historical highs just below $70,000. Probably due to the Chinese ban, some capital was missing from the crypto market, and the performance compared to the maximum of the previous cycle was limited to x3.5. 

Fourth elections coming up: what to expect from Bitcoin (BTC)?

This year the USA presidential elections will be held on November 5, and the halving was on April 20. 

However, 2024 is completely anomalous compared to all past cycles, because for the first time in Bitcoin’s history, a new all-time high of its price was recorded a few weeks before the halving, in March, exceeding 73,000$.

This year, it was the new ETF on BTC spot on the US exchanges that pushed the price of Bitcoin so high at the beginning of the year, so much so that it later fell.

The question is: will the past repeat itself? Will a new bull run start after this year’s elections?

To respond, it is necessary to specify why after the elections the price of BTC performs well. 

Bitcoin is inversely correlated to the strength of the dollar. So when the dollar falls, it tends to rise. 

During the presidential years, the dollar tends to strengthen in the preceding months and weaken in the following ones. 

To tell the truth, this year it had strengthened only until April, and then it weakened. But it is possible that it could weaken further in the coming months, especially after the elections. 

So the conditions for a new bull run might also be there, even if that is not enough. So far, history has repeated itself, even though 2024 has already shown that it does not always repeat exactly.