Why did bitcoin rise to $100,000 after Trump’s election, and where is it going now?

Donald Trump has put the cryptocurrency front and center on his path to the White House, driving bitcoin’s price to record highs and sparking fierce debate.

The incoming US president has even hinted at potentially creating a strategic reserve of bitcoin.

At the New York Stock Exchange this week, CNBC’s Jim Cramer asked Trump if he would push for such a plan.

“Yes. I think so. We’re going to do something great with crypto,” he replied.

Bitcoin has surpassed $100,000 for the first time since Trump won the US election. Now he’s filling his administration with cryptocurrency advisers and backing the idea of ​​a U.S. Treasury-held bitcoin reserve that analysts say could boost the price by another 50 percent. Supporters say it could put the U.S. at the forefront of technology they see as disruptive — while critics say it would exacerbate wealth inequality.

Trump’s turn to cryptocurrency

Trump has recently turned once on the issue of cryptocurrency calls bitcoin A “fraud” against the US dollar. But during the campaign, he announced himself as “the first major party candidate in American history to accept bitcoin and crypto donations.”

It is not clear what made him change his mind. But he and his family launched its own cryptocurrency during the last campaign.

And, he said, this is just the beginning.

“I am laying out my plan to ensure that the United States is the cryptocurrency capital of the planet and the bitcoin superpower of the world,” he said at a bitcoin conference in November.

He also appointed billionaire David Sachs as the new “AI and cryptocurrency czar”.

Sacks was part of the PayPal Mafia, a group of founders and employees (including fellow Trump appointee Elon Musk) who founded the financial technology firm in the early 2000s and have since played or played key roles in other tech companies.

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He has been a vocal supporter of bitcoin and cryptocurrency since 2013.

“Bitcoin has the potential to be the next internet – the internet of money. I buy it” Posted on May 30, 2013 in Xwhen bitcoin was trading at just $129 USD. If he had invested $1,000 back then, it would be worth about $800,000 today.

Now, Sacks has the key job of shaping how the industry will be regulated in the next administration. In July, he wrote in X that the industry’s main desire was a clear legal framework.

“If Trump wins, the industry will buy it and there will be more innovation in the US”

Don’t hold back a new idea

The idea of ​​a strategic reserve was evaporating even before Trump won the election.

A bill proposed this summer by Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, a Trump ally, would require all bitcoin held by any federal agency to be transferred to the Treasury for safekeeping in a strategic bitcoin reserve.

It will also direct the Treasury Secretary to buy more than 200,000 bitcoins per year for five years, for a total of one million bitcoins.

The US Treasury will be required to hold these bitcoins for at least 20 years.

Cryptocurrency enthusiasts say the reserve will position the United States as the world leader in the cryptocurrency world and see it as the future of the financial system. They also say that if the new administration supports the idea of ​​a strategic reserve, bitcoin will rise to new highs.

“I think it’s somewhere between $250,000 (US) and $500,000 (US) per coin,” said analyst Ronnie Moas, founder of Standpoint Research.

Moas says that the Trump presidency has put a new wind in the cryptocurrency sails, and the moment the bitcoin reserve is announced, the price will rise again.

“(It’s) going to go up 25 to 50% in price overnight because there’s going to be a lot of people trying to jump in front of the government buying it, which is going to take months or weeks. The place,” Moas said this week.

Moas is no fan of Trump, calling him a “stupid” and a “fraud,” but he says he’s right about bitcoin.

Others argue that a bitcoin reserve fund is a fundamentally bad idea.

Among those disgruntled is economist and former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers.

Summers says there could be a decent argument in favor of building a strategic oil reserve at Fort Knox a century ago or creating gold hoards.

He says there is no such argument in favor of buying billions of dollars in cryptocurrency because it remains an unproven and volatile financial asset.

“Some of what’s being said — this idea that we’re going to have some kind of national bitcoin reserve is crazy,” Summers told Bloomberg Television. Wall Street Week With David Westin.

A well-funded push for a crypto-friendly government

The push for a more crypto-friendly administration in Washington is strong and well-funded.

Cryptocurrency companies spent more than $133 million in the US to support pro-crypto candidates in the November US elections. OpenSecretsTracks US campaign spending and lobbying. That would be about one-third of direct corporate contributions to super PACs (political action committees).

It wasn’t just the president who won — many pro-crypto Senate and House candidates also won key races. Candidates who lobbied for more cryptocurrency restrictions were defeated.

Among them was Democrat Sherrod Brown, the current chairman of the Senate Banking Committee and an outspoken critic.

In a recent statement to the committee, Brown warned of the dangers of problems including algorithmic pricing, AI and, of course, cryptocurrency.

“All of these risks have one thing in common: they all have the potential to take more money from working Americans … and funnel it to the same corporate elite who always seem ahead.”

In its first Cryptocurrency Fraud Report last year, the FBI found that American consumers lost more than $5.6 billion to cryptocurrency fraud last year, a 45 percent increase from 2022.

Just this week, Reuters informed Trump said his cryptocurrency venture is partnering with a platform that authorities and financial experts say is used by criminals and Iran-backed militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah.

Critics say the potential for fraud is all the evidence cryptocurrency needs to keep from the mainstream. Supporters will say that this simply underscores the importance of creating Sacks’ “clear legal framework within which to operate.”

Either way, Trump’s embrace of cryptocurrency has already created new interest, new value, and new concerns. And there are still five weeks until he officially takes office.