The Crypto World’s Victory Lap Begins

On Nov. 5, a few dozen Bitcoiners, MAGA-hat wearers and curious locals gathered to watch the election results come in at PubKey, a Bitcoin-themed bar in New York’s Greenwich Village. A digital display on the wall showed the price of Bitcoin, which ticked past $73,000 as favorable news came in for Donald Trump. The tallies looked increasingly good, too, for Bernie Moreno, an Ohio Republican trying to unseat Senator Sherrod Brown, who’d called for hearings on crypto’s use by terrorists. Moreno was backed by $40 million from crypto companies.

At 10:30 p.m., the organizer of a Bitcoin meetup group called out that the odds of a Trump victory on the crypto gambling site Polymarket had reached 88%. “Bitcoin’s pumping, dude!” he yelled. “You should buy it before it goes to a million.”