Trump Lost and Bitcoin Won First Presidential Debate – Cryptoverse

Fredrik Vold
Last updated: | 2 min read

After last night’s first presidential debate between US President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, crypto traders are betting that the likelihood of a Trump win in the election is far lower now than before the debate. Meanwhile, some crypto industry players took the chance to tout Bitcoin (BTC) again.

Donal Trump (on the left) and Joe Biden during the debate. Source: a video screenshot, Youtube, CNBC Television

As of press time Wednesday morning (08:13 UTC), the Trump 2020 perpetual contract that is traded on crypto derivatives exchange FTX declined by more than 7% during the hour of the debate, from USD 0.436 before the debate and to USD 0.405 at the time of writing.

Source: FTX

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Source: FTX

Similarly, ‘YES Trump’ and ‘NO Trump’ tokens issued by the decentralized prediction market protocol Augur (REP) also shows that people think that Trump’s chances of winning the election have decreased, with the NO Trump token now trading at USD 0.55 and YES Trump trading at USD 0.47.

However, market participants’ outlook on the election looked less favorable for Biden ahead of the debate, with the price of the YES Trump token at one point reaching nearly USD 0.50, before it corrected lower, according to data from Coingecko.

The price of the YES Trump token would go to USD 1 if Trump wins the election on November 3 and expire worthless if he loses, while the NO Trump tokens would move in the opposite direction.

Although the crypto world’s presidential prediction markets have given Biden the lead for now, however, many observers also agreed that the debate represented yet another low point in American politics. Once again, the Cryptoverse offered BTC as a solution.

“The debate was a landslide victory for Bitcoin,” wrote Dan Held, Growth Lead at major crypto exchange Kraken, while Julian Hosp of Cake DeFi asked his followers “So, tell me, how much faith do you have into the USD after watching 90 minutes of this madness of 2 people?,” while adding “Hey, Bitcoin fixes this!”

Meanwhile, the debate also brought some volatility to traditional financial markets, with US stock futures sliding lower on prospects of what observers like Northman Trader founder Sven Henrich worried “may not be an accepted election result.”

Also commenting on the debate from the vantage point of traditional finance was famous gold bug and bitcoin critic Peter Schiff, who wrote on Twitter last night that the problem, in his view, is structural:

“When both candidates agree that [the] government should spend more, borrow more, and print more, and neither understands the nature of the structural problems that will precipitate the coming crisis, there’s nothing of substance to debate. The result is the spectacle we just witnessed.”

At the time of writing (08:13 UTC), bitcoin was unchanged over the past 24 hours, trading at USD 10,716. Meanwhile, US S&P 500 futures were down by 0.7% for the day, while gold prices were down by 0.5% to USD 1,888.
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