Trump-Inspired Bitcoin Boom Appears to Lose Traction

Donald Trump’s election last month sparked a cryptocurrency rally, with bitcoin’s price hitting record highs.

Weeks later, the momentum of that run seems to be waning, Bloomberg News reported Monday (Dec. 30). Bitcoin’s price in London Monday morning, that report said, wavered at just north of $93,000, a $15,000 drop from the record reached weeks ago.

That surge followed Trump’s victory, as the Republican was seen as a more crypto-friendly candidate, one who has floated the idea of creating a national bitcoin reserve, standing in contrast to President Joe Biden’s efforts to crack down on the industry following some high-profile scandals.

Among the signs that the new administration will be more favorable to the digital asset space are some of Trump’s leadership picks. For example, he has tapped Paul Atkins, a pro-crypto former Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) commissioner, to lead that agency. And David Sacks, Trump’s choice for crypto/artificial intelligence (AI) czar, is seen as a critic of over-regulation.

However, the Bloomberg report said, reduced expectations for Federal Reserve interest rate cuts have cooled some of the fervor among speculators. The future of America’s crypto policy, the report adds, is likely to become clearer once Trump takes office Jan. 20.

Chris Weston, head of research at Pepperstone Group, told Bloomberg that “the momentum has come out of the post-election move” in bitcoin, in part because of outflows from exchange-traded funds for the token.

At the same time, software maker MicroStrategy has been on a bitcoin buying spree, amassing more than $40 million of the digital currency. Traders, Bloomberg said, are waiting to see if the company will announce more purchases Monday.

Meanwhile, PYMNTS wrote recently that this year would go down as a pivotal one for the crypto and blockchain sector, with shifts in technology, regulation and market sentiment.

“As the sector matured, it experienced transformative changes that bridged gaps between the speculative origins of cryptocurrency and its increasingly utilitarian applications across industries,” that report said.

Among those applications are Regal theaters’ recent offer to let moviegoers in the U.S. purchase tickets and concessions with the USDC stablecoin.

“Beyond cryptocurrencies, blockchain technology found new champions in 2024,” PYMNTS wrote. “Enterprises increasingly adopted blockchain to enhance supply chain transparency, streamline payments and improve data security. Financial institutions also embraced blockchain innovations and increasingly investigated the benefits of tokenizing real-world assets.”