Bitcoin hits 1-month high of $66,000 amid hopes of Trump's pro-crypto stance

By Ovunc Kutlu

ISTANBUL (AA) - The price of Bitcoin hit the $66,000 mark Wednesday again with hopes that Donald Trump will be elected president and his new administration will adopt a pro-crypto stance.

Bitcoin saw its price climbing to as high as $66,180 during the day, while Ethereum soared to $3,517 for the first time since June 23.

The value of the cryptocurrency market stood at $2.35 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap, a digital asset price-tracking website.

Bitcoin, the world's biggest cryptocurrency, plummeted to as low as $53,727 on July 5, erasing all gains of the last four and a half months, while the value of the crypto market stood at approximately $2 trillion then.

The recent rally comes as investors hope there will be a more crypto-friendly administration in the White House under Donald Trump and his vice president, JD Vance.

Vance held as much as $250,000 worth of Bitcoin back in 2022, according to multiple reports.

After surviving an assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania last weekend, former President Trump has reconfirmed that he will attend this year’s Bitcoin Conference, which will be held in Nashville, Tennessee from July 25-27.

"We are happy to report that Donald Trump is committed to delivering his speech in-person at Bitcoin 2024," The Bitcoin Conference wrote Sunday on X. "We are proud to host him and to share the solidarity of the global Bitcoin community and our universal commitment to free speech and peaceful democracy."

The odds of a Trump victory in November soared to 71% on Monday after the shooting from 43% in late April, according to bets placed on Polymarket -- a decentralized prediction market platform that allows users to place bets on world events.

The US Federal Reserve's rising likelihood of delivering its first interest rate cut in September has also provided a boost to cryptocurrencies. Some cryptos saw their prices increasing more than 40% in the last seven days.

The probability of a rate cut of 25 basis points at the Fed’s Sept. 18 meeting stood at 95.5% on Wednesday, according to the FedWatch Tool provided by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Group.

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said Monday that receiving "more good" inflation data is paving the way for its first interest rate cut later this year, and Fed Governor Christopher Waller said Wednesday that the US central bank is getting closer to an interest rate cut as inflation is slowing.

There are, however, some downside risks to cryptocurrencies, which had also led to their sudden decline earlier this month.

The defunct crypto exchange Mt. Gox has started this month to distribute digital assets stolen from its clients in a hacking event in 2014, which added downward pressure on the price of Bitcoin. Its hacking resulted in the loss of an estimated 740,000 Bitcoin, which was worth more than $47 billion in value as of Wednesday.

The German government, in addition, had sent 6,500 Bitcoin worth over $400 million to crypto exchanges last month following a seizure of 50,000 BTC in January -- the biggest crypto seizure in the country.