Bitcoin soars to two-week high after Trump attack

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Bitcoin surged to a two-week high on Monday after an assassination attempt on U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump raised the odds that the self-proclaimed cryptocurrency champion could win the upcoming election.

Trump said he was shot in the ear during an attack at a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday. His campaign said he was doing well. Some investors said the attack boosted his chances of winning the White House, and trading betting on his victory was expected to pick up this week.

Bitcoin rose 8.6% to $62,508, having hit a two-week high of $62,698 earlier in the session, taking its gains to 47% since the start of the year.

Ether also rose 6.8% to $3,322.

Trump is running against Democratic President Joe Biden in the November US election and has been a vocal critic of Democrats’ attempts to regulate the crypto industry. Trump introduced himself as a crypto champion at a fundraiser in San Francisco in June, but did not provide details about his proposed crypto policy.

“He’s definitely positioned himself as pro-crypto and the fact that his re-election prospects have increased with the shooting over the weekend has really undercut the bid in crypto markets and Bitcoin. He’s definitely standing out,” said Tony Sycamore, market analyst at IG.

Trump will speak at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville, Tennessee, on July 27, conference organizers said last week.

Bitcoin had a strong start to the year after the launch of exchange-traded funds in the U.S., reaching a record high of $73,803.25 in mid-March, but has struggled since then. It fell to its lowest level in more than four months in early July as traders worried about a possible sale of tokens from bankrupt Japanese exchange Mt. Gox.

“We’ve had four weeks of declines since the Mt. Gox news… but it looks like the recovery will continue and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it at least pull back toward $65,000 by the end of this week,” IG’s Sycamore said.

(Reporting by Ankur Banerjee and Rae Wee in Singapore; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)