As US election dust settles, crypto traders and analysts eye new administration

While some in the community continue to question the outcome of the US Presidential election, mainstream media outlets and the Associated Press have definitively called the race for former Vice President and current President-Elect Joe Biden.

But with uncertainty out of the way, traders and analysts are now looking to determine what a Biden administration will mean for cryptocurrencies — and they appear to have come to a loose consensus that a President who says nothing about crypto is preferable to a president who actively disparages it.

Qiao Wang, the lead at decentralized finance accelerator DeFi Alliance, cheered Trump’s loss, noting that the President had tweeted negatively about Bitcoin and Libra in the past:

The fact that Trump and Mnuchin are hostile towards BTC makes a Trump a far inferior candidate. Full stop. However the senate part is debatable. You could argue that democrats are more likely to create inflation which is good for BTC.

— Qiao Wang (@QwQiao) November 8, 2020

Meanwhile, investor Mike Novogratz concurred that a Democratic administration would be good for crypto, saying that an ongoing stimulus program would bolster Bitcoin’s anti-inflationary narrative:

Wore my lucky hat for Biden. Go $BTC. Go Biden. https://t.co/AwVxCsUAJm

— Mike Novogratz (@novogratz) November 4, 2020

At a macro level, Cointelegraph has previously reported that an incoming Biden administration may bolster markets as uncertainty settles and hopes for additional stimulus run high, but likewise these efforts could cripple cryptocurrencies via a stronger dollar.

There has also been widespread speculation concerning the crypto inclinations of key appointees in the forthcoming administration. Compound general counsel Jake Chervinsky noted that whoever President-Elect Biden nominates to posts will be more important than incoming President’s personal opinions:

President-elect Biden hasn’t said anything publicly about his views on crypto. For now, it really isn’t a big enough issue to warrant his attention.

The next four years of US crypto policy depends on who he appoints to key positions; we’ll know more as the transition gets going.

— Jake Chervinsky (@jchervinsky) November 7, 2020

To that end, Politico first reported that former CFTC chairman and Obama appointee Gary Gensler, best known for his hardline enforcement of Wall Street regulations in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, would be a part of Biden’s transition team. Gensler has spoken positively about Bitcoin in the past.

Major outlets also reported two weeks ago that economist Lael Brainard, the former Federal Reserve governor who led a MIT joint effort to research CBDCs, is a frontrunner for Treasury secretary.

For all the guesswork, however, US stock market open come Monday will ultimately paint a clearer picture for speculators. Said one popular Twitter trader: