This Week in Crypto Twitter: Trump Support Rises After Shooting, Degens Dumps Germany’s Bitcoin

We thought we’d seen everything it had to offer last week, not to mention Crypto Twitter’s reaction to it all. But then on Saturday afternoon, former US President and current presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump was shot at a campaign rally.

Trump survived what the FBI described as an assassination attempt with an ear injury. He was taken to safety by members of the Secret Service while the attacker, identified by law enforcement as 20-year-old Thomas Crooks, was quickly removed by federal security.

Political leaders across the United States and the world condemned the attack. And amid concern and relief that Trump had survived, some business leaders took the moment to throw their support behind the Republican nominee.

Twitter owner Elon Musk Trump quickly agreed having recently donated to a Trump-centric super PAC, and then to prominent hedge fund manager Bill Ackman and Tron founder Justin Sun similarly threw their support behind Trump.

The election has been framed by crypto industry advocates as a battle for the future of cryptocurrency in the United States. And since Trump is the pro-crypto candidate, many traders took his survival and the surging wave of Trump support as bullish signs.

Bitcoin surged in price immediately after the shooting, while Trump-themed meme coins saw gains soar. Trump’s odds of winning the election also jumped on leading crypto prediction markets platform Polymarket, reaching an all-time high of around 70% late Saturday.

Earlier in the week, before political violence rocked the nation, the German government unloaded its entire billion-dollar Bitcoin holdings in a rapid fire sequence e mass sale.

Twitter users held their breath, waiting to see if Bitcoin would sink even further than that already had. But the Crypto Gods were merciful: Towards the end of the week, as Germany moved the last BTC out of its wallets, Bitcoin started to rise again.

Analysts cautiously expressed the belief that the best cryptocurrency in the world was ready to endure—not only against the German government’s BTC sales, but also through the impending settlement of billions of dollars worth of BTC to Mt. Gox’s creditors.

However, in typical Crypto Twitter fashion, users couldn’t just take the win and go home. Many turned their relief into disgusted glee, slamming the German government for failing to HODL.

Some were convinced that the end for Bitcoin was now at last, comparing the moment to the early 2000s, when gold rose in value after some governments sold off their supplies of the commodity.

Meanwhile, amid the turmoil in Washington and the growing pressure on President Joe Biden leave of the presidential race, crypto had an extremely prominent week in the national political spotlight.

The closer look began Monday, when Republicans adopted a draft party platform ahead of the Republican National Convention explicitly embraced cryptofirst for a major American political party.

Prominent Crypto Twitter personalities immediately hailed the platform as exactly what crypto users are looking for from their political leaders.

Later in the week, in a stark reminder of crypto’s increasingly partisan tone on Capitol Hill, the House failed to bypass Biden’s veto of a bill that would have allowed US banks to hold crypto.

Crypto policy experts criticized the vote, which failed to attract the significant number of Democratic defectors needed to achieve a veto-proof supermajority — but they hadn’t necessarily expected the measure, a repeal of SAB 121. overcome those great odds.

Still, in some hope for bipartisan consensus on crypto, prominent Democratic lawmakers hosted a crypto roundtable on Thursday to create a more fluid dialogue with industry leaders. One of Biden’s most trusted senior advisers, Anita Dunn, attended the meeting, which left some in attendance reeling. cautiously optimistic.

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.