The US election appears to have triggered a Bitcoin rally to near $16,000 as market sentiment warms to a potential Joe Biden win
Bitcoin has not been the only cryptocurrency to rally in the past 24 hours. As can be seen in the cryptocurrency heat map below, it’s a sea of green across the market today.
While BTC price has pumped about 12% to come close to breaching $16,000, the rest of the altcoin market has looked to mirror that with bullish breakouts above major resistance areas.
Bitcoin’s charge on this super Friday brings it closer to the coveted $20,000, an all-time high reached in December 2017. An analytics company says chances of BTC/USD hitting the mark this year have climbed to 14%.
Elsewhere, Ethereum has surged to highs near $450 as it approaches the launch of its ETH 2.0 upgrade. The second-largest cryptocurrency has surged more than 11% since yesterday to trade around $445 as of writing.
XRP, which has for so long underperformed the rest of the top tier crypto assets, has gained over 6% to see traders eye a break to $0.30. Litecoin is up more than 13% to trade above $62, while Polkadot, EOS, ChainLink, Cardano and Tron are among top cryptocurrencies to turn positive.
In the process, the total cryptocurrency market cap has jumped to over $443 billion- the metric’s highest level since early January 2018.
The DeFi sector too is seeing an uptick in sentiment, even if that might not be as impressive as the July-August frenzy that skyrocketed tokens like Compound (COMP), Aave (AAVE), Yearn.finance (YFI) and Synthetix (SYN). Total value locked (TVL) is up to $12 billion, with more than $700 million locked in various projects over the past 24 hours.
The US election has played a role
According to market analysts, Bitcoin’s rockstar performance is down to the global sentiment around a gridlocked US election.
Projections show that Joe Biden is stomping to the White House with the Electoral College votes now at 264 for the Democratic candidate, against 214 for Donald Trump. While Trump has been seen as a great choice for the stock market, analysts point to a Biden win as a more crypto-friendly outcome.
As such, while Futures markets have shrunk after an initial surge, crypto analysts are suggesting BTC is headed for an even bigger rally. Altcoins might suffer if BTC goes vertical, but are likely to post huge gains if the premier digital asset hits a new consolidation phase just above or below current price levels.