Former U.S. President and current presidential candidate Donald Trump was the subject of an assassination attempt on Saturday. After a shooter opened fire minutes into a rally in Pennsylvania, an injured Trump was seen with blood on the side of his head, and was escorted away by Secret Service agents while pumping his fist in the air.
Prediction markets are now pricing in a higher chance that Trump takes the Oval office. At the time of writing, the odds of Trump winning the US presidential election in November stand at an all-time high of 71% on Polymarket. Prediction markets enable individuals to bet on the outcome of future events. They are real-time and are frequently being used as an alternative to polls and pundits.
The size of the market for who will win the US election sits at $257 million for bets placed on all candidates, Around $32 million worth of bets have been placed on Trump alone, while Joe Biden’s odds now stand at 18%, with $35 million worth of bets placed.
New and existing Trump-themed memecoins quickly gained millions of dollars in market cap, with TREMP posting the most impressive gain of 94% in the 12 hours that followed news of the attack. Others such as MAGA, STRUMP and TRUMP also posted gains of more than 50% over the same period.
While all these rallies have since changed course, the more liquid side of the crypto market has charged on. Bitcoin was trading at $63,000 at press time, still up over 5% in the last 24 hours. Ether was up a similar amount, trading at a price of $3,360.
The weekend’s events have undoubtedly had a impact on the memecoin market, but a community of crypto investors have been actively trading this new brand of tokens inspired by political figures for the better part of the year. These “PolitiFi” tokens across all sectors actually outperformed bitcoin over the last week.
For traders involved in the space, a pro-crypto candidate such as Trump being sworn in as the next US. President is reason enough to bet big on these coins despite the higher risk. Meanwhile, industry watchers such as Arthur Hayes, CIO of the Maelstrom investment fund and the co-founder of crypto exchange Bitmex, cautioned voters against taking Trump’s words at face value.
“I am dismayed that many crypto pundits who should know better are now blindly throwing fancy fundraisers for the Trump campaign,” said Hayes in a recent blog post.
“Trump is an astute politician. He will say whatever to whoever is to be re-elected. Once in office, anything related to crypto will be a distant memory.”
