Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by... [+]

We are moments away from a big crypto pump or dump. This will all be down to whether Trump gets elected or whether Harris carries the day. Although Trump is odds on favorite, one day before the big event there is no certainty that he has it in the bag.

As such, the market can’t know the outcome, and the outcome is therefore not priced in beyond the fact it can go either way, which is in the case of crypto means bitcoin is perched on a ledge between the moon and the dumpster.

If you stick to political definitions of right and left, it’s a no brainer to understand crypto is Kryptonite to the left but less so to the right. The last few years of ultra-aggressive SEC “regulation by enforcement” is evidence enough that the current administration is out to kill crypto at all costs. That seems like a wild statement, but we saw that policy in action last year with crypto banks Silvergate and Signature Bank’s demise accelerating a financial storm that nearly felled the U.S. regional banking system.

On the other hand, Trump seems at the very least crypto neutral, though you might think him a strong crypto believer from his statements and actual involvement in Trump crypto projects like his NFT. A Trump win is critical for crypto, with the walls closing in on its future under the Democrats..

So for crypto denizens, the odds that Trump will be the next president of the U.S. are promising, but having said that there is no landslide in the prognosis of the polls or the betting odds, so once the market knows the outcome it is going to move and move a lot.

Here is the bitcoin chart which is the sort of projection a Trump win could kick off:

The bitcoin chart: what could happen if Trump wins the election

You don’t have to be a chartist to line up Trump’s comeback against Harris to see a bitcoin chart go from bearish to bullish, and as a holder of crypto, this is the upside I’m holding on for.

Here is what a Harris win and the prospect of four more years of anti-crypto administration would look like, if you buy the narrative that the current administration hates crypto:

The bitcoin chart: if Harris wins the election this is what we might see

That is very ugly. Charts aren’t fate, of course, but the difference between Trump/Musk, two crypto denizens driving the bus, and Harris/Democrats in charge, is a potentially massive fork in the road for the first generation of crypto projects we have followed for all these years.

The history of private sector money is long and not reassuring for the advocates of its latest generation. Private sector money does not have a big future under legacy politics because like violence, money is a prized government monopoly. The trouble with monopolies is they are infamously inefficient, so a drive to private sector money is natural but unwelcome for those in a position to prohibit it. In the end, crypto does need regulating and it is easier to sterilize than police.

The monolithic public sectors of the world will want no truck with competition on the issuance of money, so only a departure from the norm like a Trump administration can keep the crypto dream alive against a global tide of suffocating regulation. Without a Trump win, the trend of regulating crypto out of practicality will continue and succeed. The bottom line is, printing paper money or minting token coinage is easy profitable technology, but you are just not allowed to do it; that is the direction of travel at present.

You can make tokens if you have a laundromat or a fruit machine parlor or paper money if you are Amex with their travelers’ cheques or the Luncheon Voucher people, but the technology of private sector money has been made impractical for most applications due to a mesh of prohibitive and punitive laws corralling it in very narrow domains. This is the fate of crypto if Trump does not win, but if he does, the technology might get the breather it needs to break the current death grip and have a chance to develop into its full potential

We will know soon. Expect fireworks one way or another.

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