Election day is here and it appears traditional investors were looking to de-risk before voters even made it to the polls. On Monday, U.S. Bitcoin exchange traded funds (ETFs) saw huge outflows with $541 million being withdrawn from the investment products.
This election-related outflow is nearly the largest outflow the Bitcoin ETFs have seen since creation, according to CoinGlass data, only topped by an outflow of $563.7 on May 1 amid the Bitcoin price experiencing a big slide.
BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) was the only fund to see inflows on Monday, bringing in $38.4 million while every other fund stood still or saw significant outflows. Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC), most notable, withdrew $138.3 million as the ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ARKB) and Bitwise Bitcoin ETF (BITB) lost $138.3 million and $79.9 million respectively.
By comparison, on Friday the U.S. Bitcoin ETFs saw just $54.9 million worth of outflows after it had experienced seven days of consecutive inflows. This is likely due to the U.S. Presidential election which is set to take place on Tuesday. Donald Trump has long been seen as the ‘crypto candidate’ due to his vocal support for Bitcoin and cryptocurrency as a whole. As a result, JPMorgan predicted that Bitcoin would see gains if the Republican won the race.
A recent Bernstein report claimed that Bitcoin would hit $90,000 over the coming weeks if Trump wins the election. However, if Harris won it’d fall to just $50,000. This prediction comes due to Kamala Harris’ fairly weak stance on cryptocurrency, mostly claiming that she would encourage blockchain innovation and would regulate the technology to protect Black men. This has led traders to believe she’d be a worse option for the orange coin when compared to Trump.
That said, VanEck analysts speculated that her reign as President could weaken the U.S. dollar and push Bitcoin adoption—which would be bullish for the price of the leading cryptocurrency. We’re also seeing uncertainty with the price of Bitcoin as it falls 3.4% over the past week as Ethereum falls an even further 7.3%.
At the time of writing, prediction market Polymarket has Trump with a 62% chance of winning with Harris behind at 38%. This is in contradiction to a significant Iowa poll from veteran pollster Ann Selzer, however, which favored Harris over Trump by three percentage points. If correct, this could mean disastrous things for the Republicans. As this news broke, Polymarket odds sharply narrowed, Bitcoin slipped, and total crypto liquidations hit $315 million in 24 hours.
Edited by Stacy Elliott.