This Week on Twitter: Trump Support Surges After Shooting, Degens Ignores German Bitcoin Sales

Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt

We thought we had seen it all last week, not to mention the reactions on Crypto Twitter. But on Saturday afternoon, former US President and presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump was shot dead at a campaign rally.

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

Political leaders in the United States and around the world condemned the attack. And, amid concern and relief that Trump survived, some business leaders took the opportunity to throw their support behind the Republican candidate.

Elon Musk, owner of Twitter quickly supported Trump after recently donating to a Trump-focused super PAC, then to prominent hedge fund manager Bill Ackman and Tron Founder Justin Sun In the same way, they gave their support to Trump.

Crypto industry advocates have framed the election as a battle for the future of cryptocurrency in the United States. And since Trump is the pro-crypto candidate, many traders have interpreted his survival and the groundswell of support for Trump as bullish signs.

Bitcoin prices spiked immediately after the shooting, while Trump meme coins saw meteoric gains. Trump’s odds of winning the election also surged on crypto prediction platform Polymarket, hitting an all-time high of about 70% Saturday night.

Earlier this week, before political violence shocked the nation, the German government unloaded its entire billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin into a rapid fire sequence of massive sales.

Twitter users held their breath, waiting to see if Bitcoin would plunge even lower than it had. already hadBut the crypto gods were merciful: towards the end of the week, as Germany moved the last of its BTC out of its wallets, Bitcoin started to rise again.

Analysts have cautiously expressed confidence that the world’s first cryptocurrency is ready to hold on—not only against the German government’s BTC sales, but also through the imminent repayment of billions of dollars worth of BTC to Mt. Gox creditors.

But, as is often the case on Twitter, users couldn’t just settle for victory and go home. Many turned their relief into resentful joy, criticizing the German government for not HODLing.

Some were convinced that Bitcoin had now bottomed out, comparing the moment to the early 2000s, when gold soared in value after some governments sold off their reserves of the commodity.

Meanwhile, amid unrest in Washington and mounting pressure on President Joe Biden to give up In the presidential race, crypto has had an unusually big week in the national political spotlight.

The big plan began Monday, when Republicans approved a draft party platform ahead of the Republican National Convention that explicitly adopted cryptographya first for a major American political party.

Prominent figures on Crypto Twitter 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 hue on Capitol Hill, the House replacement failure Biden vetoes bill that would have allowed US banks to hold cryptocurrencies.

Crypto policy experts criticized the vote, which failed to attract the substantial number of Democratic defectors required to secure a veto-proof supermajority — but they didn’t necessarily expect the measure, a repeal of SAB 121, to pass. overcome these considerable obstacles.

In hopes of bipartisan consensus on cryptocurrency, prominent Democratic lawmakers hosted a cryptocurrency roundtable on Thursday to establish a more fluid dialogue with industry leaders. One of Biden’s most trusted advisers, Anita Dunn, attended the meeting, which left several attendees feeling cautious optimism.

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.