Trump's assassination attempt catalyses Bitcoin's price jump

Bitcoin rallied Monday to its highest in two weeks amid heightened prospects for the US presidential candidate Donald Trump's victory following an attempt on his life. The prospects of Trump's win soared after he was shot in the ear during a campaign rally in the state of Pennsylvania on Saturday. Reports indicated that he was recovering well from the attack, according to his campaign team. Trump has portrayed himself as a pro-cryptocurrency candidate.

Bitcoin jumped 8.6 per cent to $62,508 in a session high earlier at $62,698. This leap brought Bitcoin's year-to-date gains to 47 per cent. Ether also gained 6.8 per cent to $3,322.

Trump is battling Democratic President Joe Biden for the presidency in November's US election and has been antagonistic toward Democratic efforts to rein in the cryptocurrency industry. At a fundraiser in San Francisco in June, Trump promoted himself as a champion of cryptocurrency, although he has given no details on what his crypto policy would look like.

"He's certainly positioned himself as pro-crypto and as the odds of his reelection were galvanised by the shooting on the weekend, it's certainly put a big boost underneath the bid in crypto markets and bitcoin obviously, just an absolute standout," said Tony Sycamore, a market analyst at IG.

Trump is due to speak at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville, Tennessee, on July 27, the organisers of the conference said last week.

Bitcoin had a blistering start to the year, underpinned by the launch of exchange-traded funds in the United States that drove it to its record of $73,803.25 about mid-March. Since then, the struggle persisted, hitting four-month lows at the beginning of July as traders fretted over the likely dumping of tokens from defunct Japanese exchange Mt. Gox.

"We had four weeks of declines on the back of the Mt. Gox news...but the rebound, it looks to me like it's got further to go and I wouldn't be surprised seeing it head back up towards, at least towards $65,000 by the end of this week," said IG's Sycamore.

The assassination plot of Trump brought new volatility to the cryptocurrency market, underlining once more the intricate relationships between politics and digital assets.