TDuring his campaign, the crypto industry invested over $100 million in races across the country, hoping to reinforce the relevance of crypto as a voter issue and propel pro-crypto candidates into office. On Wednesday morning, almost all of the industry's wishes came true. Republican candidate Donald Trump, who has showered Bitcoin with praise this year, won comfortably against his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris. And crypto PACs scored big victories in House and Senate races – most notably in Ohio, where Republican Bernie Moreno defeated crypto skeptic Sherrod Brown.

As Trump's numbers rose on Tuesday evening, Bitcoin hit a new record high of over $75,000. Crypto-related stocks, including Robinhood Markets and MicroStrategy, also surged. Proponents now believe that the Trump administration will roll back regulation of the crypto industry and that a sympathetic Congress will pass legislation that gives the industry more room to grow.

“This is a huge victory for crypto,” Kristin Smith, CEO of the Blockchain Association, a Washington-based lobbying group, tells TIME. “I think we’ve really turned the corner and have the right people in place to sort out the policy once and for all.”

Trump’s crypto hug

Many crypto fans supported Trump over Harris for several reasons. Trump spoke enthusiastically about crypto on the campaign trail this year, despite having expressed skepticism about it for years. At the Bitcoin conference in Nashville in July, Trump floated the idea of ​​establishing a federal Bitcoin reserve and emphasized the importance of bringing more Bitcoin mining operations to the US

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Perhaps most importantly, Trump vowed to oust Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler, who has filed many lawsuits against crypto projects for allegedly violating securities laws. Gensler is a widely reviled figure in the crypto industry, with many accusing him of stifling innovation. Gensler, on the other hand, argued that his job is to protect consumers from the massive crypto meltdowns that unfolded in 2022, including Terra Luna and FTX.

Gensler's term doesn't end until 2026, but some analysts expect he will step down once Trump takes office, as previous SEC chairs have done after the president who appointed them lost their elections. A change in SEC leadership could lead to many more crypto products entering mainstream financial markets. In recent years, the SEC has been reluctant to approve crypto ETFs: investment vehicles that allow people to bet on crypto without actually owning it. But a judge forced Gensler to act and launched Bitcoin ETFs in January. Now, under a friendlier SEC, ETFs based on smaller cryptocurrencies like Solana and XRP could be next.

Many crypto enthusiasts are also excited about Trump's alliance with Elon Musk, who has long advocated for cryptocurrencies on social media. On election night, Dogecoin, Musk's meme coin of choice, rose 25% to 21 cents.

Impact in the Senate

Crypto enthusiasts are also cheering the results in the Senate, which has been the focus of most of the industry's political input. Crypto PACs like Fairshake spent over $100 million supporting pro-crypto candidates and fighting anti-crypto candidates in hopes of creating a new Congress that would pass legislation favorable to the industry. Essentially, lobbyists were hoping for a bill that would hand crypto regulation from the SEC to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), a much smaller agency.

Read more: Crypto is putting money into the 2024 elections. Will it pay off?

Crypto PACs particularly focused their efforts on Ohio, spending around $40 million to unseat Democrat Brown, the Senate Banking Committee chairman and crypto critic. His opponent Moreno was a regular attendee at crypto conferences and promised to “lead the fight to defend crypto in the US Senate.” On Tuesday evening, Moreno won, handing control of the Senate.

Defend American Jobs, a cryptocurrency PAC affiliated with Fairshake, claimed blame for Brown's defeat on Tuesday. “Elizabeth Warren’s ally Sherrod Brown has been a key opponent of cryptocurrency and thanks to our efforts, he will be leaving the Senate,” spokesman Josh Vlasto wrote in a statement. “Senator-elect Moreno’s victory shows that Ohio voters want a leader who will prioritize innovation, protect America’s economic interests and ensure our nation’s continued technology leadership.”

Crypto PACs scored another victory in Montana, where their preferred candidate, Republican Tim Sheehy, defeated Democrat Jon Tester.

The rise of prediction markets

Finally, crypto enthusiasts celebrated the accuracy of prediction markets that allow users to bet on election outcomes using crypto. Proponents claimed that prediction markets could be more accurate than polls because they channeled the collective wisdom of people with skin in the game. Critics, however, pointed out that they were too volatile and based on personal sentiment and encouragement.

For weeks, the prediction markets have been far more favorable to Trump than the polls that showed Trump and Harris in a dead heat. (For example, on November 3, Polymarket gave Trump a 62% chance of winning.) And on Election Day, before key results were announced, prediction markets swung heavily toward Trump; The probability of Republicans winning the presidency, House and Senate increased to 44% for Kalshi.

According to Dune Analytics, bettors have bet over $2 billion on the presidential election on Polymarket in recent months. It's still unclear whether prediction markets are actually more accurate than polls on average. But their success in this election will likely mean that their presence in the political arena will only increase in the years to come.

The future of crypto in the Trump era is anything but guaranteed. Crypto prices are highly vulnerable to global events such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine as well as larger macroeconomic trends. Fraudulent crypto projects like FTX that thrived in deregulated environments have also caused prices to plummet in recent years. Skeptics fear that allowing more Americans to purchase cryptocurrencies will increase volatility and risk to the American financial system.

And it's unclear how committed Trump actually is to cryptocurrency or whether he will follow through on his promises to the industry. “If he doesn’t deliver on these promises quickly, euphoria could turn to disappointment, which has the potential to cause volatility in the crypto market,” Tim Kravchunovsky, founder and CEO of decentralized telecommunications network Chirp, wrote to TIME. “We need to be prepared because the reality is that crypto is not the most important issue on Trump’s current agenda.”

But for now, most crypto fans believe that a “bull run” in which prices rise is imminent and that regulatory changes are on the way. “I don't think we're going to see the same kind of hostility from the administration and especially from members of Congress that we've seen in the past,” Smith said. “This is really positive news for all parts of the ecosystem.”

Andrew R. Chow's book on crypto and Sam Bankman-Fried, CryptomaniaWas published in August.