Could an Assassinated Squirrel Be Bitcoin's Key to $125,000?

The election is finally upon us — and somehow an assassinated squirrel is playing a swing role in where Bitcoin goes from here (thanks in part to Elon Musk.) That’s not a sentence I ever thought I would write, but then again, it’s crypto.

Let’s dig into how things are shaping up during a week that will decide key control in Washington, another potential Fed rate cut, and much more on the horizon. As always, you can watch us discuss all these topics in our live news recap, featuring Dragonfly General Partner Rob Hadick.

Bitcoin Goes Higher No Matter Who Wins

As we’ve covered over the last few weeks — regardless of who wins the presidency, this Congress is likely to be the most pro-crypto ever. That means key pieces of legislation may support an industry that has been hamstrung by bad policies and enforcement actions under the previous administration.

Case in point: analysts at Standard Chartered and Bernstein are both predicting Bitcoin moves higher after the election. The former has Bitcoin at $125,000 at year-end under Trump and $75,000 under Kamala. Bernstein says Bitcoin hits $200,000 by next year regardless.

“The bitcoin genie is out of the bottle, and it is hard to reverse this course. Our bitcoin price target for the end of 2025 remains $200,000 independent of the election outcome,” analysts wrote. That largely matches what we heard from Travis Kling last week — echoing the idea that a retrace under a Kamala win might be more muted than people think.

As further proof, despite the constant jockeying for who might win / who the polls are showing in the lead, inflows into Bitcoin ETFs have remained constant. Last week, CoinShares says $2.2 billion flowed into the Bitcoin ETFs as investors continued to allocate to the largest crypto by market cap.

Ok, Sure. But Who Wins?

We aren't a political publication, so far be it from Coinage to try to predict the next president. That said, polls have swung back in the favor of VP Harris. In fact, even Trump’s lead on the prediction site Polymarket came back a bit this weekend after a new Iowa poll claimed Harris was leading in the state that hasn’t voted blue since Obama’s second term in 2012.

With the election essentially being a coin-flip, it seems like anything in the last inning could seemingly tip the scales. Like, I dunno, maybe the state of NEW YORK RAIDING SOMEONE’S HOUSE AND ASSASSINATING A SQUIRREL…

New York Assassinates a Squirrel

Only in crypto could a story about a rescued-and-then-euthanized squirrel inspire a $100 million memecoin.

The tl;dr is that an animal lover in New York, Mark Longo, and his family had rescued a squirrel named Peanut who went on to go viral on TikTok. The problem is, New York law says it’s illegal to house a squirrel in the state. And apparently, on the eve of the election, officers from the state Department of Environmental Conservation showed up to seize Peanut (and a raccoon named Fred) from the home near the Pennsylvania border and euthanized them both. Elon Musk quickly latched onto the story as government overreach:

On the campaign trail, JD Vance mentioned Peanut as well. "The same government that doesn't care about hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrant criminals coming into our country, doesn't want us to have pets," the Ohio senator told supporters at a rally in North Carolina. "It's the craziest thing."

As the story spread, someone quickly spun up a memecoin named “Peanut” and it surged to a $100 million market cap as the story grew. As of Monday, trading volume was drying up and it was back down to $47 million, which is still wild — all things considered. As always, the lesson here is to tread carefully with memecoins — they’re volatile by design and often don’t last long.

And before you think crypto is unique in its propensity to gamble on things like this, let’s not forget that Trump’s “Trump Media” holding company has largely traded as a bet on Trump winning the election as well. “DJT is a memecoin. It's just in stocks, right? Like this is something that is permeating outside of crypto,” Hadick told us.

We don’t know what kind of impact Peanut the Squirrel might have on the election — but given that the election could come down to Pennsylvania (a state that was won by about 80,000 votes in the last election cycle) even the smallest of impact from an Elon-fueled outrage machine could loom large.

Don’t Forget the Fed

As if the election by itself wasn’t enough to chew on this week — the market will also have to digest another Fed decision on interest rates. On Wednesday, the Fed is expected to cut rates by another 25-basis points, with the market pricing in about a 99% chance of that happening.

And as much as we talk about macro-economic policy here in the U.S. and what it might do to unleash more bullish bets in crypto, it’s worth also highlighting that crypto is continuing its warpath around the world.

Last month, we headed down to Buenos Aires Argentina to spotlight how the country continues to embrace crypto as it suffers through one of the world’s worst bouts of hyperinflation.

Thanks for reading Coinage! Don’t forget, you can support our community-owned outlet by sharing this with friends, by scooping up a Coinage NFT, or by staking with our community validator!