Bitcoin’s ‘Midterm Curse’ Was Never About Congress

Americans vote on Tuesday, and bitcoin traders have a superstition ready. Analyst Ali Martinez counts large falls after recent midterms: about 65% after 2014, 52% after 2018 and 27% after 2022. CryptoPotato asked in September whether 2026 could break the pattern.

The pattern is real. The cause isn’t Congress.

Check the calendar

Each of those midterms landed about a year after a bitcoin cycle peak: late 2013, December 2017, November 2021. Those were bear-market years before a single ballot was counted, and they kept falling because that is what bitcoin did a year after each of its tops. The midterm was on the calendar; it wasn’t in the chart.

The calendar holds a second detail. Each of those cycles also found its low about a year after its high — January 2015, December 2018, November 2022 — within roughly ten weeks of a midterm. The elections look like turning points because they kept landing next to them.

This year rhymes for the same reason. Bitcoin’s record, $126,210, was set last October. It sits near $77,800 now.

The four-year cycle and the four-year election calendar line up. Only one of them sets the price.

What Tuesday can change

Prediction markets give Democrats better than 90% odds of taking the House and about 72% for the Senate, CriptoNoticias reports. The crypto industry spent more than $200 million on these races, much of it to pass the CLARITY Act, which would divide oversight of tokens and exchanges between the SEC and CFTC. That matters a great deal to token issuers. Grayscale says the election matters to bitcoin “only at the margins”.

Bitcoin doesn’t need Congress to settle a block. What moves its price this quarter is closer to the Federal Reserve, where futures traders put about a 76% chance on a December rate hike, and to oil, which is pricing a war. Watch those on Wednesday, not the seat count.

Opinion. Martinez’s figures do not state a measurement window. Grayscale’s remark is translated back from CriptoNoticias’s Spanish. Price as read on River at 11:56 UTC November 2. Not investment advice.