Crypto traders react to Trump-Biden debate—and they’re not happy

Joe Biden’s weak performance in Thursday’s presidential debate against Donald Trump has already resulted in a significant backlash for the president, including calls from within his party for him to step down as the Democratic candidate. Pollsters will determine how Biden’s stumbles and Trump’s boasts and fabrications have impacted the overall mood of voters, but the crypto world is offering what could be an early look at where people are leaning.

Biden and Trump are both the focus of separate meme coins—and neither cryptocurrency is performing well on Friday. The Trump-centric MAGA coin was down 13% as of Friday morning, according to CoinMarketCap, while the BIDEN meme coin has nosedived a stunning 70%.

The drops for both started in conjunction with the debate and are acting, in some ways, as a real time poll of voter/investor reactions to what the candidates said. The MAGA coin hit its lows just before 1 a.m. ET, falling to $7.19 (from a high Thursday of $9.63). BIDEN, however, has yet to find a floor.

MAGA has always been the stronger of the two meme coins, trading for as much as $17.52 a month ago. The BIDEN coin has never been worth more than 2.8 cents. Even with that differentiation, however, no one is “hodling” Biden’s meme stock. As of 9 a.m. Friday, it had fallen to $0.003198 per token, meaning you’d have to buy 313 of the meme coins to have a cash value of $1.

One other political meme coin, the Martin Shrkeli-created DJT (which Shrkeli claims was created with Trump’s youngest son Barron Trump) has actually gained some ground, climbing 5% in the past day and gaining strength during the debate Thursday night.

Neither Biden nor Trump were behind the launch of the MAGA or BIDEN coin. The tokens are part of an “experiment” in PoliFi (a fusion of politics and finance) according to marketing director Steven Steele, a YouTube talk show host (who appears to be an ardent Trump supporter, based on his social media posts).

Because funds from both meme coins don’t go to either candidate’s campaign, Trump and Biden can sidestep any worries about campaign finance laws. Trump has a reason to keep an eye on the performance of MAGA, though.  

CoinDesk reported in May that a wallet that is supposedly linked to Trump holds the MAGA meme coin with a current value of $4.6 million. It is unclear whether the wallet actually belongs to Trump. (The Trump organization did not respond to a request for comment.) That wallet was given $7,100 of TRUMP by the coin’s developers between August and October of last year.

Both meme coins are, in some ways, akin to a prediction market, letting people bet on future events. But because it’s also a traded crypto, the returns can be higher (or lower, depending on how things ultimately turn out).

Those prediction markets, which let people wager on the outcome of all sorts of things, including the November election, haven’t been good for Biden either. Polymarket, one of the leading prediction markets, saw bets for Biden fall 14.5% after the debate, while the number of people betting that Biden drops out of the presidential race soared 23% to 42%.

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