On election week, bitcoin opened Sunday night futures at approximately $69,000. With the big day less than 48 hours away, Monday showed an uptrend, closing near $70,000. By Tuesday, the market remained relatively flat as investors and traders awaited the results of the 2024 U.S. election.

The significant move of the week came when initial election results began emerging from key swing states on the Eastern coast, such as North Carolina and Georgia, around 7:30 PM Eastern, followed by Pennsylvania at 8 PM Eastern.

By 10 PM EST, as it became evident that the swing state results were favoring Trump, bitcoin started climbing toward its all-time highs, reaching $74,000. By 11 PM EST, with prediction market odds for Trump surging, bitcoin broke through its previous all-time high, closing an hourly candle at $74,350 and surpassing the March peak of $73,650.

The rally continued into Wednesday and throughout the week, with bitcoin closing at $77,360 by the end of the NYSE session on Friday. As noted in previous editions, a Trump victory was anticipated to be positive for bitcoin’s price action, and this scenario is now unfolding.

Excess Short Liquidations

Tuesday evening into early Wednesday saw the highest level of short liquidations this year, with $426 million in short positions wiped out across major leveraged futures exchanges. This wave of liquidations provided additional momentum for bitcoin bulls, further fueling the rally.

Bitcoin Weekly Analysis

Examining the higher-term timeframes, such as the weekly chart, bitcoin has clearly broken out of the months-long consolidation range that began in March. With a weekly close at $77,360, this surpassed the prior all-time weekly high of $71,530 by a significant margin. The close above the high-value node on the volume profile, which highlights the price levels where the most volume has been transacted this year (around $64,000), adds further confirmation of bitcoin’s bullish momentum.

Exchange BTC Futures Open Interest Hits New Highs

With bitcoin’s price surge, open interest in BTC futures expanded, hitting $46.74 billion by the end of the week. This marks a 4.5x increase from the lows seen during the FTX collapse, when total open interest was below $10 billion. Rising open interest coupled with increasing prices is a bullish indicator, signaling that traders are opening new positions and supporting the uptrend.

Bitcoin Balance on Exchanges Continues To Decrease

Another important metric for gauging the health of the bitcoin ecosystem is the balance of bitcoin on spot exchanges. After peaking at 2.72 million in February, the balance has now dropped to 2.35 million — a 13.6% decrease.

This decline is a positive signal, as a lower exchange balance typically indicates that investors are moving their bitcoin off exchanges and into long-term storage.

ETF Flows Soar To Record Highs

It was not surprising to see ETF flows rocket up to new highs as well, with the major ETF issuers now owning over 1 million bitcoin, or close to 5% of the total bitcoin supply, Total net assets now stand close to $78 billion, with Blackrock’s IBIT fund holding the most with over 447,000 in bitcoin.

Following the announcement of Trump’s victory on Wednesday, spot ETFs saw record inflows of $1.38 billion, surpassing the previous record of $1.05 billion set in March.

Looking Ahead

Now that bitcoin is at all-time highs and in price-discovery territory, most on-chain metrics and technical chart analysis suggests that further upside is likely to continue.

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