What happens to Bitcoin after midterm elections? Here's the data

What happens to Bitcoin after midterm elections? If you go back through every midterm since Bitcoin had a real market, the short term has been ugly and the year after has been strong. Bitcoin hit its low somewhere between two and ten weeks after each of the last three votes, and 12 months later it was higher every single time.

Today is November 3, 2026, Americans are voting, and Bitcoin is trading near $77,000. So let's look at what the last three midterms actually did, and what I think it means this time around.

Two kinds of people are reading this today. One wants to know what history says so they can stick to a plan they already wrote down. The other wants someone to tell them whether to buy tonight. I'm writing for the first one... and if you're the second, stick around, because the numbers below are the best argument I know for having a plan before the headlines hit.

Why do midterm elections move Bitcoin at all?

It comes down to uncertainty, plain and simple.

Leading up to a midterm, nobody knows who's going to control Congress, what that means for taxes, for regulation, for spending, for crypto bills sitting in committee. And it doesn't matter which side you're rooting for. Everybody wants an answer before they commit money. So capital sits on the sidelines and waits. People want their own certainty on the what, the when, the where and the why before they put real money to work.

Then the votes get counted. The uncertainty clears, right? Whatever people think of the result, they finally know what they're dealing with, and money that was waiting on the sidelines starts making decisions again. That's really all it comes down to. The market doesn't need good news. It needs news.

What happened to Bitcoin after the last three midterms?

Here are the numbers from election-day close, for the three midterms where Bitcoin traded on real volume. The 2010 midterm is left out because Bitcoin was worth about 19 cents and barely traded.

Midterm	Election-day close	30 days later	Low after the vote	12 months later
Nov 4, 2014	$329.66	+11.9%	$175.64 on Jan 14, 2015 (down 46.7%, 71 days later)	+23%
Nov 6, 2018	$6,441.15	down 45.5%	$3,185.07 on Dec 15, 2018 (down 50.6%, 39 days later)	+45.2%
Nov 8, 2022	$18,520.97	down 7%	Mid-November 2022 during the FTX collapse, about 13 days later	+93.3%

The 12-month gains averaged about 54%. Bitcoin's low after the vote came 41 days later on average, about six weeks. In 2022, Bitcoin was back above its election-day price by January 12, 2023, roughly two months later. In 2018 it took until May 2019, about six months. In 2014 it took close to a year.

So is the pattern bearish first and bullish later? Yes... but be honest about the size of the "bearish first" part. Two of those three drops were cut in half. If you bought on election night in 2018, you watched half your money disappear in five weeks before it ever came back. That's not a dip. That's a test of whether you had a plan.

Do midterm elections cause the drop, or is it the four-year cycle?

My honest read? Mostly the cycle.

Every one of those midterms landed in the year after a cycle peak. The 2014 vote came about a year after the 2013 top, the 2018 vote about a year after the 2017 top, and the 2022 vote about a year after the 2021 top. Bitcoin was already deep in a bear market each time. On election day it was trading about 35% below its 200-day average in 2014, about 9% below in 2018 and about 22% below in 2022.

So the election didn't create those bear markets. It landed in the middle of them, added a little extra uncertainty, and then got out of the way. If you want the bigger picture on how the cycle works, I break it down in our guide to the crypto market cycle.

Is the Bitcoin four-year cycle broken in 2026?

I don't think the four-year cycle is broken. I do think this will probably be the last cycle that runs this cleanly, and the reason is in the drawdowns.

Look at how deep each bear market went from its peak. Roughly 93% in 2011. About 86% into early 2015. About 84% into late 2018. About 77% into late 2022. This time, Bitcoin peaked above $126,000 in October 2025 and bottomed near $57,700 on July 1, 2026, a drop of about 54%. Every cycle, the drops get smaller and the swings get tamer. That's what mass adoption and a maturing market look like. More holders, more institutions, more liquidity, and less room for 90% wipeouts.

And that's why 2026 already looks different from the last three midterms. The low came in July, about four months before the vote, not weeks after it. As of today Bitcoin is trading about 5% above its 200-day average, the first time in this comparison that Bitcoin went into a midterm above that line. That's a real difference, and anybody who copies the 2018 playbook onto this chart without noticing it is going to get confused fast.

Should you buy Bitcoin before or after the midterms?

I'm not going to tell you to buy or sell tonight, and anyone who does is selling you a feeling. Three data points is not a law. It's a pattern with a very small sample.

Here's what I actually do with this information. I don't trade the calendar. I use it to know when the market is likely to get emotional, and I make sure my plan is already written before it does. That means:

• Size from your risk, not the headline. If an election-night candle shakes you out of a position, the position was too big. Our position sizing guide walks through how to set it from the stop.
• Have a plan for both directions. One-sided exposure only works if you can sit through a 50% drawdown. Most people can't, and that's not a character flaw. It's why we teach trading both ways, long and short, inside a diversified plan.
• Wait for the uncertainty to clear. The data says the weeks right after a midterm have been the shakiest stretch. There's no prize for being first. Let the market show its hand.

The people who get hurt around elections aren't the ones who picked the wrong party. They're the ones who went all in on a hunch and had no idea what they'd do if they were wrong.

What should you do this week?

Take ten minutes tonight, before the results come in, and write down two things: what you'll do if Bitcoin drops 20% from here, and what you'll do if it rallies 20%. If you can't answer both, that's your homework, not the election. Our trading plan checklist is a good place to start.

And if you want to learn to read the market yourself, with coaches checking your work every week, try our Skool Community free for a week, then $97/month.

This is education, not financial advice. Past midterms are a small sample and don't predict what happens next. Prices are current as of November 3, 2026.