Election nail-biter has Bitcoin gasping

Bitcoin was trading at about $13,850 as of 8:45 a.m. Wednesday morning (EST). This mini-surge followed a 3% decline (overnight, on selling, in Asia). That took place after BTC broke $14,000 against the backdrop of a tight U.S. presidential election that has no clear winner yet. The state of the race is down to a handful of states with millions of Biden-bolstering mail-in votes still not counted. Despite the not-finalized outcome, Trump, controversially, claimed victory and asked that counting be halted.

Demand for safe-haven government bonds spiked, with the yield on the U.S. 10-year falling 23 basis points to 0.77%.

Futures contracts tied to indexes tied to DeFi are collapsing, erasing gains, as the sector cools off following a wild summer of speculation (CoinDesk).

Meanwhile, the Shanghai Stock Exchange has suspended Ant Group's IPO. The financial app behemoth had planned to raise $34 billion in what would have been the biggest public offering ever. However, Chinese regulators appear to have squashed it. The timing seems eerie, considering geopolitical/trade tensions, the escalating technology arms race and a still unsettled U.S. election.

Spared a knock-out blow Tuesday night, President Trump appears to be losing ground in several key battleground states as mail-in vote counts drag on. Trump's lead was slipping in Wisconsin and Michigan as of early Wednesday.

Some Vegas bookmakers, as of Wednesday morning, had Trump's odds of winning in the end at 40%, compared to Biden, at 60%.

Crypto investors are keenly interested in who becomes the next U.S. president. Bulls seem to be hitching their wagons to Biden, viewed as more crypto friendly compared to Trump, who reportedly told his Treasury Secretary to go after Bitcoin for fraud.

With millions of votes still being counted, the U.S. presidential election could be heading for a protracted court battle, which could be bad for markets, including Bitcoin (Cryptobriefing). On-chain data analysis shows a major spike in BTC exchange inflows, which may result in near-term bearish price pressure.

Automated clearing house (ACH) transfers allow money to flow directly between U.S. bank accounts. Dharma, a DeFi trading app startup, has now enabled bank account ACH crypto purchases, for a 1.5% fee, up to $25K worth of coin, in 13 states. Applications connecting bank accounts are what vaulted Robinhood and Coinbase to prominence.

Dharma would seem to be leading decentralized finance straight into the belly of the centralized banking beast, using the API of financial services company Plaid, owned by Visa. But big players are needed in any ecosystem, Dharma’s leaders have argued, and longer-term development of DeFi's potential will require all the brain power that money can buy.

While DeFi projects might seem like they grow on trees, in actuality they require a tremendous amount of hard work.