Ahead of his campaign rally at the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, New York, former President Donald Trump stopped off to greet supporters at Pubkey, a Greenwich Village-based "Bitcoin bar."
While leaving the cryptocurrency-themed establishment, which opened in fall, 2022, Trump paid for patrons' food and drinks with Bitcoin, a transaction he described as "very easy. It goes quickly and beautifully."
"I think it's a great place. I think it's I just made [my] first transaction in Bitcoin," Trump said when asked what he thought of the bar. "Everybody that's a crypto guy – crypto maniac as I call them – get out and vote. Because if you vote, we cannot lose."
Following the visit, which occurred at around 5 p.m. E.D.T., according to the New York Post, Bitcoin's price has seen a 4.7 percent rise from $60,244.92 to $63,109.80.
While well below its near-record 9.5 percent gain in February, this is the first time Bitcoin has surpassed the $62,000 threshold since late August, and the spike raises the question of whether the nominee's tacit endorsement could have boosted the cryptocurrency.
Cathy Mulligan, a digital technology researcher and founding Co-Director of the Imperial College Centre for Cryptocurrency Research and Engineering, spoke to Newsweek about Trump's use of Bitcoin on Thursday.
Mulligan described the 4 percent, $3,000-dollar jump as "a small bump," which is not that significant compared to the currency's high price.
"We would need to look at prices over a longer period to see if there was any real impact from Trump's announcement," she said, adding that any correlation between the former president's statement and the currency would be "extremely hard to identify."
Cryptocurrency analyst David Gerard, who authored the 2017 book "Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain," concurred with Mulligan, and said that a price fluctuation of a few thousand dollars was "normal" for such "thinly traded commodities," whose low trading volumes lead to greater price volatility.
Mulligan also pointed out that, were Trump to wield this sort of economic sway, stocks of Trump Media, the parent company of Truth Social, would have also increased.
"If [Bitcoin's rise] really is related to Trump, you would have expected that his stock price would also have increased," Mulligan said. "It is instead dropping."
Shares in Trump media are currently change hands at around 15 dollars each at the time of writing, having closed on Thursday at the lowest level since their Nasdaq debut in late March.
This is ahead of "lockup" restrictions on the asset expiring as soon as Thursday afternoon, which will allow the former president to sell his majority stake in the company, though Trump has previously vowed to hold onto his 57 percent share.
Peter McCormack, host of the "What Bitcoin Did" podcast, highlighted other more significant events that could have influenced Bitcoin's price, chief among which being the Federal Reserve's Thursday decision to lower its benchmark interest rate to the range of 4.75-5 percent, the first cut in over four years.
"The types of movements we have seen in the Bitcoin price over the last few days is nothing abnormal," McCormack added. "Bitcoin moves up and down quite regularly."
Do you have a story we should be covering? Do you have any questions about this article? Contact LiveNews@newsweek.com.
fairness meter
About the writer
Hugh Cameron is Newsweek U.S. news reporter based in London, U.K. with a focus on covering American economic and business ... Read more