2010 sets a very fragile precedent
Bitcoin already existed during the November 2, 2010 midterm elections. That matters, because many viral charts only begin in 2014. Yet if the claim is that the pattern occurred during “every midterm in Bitcoin’s history,” 2010 must be included in the calculation.
The market was obviously nothing like today’s market. BTC was worth around $0.19 on election day, with extremely low liquidity and historical data that was sometimes incomplete. A few days later, it surged to roughly $0.44 on November 8 before falling back toward $0.22 the next day.
A 50% drop in one day after more than doubling over a few sessions: technically, “crash” works.
More than anything, this highlights how fragile the exercise is. Bitcoin now comes from a completely different market, with ETFs, institutions and much greater depth. Directly comparing a November 2010 move with 2026 therefore has little statistical value.
November 2010 actually ended around $0.22, above the level recorded on election day.
In other words, it is possible to single out a spectacular drop one week after the vote. It is just as easy to note that Bitcoin ended the month higher.
The first data point in the famous pattern exists, but it is far from clean.
2014 does not really fit the narrative
The November 4, 2014 U.S. elections offer an even more interesting case.
Bitcoin was worth around $330 on election day. It did not collapse after the vote. The exact opposite happened: BTC climbed to approximately $423 on November 12, a gain of nearly 28% in eight days.
The real downward move came later.
After trading above $450 during the first half of November, Bitcoin gradually gave back ground. It ended December around $320 before plunging to approximately $172 in January 2015.
Over a sufficiently broad window, it is therefore possible to link a crash to the midterms. The problem is that the same method could connect almost any event to a decline occurring several weeks later.
The 2014 backdrop was much more significant. Bitcoin had surpassed $1,100 at the end of 2013 before entering a historic bear market, notably marked by the collapse of Mt. Gox. BTC ultimately ended 2014 down approximately 56%.
The decline had therefore begun well before the vote.
That detail is particularly important for 2026. Bitcoin has also already gone through a genuine bear market this year, after falling from its October 2025 peak toward the $60,000 range in June.
In both cases, the midterms came after a major correction. They did not necessarily cause it.
2018 offers the most convincing case
2018 looks much more like the viral chart.
The midterm elections took place on November 6. Bitcoin was trading around $6,400 and had stagnated for several months within a relatively narrow range. Then, on November 14, eight days after the vote, support at $6,000 gave way abruptly.
BTC fell as low as approximately $5,533 during the day.
Five days later, it dropped below $5,000. By mid-December, Bitcoin was approaching $3,200. In a matter of weeks, the final major leg of the 2018 bear market had erased roughly half its value.
The proximity to the elections was therefore real.
It still does not establish a cause-and-effect relationship. Reuters reported at the time that the market attributed the decline in part to tensions surrounding the Bitcoin Cash hard fork, persistently weak demand and an already extremely damaged crypto environment.
More importantly, Bitcoin had begun the year near $14,000 after reaching its December 2017 peak around $20,000.
The November crash did not create the bear market. It ended it.
2018 ultimately ended with a decline of close to 73%. The link to the elections is visually striking, but the fundamental factors lay elsewhere.
And one detail keeps coming back: we were still roughly two years after a halving.
That deserves far more attention than Washington.
2022 landed almost exactly on the vote
If 2018 is troubling, 2022 is even more so.
The U.S. elections took place on November 8, 2022. Bitcoin closed November 7 around $20,600. The next day, it plunged toward $18,500, then reached approximately $15,350 on November 9.
This time, the timing was impossible to deny.
But it was also impossible to ignore what was happening at the same time: FTX was collapsing.
Concerns about the solvency of Sam Bankman-Fried’s exchange had intensified over the previous weekend. On November 8, Binance announced a nonbinding agreement to acquire FTX. It would abandon the deal the following day. On November 11, FTX filed for bankruptcy.
Bitcoin lost nearly 20% over the week.
The story is therefore fairly clear. BTC did not fall because Americans were electing members of the House of Representatives and part of the Senate. It fell because one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges was imploding.
2022 had already been a disastrous year before November: Terra/Luna had disappeared, Celsius had gone bankrupt, Three Arrows Capital had collapsed and Bitcoin was already far below its 2021 record.
Once again, the midterm crash looks more like the final chapter of a bear market than its origin.
The resemblance to 2018 is nevertheless unsettling. In both cycles, November of the midterm year came close to the final capitulation.
Why?
Probably because another four-year calendar is at work.
The halving explains the pattern better
Bitcoin has its own four-year cycle.
The halvings took place on November 28, 2012, July 9, 2016, May 11, 2020 and April 20, 2024. Approximately every 210,000 blocks, the reward paid to miners is cut in half. The schedule is built into the protocol and obviously has no connection to U.S. elections.
Now consider the years that follow.
The 2012 halving preceded the major 2013 bull market, followed by the 2014 bear market.
The 2016 halving preceded the December 2017 peak, followed by the 2018 bear market.
The 2020 halving preceded the 2021 highs, followed by the 2022 bear market.
The 2024 halving was followed by the record above $125,000 in October 2025, then a collapse to approximately $59,000 in June 2026.
And what exactly are 2014, 2018, 2022 and 2026?
U.S. midterm years.
This is probably the most interesting explanation for the viral chart. It is not necessarily the election calendar that creates the crash. U.S. midterm elections simply occur roughly two years after each Bitcoin halving, historically placing them in a period when previous bull-market cycles had already peaked and bear markets were well advanced.
Fidelity notes that Bitcoin recorded 56% declines in 2014, 73% in 2018 and 64% in 2022. These three years also correspond to the three major post-halving bear markets.
The coincidence is almost perfect.
That does not guarantee it will continue. Fidelity itself points out that the historical sample contains only three comparable cycles and that ETFs and institutional instruments have fundamentally changed the market’s structure.
This is much more serious than an election statistic.
And far less spectacular on X.
2026 resembles the past without repeating it
The timing remains difficult to ignore, however.
The next midterm elections will take place on November 3, 2026, in accordance with the U.S. federal election calendar. Bitcoin is currently trading around $83,000 to $84,000, approximately one month before the vote.
It has already covered much of the downward move that previous cycles experienced around this period.
Since its record above $125,000 in October 2025, BTC has lost more than half its value, falling to a low near $59,000 in June. The structure then turned around: July became positive, August gained nearly 25% and September is heading toward another green close.
The third quarter is now showing a gain of more than 40%.
CryptoQuant even considers that Bitcoin has returned to a bullish phase after reclaiming its 365-day moving average. Its Bull Score rose to 90 out of 100. At the same time, the company warns that the market could face a short-term correction: estimated spot demand has fallen by approximately 170,000 BTC over thirty days, profit-taking is increasing and speculative futures demand is slowing sharply.
So yes, a correction remains entirely possible before or after November 3.
That is not the same as saying the midterms will cause it.
The current market also has features that were absent from previous cycles: U.S. spot ETFs, heavy institutional buying, corporate treasuries, more developed derivatives and professional investors capable of absorbing some of the volatility. A recent Bitwise survey of 15 major institutions even found that none had reduced its crypto allocation during the roughly 50% decline between the end of 2025 and the second quarter of 2026.
The $58,000 to $60,000 range nevertheless remains the cycle’s real technical red line, far more so than the November 3 date.
That is probably where this “curse” belongs.
Bitcoin has indeed experienced a sharp decline around each midterm cycle if a sufficiently broad window is used. The parallel is very clear in 2018 and 2022, much less convincing in 2014, while 2010 belongs to a market that is almost impossible to compare with today’s.
The strongest common factor is not electoral.
2014, 2018, 2022 and 2026 all occupy the same place in Bitcoin’s post-halving calendar.
If BTC corrects again around November 3, the viral chart will gain a fourth spectacular example. That still will not prove that U.S. elections make Bitcoin fall.
It may simply show that the midterms and BTC’s old four-year cycle continue, by chance, to share the same calendar.
