Bitcoin's (CRYPTO: BTC) midterm election test will likely be forgotten within months, Bitwise's Ryan Rasmussen says, even as prediction markets price a 75% chance Democrats sweep both chambers of Congress.

Why Rasmussen Expects the Midterms to Fade Quickly

Rasmussen said on The Wolf Of All Streets podcast that the election carries limited long-term impact on crypto since the regulators currently pushing pro-crypto policy remain in place regardless of Tuesday's outcome.

"I think it'll ultimately be a non-event six months from now," he said, comparing the midterm anxiety to the months of worry around the Clarity Act's failure that also faded quickly once markets moved past it.

Fellow panelist Andrew countered that investors should not take regulatory tailwinds for granted, noting that a Democratic Senate sweep could put Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in charge of the Senate Banking Committee and complicate SEC Chair Paul Atkins' agenda.

Still, Andrew argued technology consistently leads regulation and legislation, not the other way around, and said crypto has won over meaningfully more Democratic support than it had two years ago.

Why Bitcoin's Resilience Through the Binance Hack Stands Out

Rasmussen said the market has digested an unusually heavy run of negative news, including the Binance hack, without the kind of sharp selloff that similar events would have triggered years ago.

He called that resilience "a coiled spring" for when uncertainty around rate decisions, the midterms and Iran clears, arguing negative news losing its power to move price typically signals a market nearing the later stages of a bear cycle.

Andrew pointed to apathy, not bearishness, as the bigger near-term concern, noting four to five of the nine spot Bitcoin ETFs have seen zero net inflows for roughly three consecutive weeks.

Rasmussen said financial advisers remain highly engaged at industry events, but flows have stalled since the Clarity Act's failure, even as advisers increasingly ask about stablecoins, tokenization, Solana (CRYPTO: SOL) and XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) rather than just Bitcoin.

Why Bitwise Raised Its Bitcoin Price Target to $1.6 Million

Rasmussen also addressed Bitwise's newly updated long-term Bitcoin forecast, which raises the firm's 2036 price target to $1.6 million. Three trends anchor the thesis:

  • Deficit spending: governments continuing to run large deficits.
  • Gold purchases: central banks buying gold at a record pace.
  • Institutional allocation: investors still in the early stages of allocating from a pool of hundreds of trillions of dollars in assets under management.
Rasmussen expects Bitcoin's volatility to keep compressing as market structure deepens, cushioning downside risk while still supporting long-term price appreciation.

He noted Bitwise's forecast lands roughly in the middle of competing institutional estimates, including JPMorgan's own capital market assumptions, which project Bitcoin as the best-performing asset class over the next decade.