Election Day had crypto stocks popping while $BTC sat in the back pew 🗳️

Coinbase, Strategy, Riot Platforms and MARA Holdings surged between 5% and 13% by late Tuesday morning on Election Day, outpacing a 0.3% gain in Bitcoin ($BTC) over 24 hours. The rally recovered only part of a two-day sell-off that had cut the four stocks by 8% to 14%.

Three developments coincided. The stocks were rebounding from their two-day decline, while the Nasdaq Composite climbed about 1% after losing 3.9% over the previous two sessions. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) also cleared equity perpetual futures on Tuesday, allowing contracts that track individual US stocks and never expire; Coinbase’s derivatives arm had filed to list them.

Shortly before 11 a.m. ET, Riot rose 13.3%, Coinbase gained 8.6%, MARA advanced 7.6% and Strategy added 5.4%. Bitcoin miners such as Riot earn new Bitcoin by operating specialized computers, while Strategy buys and holds Bitcoin as its core business.

Short covering may have contributed, although the role remains unconfirmed because late-October figures have not been published. Short interest in MARA reached 111.9 million shares in mid-October, up from 100.8 million two weeks earlier, according to Nasdaq data. Riot’s short position rose to 53.6 million shares over the same period.

Barclays cut its Coinbase target to $120 last week after October trading fees reached only about $165 million, while the exchange had reported about $130 million through July 26 before third-quarter trading revenue closed at $590 million, according to its deck. Riot reports third-quarter earnings before Wednesday’s open, with analysts expecting a loss of $0.32 a share, or 32 cents per share, on about $159.7 million in revenue as the company shifts from bitcoin mining toward AI and high-performance computing infrastructure.

US midterm results also land overnight. In a Bloomberg survey, investors tied Bitcoin’s $100,000 chances to a Republican Congress winning.