The price of Bitcoin sputtered and then steadied, as President Donald Trump’s tariff threats intensified. The original cryptocurrency is up slightly above $65,000 on Monday after it dipped below that threshold on Sunday evening for the first time in about two weeks, according to Binance. The latest gyrations came after the Supreme Court found the majority of the White House’s tariffs to be unconstitutional, leading President Donald Trump to double down and vow a new set of tariffs shortly after.
“Selling pressure is still tangible and heavy, so the asset has become highly sensitive to headlines, and recent turbulence around tariffs has put even more pressure on risk sentiment,” said Gracy Chen, CEO of Bitget, in a note to Fortune.
The latest dip is yet another example of how Bitcoin is prone to struggles amid macroeconomic uncertainty, just like the traditional stock market, as the S&P 500 also dropped about 1% on Monday.
In response to the Supreme Court ruling, which struck down the tariffs the president imposed by using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), Trump reacted by at first announcing a 10% tariff on all countries and then increased that rate to 15% over the weekend. He posted on Truth Social on Monday that “any country that wants to play games with the ridiculous Supreme Court decision…will be met with a much higher tariff.”
This isn’t the first time that Trump’s tariff threats have caused a crypto downturn. In October, following the president’s aggressive rhetoric toward China, digital asset traders saw $19 billion in positions wiped out—though it remains unclear how much of those losses were sparked by the tariff news. More broadly, the original cryptocurrency is down about 48% since its all-time high of $126,000 in October.
Other cryptocurrencies have also buckled. Ethereum is down 35% in the past three months to its current price of $1,893, and Solana is down roughly 42% to its current price of about $79.
Because of crypto’s integration into traditional finance, Chen believes that an upswing is coming but that the timeline is uncertain. “Bitcoin and crypto more broadly already serve as an underlying layer of the financial system, so we view a recovery as inevitable. The only question is timing, and for now, there are no visible markers,” she said.
