Bitcoin and the rest of the crypto market plunged to new lows over the weekend as the fallout from President Trump’s reciprocal tariffs sends the global economy into disarray.
Bitcoin has fallen 12% since Trump announced a deluge of tariffs on Wednesday, targeting imports from a list of countries including important U.S. trade partners like Vietnam, Japan, and China. The world’s leading cryptocurrency has tumbled to a low of $74,700 in the last 24 hours, wiping out previous post-election gains.
The broader crypto market has also been hammered by the tariff selloff, as investors opt for less risky investments or flee financial markets altogether. While Bitcoin is down 4% on Monday, other cryptocurrencies have fallen further with Ethereum falling 10%, XRP 9%, and Solana 7%. All together, the crypto market has now wiped out 9% of its total market cap since Trump’s tariff announcement, falling from $2.72 trillion to $2.47 trillion.
Traditional assets aren’t faring well either. The stock market is weathering a major downturn, with the S&P 500 and Dow Jones both down 10% over the last five days.
Trump’s tariffs are expected to disrupt global supply chains, increase inflation, and potentially trigger a recession by making the price of foreign goods higher. And while Bitcoin is touted by some industry leaders as an inflation hedge, it is often seen by financial advisors and retail investors as a risky asset similar to stocks and commodities. That’s led investors to brace themselves for the economic consequences by offloading their crypto holdings to limit the amount of risk in their portfolios.
“The decline in crypto markets reflects a broader risk-off sentiment,” Thomas Perfumo, global economist at crypto exchange Kraken, told Fortune. “This isn’t an exodus from crypto, but a macro-driven recalibration.”
The latest crypto downturn is also a far cry from the optimism that followed Trump’s election in 2024, after an election which he promised to bolster the asset class. That culminated in Bitcoin reaching an all-time high of $109,000 in January. While Trump has delivered on a number of his crypto-related campaign promises, digital asset prices have been tumbling since his inauguration, weighed down by concerns of a slowing economy and the ramifications of a potential trade war.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty right now, and as we’re seeing, crypto is not immune to these global pressures,” Dr. Edward Felten, founder of Offchain Labs, the company that developed the Ethereum Layer 2 Arbitrum, told Fortune.
