Crypto market sheds $125 billion as Trump threatens more tariffs on China

Prices of major cryptocurrencies are down just about across the board after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to slap a “massive increase in Tariffs” on Chinese products imported into the United States on Friday.

Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market cap, is down by about 2% at the time of press, according to The Block's price page. Other top 10 assets are also down, including ETH, which dropped as much as 4.4% as well as over 3% for SOL and nearly 2% for XRP.

The total crypto market cap fell by more than $125 billion, a nearly 3% loss in just two hours. The drop triggered over $820 million in liquidations according to CoinGlass, though reported figures may understate the true scale of activity due to API limits and incomplete reporting.

Crypto-related stocks appear to have fared even worse, with the three largest stocks by market cap, Robinhood (ticker HOOD), Mercado Libre (MELI), and Coinbase (COIN) down over 5%. Crypto exchange Bullish (BLSH) and stablecoin issuer Circle (CRCL), both of which went public earlier this year, are the worst-performing crypto stocks at press time, both down over 7%.

Meanwhile, BNB, the native token for the Binance-backed BNB Chain, seems to have bucked the trend and is up slightly in the past hour, according to The Block's data. BNB this week rocketed to third place among free-floating cryptocurrencies by market cap, surpassing SOL and XRP.

Crypto is not alone in being spooked by Trump's latest hawkish tariff position. Stock market indices like the Dow Jones dropped 540 points following a Trump Truth Social post claiming that China was keeping the world "captive" with its updated rare earth policy.

On Thursday, China’s Ministry of Commerce said foreign entities would need to obtain a license to export products that contain more than 0.1% of rare earth sourced from the country, among other stipulations.

That said, some crypto assets seem to be unaffected. Zcash, Horizon, and Dash, known for their privacy features, are all up double-digit percentages amid an emerging market "meta."