Since the announcement of the new US tariffs, risky assets have become the scapegoats for widespread aversion. And in this hierarchy of risk, crypto-currencies are at the very top of the pyramid. As a result, bitcoin has fallen by almost 10% in 48 hours, but that's nothing compared to what altcoins have suffered. Ether (ETH) collapsed by 18%, breaking the psychological threshold of $1,500 for the first time in two years. At the time of writing, ETH is trading at $1,460, a level not seen since March 2023. The rest of the top 10 suffered equally brutal results: XRP -17%, Solana -17%, Dogecoin -18%, Cardano -16%.
In the wake of this general plunge, derivatives platforms recorded massive liquidations: $850m on Sunday, and a further $460m on Monday. In 24 hours, nearly $1.42bn worth of positions have evaporated.
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And that's not all: the total capitalization of the crypto market fell by 11.8% in one day, wiping out over $330 billion. Not a single asset in the top 10 has posted a positive performance over the last 5 days. All plunged, without exception.
Behind this debacle lies a scenario: if bitcoin were to fall below $70,000, it would wipe out all the gains made since Donald Trump's election. To climb back above the symbolic $100,000 mark, it would then need to recover 33%.
The timing of this correction is all the more cruel as it coincides with a key deadline for the Ethereum ecosystem. The "Pectra" update, due in a month's time, is supposed to boost the blockchain's efficiency. While Ethereum remains the absolute benchmark for decentralized finance (DeFi), investors are already looking elsewhere.
The truth is, the cryptocurrency market isn't simply the victim of a bear market. It's caught up in the turmoil of a brutal geopolitical rebalancing. Washington's trade war is reshuffling the cards of the global economy. And in this new mess, digital assets are becoming the front line. Ultra-volatile, ultra-liquid, ultra-exposed: they react instantly to international tensions.
At a time when the Federal Reserve is still struggling to stabilize post-Covid inflation, this tariff shock is injecting nervousness back into the markets. It is disrupting supply chains, threatening global growth and fuelling financial instability. Against this backdrop, it's hard to imagine a rapid return to confidence. For behind every price drop, a market structure is shaking.
On Monday, the crypto industry woke up groggy. Curves are red, order books deserted, traders under stress. And as Trump's protectionist measures intensify, doubts are growing: is the market experiencing a simple correction... or the start of a cycle reversal?
