Bitcoin touches $104K as Trump tariff pressures trigger over $10B in liquidations

Bitcoin temporarily slipped to $104,000 late Friday, its lowest point in ten months, after President Donald Trump hiked tariffs on Chinese exports and froze outbound shipments of critical tech ￰0￱ was an 8.4% plunge, and it came during a historically turbulent trading session that rattled both global traditional markets and crypto exchanges. Bitcoin’s sidekick, Ethereum of course took a hit too, falling 5.8% to $3,637, based on data from Binance. Trump’s tariff announcements followed China’s decision to limit exports of rare earth minerals, which are essential to chipmaking and basically every other tech hardware out ￰1￱ the president once again pushed duties to 100% and declared an all-out export control on “any and all critical software,” though this is likely just another TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) trade ￰2￱ the standoff between the world’s two largest economies deepened, the S&P 500 slipped 2%, and the Dow lost nearly 1,000 ￰3￱ on the Nasdaq, the sell-off wiped out Amazon’s gains for the year, bringing the stock now down 2% year-to-date.

Actually, Amazon, Nvidia and Tesla each plunged by around 5% on Friday, as tech’s megacaps lost $770 billion in market cap. Meanwhile, shares of US rare earth miners were ￰4￱ Materials surged more than 8%, USA Rare Earth advanced about 5%, Energy Fuels gained more than 3%, and NioCorp Developments rose more than 5%. Exchanges withstand record stress as liquidations hit billions Just hours into the crash, crypto exchanges began experiencing heavy traffic and load ￰5￱ OKX CEO Star said everything held steady, telling reporters, “All operations ran smoothly across all regions, with every indicator reading normal.” The Hyperliquid platform also stayed fully operational despite a flood of new orders, and confirmed there were no latency issues or outages.

Uniswap, the DeFi giant, clocked in nearly $9 billion in daily trading volume, well above ￰6￱ Hayden Adams commented, “This kind of volatility is exactly where DeFi ￰7￱ had no stress, no downtime.” As centralized and decentralized exchanges ran hot, leveraged bets started getting wiped ￰8￱ showed total liquidations topped $10.3 ￰9￱ positions suffered the most, losing $16.83 billion, compared to $2.49 billion on the short ￰10￱ alone saw $5.38 billion in liquidations, with Ethereum following at $4.43 ￰11￱ and XRP got hit too, losing $2.01 billion and $708 million, ￰12￱ of the largest liquidation events came from a Hyperliquid user holding an ETH-USDT pair worth $203.36 ￰13￱ ETFs also ￰14￱ funds reported $4.5 million in net outflows, with only BlackRock’s IBIT showing a net inflow.

Meanwhile, Ethereum ETFs recorded a massive $175 million exit across all nine active ￰15￱ biggest pullback came from BlackRock’s ETHA, which lost $80.19 ￰16￱ gain big while Trump’s approval tanks amid shutdown While most traders got wiped out, one large Hyperliquid whale reportedly shorted nine figures worth of BTC and ETH, walking away with a clean $190 million profit. On-chain analyst @mlmabc said the timing of the trade suggested the whale may have helped trigger the early morning price ￰17￱ in Washington, the pressure is also rising. Trump’s approval rating dropped again, hitting 40% in the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll, with 58% disapproving of his ￰18￱ got worse after he defended deploying militarized law enforcement units, a move that’s drawn criticism even from his own base.

A separate HarrisX survey showed a slightly better 46% approval, still signaling deep national ￰19￱ to the chaos, the federal government shutdown stretched into its second week after lawmakers failed to pass spending bills before the October 1 ￰20￱ blamed the gridlock on Democrats, promising to gut their programs in the next round of budget ￰21￱ the Polymarket prediction platform, 86% of traders now expect the shutdown to drag past October 15, showing how little faith remains in any sort of ￰22￱ up to Bybit and start trading with $30,050 in welcome gifts