Trump Tariff Threat on China Sends Bitcoin Tumbling Below $119K

It's deja vu all over again for bitcoin bulls as Monday's rally to an all-time high triggered not FOMO, but instead fast ￰0￱ retreat sped up in a big way in late-morning ￰1￱ on Friday after trade war tensions between the ￰2￱ China ratcheted ￰3￱ Donald Trump said in a Truth Social post minutes ago that he's preparing a "massive increase" in tariffs on Chinese goods in response to China earlier imposing export controls on rare earth ￰4￱ the post, bitcoin (BTC) plunged below $119,000 from $122,000. Ether (ETH), solana (SOL) and XRP each joined in the swift ￰5￱ drop in crypto prices also weighed on stocks tied to the ￰6￱ (CRCL) fell over 6%. Robinhood (HOOD), which gets a large portion of its trading activity from crypto, declined 5%.

Coinbase (COIN) also shed 5%, while MicroStrategy (MSTR) slipped about 3%. The news rippled across traditional markets, ￰7￱ crude oil dropped nearly 4% below $60, its weakest price since early ￰8￱ S&P 500 and Nasdaq were 1.6% and 1.3% lower, respectively. Gold? It rallied more than 1% to back over $4,000 per ounce as the yellow metal once again showed itself, not bitcoin, to be the risk-off asset of choice for ￰9￱ the current $118,800, bitcoin is lower by about 2% over the past 24 hours and about 6% since hitting a new record above $126,000 just four days ago.