Will the BTC Bull Market Still Be There?
[TL；DR]:
Trump’s latest tariff policy means that the United States will impose a 10% base tariff on global trading partners and impose higher “reciprocal tariffs” on certain trading partners. The market interprets this as an escalation of the trade war.
Trump’s tariff policy seriously exceeded expectations, and the stock market, gold, and cryptocurrencies all fell. Bitcoin has experienced a continuous decline since the weekend.
The market is worried about the US economic recession, the confidence in the crypto market has been dampened, both technical and fundamental aspects are bearish, and the prospects for the BTC bull market are unclear.
Introduction
Since late March, the global financial market has been oscillating and struggling amid challenges. In particular, after the recent announcement of Trump’s reciprocal tariff policy, the unexpected policy strength has triggered a global market downturn, especially BTC, which fell again after being strong for several days and hit a new low this year. When the hedging properties of all safe-haven assets need to be redefined, the collective flight of capital may be brewing the next rebirth.
Black Monday: Global Financial Markets Plunge
Sell-offs always come quickly. Since the Trump administration announced an utive order on “reciprocal tariffs” in early April that far exceeded market expectations, global stock markets, gold, and cryptocurrencies have plummeted in just a few days, signaling that the market is strongly concerned about the economic outlook.
Source: tradingeconomics.com
In fact, since the 3rd of this month, the so-called “reciprocal tariffs” announced by the United States severely impacted the international capital market, and the global stock market value has shrunk by as much as $10 trillion. For example, JPMorgan Chase recently stated that the probability of a recession digested by stocks closely related to the US economy soared to nearly 80%.
Source: Bloomberg
Unlike his previous term, when he was very concerned about the stock market, Trump said he did not want any declines, but sometimes the market must take medicine to solve the problem. And just this Monday morning, Trump once again said that the United States has huge fiscal deficits with China, the European Union and other countries, and the only solution is to impose tariffs, which have now brought the United States tens of billions of dollars in revenue. He criticized the widening of the U.S. trade deficit with the above-mentioned countries during the Biden administration and promised to quickly reverse the situation, once again emphasizing that tariffs are “a very beautiful thing” for the United States.
Source: realDonaldTrump
On Monday, April 7, the day of the worst decline, the three major U.S. stock indexes fell by more than 5.5%. The stock markets in Japan and Taiwan in Asia were hit by limit-down circuit breakers. Thailand temporarily banned short selling of stocks. The Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong fell by more than 12% throughout the day. China’s A-shares fell by more than 6%, with more than 1,400 stocks hitting the limit-down. Gold, an asset that has always been regarded as a safe haven, was not spared. Spot gold fell below $3,000 per ounce for the first time since March 21, with a daily decline of 1.28%.
The crypto market was not spared. The total market value of cryptocurrencies has evaporated by more than $1.1 trillion since Trump officially took office, falling to $2.37 trillion, the same as the starting point in November last year, and has entered a technical bear market. Among them, BTC plunged from a high of $88,000 to a low of $74,508, a 24-hour drop of more than 10%, and led ETH and SOL to fall below $1,500 and $100 respectively.
Source: Gate.io
The short-term and violent fluctuations in the price of the currency led to a series of liquidations. According to Coinglass data, in the 24 hours with the most severe decline on Monday, more than 420,000 people had their positions liquidated, with a total amount of up to US$1.3 billion.
Source: coinglass
Investors may still remember the “312” crash in March 2020, when Bitcoin fell by as much as 40% in a single day. Although the current decline is not as tragic, it is enough to make people tremble. After all, the Fear and Greed Index dropped to 23 on April 7, and market sentiment fell directly from yesterday’s “panic” to “extreme panic,” and any subsequent policy changes may trigger a violent reaction.
Tariff Policy Released: Crypto Market Becomes More Volatile
In my opinion, this turmoil is not without signs. As early as March 2025, I mentioned in another article “The US Economic Recession Is Imminent, What Impact Will It Have On The Crypto Market?“ that the pressure to restructure the global trade is accumulating. At present, the market is dominated by the expected speculation of economic recession, which suppresses other positive factors in the short term. Once other positive factors are implemented or deteriorate, they will resonate and suppress the currency price.
Source: @WhiteHouse
According to the full text of the public utive order, the core of Trump’s policy is to “correct the long-standing high annual trade deficit in goods in the United States.” According to the utive order released by the White House, the United States will impose a 10% base tariff on 50 countries and impose “reciprocal tariffs” on the 60 countries with the largest trade deficits. The calculation method is: directly divide the trade deficit by the import amount to obtain the “actual tariff rate of the other party.”
For example, the basis for imposing a 32% tariff on Indonesia is US$17.9 billion trade deficit/US$28 billion imports = 64%, which is half the value, or 32%.
In Trump’s view, the non-reciprocal tariffs and non-tariff barriers of trading partners are the core of policy concerns. For example, the United States only imposes a 2.5% tariff on imported passenger cars, while the European Union is 10% and India is as high as 70%. This asymmetry has caused American manufacturers to suffer heavy losses in overseas markets, and has also made Trump determined to use tariffs to “revitalize American industry” and bring manufacturing back to the United States.
The market is pessimistic about this game. Investors are worried that the 10% base tariff plus higher reciprocal tariffs will push up the prices of imported goods, which will be directly passed on to consumers and cause inflationary pressure. Worse still, countermeasures from trading partners may follow one after another. Once the global supply chain is broken, economic growth may be difficult to maintain.
Morgan Stanley economists warned that Asian countries will bear the brunt of the impact, and policy uncertainty will dampen corporate confidence, with capital expenditures and trade volumes both set to decline. Goldman Sachs was more direct, lowering its forecast for US GDP growth in the fourth quarter of 2025 to 0.5%, and raising the probability of a recession from 35% to 45%. Even Federal Reserve Chairman Powell admitted in his speech on April 7 that the increase in tariffs was “larger than expected,” the economic impact could be “more significant,” and the risk of inflation could not be ignored.
Source: @NickTimiraos
It is worth mentioning that as of April 10, Trump announced a 90-day suspension of reciprocal tariffs on regions other than China. Influenced by this news, the crypto market and US stocks experienced a brief rebound.
As Recession Looms, Where Will the Crypto Market Go After the Crash?
There is no doubt that the current environment poses an unprecedented test to BTC and the entire crypto market. The technical breakdown, the change in the direction of capital flows in the fundamentals, and the shadow of macroeconomic recession all point to a cruel fact: the logic of Bitcoin’s rise is being re-examined.
In the past, Bitcoin has repeatedly recovered from plunges, driven by global liquidity and risk appetite. But now, liquidity contraction and expectations of various uncertain risks have overwhelmed everything, the US dollar index has been trading sideways at a high level, gold and Bitcoin have fallen simultaneously, and institutional investors have sold highly liquid assets in exchange for cash.
Source: CryptoQuant
This high-intensity risk background has indeed made Bitcoin’s speculative attributes suppress its safe-haven aura. Facing this crisis, it is not only a price fluctuation, but more likely a change in the value narrative - the 90-day correlation between Bitcoin and the Nasdaq index has risen to 0.82, which seems to have begun to make people think that this breaks the narrative logic of its “non-correlated assets.”
However, in my opinion, the current market still has positive signs behind the triple bearish signals:
Technically bearish: After Bitcoin broke through the 200-day bull-bear dividing line and the March 11 horizontal support level, the $74,000 support level below is already shaky. Historical data shows that when Bitcoin first falls to the 60-week moving average, it will receive a wave of strong support, which has been initially verified. In addition, the weekend’s sharp drop caused a gap of nearly 5,000 points in CME Bitcoin futures. According to previous rules, these gaps will be fully filled.
Source: CME
Funding withdrawal: CoinShares weekly report shows that digital asset investment products saw a total outflow of $240 million last week, which may be a response to recent news on US trade tariffs, which threaten economic growth. Although the total market value of stablecoins has exceeded $235 billion, on-chain data shows that the proportion of USDT exchange balances has risen to 68%, indicating funds are deposited in exchanges ready to be withdrawn at any time, which in turn lays the foundation for the subsequent stabilization and recovery.
Source: CoinShares
Weakening of narrative: On-chain interactions are cooling, spot ETF funds are constantly flowing out, and the strategic reserve of Bitcoin is less than expected. The crypto market is currently at a point of narrative stagnation, but construction has not stagnated. FHE, RWA, AI, and other technologies and protocols are still brewing greater breakthroughs. We have done data analysis on this in The US Economic Recession Is Imminent, What Impact Will It Have On The Crypto Market?
In general, the crypto market experienced a deep correction amid a sharp tightening of the financial environment, foreign consumer boycotts, and policy uncertainty. The short-term trend will depend on how investors interpret policy changes and the global liquidity environment, and the market may continue to be shrouded in violent fluctuations in the coming weeks. This sharp drop also reminds us that we should remain sensitive to economic policies, macroeconomics and market sentiment. We will also provide real-time interpretation and discussion on this in a series of subsequent blog posts. We also look forward to the currency price further stabilizing after all the negative news is exhausted, thereby bringing more market opportunities.
