Trump Tariffs Shock Markets

President Trump announces tariffs on three countries causing overall market panic

Good Morning,

It could be a better morning, but it’s always a GM - especially for buying the dip.

Here's a quick preview of today’s content: Trump’s tariff plans derail markets, Tether saw record profits in 2024 while Kraken hits new revenue high, Bitcoin network transactions are falling, a memecoin officially has a trust, and much more.

Happy Monday, Let’s hodl and dive in.

Market Snapshot

Prices on 2/2/25 per CoinMarketCap

  • The crypto market has dipped significantly in response to President Trump’s plan to enact steep tariffs on imported goods from Canada, Mexico, and China beginning on Tuesday

    • Canada and Mexico have ordered retaliatory tariffs in response, while China promised “corresponding countermeasures” and said it would file a lawsuit with the WTO

    • Memecoins were particularly hard-hit by the downturn, with many top coins seeing double-digit percentage drops. Trump’s memecoin has fallen nearly -30% over the past week

  • The Block's GMCI 30 GM30 index of the top 30 tokens by market cap has fared the best of The Block's indices, seeing a -7.15% drop, compared to the double-digit percentage losses of most other indices

    • Bitcoin's price has dipped back below the $100,000 mark as a result of the market move

Headline Roundup
The major headlines driving crypto markets

  • $1.8B liquidated from crypto markets in under an hour Sunday evening (TB)

  • Nasdaq, S&P 500, and Dow futures plummet with U.S. tariff news (YF)

  • Italy bans Chinese AI startup DeepSeek’s chatbot over privacy concerns (DC)  

  • Securitize partners with Apollo Global to to launch a tokenized private credit fund (TD

  • Tether’s profits surpassed $13B in 2024 (TB

  • The SEC formally acknowledges Canary Capital’s Litecoin ETF proposal (TD

  • Binance’s former CEO CZ says that the EU needs Bitcoin (TD

  • UBS completes a proof-of-concept of its UBS Key4 Gold offering on Ethereum L2 ZKsync (CD

  • Kraken recorded $1.5B in revenue in 2024 (TB

  • MicroStrategy raises $563M via a sale of preferred stock to buy more Bitcoin (TB

  • Kraken will delist five stablecoins, including USDT, to comply with EU MiCA regulation (CT

  • Transactions on the Bitcoin network fall to an 11-month low in January (TB

  • Collapsed Turkish exchange Thodex's founder wins partial legal relief but remains jailed for $2B fraud (DC

  • LayerZero Labs reaches a settlement with the FTX bankruptcy estate (TB

  • Memecoin Dogwifhat addresses delays in its $700K crowdfunded plan to display its logo on the Las Vegas Sphere (CT

  • Geth, the Go implementation of the Ethereum protocol, releases its Schwarzschild update (TB

M&A Announcements

  • Coinbase acquires onchain advertising platform Spindl (TB)

Launches

  • Grayscale Investments launches the Dogecoin Trust (TB

  • Uniswap Labs launches version 4 of the Uniswap protocol, Uniswap V4 (TB

Venture Capital

  • Bitcoin miner Cipher Mining secures a $50M investment from SoftBank Group (TB

  • VitalVEDA raises $20M from Rollman Group for web3 & AI fitness platform (CR)

  • DePIN project SyFu raises from venture partner Castrum Capital (SF)

Regulation

  • Arkansas’ Senate rejects a bill that would ban crypto mining facilities within 30 miles of military facilities within the state (CT)

  • Utah looks to become first state to pass Bitcoin Reserve bill (CT)

  • India will force 70% tax on any undisclosed gains (CT)

Cybersecurity

  • A UK gang that kidnapped and tortured a man to steal his crypto is jailed for 76 years (TB)

  • Sirio Finance, a defi lending tool on Hedera, detects malicious transactions on the protocol (SF)

  • How to stay safe from Sandwich Attacks (CT)

Extra Reads

Chart of the Day

Crypto Fear & Greed Index volatility changed from Greed (66) to Fear (39) in 1 week 📉

Meme Dump

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