Customs duties, duties, duties.
Trump’s repeated, repeated import division controlled the week. Initially, tariffs significantly lowered stocks and codes. Finally, the market rose again as all new non-Chinese tariffs suspend for 90 days.
Bitcoin returned to the level that was at this point last week ($82,000). Analysts discussed whether the panic the previous day showed the qualities of a “safe shelter” (such as money), or whether it was a risk asset, just like many others. The consensus was that Bitcoin did something resilient rather than being completely at ease.
Our Asian reporting team led the way in our market coverage. Omkar Godbole has launched the week strongly by revealing how “basic deals” rewind will affect Bitcoin prices. Sam Reynolds wrote about how Karshi was set to win the legal battle in Nevada a few hours before the forecast market won its first state victory. Shaurya Malwa reported that its first XRP ETF list in the US and that Teucrium leveraged fund received $5 million on the first day of the transaction.
There were timely analysis from the European teams from James Van Stratin, stories of the extremely important US yields moving in the wrong direction for Trump, and the resilience of a distributed economy from Oliver Knight, and stories of traders “denial” the flesh of the market when they were poured into millions of people in panic.
Our coverage has expanded beyond just tariffs and market responses. Along with Jamie Crawley’s scoop, Rowstock is preparing to release the Bitcoin Layer 2 SDK using BitVMX. And there was an excellent denial follow-up on how hyperliquid vault hype evaporated in concerns about centralisation about the impact of Oliver’s misuse of hyperglycemia price manipulation from March.
Meanwhile, there was a lot of important regulatory news that were not customs related.
Paul Atkins has been confirmed as the new SEC Chair. The Justice Department has stoked criticism from Democrats and others, criticising that they weren’t serious about fighting fraud, and shut down the code enforcement squad. The SEC has approved the ETH ETF option following a long delay. And President Trump has ended the controversial defi accounting rules.
It was a week that showed how cryptography is at the heart of funding and macroeconomics. The fun time is ahead.
