President Donald Trump’s threat to impose an additional 100% tariff on imports from China sparked a massive cryptocurrency sell-off late Friday that exposed risky leverage in the space.
Digital currencies bitcoin, ether and solana were among the most affected cryptocurrencies, bringing total liquidations to $18.28 billion as of 3:47 p.m. ET, according to data analysis platform CoinGlass. The losses for cryptocurrencies come amid a broad sell-off, as the Nasdaq and S&P 500 on Friday saw their steepest declines in six months.
In the past 24 hours, roughly $5 billion of bitcoin has been liquidated, along with about $4 billion of ether and about $2 billion of solana, according to CoinGlass.
It’s the “largest liquidation event in crypto history,” CoinGlass said in a post on X.
Bitcoin is down almost 10% in the last five days and was trading at $111.616.20 as of 3:45 p.m. ET, a jump from when it dropped to $103,000 at 5:15 p.m. ET on Friday.
On Friday, ether was priced at $4,365.63 and then sunk to $3,742.88 — a 14.2% decline.
Solana was priced at $223.10 on Friday and has fallen to $178.72, as of 3:45 p.m. ET — a nearly 20% plunge.
Crypto has made major gains since Trump took office this year, in large part because of the president’s turnaround from dismissing bitcoin as “based on thin air” to addressing crypto fans at conventions, launching his own meme coin and promising a strategic crypto reserve.
And Trump recently issued an executive order allowing digital assets like crypto to be included in 401(k) plans, causing bitcoin to soar to a record high of $124,000 last week.
Despite ongoing trade talks between Washington and Beijing, trade tensions re-escalated Thursday after China ramped up export restrictions on critical rare earth minerals.
