BTC Defies Peak Fear as USD Plunges Over Trump’s China Trade War

By Francisco Rodrigues (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)

As the trade war between the U.S. and China escalates, with the latter raising tariffs on the former from 84% to 125% this morning, bitcoin (BTC) and the wider cryptocurrency market appear relatively unfazed.

Bitcoin is down a mere 0.15% over the last 24 hours, and China’s recent escalation hasn’t stopped its ongoing recovery. The cryptocurrency is now trading above $82,000. The wider crypto market, measured by the CoinDesk 20 (CD20) index, is stable with similar performance.

The same can’t be said about other assets. Gold rose to a new $3,227.5 record making Tether’s XAUT — a gold-backed cryptocurrency — the top-performing digital asset. Meanwhile, the U.S. Dollar Index (DXY) dropped below 100 after enduring its biggest drop since 2022. At the same time, the yield on 10-year Treasuries kept rising to now stand near 4.4%.

“The question of a potential dollar confidence crisis has now been definitively answered — we are experiencing one in full force,” ING strategists, including Francesco Pesole wrote in a note reported on by The Telegraph.

Inflation in the U.S. actually declined at the headline level last month, which could prompt the Federal Reserve to resume cutting rates at its next meeting. Still, the market may have interpreted the lower figures as potentially waning demand, deepening the crisis.

That “confidence crisis” is seemingly seeing every asset gain against the dollar, except crypto. Bitcoin investors realized losses of up to $250 million over 6-hour windows during the recent drop, according to Glassnode, which points out that “realized losses are shrinking – suggesting early signs of seller exhaustion.” Stay alert!

What to Watch

• Crypto:
• Macro
  • April 11, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases March producer price inflation data.
    • Core PPI MoM Est. 0.3% vs. Prev. -0.1%
    • Core PPI YoY Est. 3.6% vs. Prev. 3.4%
    • PPI MoM Est. 0.2% vs. Prev. 0%
    • PPI YoY Est. 3.3% vs. Prev. 3.2%
  • April 11, 12:01 p.m.: China’s tariff on imported goods originating from the U.S. will increase from 84% to 125%.
  • April 14: Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele will join U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House for an official working visit.
• Earnings (Estimates based on FactSet data)
  • April 22: Tesla (TSLA), post-market
  • April 30: Robinhood Markets (HOOD), post-market

Token Events

• Governance votes & calls
  • Spartan Council is voting on increasing the liquidation ratio for SNX solo stakers, with an initial increase to 250% on April 11, to 500% on April 18, and “high enough to deprecate solo SNX staking” on April 21. Voting ends on April 19.
  • Lido DAO is discussing onboarding credit delegation protocol Twyne into the Lido Alliance. Twyne aims to expand stETH’s use cases, while it’s requesting strategic endorsement, promotional support and technical guidance from Lido.
  • GMX DAO is discussing the deployment of GMX V2 Botanix’s Spiderchain, which it describes as being “positioned as the first bitcoin Layer 2 designed to unlock bitcoin DeFi.”
  • April 11, 9 a.m.: Lombard is holding an X Spaces session on Institutional Bitcoin Staking Partnership.
  • April 11, 12 p.m.: Avalanche to hold a call on Revolutionizing Blockchain Privacy with Encrypted Tokens.
  • April 11, 3 p.m.: Zcash to host a town hall on lockbox distribution & governance.
  • April 14, 10 a.m.: Stacks to host a livestream with recent announcements from the project.
• Unlocks
  • April 12: Aptos (APT) to unlock 1.87% of its circulating supply worth $53.83 million.
  • April 12: Axie Infinity (AXS) to unlock 5.68% of its circulating supply worth $21.82 million.
  • April 15: Starknet (STRK) to unlock 4.37% of its circulating supply worth $16.69 million.
  • April 16: Arbitrum (ARB) to unlock 2.01% of its circulating supply worth $27.12 million.
  • April 18: Official Trump (TRUMP) to unlock 20.25% of its circulating supply worth $326.78 million.
  • April 18: Fasttoken (FTN) to unlock 4.65% of its circulating supply worth $80.6 million.
• Token Launches
  • April 11: Tether Gold (XAUT) to be listed on Bybit.
  • April 14: KernelDAO (KERNEL) to be listed on Binance, Gate.io, LBank, KuCoin, MEXC, and others.
  • April 16: Badger (BADGER), Balacner (BAL), Beta Finance (BETA), Cortex (CTXC), Cream Finance (CREAM), Firo (FIRO), Kava Lend (KAVA), NULS (NULS), Prosper (PROS), Status (SNT), TROY (TROY), UniLend Finance (UFT), VIDT DAO (VIDT), and aelf (ELF) to be delisted from Binance.
  • April 22: Hyperlane to airdrop its HYPER tokens.

Conferences:

Token Talk

By Shaurya Malwa and Oliver Knight

• A stablecoin (sUSD) tied to decentralized derivatives exchange Synthetix suffered a depeg on Friday, tumbling down to $0.86. The depeg stemmed from a governance proposal named SIP-420, which involved shifting Synthetix from individual staking to pooled staking.
• The proposal meant that 2.5 times more sUSD would be minted per staked synthetix (SNX) token, but it also meant that stakers had no incentive to buy sUSD as all debt sat on the staking pool as opposed to individual wallets.
• The Synthetix team said on Discord that it will “continue to increase incentives for Curve pools,” and that “the sUSD peg is critical. “An MEV (Miner Extractable Value) bot named “Yoink” exploited weaknesses in Wayfinder’s PROMPT token airdrop, using a front-running strategy (reordering transactions to jump ahead of legitimate claims) to steal approximately 119 ETH (or $200,000 at current prices) from Kaito users. Onchain data shows the bot swapped claimed tokens for ETH, draining funds until the airdrop was paused.
• Wayfinder, an AI blockchain project, launched the PROMPT token airdrop for users who staked PRIME (Echelon Prime’s governance token) or earned “Yaps” on Kaito, a platform that analyzes social media for crypto insights. The bot targeted Kaito “Yappers” who completed social missions, with TokenTable halting claims to fix the issue and promising user compensation.
• MEV attacks, where malicious actors manipulate Ethereum transaction ordering for profit, are increasingly sophisticated with AI-driven bots like Yoink. TokenTable confirmed the smart contract’s security, is addressing failed transactions, and will provide a detailed report once the claim process resumes.

Derivatives Positioning

• On most exchanges, notional open interest in BTC futures has increased more than the cryptocurrency’s price in the past 24 hours, suggesting an influx of new money as the market looks to carve out a bottom.
• A similar pattern is seen in SOL and DOGE futures, while traders remain cautious in the ETH and XRP futures markets.
• Funding rates for the top 25 coins remain between 0% to 10%, suggesting cautiously bullish sentiment.
• BTC’s options-based implied volatility term structure has normalized, while ETH’s remains in backwardation, indicating fears of outsized price volatility in the short term.
• Flows have been mixed on Deribit, with call spreads booked in BTC and SOL put rolling via OTC platform Paradigm.

Market Movements:

• BTC is unchanged from 4 p.m. ET Thursday at $82,013.36 (24hrs: +0.81%)
• ETH is up 1.9% at $1,559.54 (24hrs: +5.22%)
• CoinDesk 20 is up 3.43% at 2,379.04 (24hrs: +0.64%)
• Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is up 17 bps at 3.4%
• BTC funding rate is at -0.0018% (-2.0049% annualized) on Binance

• DXY is down 1.1% at 99.75
• Gold is up 2.51% at $3,234.50/oz
• Silver is up 1.79% at $31.22/oz
• Nikkei 225 closed -2.96% at 33,585.58
• Hang Seng closed +1.13% at 20,914.69
• FTSE is down 0.51% at 7,872.98
• Euro Stoxx 50 is down 1.72% at 4,736.11
• DJIA closed on Thursday -2.5% at 39,593.66
• S&P 500 closed -3.46% at 5,268.05
• Nasdaq closed -4.31% at 16,387.31
• S&P/TSX Composite Index closed -3% at 23,014.90
• S&P 40 Latin America closed -3.2% at 2,255.64
• U.S. 10-year Treasury rate is down 4 bps at 4.4%
• E-mini S&P 500 futures are down 0.38% at 5,281.75
• E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are down 0.44% at 18,403.00
• E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are down 0.4% at 39,637.00

Bitcoin Stats:

• BTC Dominance: 63.55 (0.50%)
• Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.01898 (-0.78%)
• Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 901 EH/s
• Hashprice (spot): $42.4
• Total Fees: 5.2 BTC / $424,070
• CME Futures Open Interest: 129,830
• BTC priced in gold: 25.5/oz
• BTC vs gold market cap: 7.24

Technical Analysis

• BTC’s 30-day momentum indicator, measuring the rate of change in prices over four weeks, has recently turned up, diverging from the weakness in prices.
• The indicator’s divergence, coupled with Wednesday’s bullish outside day candle, suggests the path of least resistance is to the higher side.
• A potential move past the descending trendline would open doors to resistance at $88,000 (the late March high), followed by $92,000, which acted as strong support early this year.

Crypto Equities

• Strategy (MSTR): closed on Thursday at $272.34 (-8.26%), up 4.48% at $284.54 in pre-market
• Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $169.62 (-4.22%), up 2.46% at $173.80
• Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$14.35 (-5.53%)
• MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $11.74 (-4.63%), up 4.17% at $12.23
• Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $6.79 (-7.99%), up 2.65% at $6.97
• Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $6.82 (-9.19%), up 2.79% at $7.01
• CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $7.13 (-6.55%), up 3.51% at $7.38
• CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $12.01 (-8.04%), up 4.08% at $12.50
• Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $32.63 (-7.2%), up 4.17% at $33.99
• Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $41.07 (-4.80%), down 0.41% at $40.90

ETF Flows

Spot BTC ETFs:

• Daily net flow: -$149.5 million
• Cumulative net flows: $35.46 billion
• Total BTC holdings ~ 1.10 million

Spot ETH ETFs

• Daily net flow: -$38.8 million
• Cumulative net flows: $2.32 billion
• Total ETH holdings ~ 3.37 million

Source: Farside Investors

Overnight Flows

Chart of the Day

• As the U.S.-China trade war escalates, analysts anticipate that Beijing will devalue the yuan to counter Trump’s tariffs, potentially leading to a capital flight into bitcoin.
• Options market, however, shows no signs of hedging downside risks in yuan in anticipation of a major devaluation.
• The 25-delta risk reversal for the USD/CNH was slightly above 1, representing a moderate bias for calls that would protect from yuan devaluation. Higher values were observed ahead of the previous yuan devaluation episodes of 2015 and 2016, according to The Brookings Institution’s Senior Fellow Robin Brooks.

While You Were Sleeping

• S&P 500 More Volatile Than Bitcoin as U.S. Assets Lose Investor Favor (CoinDesk): Since Trump’s April 2 tariff announcement, S&P 500 volatility has surged from 50% to 169% annualized, the highest since the 2020 COVID crash, according to TradingView.
• Gold Rally Makes Tether’s XAUT Top-Performing Digital Asset as Crypto Markets Remain Flat (CoinDesk): XAUT gained over 3% in 24 hours as crypto traders rotated into gold-backed tokens amid concerns over the U.S. budget deficit and unpredictable policy from the White House.
• Ripple and SEC File Joint Motion to Pause Appeals (CoinDesk): The two parties reached an agreement in principle to resolve all remaining issues, including appeals and claims involving Ripple founders Garlinghouse and Larsen, according to attorney James Filan.
• Bitcoin’s Recent Drawdown Proves Its More Than Just a Leveraged Tech Play (CoinDesk): Bitcoin’s three-month decline is milder than in 2021–22, signaling greater stability, and ranks mid-pack among tech peers, outperforming Tesla and NVIDIA and matching Apple, Meta and Amazon.
• Gold Bolts Past Key $3,200 Mark on Dollar Slide, Safe-Haven Flows (Reuters): Investor rotation out of U.S. stocks and Treasuries on tariff fears is pressuring the dollar and driving global demand for gold, according to Tastylive’s head of global macro.
• BOJ’s Retreat From Bond Buying Spurs Bid to Lure Foreigners (Bloomberg): Officials are pitching Japanese bonds abroad more aggressively as domestic demand wanes, stressing stronger yields, streamlined trading access, and a steady economic outlook to attract new buyers.
• China Unlikely To Aggressively Devalue Yuan to Offset Impact of U.S. Tariffs, Economists Say (CNBC): Analysts expect China to rely on stimulus and gradual yuan weakening to steady markets, warning that sharp moves risk triggering capital flight like in 2015 and broader financial instability.

In the Ether