Trump Tariff Panic Triggers $300M Crypto Bloodbath—Late Bulls Get Slaughtered

Another day, another political shockwave rattling crypto’s fragile leverage addicts. This time? A classic Trump tariff threat sent derivatives traders scrambling—and liquidations ripped through over-leveraged positions like a hot knife through meme coins.

Short squeeze or just dumb money? The usual suspects got wrecked: perpetual swaps flipped bearish as BTC wobbled, triggering cascading margin calls. Meanwhile, institutional desks quietly accumulated spot at discount prices—because nothing beats retail panic for filling cold wallets.

Funny how ’macro uncertainty’ only ever seems to vaporize degenerate longs. Almost like the house always wins... but hey, at least the blockchain kept working flawlessly while humans lost their shirts.

"Nice aggregate flush of long leverage and de-risk selling from spot," well-followed crypto trader Skew noted in an X post early Friday. "All driven by headlines once again."

The sell-off came after TRUMP proposed a 50% tariff on imports from the European Union starting next month, along with a 25% tariff on iPhones manufactured outside the U.S., reigniting fears of an escalating trade war.

As a result, BTC and major altcoins such as Ether ETH, XRP XRP, and Cardano ADA fell 3% to 4%, while smaller-cap tokens like Uniswap UNI and SUI SUI dropped 5% to 7% over the past 24 hours.

Crypto trader named James Wynn, who gained attention recently opening a $1.1 billion BTC long bet with 40x leverage on the Hyperliquid exchange, also slipped underwater on the massive position. Currently, the trader is sitting on $7.5 million of unrealized losses, and the position could be liquidated if BTC slips to $102,000, according to a screenshot shared on X.

Interestingly, the long liquidations came amid a recent unusual tilt toward short positions in BTC derivatives despite record prices, CoinDesk reported on Thursday.