Trump Tariff Chaos Wipes Out $300M in Crypto Bets—Late Bulls Left Holding the Bag

Another day, another political shockwave crushing crypto’s fragile momentum. This time? A $300 million bloodbath as leveraged traders—always the last to read the room—got steamrolled by tariff talk.

Market carnage: The usual suspects (overconfident longs, overleveraged degens) learned the hard way that geopolitics trumps hopium. Liquidation alerts lit up like a Vegas slot machine hitting jackpot.

Wall Street’s take: ’Risk assets?’ More like ’political piñatas.’ Meanwhile, crypto’s so-called ’hedge’ narrative took another beating—but hey, at least the brokers made bank on fees.

"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.