Palantir Shockwave Hits Markets: Bitcoin Plunges 20% as Fed Scrambles Rate Cut Timeline

Wall Street reels as Palantir's unexpected earnings report sends shockwaves through digital and traditional markets alike.

The Domino Effect

Bitcoin's 20% nosedive triggered mass liquidations across crypto derivatives—just when everyone thought the Fed's rate cuts were locked in. Now the FOMC faces complete timeline recalibration as market sentiment flips from greedy to fearful overnight.

Institutional investors hitting sell buttons aren't just reacting to one bad earnings call—they're pricing in the reality that easy money might not be arriving quite so easily after all. The 'buy the dip' crowd suddenly looks awfully quiet.

Because nothing says 'stable monetary policy' like rewriting the playbook mid-crash while Wall Street analysts pretend they saw it coming all along.

Politicians are getting loud about it

Washington lawmakers have ramped up their scrutiny of CZ’s pardon and how Binance is tied to the TRUMP family’s crypto business. Senator Elizabeth Warren sits on the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, and she’s been one of the loudest voices. She’s flat-out accused Binance and the Trump White House of corruption.

Warren put out a statement last month. “First, Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty to a criminal money laundering charge. Then he boosted one of Donald Trump’s crypto ventures and lobbied for a pardon,” she said, before the President “did his part.” Binance didn’t respond right away when asked about it. CZ stepped down as chief executive back in 2023, but Teng says he’s still the company’s biggest shareholder.

People have been questioning World Liberty Financial’s open connections to the Trump administration for a while now, especially as it goes after new deals and investors overseas.

The company’s website says DT Marks DEFI LLC, a Trump-linked firm, along with Trump family members, gets a big chunk of the platform’s earnings. They also hold digital tokens that back the company, called WLFI. Word is the venture has brought in hundreds of millions, maybe billions, for the Trump family.

But the website also says Trump, his family, or anyone from the Trump Organization or DT Marks DEFI LLC isn’t an officer, director, founder, employee, manager, owner, or operator of World Liberty Financial or any related companies.

The timing looks suspicious

When MGX bought $2 billion worth of USD1 tokens, it raised some eyebrows. A New York Times piece in September noted it happened just two weeks before the WHITE House signed a major agreement with the UAE about access to hundreds of thousands of American microchips.

Zhao had to resign from Binance in 2023 after he admitted to letting money laundering happen through the exchange. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement on October 23 that Zhao got prosecuted under the Biden administration “despite no allegations of fraud or identifiable victims.”

Trump said later that he pardoned Zhao “at the request of a lot of very good people” and claimed he knew nothing about him beforehand.

Since he got back in office, Trump’s been all about cryptocurrency. He’s proposed new crypto laws and rolled back enforcement actions that went after exchanges like Coinbase and Ripple when Biden was in charge.

Monday, Teng said Binance and the crypto industry as a whole “were very thankful” to the president for pardoning CZ and for saying the United States WOULD become the “global crypto capital of the world.”

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