Bitcoin falls below $89,000 amid new tariff war concerns, bond selloff: Markets Liveblog

Bitcoin fell below $90,000 on Tuesday as traders panic-sold risk assets amid a meltdown in Japan’s government bond market. At the same time, U.S. President Donald Trump increased tariff threats against Europe. This is CoinDesk's markets liveblog. This liveblog will be updated regularly. Scroll down for the latest.

Coming full circle? (Aoyon Ashraf, 11:57 pm UTC):

CoinDesk's market team is monitoring if bitcoin falls below $87,586, the level at which the largest cryptocurrency started this year, with hopes of a bullish run. Below that, all the gains for this year will be gone, just a little less than three weeks into the year.

With bitcoin rising to the $96,000 level earlier this month, there were talks of it hitting $100,000 at one point. However, after today's brutal selloff, it seems like bears are again in control of the narrative. Earlier in the day, veteran trader Peter Brandt discussed the potential for the price to hit between $58,000 and $62,000 within two weeks. While that may sound the panic alarm for some, our colleague Omkar Godbole pointed out that there is a 30% chance bitcoin will fall below $80,000 by the end of June, according to options data.

And just for a sanity check, bitcoin is around $88,403, and ether is below $3,000, according to CoinDesk data.

Aoyon Ashraf, CoinDesk Head of News (10:50 pm UTC):

Bitcoin continues to sink, falling sharply to $88,406 as Asia wakes up to a chaotic trading day in the U.S. The largest digital asset hit these levels last time was on Jan. 2 of this year.

The bearish price action has pushed the crypto "fear and greed" index to 31, suggesting traders are fearful amid geopolitical uncertainty. This comes only a few days after the sentiment gauge climbed to 61, towards greed, when it hovered near $96,000.

Krisztian Sandor, Reporter, 9:15 pm UTC:

Bitcoin steadied around $89,700 by 4 p.m. U.S. Eastern Time, though it was still down 3.6% over the past 24 hours for its steepest daily drop since early December. Ether hovered just below $3,000, shedding 6.7%, while the broad-market benchmark CoinDesk 20 index fell a little over 5%. Monero XMR$514.29, Monad (MON), XTZ$0.5809 and Dash DASH$64.78 saw sharper, over 10% losses.

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 closed the day more than 2% lower, booking their worst day since October 10, the day when crypto markets crashed on Trump's tariff threats against China.

A look at crypto stocks shows declines across the board. Strategy (MSTR), largest corporate BTC holder, tumbled 7.8% while the largest ether treasury BitMine Immersion (BMNR) tanked 9.5%. Crypto exchange Coinbase (COIN) and stablecoin issuer Circle (CRCL) fell 5.5% and 7.5% respectively.

Adding to the cautious tone, BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes said markets are increasingly focused on turmoil unfolding in Japan’s bond market and potential spillover into U.S. Treasuries. In an X post, he warned that a spike in the MOVE index, a key Treasury bond volatility gauge, toward 130–140 could likely force some form of bailout, until then markets are setting up for a painful risk-off trade.

Galaxy Digital's Mike Novogratz weighs in, 8:22 pm UTC:

"The gold price is telling us we are losing reserve currency status at an accelerating rate," said Novogratz, who, prior to founding Galaxy Digital, was a global macro trader at Goldman Sachs and then Fortress Investment. "The long bond selling off is not a good sign either. Bitcoin is disappointing as it is still being met with selling. I will reiterate it has to take out $100,000-$103,000 to regain its upward trend. I think it will in time."

Nikhilesh De, Managing Editor, Global Policy & Regulation, 7:38 pm UTC:

Amid the market carnage, U.S. President Donald Trump took the podium in the White House press briefing room ahead of his trip to Davos to tout his administration's work over the past year, starting by praising U.S. Immigrations and Custom Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) and briefly discussing Venezuela.

He trotted out familiar figures in talking about his administration's work on the economy, saying drug prices were down as much as 600% (a mathematical impossibility), core inflation over the past six months hovered at 1.6% (the lowest figure inflation reached was 2.6% at the end of 2025), that 25% of jobs created during former President Joe Biden's administration were federal government roles (data shows that 11% of jobs were public-sector, including federal, state and other public-sector jobs) and that there was a 62% reduction in the U.S.'s trade deficit. "Next year we won't have a trade deficit," he said.

Interestingly, health services and consumer (non-durables) sector were among the outperformers, while all other sectors fell in the S&P 500, according to FactSet data.

Trump also hinted at how the White House might respond to the Supreme Court ruling against his administration on tariffs.

"I don't know where there's a case even there. We've taken in hundreds of billions of dollars," he said. "If we lose that case, it's possible we're going to have to do the best we can in paying it back, I don't know how that's going to be done very easily without hurting a lot of people."

Meanwhile, U.S. equities continued to slip lower, with the S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Index, Nasdaq Composite extending losses to around 2% as the U.S. trading day nears an end.

Krisztian Sandor, Reporter, 7:22 pm UTC:

While bitcoin struggled, gold climbed another 3% to $4,750 on Tuesday, continuing a trend that has played out for the past few months.

"Gold’s strength also makes sense in the current macro environment," said James Harris, CEO of Tesseract Group. "Ongoing geopolitical tension, fiscal uncertainty in the U.S., and strong central-bank buying have reinforced its role as the defensive hedge of choice.

"Bitcoin, by contrast, has lagged because liquidity has been tighter and risk appetite more subdued," he added.

Aoyon Ashraf, CoinDesk Head of News (6:40 pm UTC):

A quick pulse check: Bitcoin has now fallen to $89,370 on Coinbase, while ether is trading around $3,000 and solana is near $127. According to CoinDesk data, the memecoin sector (CoinDesk Memecoin Index) is faring slightly worse than the rest.

Meanwhile, in the traditional equities market, big tech names seem to be hit worst, with NDVA among notable losers, down more than 3% today. Among the Nasdaq 100, Michael Saylor's Strategy was among the worst performers, falling about 7.4%.

The S&P 500 fell about 1.8%, the Nasdaq is down 2%, and the VIX, Wall Street's fear gauge, is up about 5%. Precious metals such as gold and silver are trading higher, with gold posting a price near $4,757.30 and silver at $94.25, according to Kitco data.

Helene Braun, Reporter, 5:30 UTC

Major crypto prices continued holding sharp losses, with bitcoin BTC$89,314.05 barely staying above $90,000 as of press time. Ether ETH$2,960.58 is hovering around $3,000 and Solana SOL$127.11 is trading at $127.46.

Crypto stocks extended their losses with Coinbase (COIN) and Circle (CRCL) now nearly 5% lower on the day. Crypto platform Bullish (BLSH), CoinDesk's corporate parent, on the other hand, gained further and is now trading more than 1% higher at $39.52 a share. Bitcoin miners are in the red across the board.

Oliver Knight, DeFi Lead, 5:12 UTC

Privacy coins monero XMR$514.29 and dash DASH$64.78 tumbled by 11.6% and 8% respectively on Tuesday. The move follows a strong start to the year that saw XMR form a record high at $713. Zcash, meanwhile, has sauntered away from the limelight after a governance dispute earlier this month led to a team of developers leaving to form a new entity. It currently trades at $354 - its lowest point since mid December after tumbling by 6% on Tuesday.

The DeFi market showed resilience to Tuesday's sell pressure, with total value locked across protocols continuing an uptrend dating back to October 2023 with a series of higher lows. The divergence between prices and TVL shows two things; the desire to generate a yield is still there and DeFi traders are opting to use stablecoins to do so in order to remain directionally neutral.

Krisztian Sandor, Reporter, 5:12 UTC

Despite the broad-based selloff, there are some standout outperformers in the crypto market: Canton Network (CC) advanced 18% over the past 24 hours, ARC$0.06009 jumped 30%, while Pumpfun (PUMP) was up 4%.

Traders appear to be shorting (Oliver Knight, DeFi Lead, 4:40 UTC)

Open interest for bitcoin derivatives rose from $28.5 billion to $29.3 billion during the selloff, suggesting traders are shorting the breakdown, as opposed to selling spot.

Ether tells a different story as open interest fell more respective to the 6% 24 hour downturn in price alongside heavy volume, meaning underlying spot sales were driving price action.

Trading volume over the past 24 hours for ether hit $36.8 billion, beating bitcoin's total of $34.1 billion, according to Coinalyze.

Gold (and silver) bugs have their day again (Steve Alpher, CoinDesk markets Senior Editor, 4:20 UTC)

"What’s happening with silver is about to happen with bitcoin, only in reverse," wrote Peter Schiff as silver soared more than 7% to above $95 per ounce. "Silver’s spectacular rise will usher in Bitcoin’s catastrophic collapse. Don’t say I didn’t warn you."

"9 years ago CNBC's Tim Seymour called Bill Fleckenstein 'pathetic' for being long gold (then $1,400) and saying Japan's bond market would crack ... Today gold is $4,700 and Japan's bond market has just cracked," wrote Quoth the Raven.

"Gold correlating with JGB yield ... bitcoin correlating with JGB price," wrote ZeroHedge.

Danish pension fund to unload U.S. Treasurys

"The U.S. is basically not a good credit and long-term the U.S. government finances are not sustainable," Anders Schelde, chief investment officer at AkademikerPension, told Bloomberg on Tuesday.

Though the $25 billion AUM Danish teachers' pension fund held just $100 million in U.S. paper at the end of 2025, the move could prove important as investors rethink exactly what a safe-haven investment means these days, wrote Bloomberg's Frances Schwartzkopff.

Risk and liquidity management were the only reasons to hold Treasurys, Schelde continued. "We decided that we can find alternatives to that."

Indeed, Deutsche Bank's George Saravelos over the weekend noted that Europe holds $8 trillion of U.S. bonds and stocks, more than twice as much as the rest of the world combined. “In an environment where the geoeconomic stability of the Western alliance is being disrupted existentially, it is not clear why Europeans would be as willing to play this part ... Developments over the last few days have potential to further encourage dollar rebalancing.”

Krisztian Sandor, CoinDesk markets reporter (4:15 UTC):

Amid the chaos $486 million in longs were liquidated so far on Tuesday across all assets, trailing Monday's $637 million, per Coinglass. Marking the worst two-day streak for longs this year.

Francisco Memoria, CoinDesk reporter (4:12pm UTC):

The sell-off is also bringing down crypto-linked equities. Coinbase (COIN) shares are down 3.79% to $232.01, while CleanSpark (CLSK), a bitcoin miner, dropped 3.07%.

Ether treasury companies SharpLink Gaming (SBET) and Bitmine Immersion Technologies (BMNR) led the declines, each down more than 7%.

Bitcoin treasury giant Strategy (MSTR) wasn’t spared, falling 6.78% to $161.94. Galaxy Digital (GLXY), which provides financial services tied to digital assets, lost 1.87%. Among the top performers was CoinDesk’s parent company Bullish (BLSH), down 0.1%.