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- Trump Tariffs Crash Crypto Market
Trump Tariffs Crash Crypto Market
Alpha Team
October 11, 2025
📉 Tariffs Trigger Crypto Crash
Tariffs Cause Market Drop: President Trump announced 100% tariffs on Chinese imports, effective November 1, in response to China’s tightened controls on rare earth exports. The announcement followed initial threats of countermeasures, which already caused the market to shed $125 billion. The total crypto market capitalization then dropped over 9% on the day, with approximately $530 billion erased in a single hour, before rebounding to around $3.7 trillion. Major cryptocurrencies experienced double-digit declines, though many have since slightly recovered. The GMCI 30 index fell 13% to 200.28. The S&P 500 closed down 2.7%, losing about $1.65 trillion, marking the largest daily decline since April 10. Crypto-related stocks, such as those of mining firms like Bitdeer, stablecoin issuer Circle, and others, led the losses. This widespread volatility triggered extensive liquidations and strained exchange operations.
Liquidations Reach Historic Levels: Over 1.5 million traders were liquidated in the past 24 hours, erasing $9.55 billion in open interest, including $8 billion in longs and $1.55 billion in shorts. The total liquidations surged to $19.31 billion, with $16 billion in long positions wiped out in just 12 hours, exceeding previous major events like the Covid crash at $1.2 billion and the FTX collapse at $1.6 billion, establishing this as the largest single-day liquidation event in crypto history. Exchanges faced significant strain; Binance reported systems under high load, causing intermittent delays and display issues, while assuring users that "Funds are SAFU." Similarly, Lighter experienced an outage due to extremely high transactions per second over the prior 12 hours, with the team actively working to resolve the technical issue and confirming that funds remained safe with no security or risk concerns. Liquidation data may understate the full extent due to API limits and incomplete reporting.
Whale Profits and Speculation: Amid the market turmoil, a prominent whale on Hyperliquid shorted nine-figure positions in Bitcoin and Ethereum minutes before the cascade began, subsequently closing 90% of the Bitcoin short and the entire Ethereum short to secure an estimated $190–200 million profit. @mlmabc observed that "this was just publicly on Hyperliquid imagine what he did on CEXs or elsewhere," and suggested "this guy played a huge role in what happened today," raising questions about potential insider trading or market manipulation. Speculation on the crash's triggers included @qwqiao's view that "the most likely explanation for this is some big exchange or mm broke." Arthur Hayes, co-founder of BitMEX, echoed this sentiment, stating that market rumors indicate "major centralized exchanges (CEXs) automatically liquidated collateral tied to cross-margin positions," which caused sharp declines in many altcoins, with some like IOTX briefly dropping over 90% to $0. Hayes added that "prices of many high-quality altcoins are unlikely to revisit those lows anytime soon." Read More.
️ On today's Top Picks:
- 🥀 US President Trump announces 100% tariff on China.
- ⌛ Polymarket to reportedly launch $POLY token next year.
- 💰 Kalshi raises $300M at $5B valuation led by Sequoia Capital & a16z.
- 🪂 Monad to launch $MON airdrop claim portal on October 14th.
Read time: ⏰ 8 minutes
Crypto News
• ⭐️ Total Crypto Market Cap tanks ~9% (~$530B) following Trump's retaliatory tariffs on China; crypto liquidations near ~$19B.
• ⭐️ Polymarket to reportedly launch $POLY token next year; Polymarket wants to regain a foothold in the US market first, which is currently dominated by Kalshi.
• ⭐️ Kalshi raises $300M at $5B valuation led by Sequoia Capital & a16z; also launches in over 140 countries.
• US President Trump considers pardoning Binance $BNB Founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ); though the admin is concerned about the "optics" of a pardon given Trump's involvement in digital assets.
• CZ denies investment links between YZi Labs & Hyperliquid $HYPE; explains that Hyperliquid Founder Jeff Yan was part of the YZiLabs incubation season 1 cohort in 2018, but that project failed.
• Bybit secures Virtual Asset Platform Operator license from UAE SCA; allows Bybit to offer regulated virtual asset trading, brokerage, custody, and fiat conversion services in the UAE.
• PayPay acquires 40% equity stake in Binance $BNB Japan, the Japanese branch of Binance; to integrate PayPay Money within the Binance Japan app.
• Arbitrum $ARB Foundation hires Brendan Ma as head of investment strategy; expected to grow Arbitrum’s ecosystem through investments & partnerships; Ma was formerly at Immutable $IMX & Goldman Sachs $GS,
• Roger Ver reaches deal with US DOJ; to pay $48M penalty to settle tax fraud charges; Ver was arrested in April 2024 and charged with mail fraud, tax evasion, & filing false tax returns.
Alpha
• Base invites over 40K people to the Base app beta; join the waitlist or receive an invite from a friend.
• MegaETH introduces second batch of MegaMafia 2.0; cohort includes Brix, Kumbaya, Rocket, Stomp, & Benchmark.
• Concreate launches Staked $EIGEN Vault; deposit EIGEN to earn 8-10% yield & incentives; rewards include EIGEN, Concrete Points, CAP Points, & more.
• Chronicle launches Chronicle Points access directly on the Chronicle website; Chronicle Points to convert to $CLE in the future.
• ICYMI Polymarket launches Polymarket US waitlist; register & view waitlist position; to launch soon.
• ICYMI Hyperliquid $HYPE & Lighter launch Monad $MON perps; long or short with up to 3x leverage; currently trading at ~$13B FDV; to launch mainnet, TGE, & airdrop soon.
Airdrops
• ⭐️ Monad to launch $MON airdrop claim portal on October 14th; eligibility criteria has yet to be disclosed.
• Aster launches $ASTER stage 2 airdrop eligibility & allocation checker; Aster Stage 2 users are eligible; claim on October 20th (delayed).
• Turtle to launch $TURTLE airdrop soon; 13.9% of token supply allocated to airdrop; Turtle participants, LPs, early users, & more to be eligible.
• Meteora to launch $MET airdrop checker on October 15th; Meteora Points holders, Jupiter $JUP stakers, & more to be eligible.
• YO posts CoinGecko listing request on X; to potentially launch TGE & airdrop soon.
• Phi launches $PHI airdrop claim; Phi users, WAWA NFT holders, & more are eligible.
• Binance launches Walrus $WAL HODLer airdrop; $BNB Simple Earn and/or BNB On-Chain Yields subscribers from October 1st to October 3rd are eligible.
Finance News
• ⭐️ US President Trump announces 100% tariff on China in response to China's export controls; to start as soon as November 1st.
• S&P 500 $SPX closes down down 2.7% (~$1.65T) after US President Trump threatens "massive increase of tariffs on Chinese products..."; largest daily decline since April 10th.
• Major Global Banks jointly exploring to launch a stablecoin; includes Bank of America $BAC, Goldman Sachs $GS, Citigroup $C, & others; aim to develop a 1:1 reserve-backed digital currency based on G7 currencies.
• Aurelion Global $AURE raises $150M to launch Tether Gold $XAUT treasury; Antalpha $ANTA led the $100M private placement & $50M debt financing round.
• Silver $XAG reaches new all-time high of ~$50; Gold $XAU also recently reached new all-time high of ~$4000.
• Morgan Stanley $MS to open access to crypto funds for all clients; previously, only clients with at least $1.5M in assets & “aggressive” risk profile could access crypto.
• Coinbase $COIN & Mastercard $MA in late stage talks to buy BVNK for up to $2.5B; Coinbase currently the frontrunner; BVNK provides stablecoin-based solutions.
• Sharps Technology $STSS partners with Coinbase $COIN to expand its digital asset treasury; to use Coinbase Prime for custody, liquidity, & OTC trading; currently holds ~2M Solana $SOL (~$371M).
• Solana Company $HSDT partners with Coinbase $COIN, BitGo, & Anchorage as custodians for its Solana $SOL treasury; currently holds ~2.2M SOL (~$408M).
• Galaxy $GLXY raises $460M via private placement; to use proceeds to fund its Helios project which converts its former Bitcoin $BTC mining site into a large-scale computing campus for CoreWeave $CRWV.
• HashKey Group confidentially files for an IPO in Hong Kong; aims to list this year.
Security and Exploits
• Revoke introduces small batch revoke fee; helps cover infrastructure costs & funds continued development of new features
• Apple $AAPL updates Security Bounty program; introduces expanded vulnerability categories, new objective validation tools, & higher incentives.
• Discord confirms ~70K government ID's exposed in 3rd party breach; attackers claim a broader breach affecting millions.
• Shuffle announces security breach due to 3rd party compromise; data includes emails, names, addresses, & more.
Token Unlocks
• BounceBit $BB / ~$7M / OCT 10th
• Home $HOME / ~$7M / OCT 10th
• Babylon $BABY / ~$15M / OCT 10th
• Linea $LINEA / ~$28M / OCT 10th
• Optimism $OP / ~$3M / OCT 10th
• Aptos $APT / ~$43M / OCT 11th
• Starknet $STRK / ~$16M / OCT 15th
Sourced from Tokenomist
Funding
• CipherOwl raises $15M in Seed funding led by General Catalyst & Flourish Ventures.
• Block Street raises $11.5M in funding led by Hack VC.
• Falcon Finance $FF raises $10M in Strategic funding led by M2 Capital.
• Lab raises $5M in funding from several investors.
• BVNK raises an undisclosed amount in Strategic funding from Citi $C Ventures.
The Degen Farmer
Top stablecoin yield farms of the day, more than $3,000,000 in TVL. DYOR and step up your farming game!
| PROTOCOL | ASSETS | APY |
|---|---|---|
 Aerodrome Slipstream (Base) | MSUSDUSDC | 103.58% |
 Hyperion (Aptos) | USD1USDC | 79.94% |
 Uniswap V3 (Ethereum) | USDEUSDC | 55.09% |
 Peapods Finance (Ethereum) | USDC | 50.52% |
 Storm Trade (Ton) | USDT | 49.48% |
 Etherex CL (Linea) | USDTMUSD | 44.53% |
 Pendle (Arbitrum) | USDAI | 43.07% |
 Morpho V1 (Base) | LLUSDC | 42.07% |
☁️ EigenCloud: Verifiable Cloud & Ethereum Restaking |  |
☁️ What is EigenCloud EigenCloud is a developer platform built on EigenLayer, Ethereum’s leading restaking protocol, enabling users to reuse staked ETH or EIGEN tokens to secure innovative applications. With over $17.5B in total value locked and 162+ Actively Validated Services (AVSs) in development, it drives Web3 growth with tools like EigenDA for data availability and EigenVerify for trustless compute. Backed by a16z’s $170M investment, EigenCloud supports secure DeFi, AI, and real-world use cases. Join now: Restake ETH or EIGEN via EigenLayer to earn rewards (over $128M distributed) or run nodes for AI inference and scaling. Just launched: Concrete’s Staked Eigen Vault lets you deposit $EIGEN to earn 8-10% real USD yield, Eigen incentives, partner rewards, and DeFi composability.
📊 Delphi Digital’s Report on EigenCloud Delphi Digital recently published a report hailing EigenCloud as a breakthrough for blockchain programmability, moving beyond finance-focused apps. Its core tools include EigenDA for secure, scalable data storage (similar to AWS S3), EigenVerify for reliable result verification, and EigenCompute for running complex off-chain tasks. These simplify development by handling validator coordination, letting developers focus on building trusted applications. The dual-token system, with EIGEN for network coordination and bEIGEN for verification collateral, ensures rewards for stakers and verifiers, backed by a forking mechanism to prevent collusion. EigenDA v2 delivers 100MB/s throughput, the fastest data availability solution, and a testnet DevKit streamlines new service creation.
🚀 EigenAI & EigenCompute: Trusted AI Live Delphi Digital’s report highlights EigenCloud’s leadership in verifiable AI with EigenAI and EigenCompute, now in mainnet alpha. EigenAI ensures AI outputs are trustworthy for high-stakes DeFi and autonomous agents, using cryptographic proofs or attestations, supporting projects like Coinbase’s AgentKit and Collective Memory. EigenCompute runs secure off-chain tasks, like AI inference or data oracles, with results stored on EigenDA and verified by EigenVerify. Developers can choose trust modes (Instant, Optimistic, Forkable, Eventual) to optimize speed, cost, and security, enabling applications like prediction markets and secure data integration.
👉 Deposit into Concrete’s Staked Eigen Vault and earn real yield today!
That’s it for today’s edition! See you soon.
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