Global markets suffered major losses on Monday after US President Donald Trump confirmed he would not back down on tariffs. His remarks reignited fears of a global recession, sending investors scrambling.
US stock futures pointed to a 3–4% drop, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index plunged more than 10%. European and other Asian markets also fell sharply as investors rushed towards safer assets, leading to a drop in bond yields worldwide.
Goldman Sachs reacted by raising its prediction for a US recession to 45%, citing the financial stress from Trump’s aggressive new tariffs.
Defending his decision, Trump insisted that tariffs are generating billions in revenue and are essential to correct trade imbalances with China and the European Union. However, China quickly retaliated, imposing 34% tariffs of its own.
The result was a staggering loss of over $5 trillion from US stock markets in just two days, marking the worst week since the pandemic crash of 2020.
Even prominent Trump supporters, including investors Bill Ackman and Stanley Druckenmiller, criticised the tariff strategy, warning it could hurt both America’s economy and its global standing.
The search for safe assets caused bonds to rally, but commodities and cryptocurrencies were badly hit. Bitcoin ($BTC) was not spared, falling sharply alongside traditional markets.
Other major cryptocurrencies also suffered heavy double-digit losses, showing that investors were retreating from risky assets across the board.
Bitcoin drops to 25-day
Bitcoin fell below $80,000 for the first time in several weeks, raising fresh concerns about the health of the ongoing crypto bull run. Over the weekend, Bitcoin dropped by as much as 11%, hitting a 25-day low of $74,660.
The fall came after Trump’s announcement of steep new tariffs, which triggered a wider global market collapse.
The shockwave spread quickly. The S&P 500 saw a 6% decline on 4 April, its worst day since the March 2020 crash at the start of the pandemic. Meanwhile, nearly $300 billion was wiped out from the crypto markets, with most losses coming from heavily leveraged long positions.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin was trading at $77,112, down more than 7% over the past 24 hours.
The sharp fall has sparked debate among traders and analysts about whether Bitcoin’s current bull cycle may have peaked. While the price drop is alarming, deeper analysis of blockchain data suggests the situation may be even more concerning.
CryptoQuant CEO, Ki Young Ju, recently pointed to a worrying trend: a growing disconnect between Bitcoin’s Realised Cap and its Market Cap.
Realised Cap measures the value based on when coins last moved on-chain, offering a better view of real capital entering the market. Market Cap, in contrast, is based on current prices and total supply, making it more sensitive to quick price movements.
According to Ju, when Realised Cap rises while Market Cap stays flat or falls, it signals that heavy selling is absorbing fresh capital — often a bearish sign.
“When Market Cap jumps without a Realised Cap increase, it usually suggests small inflows are driving prices higher, typical of bull markets”, Ju explained. However, the current data shows the opposite pattern, warning that a fast recovery may be unlikely.
Analysts believe Bitcoin could now face a long period of consolidation, possibly lasting at least six months.
Adding to the pressure, Bitcoin’s price has struggled to regain lost ground. After failing to stay above $83,500, $BTC broke key support levels at $83,000 and $82,000, moving into a clear bearish zone. There was even a break below a bullish trend line at $83,000 on the BTC/USD hourly chart.
$BTC touched a low at $77,057 before staging a small recovery. It moved above the $78,800 level and cleared the 23.6% Fibonacci retracement of the decline from the $83,680 high to the $77,057 low. However, momentum remains weak.
Immediate resistance sits near $80,000, with key hurdles at $80,500 and $81,500. If $BTC manages to break above $81,500, it could rise towards $82,500 and then potentially retest $83,500.
On the downside, if Bitcoin fails to move past $80,500, fresh losses could follow. Immediate support lies near $77,000, with further support at $76,500. In a worst-case scenario, Bitcoin might fall back toward the $75,000 or even $74,200 levels.
Despite the latest drop, Bitcoin had managed to stay above $80,000 for most of 2025, showing surprising strength against global pressures.
Last week, it even defied broader market weakness, trading between $86,000 and $88,000 and finishing the week on a strong note. However, the overwhelming wave of market fear this weekend proved too much, dragging Bitcoin lower alongside traditional financial assets.
Altcoins suffered even worse losses than Bitcoin, deepening the market-wide sell-off. The chaos led to approximately $1.23 billion in liquidations across crypto derivatives markets over the past 24 hours alone.
Bitcoin long positions lost $430.12 million, while Ethereum long positions saw $343.52 million in liquidations, according to data from CoinGlass.
Because crypto trading never sleeps, the lack of a weekend break accelerated the panic, increasing the speed and depth of the sell-off.
The catalyst for all this volatility remains Trump’s announcement of sweeping tariffs on all imports, escalating trade tensions dramatically. Investors rushed to lower their risk exposure as recession fears resurfaced.
US stock futures also reflected this panic: Dow Jones futures plunged 1,558 points, a 4.03% drop; S&P 500 futures fell 3.81%; and Nasdaq-100 futures tumbled by 4.86% as investors dumped tech stocks to raise cash.
Bitcoin hashrate surpasses 1 Zetahash milestone
While prices were falling, Bitcoin’s network achieved a major technical milestone. Over the weekend, Bitcoin’s hashrate — the total computing power securing the network — topped 1 Zetahash per second (ZH/s) for the first time in its history.
Several blockchain tracking platforms recorded the event. According to mempool.space, Bitcoin’s hashrate peaked at 1.025 ZH/s on 5 April, while BTC Frame reported that Bitcoin crossed the 1.02 ZH/s mark a day earlier.
Coinwarz data even showed a peak of 1.1 ZH/s at block height 890,915 on 4 April. Coinwarz also indicated that Bitcoin first reached 1 ZH/s back on 24 March.
The differences in reported figures come from how each platform calculates hashrate. Factors include block times, difficulty adjustments, data sources from nodes and mining pools, and other technical elements.
The Chief Security Officer at Casa, Jameson Lopp, previously explained that using only one trailing block to estimate hashrate instead of five could lead to a discrepancy of more than 0.04 ZH/s.
Blockware Solutions head analyst, Mitchell Askew, also pointed out that “viewing the raw hashrate metric can be deceiving due to random variations in block times”. Askew noted that Bitcoin’s 30-day moving average hashrate still stands around 0.845 ZH/s.
Despite these calculation differences, the milestone remains significant. Achieving 1 ZH/s marks a 1,000-fold increase since January 2016, when Bitcoin first reached 1 EH/s (Exahash per second).
To put it into perspective, Litecoin, the second-largest proof-of-work blockchain, currently has a hashrate of 2.49 PH/s — making it roughly 40,000 times smaller than Bitcoin’s.
Askew added that the rise in hashrate reflects the growing competition among industrial-scale Bitcoin mining firms. “Miners are doubling down: expanding sites and plugging in more efficient machines”, he said, warning that less efficient operations could soon be forced out unless Bitcoin prices recover in the coming months.
Currently, MARA Holdings stands as the largest Bitcoin miner, boasting more than 50 EH/s of computing power. Most of Bitcoin’s total hashrate flows through mining pools such as Foundry USA and AntPool, according to the Hashrate Index.
In total, at least 24 publicly listed companies are now involved in Bitcoin mining, according to CompaniesMarketCap.com. Other major mining firms contributing to Bitcoin’s strength include Riot Platforms, Core Scientific, CleanSpark, Hut 8 Mining, and TeraWulf.
