The VIX index, which shows the equity market’s expectations for 30-day volatility and is often called Wall Street’s «fear gauge,» rose to 39, the highest since October 2020, after China imposed retaliatory tariffs on the U.S., data from TradingView show.

The increase, coupled with the sharp sell-off in the U.S. stock-index futures, prompted traders to increase estimates of Federal Reserve interest-rate cuts to 116 basis points this year, up from 100 basis points before the China news hit the wires, CME’s FedWatch tool shows.

Bitcoin (BTC) traded 0.7% lower on the day at $82,500 at press time, having earlier put in highs above $84,600. Bitcoin’s 30-day implied volatility, represented by Deribit’s DVOL index, rose to an annualized 54.6%, the highest in two weeks.

By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)

Major coins reversed early gains after Beijing stepped up trade tensions by announcing retaliatory tariffs following President Donald Trump’s Wednesday decision to impose additional levies on China and other nations.

Bitcoin dropped to $83,000 from $84,600, though the downside appeared limited, probably because the market’s worst fears have finally come true. Markets dislike uncertainty, and the anticipation of a looming threat often creates more anxiety and fear than the actual realization of that threat.

Since Trump took office on Jan. 20, markets have been wrestling with the threat of tariffs and a global trade war. That damped investor risk appetite, causing the BTC price to tumble from a record high over $109,000 to below $80,000 last month.

This week, Trump announced sweeping tariffs on 180 nations, with higher levies on China, the European Union and Southeast Asia. The effective U.S. tariff rate is now above the level of around 20% set by the 1930’s Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act.

This so-called tariffagedon moment marks the end of lingering uncertainty and could be liberating for markets, mainly because bond yields have dropped across the advanced world in the aftermath, pricing in disinflation. That’s contrary to the popular narrative that tariffs would lead to stagflation — high inflation plus low growth — forcing the Fed to keep interest rates elevated.

The yield on the benchmark U.S. 10-year bond yield has dropped below 4% for the first time since October and yields have fallen sharply in the U.K., Germany and Japan. Plus, oil has declined sharply this week on prospects of higher supply from OPEC countries.

All this bodes well for Fed rate cut bets and risk assets, including cryptocurrencies. The same can be said for Friday’s March jobs report, which, if it beats estimates, will likely be seen as backward-looking, failing to account for this week’s Trump tariffs, while a weak print will only add to Fed rate cuts.

With the major macro uncertainty behind us, the crypto market could return to focusing on positive developments, such as USDC issuer Circle’s IPO filing and technological advancements.

On Thursday, Coinbase Derivatives submitted documentation to the CFTC to self-certify futures for XRP. In addition, Ethereum developers chose May 7 as the date for the Pectra upgrade to go live on the mainnet.

Elsewhere, the SEC acknowledged Fidelity’s filing for a spot exchange-traded fund tied to SOL, which takes it closer to approval. A lot is happening within the industry, so stay alert!

What to Watch

Crypto:

April 5: The purported birthday of Satoshi Nakamoto.

April 7, 7:30 p.m.: Syscoin (SYS) activates the Nexus upgrade on its mainnet at block 2,010,345.

April 9, 10:00 a.m.: U.S. House Financial Services Committee hearing about how U.S. securities laws could be updated to take into account digital assets. Livestream link.

April 17: EigenLayer (EIGEN) activates slashing on Ethereum mainnet, enforcing penalties for operator misconduct.

April 21: Coinbase Derivatives will list XRP futures pending approval by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

Macro

April 4, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics releases March employment data.

Nonfarm Payrolls Est. 135K vs. Prev. 151K

Unemployment Rate Est. 4.1% vs. Prev. 4.1%

April 4, 8:30 a.m.: Statistics Canada releases March employment data.

Unemployment Rate Est. 6.7% vs. Prev. 6.6%

April 4, 11:25 a.m.: Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell will give a speech titled “Economic Outlook.” Livestream link.

April 5, 12:01 a.m.: The Trump administration’s 10% baseline tariff on imports from all countries takes effect.

April 9, 12:01 a.m.: The Trump administration’s higher individualized tariffs on imports from top U.S. trade-deficit countries take effect.

April 14: Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele will join President Donald Trump at the White House for an official working visit.

Earnings (Estimates based on FactSet data)

No earnings scheduled.

Token Events

Governance votes & calls

Sky DAO is voting on an executive proposal that includes initializing ALLOCATOR-BLOOM-A, updating the Smart Burn Engine’s hop parameter, approving the Spark Tokenization Grand Prix DAO resolution and executing a Spark Proxy Spell to expand SparkLend’s liquidity operations. Voting ends May 3.

AaveDAO is discussing an upgrade to GHO Savings to introduce a technical design change to sGHO, a yield-bearing version of GHO designed for multichain integration. It also introduces the Aave Savings Rate (ASR) that will determine sGHO’s yield.

April 4, 9 a.m.: Core DAO to host an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session.

April 4, 2 p.m.: Sei’s research initiative to hold a livestream on real-world asset tokenization.

April 7, 9 a.m.: OriginTrail to host a “Shaping AI for Good” Zoom talk.

April 7, 4 p.m.: Livepeer to host a monthly community call focused on governance, funding, and the strategic direction of its on-chain treasury.

Unlocks

April 5: Ethena (ENA) to unlock 3.25% of its circulating supply worth $54.22 million.

April 7: Kaspa (KAS) to unlock 0.59% of its circulating supply worth $10.17 million.

April 9: Movement (MOVE) to unlock 2.04% of its circulating supply worth $19.17 million.

April 12: Aptos (APT) to unlock 1.87% of its circulating supply worth $57 million.

April 12: Axie Infinity (AXS) to unlock 5.68% of its circulating supply worth $24.91 million.

Token Listings

April 4: Pintu (PTU), Spartan Protocol (SPARTA), Derby Stars (DSRUN), Veloce (VEXT), BOB and KryptoniteSEILOR) to be deslisted from Bybit.

April 9: IOST airdrop claims portal for a roughly 1.7 billion IOST token airdrop to open.

April 22: Hyperlane to airdrop its HYPER tokens.

Conferences

CoinDesk’s Consensus is taking place in Toronto on May 14-16. Use code DAYBOOK and save 15% on passes.

Day 3 of 4: ETH Bucharest Conference & Hackathon (Romania)

Day 2 of 4: BitBlockBoom (Dallas)

April 6-9: Hong Kong Web3 Festival

April 8-10: Paris Blockchain Week

April 10: Bitcoin Educators Unconference (Nashville)

April 15-16: BUIDL Asia 2025 (Seoul)

April 22-24: Money20/20 Asia (Bangkok)

April 23: Crypto Horizons 2025 (Dubai)

April 23-24: Blockchain Forum 2025 (Moscow)

April 24: Bitwise’s Investor Day for Bitcoin Standard Corporations (New York)

Token Talk

By Shaurya Malwa

Infected, a crypto game, moves to Solana from Base network after saying the latter couldn’t handle its launch.

Infected claimed it faced technical issues during the start-up and Base was unable to handle high transaction volumes, leading to gas price spikes and a poor user experience.

It reported that a gas spike caused transaction failures during the critical first 30 minutes of the game’s debut, disrupting momentum.

Although front-end issues were suspected initially, the team concluded that Base’s scalability limitations were the root cause, a problem they say persists across Ethereum-based chains.

Jesse Pollak, the creator of Base, rejected the claims, asserting that Base operated smoothly and did not crash. He emphasized that Base, with a $3.05 billion total value locked and 1.2 million active addresses, had offered support to resolve front-end issues, suggesting the problem was not inherent to the chain.

Base developer ‘Saedeh’ called out Infected’s inexperience, pointing to its introduction of multiple tokens and exaggerated market cap claims as missteps.

Derivatives Positioning

BTC, ETH puts are trading at a premium relative to calls out to June expiry, representing near-term downside concerns.

The positive dealer gamma at the $83K and $84K strikes means these market participants could trade against the market to hedge their books, potentially arresting price volatility.

Perpetual funding rates for most major tokens, excluding XRP and AVAX, remain marginally positive, implying cautiously bullish sentiment.

Market Movements

BTC is up 1.25% from 4 p.m. ET Thursday at $83,032.61 (24hrs: -0.28%)

ETH is up 0.61% at $1,795.41 (24hrs: +0.15%)

CoinDesk 20 is up 1.54% at 2,479.75 (24hrs: +0.62%)

Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is up 6 bps at 3.08%

BTC funding rate is at 0.0023% (2.4988% annualized) on Binance

DXY is up 0.47% at 102.56

Gold is up 0.48% at $3,111.90/oz

Silver is down 1.38% at $31.40/oz

Nikkei 225 closed -2.75% at 33,780.58

Hang Seng closed -1.52% at 22,849.81

FTSE is down 3.4% at 8,186.43

Euro Stoxx 50 is down 4.26% at 4,895.26

DJIA closed on Thursday -3.98% at 40,545.93

S&P 500 closed -4.84% at 5,396.52

Nasdaq closed -5.97% at 16,550.61

S&P/TSX Composite Index closed -3.84% at 24,335.8

S&P 40 Latin America closed +0.21% at 2,453.38

U.S. 10-year Treasury rate is down 13 bps at 3.9%

E-mini S&P 500 futures are down 2.17% at 5,315.00

E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are down 2.34%% at 18,238.75

E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are down 2.26% at 39,854

Bitcoin Stats:

BTC Dominance: 63 (0.31%)

Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.02162 (-1.05%)

Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 839 EH/s

Hashprice (spot): $46.31

Total Fees: 5.78 BTC / $478,070

CME Futures Open Interest: 135,025 BTC

BTC priced in gold: 27.1 oz

BTC vs gold market cap: 7.69%

Technical Analysis

The ratio between the dollar prices of bitcoin and gold is looking to trend lower.

Gold, however, may see a «sell the fact» pullback in the wake of Wednesday’s Trump tariffs, potentially leading to a breakout in the BTC-gold ratio.

Such a move could be taken a sign of a renewed bull run in BTC, as the cryptocurrency tends to rally after gold.

Crypto Equities

Strategy (MSTR): closed on Thursday at $282.28 (-9.68%), down 1.11% at $279.14 in pre-market

Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $170.76 (-6.66%), down 3.29% at $165.14

Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$15.08 (-11.81%)

MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $11.23 (-9.58%), down 3.29% at $10.86

Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $7.30 (-8.98%), down 3.15% at $7.07

Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $7.15 (-15.08%), down 1.96% at $7.01

CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $7.41 (-7.61%), down 3.51% at $7.15

CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $12.75 (-10.46%), down 0.16% at $12.73

Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $34.06 (-8.02%), down 6.05% at $32

Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $42.63 (-9.93%), down 0.09% at $42.59

ETF Flows

Spot BTC ETFs:

Daily net flow: -$99.8 million

Cumulative net flows: $36.23 billion

Total BTC holdings ~ 1.11 million.

Spot ETH ETFs

Daily net flow: -$3.6 million

Cumulative net flows: $2.37 billion

Total ETH holdings ~ 3.39 million.

Source: Farside Investors

Overnight Flows

Chart of the Day

The global search interest for the term «tariffs» reached a peak value of 100 on Thursday, indicating heightened curiosity and concern about trade taxes among the general public over the past 90 days.

Peak interest among the general populace usually marks the end of a trend, meaning markets could soon be looking past tariffs.

While You Were Sleeping

Bitcoin Falls Back to $83K as China Announces 34% Tariffs on All U.S. Goods (CoinDesk): China announced retaliatory tariffs on all goods from the U.S.

March Jobs Report a ‘Heads I Win, Tails You Lose’ Moment for Bitcoin Bulls (CoinDesk): Bitcoin’s price stability above March lows suggests seller fatigue, with implied volatility indicating a potential 3.4% price swing in the next 24 hours.

South Korea’s President Yoon Ousted as Court Upholds Impeachment (Reuters): The Constitutional Court said Yoon overstepped his powers by declaring martial law. An election must be held within 60 days, with Prime Minister Han Duck-soo serving as interim president.

Inflation Fears Add to Pressure on Federal Reserve (Financial Times): Markets now see short-term U.S. inflation rising at its fastest pace since 2022.

Solana’s SOL Could See Nearly 6% Price Swing as Whales Dump Coins Before U.S. Jobs Data (CoinDesk): Volmex’s one-day implied volatility index indicates SOL may see a 6% price swing as large investors offload holdings ahead of the U.S. non-farm payroll report.​

China’s Response to New U.S. Tariffs Will Likely Focus More on Stimulus, Building Trade Ties (CNBC): China is likely to respond by boosting stimulus, deepening Asian and African trade ties, and keeping the yuan strong to shift inflationary pressure onto the U.S., analysts said.

In the Ether

Risk sentiment worsened during the European hours Friday after China announced retaliatory tariffs on all goods, responding to Trump’s Wednesday decision to boost the overall levy on Chinese goods to 54%.

Bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency by market value, fell by $1,600 to $83,000, erasing the early rise to $84,600, CoinDesk data shows. Other tokens like XRP, ETH, SOL and DOGE also reversed early gains to trade largely flat on the day.

Meanwhile, futures tied to the S&P 500 and Nasdaq fell over 2% amid escalating global trade tensions.

«China’s response is not only negative for the U.S. but it is also impacting the global outlook,» ForexLive’s analyst Justin Low wrote in a market update.