It’s deja vu all over again for bitcoin bulls as Monday’s rally to an all-time high triggered not FOMO, but instead fast retreat. That retreat sped up in a big way in late-morning U.S. action on Friday after trade war tensions between the U.S. and China ratcheted higher.

U.S. President Donald Trump said in a Truth Social post minutes ago that he’s preparing a «massive increase» in tariffs on Chinese goods in response to China earlier imposing export controls on rare earth metals.

Following the post, bitcoin (BTC) plunged below $119,000 from $122,000. Ether (ETH), solana (SOL) and XRP each joined in the swift decline.

The drop in crypto prices also weighed on stocks tied to the sector. Circle (CRCL) fell over 6%. Robinhood (HOOD), which gets a large portion of its trading activity from crypto, declined 5%.

Coinbase (COIN) also shed 5%, while MicroStrategy (MSTR) slipped about 3%.

The news rippled across traditional markets, too. WTI crude oil dropped nearly 4% below $60, its weakest price since early May. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq were 1.6% and 1.3% lower, respectively.

Gold? It rallied more than 1% to back over $4,000 per ounce as the yellow metal once again showed itself, not bitcoin, to be the risk-off asset of choice for investors.

At the current $118,800, bitcoin is lower by about 2% over the past 24 hours and about 6% since hitting a new record above $126,000 just four days ago.

A subsidiary of Dominari Holdings (DOMH), the investment firm with ties to President Donald Trump’s sons, Eric and Donald Jr., is teaming up with Bitcoin programmability project Hemi to progress its digital asset treasury and exchange-traded fund (ETF) plans.

Broker-dealer Dominari Securities and Hemi, which is backed by veteran Bitcoin developer Jeff Garzik, teamed up to develop a digital asset treasury and ETF platform, according to an emailed announcement on Friday.

Dominari Holdings is located in the Trump Tower in New York City and counts Eric and Donald Trump Jr. among its investors. They also sit on its board of advisors. In March, the company took a different twist on the method of adopting bitcoin (BTC) as a treasury asset, by committing $2 billion to buy shares in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), the largest spot bitcoin ETF on the market.

The joint venture between Dominari and Hemi will allow institutions to invest in BTC-centric markets via the HEMI token.

As part of the joint venture American Ventures LLC, of which Dominari is a member, made an undisclosed investment in the Hemispheres Foundation, the principal stewards of the Hemi project.

Hemi’s goal is to transform the possibilities for decentralized finance (DeFi) on Bitcoin by unifying it with Ethereum into a single «supernetwork». It raised $15 million in funding to expand its ecosystem in August.

Alongside competitors like Lombard, with liquid staking token LBTC, and BOB, a hybrid chain built atop Bitcoin and Ethereum, Hemi is building infrastructure to make Bitcoin more compatible with DeFi, thus harnessing its $2.4 trillion market cap for the betterment of the wider digital asset industry.

Russia is moving closer to formally integrating crypto into its financial system, as officials acknowledge widespread adoption and the central bank prepares to let banks handle digital assets under tight controls.

According to a report by TASS, Deputy Finance Minister Ivan Chebeskov said around 20 million Russians now use cryptocurrencies “for various purposes,” describing them as a reality the government must address rather than resist.

TASS reported that Chebeskov argued the state needs to develop domestic infrastructure both to protect users and to secure “economic and technological benefits” for the country.

The scale of that adoption was highlighted by new figures TASS cited from the Bank of Russia.

According to the news agency, Russian citizens’ combined balances on cryptocurrency exchange wallets totaled 827 billion rubles (about $10.15 billion) at the end of March 2025, a 27% increase from the same period a year earlier.

TASS said most of those funds were held in bitcoin (62.1%), followed by ether (22%) and stablecoins USDT and USDC (15.9%). The central bank, according to TASS, also plans to survey cryptocurrency investments and lending activity between January and February 2026.

Central bank prepares tight rules for banks entering crypto

In a separate development, Interfax reported that First Deputy Governor Vladimir Chistyukhin said the Bank of Russia has decided to allow banks to operate in the crypto sector for the first time.

Speaking at the Finopolis conference, Chistyukhin said the regulator reached that decision after consulting with the banking sector, but intends to impose strict capital limits and reserve requirements to ensure crypto activity does not become a “dominant” business line.

Interfax also reported that the central bank proposed in March allowing cryptocurrency transactions only for “highly qualified investors,” with draft criteria still under discussion.

These include investment portfolios worth at least 100 million rubles or annual income above 50 million rubles. In May, the regulator issued a letter recommending that lenders cap their crypto exposure at about 1% of capital while it develops new rules for measuring crypto-related risks.

Together, the reports suggest a shift in policy: Russian officials are now publicly recognizing crypto’s entrenched role in the economy while preparing a tightly regulated pathway for banks to participate in the market.