Historical replay · BTC/USD
Bitcoin's February 2025 Tariff Crash
Over the weekend of February 1-2, 2025, a surprise announcement of new tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China sent Bitcoin down more than 6% in a single day, with 24/7 crypto markets reacting first, hours before Wall Street even opened.
On February 1, 2025, with traditional US markets closed for the weekend, an announcement of new tariffs on imports from Mexico, Canada, and China hit the wires. Since crypto trades 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, Bitcoin and Ethereum were the first global assets to fully price in the news, well before traditional stock exchanges could even reopen and react on Monday morning.
Within the window replayed here, Bitcoin fell from an open near $97,700 to a low of $91,231 — a drop of roughly 6.6% — as traders sold in anticipation of the tariffs' negative impact on global growth and inflation. The decline was accompanied by a wave of leveraged position liquidations across crypto derivatives markets.
The episode cemented Bitcoin's role as a kind of 'canary in the coal mine' for global macro sentiment: precisely because it trades around the clock, crypto often serves as an early read on how traditional markets might react once they reopen, giving attentive traders a preview window into weekend or after-hours macro news.