Bitcoin price at risk of crash below $65K as Trump tariffs shock market

Bitcoin price briefly slipped below $65,000 as changing macro trade policies and escalating geopolitical tensions kept investors on edge and sent risk sentiment plunging to multi-year lows before managing a brief recovery to the $66,000 range during late Asian trading hours.

The entire crypto market slipped alongside the pioneer asset as nearly $100 billion in market value vanished from the market within hours of the Monday open, with the total market cap sliding over 3.5% to $2.29 trillion. 

As of last check, the crypto fear and greed index showed no signs of improvement and was languishing at a reading of 5, firmly within the territory of “extreme fear.”

Leading altcoins like Ethereum, Solana, and XRP were all trading with notable losses, as a massive wave of $458 million in liquidations forced overleveraged traders out of their positions, with a handful of tokens remaining as the only muted exceptions.

Why is Bitcoin price down today?

Bitcoin price printed a fresh multi-week low of $64,435 as traders reacted to a sharp turn in global trade rhetoric and a renewed wave of geopolitical anxiety. 

President Donald Trump’s decision to lift proposed global tariffs to 15% unsettled already fragile sentiment, particularly after the Supreme Court struck down earlier emergency measures. 

Markets interpreted the policy pivot as inflationary and potentially harmful to global growth, prompting a rotation away from volatile assets. 

Digital assets, which have increasingly traded as high beta expressions of macro risk, bore the brunt of that repositioning.

Heightened military activity around Iran added another layer of unease.

Reports of an expanding US presence in the Persian Gulf, combined with uncertainty over whether further escalation could follow, reinforced a broader risk-off tone across asset classes. 

Institutional desks have shown limited appetite to increase exposure under such conditions, especially when cross-border trade flows and energy markets sit at the centre of the tension.

Crypto, lacking the defensive characteristics once associated with the digital gold narrative, struggled to attract safe-haven flows.

Pressure intensified on the market structure side.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs have now recorded multiple consecutive weeks of net outflows, with billions of dollars exiting year to date. 

BlackRock’s IBIT alone recently posted sizable redemptions, signalling that large allocators are trimming exposure rather than adding on weakness.

Reduced institutional sponsorship has left order books thinner and more reactive to sudden bursts of selling.

As price slipped through the closely watched $65,000 support zone, forced liquidations accelerated. 

More than $450 million in leveraged positions were wiped out within 24 hours, with long traders accounting for the overwhelming majority of losses.

Automated sell orders triggered margin calls, which in turn pushed the price lower. 

Simultaneously, open interest has fallen toward $95 billion, which is a sign that investors were closing positions. 

Fewer active market makers mean there were limited bids to absorb the sudden influx of supply. Nearly $100 billion in total crypto market value evaporated within hours

Yet the same factors that drove the slide also laid the groundwork for a rebound. Once the bulk of forced selling had cleared, incremental buy orders faced far less overhead pressure. 

On-chain data showed that large holders accumulated meaningfully over the past month, with whales adding substantial amounts of BTC even as retail and ETF flows weakened. 

Those long-term wallets provided a steady bid near the $64,000 region, slowing the descent.

Short sellers also began locking in gains as volatility peaked. Profit taking from bearish positions created natural buying pressure, which combined with opportunistic dip buying from patient capital. 

Stabilisation in the Japanese yen and a modest cooling of tariff rhetoric helped ease some cross-asset stress, allowing risk appetite to recover marginally during late Asian trading hours. 

At the moment, structural dynamics remain mixed.

Stablecoin market capitalisation continues to expand, signalling that capital has not fully exited the digital asset ecosystem but is instead parked on the sidelines. 

Prediction markets and select on-chain sectors show sustained activity, suggesting that speculative interest has shifted rather than disappeared. 

At the same time, futures open interest remains well below prior cycle highs, reflecting a more cautious posture among leveraged traders.

Will Bitcoin price crash?

Although Bitcoin has recovered back above $66,000, it does not erase the broader fragility.

Whether that support can hold through the next macro headline will determine if $64,000 marked a local floor.

Analysts are currently identifying the $64,000 to $65,000 range as a make-or-break zone that defines the short-term trajectory for the market. 

This area is significant because it aligns with a high-volume node where significant accumulation occurred earlier in the year, acting as a historical buffer against deeper corrections.

If Bitcoin can maintain its position above this threshold, it would suggest that the recent dip was merely a flush of overleveraged participants rather than a fundamental breakdown of the existing trend. 

However, a daily close below this support would likely shift the focus toward the $60,000 psychological floor, which many traders view as the ultimate line of defense before a potential entry into a more prolonged bearish phase.

To the upside, the immediate hurdle for bulls is the $67,000 to $68,500 corridor, which now hosts a cluster of descending moving averages. 

This region acted as support throughout much of mid February, but in technical terms, old support often flips into new resistance once it has been decisively breached.

For a sustained recovery to take hold, Bitcoin needs to reclaim these levels with rising spot volume to prove that the bounce from $64,000 was driven by genuine demand.

Until then, there’s a risk he recover may turn out to be a fakeout. 

On X, pseudonymous crypto analyst Dami-Defi pointed out that the Bitcoin price was trading within a symmetrical triangle.

At press time, Bitcoin price was trading close to the lower boundary of the pattern and a break below would confirm that sellers are firmly in control. (See below.)

BTC/USD 1-day price chart. Source: Demi-Defi on X.

A drop to $63,000 would confirm the breakout and could send the price towards $60,000.

Simultaneously, fellow analyst Rekt Capital warned that Bitcoin has closed below the 200-week EMA, a long-standing structural support level that has historically defined the boundary between macro bull and bear conditions.

According to the analyst, losing that level on a weekly timeframe means the 200-week EMA is no longer acting as a floor and could now turn into overhead resistance on any recovery attempt.

In prior cycles, similar weekly closes below the 200-week EMA, followed by a failed retest from underneath, have led to further downside acceleration. See below.

BTC/USD – 1-Week. Source:

“Historically across cycles, whenever Bitcoin performed a Weekly Close below the 200-week EMA followed by a bearish retest, it would prompt additional Bearish Acceleration to the downside,” the analyst wrote.

At press time, Bitcoin price trading at $65,829 down over 2.3% on the day.

Altcoins market tanks

The total altcoin market cap fell nearly 9% to $940 billion during the early trading hours on Monday before recovering to $1.02 trillion.

Ethereum (ETH) price briefly dropped below the $1,900 mark, and is down 2.3% over the 24-hour session.

XRP, BNB, Tron (TRX), and Cardano (ADA) faced modest losses between 1-2% each, while Solana (SOL) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) were down 5% and 7%, respectively.

Most of the top 100 crypto assets were still in minute losses by the end of the day, with the top laggards like LayerZero (ZRO) and Hyperliquid (HYPE) down 9% each. 

Pippin (PIPPIN) bucked the trend as the sole double-digit gainer with a 15% surge driven by whale accumulation, retail spot buying, and its position within the AI agent and Solana narratives.

However, community members have flagged the project as a potential rug pull, citing a highly concentrated token distribution where insider wallets control a significant portion of the supply.

Just (JST) token rose 6% on February 23, 2026, driven by increased DeFi activity on the TRON network and the introduction of WBTC and USDD 2.0 mining rewards on JustLend DAO.

Meanwhile, ether.fi (ETHFI) gains can be attributed to its strategic migration to the Optimism Mainnet recently and its selection as the network’s official liquid staking partner.

Source: CoinMarketCap

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