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Bitcoin shrugged off the market turbulence on Wednesday as industry figures raised hopes that the US’s aggressive global tariff policy would spark fresh interest in the technology behind cryptocurrencies.
The price of bitcoin, which has been correlated largely with the Nasdaq Composite for the past few years, added 0.9 per cent to $77,725 per coin after dropping to a low set in overnight trading.
The rebound came even as the US and China ratcheted up trade tensions with more retaliatory tariffs.
Crypto has fallen sharply this year as the euphoria that drove prices to record highs in the wake of Donald Trump’s election victory subsided. It dropped further still after the US president imposed tariffs on countries around the world last week.
“I think actually what’s happening right now is the greatest example of why we need blockchain cryptocurrencies,” said Charles Hoskinson, co-founder of Cardano blockchain and one of the industry’s best known entrepreneurs at a conference in Paris.
Hoskinson, who also co-founded the Ethereum blockchain, has been advising US politicians on cryptocurrency policy while Trump cited Cardano’s token Ada as a potential addition to a US crypto strategic reserve last month.
“Maybe it’s just me, but it shouldn’t be the case that a handful of people have the power to destroy the global economy or radically change the global economy,” Hoskinson said. “Perhaps it should be a bit more collaborative and decentralised, and perhaps it should be the case that we get rid of middlemen and other power structures.”
Other cryptocurrencies, ether and solana, also rose 0.9 per cent and 1.5 per cent respectively.
Gautaum Chhugani, an analyst at Bernstein, said investors for years had struggled to see the point of crypto when the centralised system worked well.
“All of this assumed the current status-quo ‘rules based order’ forever,” he said. “The world for the first time may consider decentralised technologies that can form the alternative ‘trust layer’.”
Paolo Ardoino, chief executive of stablecoin operator Tether, told the Financial Times that tariffs could accelerate the take up of coins as “more countries will have a harder time to meet the new import duties”.
The El Salvador-based company runs the world’s largest stablecoin, a type of digital dollar that is pegged to the US currency 1:1.
“More people in these countries will seek to have the dollar and access to the dollar. Unfortunately our product probably works the best when national currencies are depreciating and there is higher inflation,” he said.
