Crypto sentiment flips to ‘Fear’ as Bitcoin plunges after Trump’s tariffs

Crypto market sentiment has dropped to its lowest level in almost six months after US President Donald Trump announced a 100% tariff on China.

The Crypto Fear & Greed Index, which gauges overall market sentiment, fell to a “Fear” level of 27 in its Saturday’s update, representing a decline of 37 points from Friday’s “Greed” reading of 64. 

The decline came as Bitcoin (BTC) briefly dipped to $102,000 on the Binance perpetual futures pair following Trump’s announcement of sweeping tariffs on Friday.

Over the past 24 hours, approximately $19.27 billion worth of long and short positions have been liquidated across the crypto market, according to CoinGlass. 

Crypto market is flashing strong “buying signal,” says analyst

In an X post on Friday, Bitwise European head of research, Andre Dragosch, said that the company’s intraday crypto asset Sentiment Index just “generated a strong contrarian buying signal.”

“The index reached an intraday low of -2.8 standard deviations – its lowest level since the ‘Yen Carry Trade Unwind’ in the summer of 2024,” Dragosch said.

The last time the Crypto Fear & Greed Index was this low was April 16, shortly after Bitcoin tumbled to $77,000 amid uncertainty escalating around trade tensions.

Just days before, on April 9, Trump announced a 90-day pause on higher reciprocal tariffs, reverting the tariffs to the 10% baseline for most countries.

Earlier this week, the Index was in “Greed” territory after Bitcoin reached new highs of $125,100 on Monday. 

Bitcoin’s recent highs didn’t lead to euphoria

However, Santiment analyst Brian Quinlivan pointed out on Friday that Bitcoin’s recent all-time highs didn’t generate the same level of enthusiasm on social media as previous all-time highs.

Related: Bitcoin Mayer Multiple: BTC price can hit $180K before being ‘overbought’

“It was like a modest, run-of-the-mill reaction from the crypto audience,” Quinlivan said in an interview with the Thinking Crypto podcast published to YouTube on Thursday, referring to the level of bullish comments across social media after Bitcoin reached new highs of $125,100 on Monday.

“Really wasn’t much of anything,” Quinlivan said. “It’s not nearly as euphoric as some of these previous ones,” he added.

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