Asia Market Open: Bitcoin Tumbles 7%, Stocks Swing as Trump Signals Fed Pick And Shutdown Deal
Bitcoin slid 7% to around $82,000 on Friday as Asian markets opened to volatile trade, after President Donald Trump endorsed a bipartisan deal to avert a fresh US government shutdown and said he has decided who he will nominate to lead the Federal Reserve.
The crypto move came with a wave of forced unwinds. CoinGlass data showed $1.75B of liquidations over the past 24 hours, with long positions accounting for $1.65B and shorts at $105.63M, as 276,308 traders were liquidated.
Bitcoin dominated the damage on the heatmap, with $826.63M of liquidations tied to BTC over 24 hours, while Ether followed with $428.48M. XRP and Solana also showed sizable hits at $72.35M and $70.34M.
Market snapshot
- Bitcoin: $81,935, down 7%
- Ether: $2,737, down 7.6%
- XRP: $1.75, down 7%
- Total crypto market cap: $2.88 trillion, down 5.9%
Risk Appetite Softens As Futures Slip Across Markets
Stocks moved unevenly. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan dipped 0.2%, while S&P 500 e-mini futures fell 0.4% and Nasdaq e-mini futures slipped 0.5%.
Traders carried a cautious tone from Wall Street, where stocks fell on Thursday after soft earnings from Microsoft stirred worries about whether its artificial intelligence spending would deliver the returns investors want. The S&P 500 ended down 0.1% and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 0.7%.
Microsoft sank 10% on Thursday, wiping more than $350 billion in market value after its cloud business failed to impress. Meta gained 10% as its AI investments boosted ad targeting and supported a stronger first-quarter forecast, while Apple projected revenue growth of up to 16% for the March quarter, helped by iPhone demand and a rebound in China.
Megacap Moves Add To Uneven Market Mood
In Japan, the Nikkei 225 held flat after data showed Tokyo core consumer prices rose 2.0% in January from a year earlier, matching the Bank of Japan’s target. In currencies, the dollar index rose 0.3% to 96.441 after Trump said he would unveil his pick to replace Fed chair Jerome Powell on Friday.
Within US megacaps, Tesla fell 3.5% after outlining plans to more than double capital expenditure to a record level. Technology lagged across the S&P 500’s sector board, while communication services outperformed on Meta’s rally, and IBM added to the mixed tone after a fourth-quarter beat lifted its shares about 5%.
For crypto traders, the liquidation split told the story of positioning. Longs accounted for the bulk of the damage across the last 24 hours, and the lack of balance between long and short liquidations left the market hunting for a steadier footing as macro headlines kept risk appetite on edge.
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