Crypto Market Surges 4.4% as Bitcoin Hits $93,500 on Tariff Hopes

Cardano’s ADA and Ether (ETH) have surged by more than 14% in the past 24 hours, leading the gains among major cryptocurrencies. This surge comes as Bitcoin (BTC) crossed $93,500 late Tuesday, driven by renewed hopes of a more moderate approach to tariff wars. Bitcoin itself jumped by 6.5%, while other notable cryptocurrencies such as Solana’s SOL, XRP, and BNB Chain’s BNB all added around 8%. Major memecoins like Dogecoin (DOGE) and Shiba Inu (SHIB) climbed more than 11%, with Sui Network’s SUI surging 30% to lead gains among midcaps.

The overall market capitalization rose by 4.4% to $3.03 trillion, with the broad-based CoinDesk 20 (CD20) advancing by 5%, indicating an average jump among major cryptocurrencies. This rally followed President Donald Trump's announcement that he would substantially reduce tariffs on China and clarify that he would not attempt to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. While this shift in tone provided much-needed relief to investors, it also raised concerns about the administration's ability to maintain consistency and reliability, which has fueled recent increases in the price of gold and U.S. Treasury yields.

Bitcoin's narrative as a 'store of value' seems to be overtaking its correlation with U.S. markets. According to Nick Ruck, director at LVRG Research, Bitcoin pumped during both negative and positive news related to Trump's tariffs and Powell comments, showcasing its potential to reach new all-time highs. This resilience relative to U.S. equities has strengthened Bitcoin's store-of-value narrative among some market observers. Jupiter Zheng, partner of research at HashKey Capital, noted that there is strong potential for Bitcoin to lose its long-running correlation with U.S. equities and may now turn to its digital gold narrative as the price of gold has reached an all-time high. He remains positive that investors will evaluate BTC as a long-term store of value.

Some market watchers observed that gold's advance and the decoupling of Bitcoin from equities seem to be concentrated in Asian morning hours. Augustine Fan, head of insights at SignalPlus, suggested that data shows gold has been deriving most of its rally during the Asian hours, indicating possible central bank and official flows getting out of USD into alternative safe havens. The USD decoupling does seem to be more pronounced than previous episodes. One of the possible ramifications of the U.S. decoupling is a revisit to the long-term BTC bull case as a store of value. While BTC has also been critiqued as a levered Nasdaq proxy over the past year, it has finally started to show some signs of its own decoupling away from equity markets.