Bitcoin broke below $80,000 as tariff risk reached weekend crypto trading

Bitcoin fell below $80,000 on April 6, 2025 as cryptocurrency markets joined a widening retreat from risk triggered by the United States’ new tariff program and mounting concern about global growth.

Reuters recorded bitcoin at $78,892.92 at 18:55 GMT, down around 5%. Four minutes later, the news service measured ether at $1,617.65, down approximately 9.62%. These were timestamped market observations, not official daily settlements or prices consolidated across every cryptocurrency venue.

The move was consequential because bitcoin and ether traded continuously while U.S. cash stock markets were closed for the weekend. Crypto therefore provided one of the first liquid, globally accessible readings of risk appetite before the next American equity session.

A rapid break through $80,000

Contemporaneous specialist reporting placed bitcoin’s initial break below $80,000 during the afternoon in the United States. The Block reported at 2:46 p.m. Eastern that bitcoin had fallen more than 3% in two hours and was down 3.4% over its preceding 24-hour measurement window.

That rolling calculation and Reuters’ later approximately 5% reading are not contradictory. They were taken at different times and may have used different price feeds. Bitcoin has no single official worldwide closing auction: prices can vary among dollar, stablecoin and other currency pairs, while percentage returns depend on the selected venue, timestamp and starting observation.

Ether’s larger decline indicated that the selloff extended beyond bitcoin. It did not, by itself, establish that leverage, liquidity or investor composition caused the difference. No liquidation total is used here because contemporaneous aggregators did not provide a venue-complete record capable of showing every forced closure or a consistently documented methodology.

The tariff chronology

The immediate macroeconomic context began with Executive Order 14257, signed on April 2, 2025. The order imposed an additional 10% duty on covered imports entering the United States from 12:01 a.m. Eastern on April 5. Higher country-specific rates were scheduled to begin at 12:01 a.m. Eastern on April 9.

By April 6, the first baseline duties were in effect, but the scheduled country-specific rates had not yet begun. That distinction matters: the market was pricing both an implemented measure and uncertainty about a broader escalation, not reacting to every announced rate as though it were already being collected.

President Donald Trump said on April 6 that he would not retreat from the policy unless trading partners addressed their trade relationships with the United States. Associated Press reporting placed those remarks alongside falling U.S. stock futures, steep early losses in Asian shares and a nearly 6% Sunday decline in bitcoin.

The timing supports a connection between the tariff confrontation and the crypto selloff, but it cannot prove that the policy caused every transaction. Cryptocurrency prices were also exposed to existing positioning, liquidity conditions and other macroeconomic expectations. The defensible event-day conclusion is that trade-policy risk coincided with—and was widely treated as the principal catalyst for—a rapid repricing across major digital assets.

Why the weekend signal mattered

Bitcoin is sometimes presented as a hedge against political or monetary instability. Its April 6 decline instead resembled the behavior of a high-volatility risk asset: traders sold it as expectations for global growth and financial-market stability deteriorated.

One session could not settle bitcoin’s long-term role. The episode nevertheless demonstrated an institutional feature of the market. When conventional exchanges were closed, cryptocurrency venues remained open and transmitted a macroeconomic shock in real time.

The April 6 record established a break below $80,000, a substantially larger contemporaneous decline in ether and a credible tariff-related catalyst. It did not establish how markets would trade after U.S. exchanges reopened, whether the scheduled tariffs would remain unchanged or whether bitcoin’s relationship with other risk assets had permanently shifted.