Bitcoin Tops $115,000 as U.S.-China Trade Framework Eases Market Fears

Bitcoin climbed above $115,000 on October 26, 2025 as cryptocurrency traders responded to signs that the United States and China could step back from another escalation in their trade conflict. The advance gave the market its clearest recovery signal since the sharp selloff earlier in October, although neither government had finalized the proposed arrangements.

Yahoo Finance’s historical BTC-USD series records an October 26 opening price of $111,639.05, an intraday high of $115,260.91 and a closing value of $114,472.45. The close was 2.54% above the open, a Coinburn calculation using the displayed figures. A contemporaneous report published by The Block at 10:46 p.m. Eastern recorded bitcoin at $115,179, up 3% over its preceding 24-hour window and at its highest level in approximately two weeks.

Those observations use different measurement windows and potentially different underlying venues. Bitcoin trades continuously, so a vendor’s daily bar and a late-evening spot snapshot need not produce the same price or percentage. They establish that the market crossed $115,000; they do not identify one universal closing price.

Trade talks change the immediate risk calculation

The market move followed two days of U.S.-China negotiations in Kuala Lumpur. An official account carried by the Chinese Embassy on October 26 said the delegations had reached basic consensuses on arrangements addressing their respective concerns. It listed tariffs, agricultural trade, export controls and law-enforcement cooperation among the subjects discussed.

The official Chinese account also supplied an important qualification: negotiators still had to settle specific details and complete each country’s domestic approval process. The development was therefore a preliminary framework, not an executed trade agreement.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent offered a more specific contemporaneous assessment in an interview broadcast on October 26. He said he believed the threatened additional 100% U.S. tariff on Chinese goods was effectively off the table and expected the threat of an immediate Chinese worldwide export-control regime to recede. Bessent nevertheless said he would not get ahead of the countries’ leaders, who were expected to meet later in the week. Reuters separately reported that final terms remained for the leaders to decide.

Why Bitcoin reacted

The distinction mattered because trade policy had recently demonstrated its capacity to move digital-asset markets. Yahoo Finance’s same BTC-USD series shows bitcoin reaching an October 6 intraday high of $126,198.07 before falling as low as $104,582.41 on October 10. The October 26 close remained 9.29% below the October 6 high, calculated from those two observations.

Bitcoin’s October 26 recovery therefore did not erase the earlier decline. It showed instead how rapidly a continuously traded, globally accessible asset could reprice a change in macroeconomic expectations while conventional U.S. equity markets were closed. Reduced expectations of new tariffs and export restrictions plausibly improved demand for risk assets, but timing alone cannot prove that the trade statements caused the entire move.

The rally may also have been amplified by derivatives positioning. The Block reported substantial short-position liquidations during its preceding 24-hour window, meaning rising prices forced some bearish leveraged positions to close. Because the surviving report provides an aggregate estimate rather than a complete exchange-by-exchange ledger, the liquidation total is not used here as a verified market-wide statistic.

What the October 26 record established

By the end of October 26, the verifiable development was limited but consequential: bitcoin had traded above $115,000 while officials from both governments publicly described progress toward de-escalation. The evidence supported improved sentiment, not certainty about a completed accord, a durable Bitcoin recovery or the future course of either government’s policy.