Bitcoin yesterday was trading up more than 20 percent from last week’s lows, while several other cryptocurrencies that US President Donald Trump said would be included in a new US strategic reserve also rallied sharply.
Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that his January executive order on digital assets would create a stockpile of currencies including bitcoin, ether, XRP, solana and cardano. The names had not previously been announced.
Bitcoin and ether would be at the heart of this reserve, he wrote on Sunday.
Photo: AFP
The post sent bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, up by one-fifth from the November lows it was trading at on Friday, helping flip sentiment on a token that has been sliding since mid-January on disappointment Trump has not followed through on pledges to loosen regulation.
“Trump just gave the pump that crypto traders have been holding out for,” City Index Group senior analyst Matt Simpson said.
“Any faith that was lost last week appears to have been restored,” and new highs could be made unless there was another wave of risk-off selling, he said.
Chris Weston, research head at Australian online broker Pepperstone Group Ltd, said it was possible the rally would extend into the first White House Crypto Summit that Trump is to host on Friday, with the risk that the bearishness in other markets could weigh on sentiment.
While Wall Street closed higher on Friday, the recent sell-off in large technology bellwethers such as Nvidia Corp has eroded confidence in bitcoin, which some see as an alternative tech proxy.
Bitcoin fell more than 17 percent last month, clocking its biggest monthly percentage fall since June 2022 and losing more than one-third of its price since topping US$105,000 in early January.
Its rally since Trump’s election win in November last year was spurred by optimism that the crypto-friendly president would champion a strategic bitcoin fund and end the crackdown on the industry by the administration of former US president Joe Biden.
Beyond a flurry of appointments of crypto-friendly officials when Trump took office, there has been little concrete news so far around that policy for investors.
SELL-OFF: Investors expect tariff-driven volatility as the local boarse reopens today, while analysts say government support and solid fundamentals would steady sentiment Local investors are bracing for a sharp market downturn today as the nation’s financial markets resume trading following a two-day closure for national holidays before the weekend, with sentiment rattled by US President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff announcement. Trump’s unveiling of new “reciprocal tariffs” on Wednesday triggered a sell-off in global markets, with the FTSE Taiwan Index Futures — a benchmark for Taiwanese equities traded in Singapore — tumbling 9.2 percent over the past two sessions. Meanwhile, the American depositary receipts (ADRs) of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the most heavily weighted stock on the TAIEX, plunged 13.8 percent in
A wave of stop-loss selling and panic selling hit Taiwan's stock market at its opening today, with the weighted index plunging 2,086 points — a drop of more than 9.7 percent — marking the largest intraday point and percentage loss on record. The index bottomed out at 19,212.02, while futures were locked limit-down, with more than 1,000 stocks hitting their daily drop limit. Three heavyweight stocks — Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (Foxconn, 鴻海精密) and MediaTek (聯發科) — hit their limit-down prices as soon as the market opened, falling to NT$848 (US$25.54), NT$138.5 and NT$1,295 respectively. TSMC's
ASML Holding NV, the sole producer of the most advanced machines used in semiconductor manufacturing, said geopolitical tensions are harming innovation a day after US President Donald Trump levied massive tariffs that promise to disrupt trade flows across the entire world. “Our industry has been built basically on the ability of people to work together, to innovate together,” ASML chief executive officer Christophe Fouquet said in a recorded message at a Thursday industry event in the Netherlands. Export controls and increasing geopolitical tensions challenge that collaboration, he said, without specifically addressing the new US tariffs. Tech executives in the EU, which is
In a small town in Paraguay, a showdown is brewing between traditional producers of yerba mate, a bitter herbal tea popular across South America, and miners of a shinier treasure: gold. A rush for the precious metal is pitting mate growers and indigenous groups against the expanding operations of small-scale miners who, until recently, were their neighbors, not nemeses. “They [the miners] have destroyed everything... The canals, springs, swamps,” said Vidal Britez, president of the Yerba Mate Producers’ Association of the town of Paso Yobai, about 210km east of capital Asuncion. “You can see the pollution from the dead fish.
RSS