CNN: Trump’s new 100% tariffs on China triggered an $18 billion crypto sell-off

President Donald Trump’s threat to impose an additional 100% tariff on imports from China sparked a massive cryptocurrency sell-off late Friday that exposed risky leverage in the space.

Digital currencies bitcoin, ether and solana were among the most affected cryptocurrencies, bringing total liquidations to $18.28 billion as of 3:47 p.m. ET, according to data analysis platform CoinGlass. The losses for cryptocurrencies come amid a broad sell-off, as the Nasdaq and S&P 500 on Friday saw their steepest declines in six months.

In the past 24 hours, roughly $5 billion of bitcoin has been liquidated, along with about $4 billion of ether and about $2 billion of solana, according to CoinGlass.

It’s the “largest liquidation event in crypto history,” CoinGlass said in a post on X.

Bitcoin is down almost 10% in the last five days and was trading at $111.616.20 as of 3:45 p.m. ET, a jump from when it dropped to $103,000 at 5:15 p.m. ET on Friday.

On Friday, ether was priced at $4,365.63 and then sunk to $3,742.88 — a 14.2% decline.

Solana was priced at $223.10 on Friday and has fallen to $178.72, as of 3:45 p.m. ET — a nearly 20% plunge.

Crypto has made major gains since Trump took office this year, in large part because of the president’s turnaround from dismissing bitcoin as “based on thin air” to addressing crypto fans at conventions, launching his own meme coin and promising a strategic crypto reserve.

And Trump recently issued an executive order allowing digital assets like crypto to be included in 401(k) plans, causing bitcoin to soar to a record high of $124,000 last week.

Despite ongoing trade talks between Washington and Beijing, trade tensions re-escalated Thursday after China ramped up export restrictions on critical rare earth minerals.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/11/business/trump-tariffs-crypto-selloff

New Republic: Trump’s Biggest Corruption Scandal Isn’t Getting Enough Attention

Donald Trump cashed in on a massively corrupt foreign crypto deal—and no one blinked.

New York Times exposé published Monday tells the tale of two back-to-back deals that enriched three powerful families: the Trumps, the Witkoffs (as in Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff), and the ruling family of the United Arab Emirates.

In one deal, announced in May, a firm of Emirati royal Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan invested $2 billion in World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency company owned by the Trump and Witkoff families—which consequently became among the most prominent crypto firms overnight.

In the other, negotiated “at the same time and by some of the same people,” the White House two weeks later agreed to sell the UAE hundreds of thousands of the world’s most valuable artificial intelligence chips, despite national security concerns.

The Times revealed that some officials in the Trump administration were wary about the chip deal due to UAE-China ties. But a key dissenter at the National Security Council, David Feith, was taken out of the equation when MAGA provocateur Laura Loomer questioned his (and five other NSC members’) loyalty, leading to their removal by the president. Silicon Valley investor David Sacks, Trump’s AI and crypto czar, then took a leading role in the negotiations—and received a White House ethics waiver in order to do so.

While the Times reports that there is no evidence that the two deals constituted an explicit quid pro quo—and the White House, and those involved, maintains they were not linked—they do “violate longstanding norms in the United States for political, diplomatic and private deal-making among senior officials and their children,” according to ethics lawyers cited in the report.

On Bluesky, economist Ryan Cummings, who served on President Joe Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers, wrote that the deals, if linked, would represent, by far, “the largest public corruption scandal in the history of the United States”—amounting to a $2 billion bribe, whereas the most comparable incident, the Harding administration’s Teapot Dome scandal, involved bribes amounting to about $10 million in today’s dollars, he said.

Dan Nexon, a political scientist at Georgetown University, observed that the report reveals how “U.S. foreign policy is much easier to understand once you accept that the main ‘grand strategy’ of the Trump administration is straight-up kleptocracy.”

“The Trump Administration is cashing in on foreign crypto deals—and weakening guardrails that protect our advanced technology,” wrote Senator Elizabeth Warren on X. “We should not pass any crypto legislation without shutting this down.”

https://newrepublic.com/post/200486/trump-corruption-scandal-crypto-uae-deal

MSNBC: Presidential Profiteering? Why Trump’s estimated profit of $3.4 billion in office is a problem

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/presidential-profiteering-why-trump-s-estimated-profit-of-3-4-billion-in-office-is-a-problem/vi-AA1LBbxg

Alternet: There’s a very simple reason why Trump will never release the Epstein files | Opinion

Let’s get right to it, because time is not on our side, America: Donald Trump won’t order the release of the Epstein files because he is prominently featured in them.

Bare minimum, he associated with pedophiles.

Why is this so hard to understand?

Why isn’t this the end of the road for this monster?

Why isn’t this the only thread that is being pulled on right now with urgency by our bought-off and/or incompetent mainstream media?

Or did I just answer my own question?

Why isn’t every American calling (202) 224-3121 (that’s the U.S. Capitol switchboard) and demanding that Trump release the Epstein files like he said he would on the campaign trail?

Thank God, identifying and stomping out pedophiles is not yet a partisan issue in America.

An unheard of 82 percent of Americans — including 76 percent of Republicans — want these files released immediately. And while Democrats are doing what they procedurally can to get at the files, it will take time that we should all have decided by now that we do not have.

Shouldn’t Americans know, and just as soon as possible, the full details of their president’s relationship with a man who raped children? And shouldn’t THAT finally end the long, national nightmare we have endured for 10 years, while this dirty old man breaks everything in his blurry sight?

We know without a shadow of a doubt that the man is a grotesque racist.

We know without a shadow of a doubt he is a convicted felon, who assaults women.

We know without a shadow of a doubt he cheats on his taxes even more than he has cheated on all his wives.

We know without a shadow of a doubt he is a nuclear-powered liar, who is simply incapable of telling the truth, and lied 30,573 times the first time he tried to sink this country.

We know without a shadow of a doubt he invited Russia to help him win the 2016 election, and then refused to call them on it in Helsinki.

We know without a shadow of a doubt he is using the White House as his own personal ATM, and by many estimates has already pocketed billions of our dollars in crypto and airplanes, while taking endless vacations to his golf properties all over the world on our dime.

We know without a shadow of a doubt he stalked girls in the dressing rooms of Miss Teen USA beauty competitions, because “(He’s) seen it all before, and (he’s) the owner of the pageant. And therefore (he’s) inspecting it.”

These are his words.

HIS WORDS.

And now we know that the shadow of doubt concerning his real relationship with Epstein and his victims is receding into the light, because this is where we are right now, good people:

Given Trump’s new-found executive powers granted to him by our corrupt Supreme Court that are fit for a king, we can be assured that if there wasn’t any damning evidence in these melting files that point to grotesque behavior with stolen children — or even better for him, there were names of his political enemies mentioned in the thing — he would have ordered these files replace the Bible in all these Christo-fascist churches as must-read material for his gurgling and snorting cult. In other words: It would be EVERYWHERE right now. There would be endless celebratory, back-patting press conferences, and Trump would order that it be read slowly, and with emphasis, on the CBS Evening News, which he recently acquired to add to his budding propaganda kingdom. You couldn’t escape it.

Except he’s doing none of this, is he?

Instead, he’s turning that certain color of rust orange, as he bends over at the waist, barrel-butt out, his 6-foot tie scraping his fat ankles, while his little, chubby hands do that weird accordion thing as he lashes out at anybody within his odious vicinity.

He’s posting INSANE distractions on his SOCIAL media channels THAT are ODDly capitalized and carrY the grammatical WAIT of a 4-year-OLD who has Trapped himself in a DOOR jam.

They have quietly moved the disgusting Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s ex-girlfriend and co-conspirator, to a cushy federal prison in Texas. WHY?

Trump has no answers, which is why we need to keep asking this question:

WHY WON’T YOU JUST SHUT UP AND RELEASE THE DAMN FILES LIKE YOU SAID YOU WOULD?

Meantime, the stink has somehow gotten even worse, because there is breaking news that it has taken only six months for Trump to destroy the solid economy Joe Biden helped meticulously build after inheriting Trump’s mess in 2021 following the attempted insurrection.

Trump inherited the strongest economy in the entire world, and has screwed it up in record time. Job growth has stalled again, and is at a 16-year low — or the last time a Democrat was fixing a battered economy left in shambles by a Republican.

Prices are rising, not falling.

Why did anybody think it would be any different this time around?

Here’a another fact that never gets enough attention: Democrats make economies and Republicans break them. Go ahead, look that up.

I could stand to hear a helluva lot more about this, too, because while billionaires are being rewarded like never before in America, the rest of us are getting royally screwed.

The numbers back this up.

Right now, though, I want to know why our president is providing safe haven for pedophiles.

Based on what we know, you’d have to be a damn fool not to believe the worst.

https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/trump-epstein-files-2673859787

Daily Beast: Trump Turns Presidency Into His Cash Cow With $600M Haul

President Donald Trump has already made a small fortune off his second go-around as commander in chief.

An annual financial disclosure shows the Republican president’s crypto ventures, golf clubs, and resorts, as well as the large fees he collects from garish MAGA-branded merch, have helped him rake in more than $600 million in income last year, Reuters reported.

Overall, Reuters calculated that Trump’s combined assets totaled $1.6 billion, with his income feeding into the Trump Organization trust operated by his three eldest children—which some said allows him to skate the Constitution’s Emoluments clause, which bars the president from benefitting financially from the office.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-turns-presidency-into-his-cash-cow-with-600m-haul

Raw Story: White House claim puts Trump ‘potentially outside the immunity shield’: attorney

An attempt by White House press secretary Karoline [Bimbo #1] Leavitt to blow off ethical and legal concerns about Donald Trump’s crypto dinner on Thursday night might come back to haunt her boss.

Thursday afternoon [Bimbo #1] Leavitt lectured reporters in the Brady Briefing Room about the dinner which was to include foreign investors at a Donald Trump golf resort in Virginia, telling NBC’s Garrett Haake, “Well, as you know, Garrett, this question has been raised with the president. I have also addressed the dinner tonight. The president is attending it in his personal time. It is not a White House dinner, it’s not taking place here at the White House. But certainly I can raise that question and try to get you an answer for it.”

[Bimbo #1] Leavitt’s claim of “personal time” caught the ear of multiple Trump critics.

On X, The Bulwark’s Tim Miller pointed out, “President’s don’t get ‘personal time.’ There’s not like a magic suit you wear when you are doing official business and one where you are just Donald from Queens.”

Conservative lawyer and ardent Trump opponent George Conway took the next step and suggested, “Actually, it’s fine. If Trump is saying he’s doing something on his ‘personal time,’ then obviously that means he’s not acting within what the Supreme Court calls ‘the outer perimeter of his official responsibility,’ which, in turn, means he’s not immune from criminal prosecution.”

Oops! You probably shouldn’t run your mouth so much, Karoline [Bimbo #1] Leavitt, but I understand that’s all you do, and you do it so exceptionally well. 😀

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-immunity-2672194246

The Hill: Democrats rip Trump ahead of meme coin dinner: ‘Orgy of corruption

However, the announcement of the dinner last month, which urged investors to load up on $TRUMP to secure one of 220 spots at the “intimate private dinner,” has sparked a new level of backlash. 

“Donald Trump’s dinner is an orgy of corruption,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said Thursday. “That’s what this is all about. We are here today to talk about exactly one topic: corruption, corruption in its ugliest form.”  

“Donald Trump is using the presidency of the United States to make himself richer through crypto, and he’s doing it right out there in plain sight,” she added. “He is signaling to anyone who wants to ask for a special favor and is willing to pay for it exactly how to do that.” 

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5314955-trump-meme-coin-dinner-criticism

USA Today: Trump’s crypto dinner: Black ties, a Chinese billionaire and ethics questions

Referencing Trump’s business moves while in office, an ethics expert said, “His is one of the most blatant and appalling instances of selling access to the presidency I’ve ever seen.”

President Donald Trump dined with 220 investors who plowed a combined $148 million into his crypto venture, boosting the growing crypto industry and inviting a torrent of criticism about the ethical implications.

Black-tie dinners with the wealthy are nothing new for Trump. But this event, which took place on the evening of May 22 at his golf club in Sterling, Virginia, stood out among the annals of presidential dining.

The dinner with the president was a reward for making the leaderboard in a contest to be among the top purchasers of the $TRUMP meme coin, a type of cryptocurrency. The top 25 buyers spent more than $111 million and were granted a private VIP reception with Trump, while the top four also received a limited edition Trump Tourbillon watch that sells for $100,000.

This is corruption and influence-peddling at is finest. King Donald is for sale!

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/05/22/trump-crypto-dinner-ethics-meme-coin/83787117007

Telegraph: ‘It’s open season for corruption’: How Trump turned the White House into a cash cow

Naked profiteering by the US president and his family has triggered alarm bells in the Maga movement

Most.

Corrupt.

President

Ever!

Donald Trump caught his first sight of the so-called “palace in the sky” in February as he climbed the red-carpeted steps of the Boeing 747-8.

The Qatari plane was parked at Florida’s West Palm Beach International Airport, and offered a chance for the president to see what a newly refitted Air Force One could look like, easing his frustration with the long-delayed Boeing project.

In the event, it appears to have been more of a test drive. His administration’s plan to accept the $400m (£300m) luxury jet from the Qatari royal family, which he is expected to use after his presidency, is the latest example of what many view as an increased disregard for ethics in Washington under his second term.

During his first term in the White House, foreign governments buying meals and block-booking rooms at Trump hotels set alarm bells ringing.

Yet now the president has created even more opportunities for those looking to curry favour with him – and his children. From pay-to-dine cryptocurrency schemes, a new social media platform that carries advertising and the expansion of their property empire, it has never seemed easier for the Trump family to line their pockets.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/05/18/trump-turned-white-house-cash-machine

Intelligencer: Donald Trump Is a Crook, But He’s Their Crook

What does seem genuinely new, even by the standards of America’s warped history, is the unabashed corruption. No president, really, has favor-traded like Trump. No president has ever tried to blatantly enrich himself like this while in office. No president has ever hung a for-sale sign over the White House — not like this, anyway. Trump is poised to accept a $400 million luxury jet from the Qatari royal family, which feels like something of a capstone to his latest corruption binge. He would be able to use the plane while in the White House and transfer it to his presidential foundation when he’s out of office. Trump’s inaugural committee also gobbled up $239 million from wealthy business interests who are desperate to curry favor with such a nakedly transactional president. The amount far outstrips the $107 million Trump raised for his committee back in 2017, and since there is no way to spend so much cash on dinner and events, it appears Trump might have a slush fund for the rest of his life.

And then there’s his crypto hustle ….

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/qatar-plane-trump-corruption.html