Today, the market suddenly experienced a sharp drop, triggered by a message forwarded by a crypto industry opinion leader—Trump threatened that if a trade agreement is not reached by November 1, a 155% tariff will be imposed on certain goods.

After the news broke, BTC and ETH fell almost simultaneously, and several major coins saw their short-term losses widen. People in the community immediately began discussing whether the former president had become the market’s unofficial “sentiment switch,” and some were curious if there was a more complex game behind such a statement at this particular time.

Why can a single sentence cause such a big fluctuation? On the surface, it’s about trade policy, but the real core is “expectation management.” When relations between two major economies are this strained, traditional markets—stocks, commodities—will react first. Crypto assets are no longer the niche, decoupled sector they were a decade ago. With large institutional funds entering the space, their sensitivity to risk is extremely high. At the slightest sign of macro-level uncertainty, capital quickly exits highly volatile assets, with Bitcoin often bearing the brunt.

It’s worth noting that Trump has previously publicly expressed support for cryptocurrencies and even accepted political donations in Bitcoin. His current attitude may seem contradictory, but it actually fits his usual style—using extreme pressure to drive negotiations forward. His team includes advisors with financial and tech backgrounds, and such statements are often accompanied by sharp market volatility, which is itself a source of profit for certain participants. As for whether there was any prior positioning, there is no direct evidence, but the timing is indeed worth pondering.

So, how should we view this drop? In the short term, caution is necessary, but there’s no need to panic excessively. First, most of these threatening statements are part of negotiation tactics; the actual likelihood of a 155% tariff being implemented is not high. Second, during previous sharp drops caused by macro events, there was always some degree of recovery afterward. Bitcoin’s attributes as an alternative asset still exist, and after panic selling ends, rational buying often follows.

But avoid impulsive bottom-fishing. If similar statements or policy moves emerge again, the market could come under further pressure. Building positions in batches and controlling position sizes is a safer approach. This event is another reminder: investing in crypto today means you can’t just focus on technical indicators and on-chain data. Geopolitics and macroeconomics—these “external variables”—also need to be tracked continuously.