Hodlers on edge: Trump’s tariffs shake Bitcoin, but some are buying the dip

Bitcoin holders are facing renewed pressure following US President Donald Trump's trade tariff announcement, which sent shockwaves through global financial markets, including cryptocurrencies.

Even with Bitcoin (BTC) hodlers under pressure, some community members, including BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes, are not missing a chance to buy BTC at a discount.

“Been nibbling on BTC all day, and shall continue,” Hayes wrote on X on April 7 as the Bitcoin price hovered around $75,000.

Source: Arthur Hayes

He also predicted that Bitcoin’s dominance in the broader crypto market could grow. He expects the current 60.5% share of the market to go toward 70%.

Traders are “powerless to second-guess Trump’s next move”

While Hayes is stacking sats during the tariff-fueled market bloodbath, his investment firm, Maelstrom, reportedly sold BTC in December 2024, when Bitcoin traded near its all-time high of about $100,000.

In a blog post titled “Trump Truth,” Hayes had predicted a massive crypto crash after Trump’s inauguration in January, forecasting a clash in market optimism over his crypto policies and the realities of policy implementation.

Related: Michael Saylor’s Strategy halts Bitcoin buys despite dip below $87K

“The gospel of Bitcoin evangelists to never sell and buy every dip is testing the nerves of hodlers,” Petr Kozyakov, co-founder and CEO at the payments infrastructure platform Mercuryo, told Cointelegraph.

Bitcoin price in the past year. Source: CoinGecko

“Amateur retail traders and the citadels of high finance appear equally powerless to second-guess Trump’s next move,” he said.

He added that many traders are waiting on the sidelines, weighing whether the market has been oversold. Despite short-term uncertainty, Kozyakov remains bullish on Bitcoin’s long-term outlook as “the new digital gold.”

“Traders are cautiously waiting on the sidelines for opportunities to re-enter the market and weighing if there may be evidence of overselling.”

Kozyakov is far from being alone in seeing a promising future for Bitcoin as “new digital gold.” ARK Invest founder Cathie Wood is also bullish on Bitcoin vs. gold, claiming in February that the “substitution” of gold for Bitcoin has already happened.

Bitcoin will fail without payment use case, says Jack Dorsey

Despite the bullish sentiment of Hayes and Wood, others in the crypto community have cautioned that Bitcoin needs more than just a store-of-value narrative to remain relevant.

Jack Dorsey, former CEO of Twitter and serial crypto entrepreneur, is skeptical about whether BTC can succeed as a pure store of value.

“If it [Bitcoin] just ends up being a store of value and nothing more, I don’t think it gains relevance at all,” Dorsey said on a “Presidio Bitcoin” podcast episode on April 2.

Jack Dorsey on a “Presidio Bitcoin” podcast episode on April 2. Source: YouTube

To stay relevant, Bitcoin has to maintain its payment use case, he said:

“Otherwise, it’s just something you kind of buy and forget and only use in emergency situations or when you want to get liquid again. So I think if it doesn’t transition to payments and find that everyday use case, it just gets increasingly irrelevant. And that’s a failure to me.”

Despite its volatility largely being seen as a major impediment to its payment use case, Bitcoin continued to be a major payment asset on platforms like BitPay in 2024. Some jurisdictions have used Bitcoin as a tool of payment in global trade as well.

Magazine: Bitcoin heading to $70K soon? Crypto baller funds SpaceX flight: Hodler’s Digest, March 30 – April 5