Bitcoin heads into the new week with a clean catalyst: the White House’s tariff brinkmanship with China and a market structure that just absorbed the largest crypto liquidation on record.
Markets have marched through the tariff cycle almost beat-for-beat, and as of Monday we are squarely at Step 8 of The Kobeissi Letter’s template: the post-open reassurance from Treasury. The sequence since late week ties cleanly to the blueprint Kobeissi published after “10 months analyzing EVERY single tariff development,” which it summarized as an “EXACT playbook for investors.”
In their words: “1) Trump puts out cryptic post… 2) Trump announces large tariff rate (50%+) and markets crash… 4) After the market closes on Friday, President Trump doubles down… 5) On Saturday, the target… responds… 6) On Sunday… Trump posts an announcement saying he is working on a solution… 7) Futures open… higher Sunday… 8) After the Monday open, Treasury Secretary Bessent appears on live TV and reassures investors… 9-10) over the next 2-4 weeks, officials tease a deal, then announce one, and stocks hit a record high. 11) Repeat.”
The Friday crash is the fulcrum. After President Donald Trump threatened to impose a 100% tariff on Chinese imports by November 1, risk assets lurched lower into the US close, with the S&P 500 off 2.7% and the Nasdaq down 3.6% on the day; Bitcoin and the entire crypto suffered the largest single-day liquidation in its history, with roughly $19 billion in positions wiped out across venues.
The trigger, size, and timing map precisely to Step 2’s “announce large tariff rate… and markets crash to shake out weak positions,” followed by Step 3’s failed bounce and fresh lows as forced selling cascaded through perps and basis.
The weekend then advanced the script. Between late Friday and Saturday, the White House and Beijing traded barbs — the “double down” and counter-response embedded in Steps 4 and 5. Coverage detailed the 100%-tariff threat and China’s vow of “corresponding measures,” underscoring that the policy shock was real rather than rhetorical.
On Sunday, Trump abruptly eased his tone, writing on Truth Social: “Don’t worry about China, it will all be fine! Highly respected President Xi just had a bad moment. He doesn’t want Depression for his country, and neither do I. The U.S.A. wants to help China, not hurt it!!!
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Futures duly bounced Sunday evening, consistent with Step 6’s “working on a solution” message and Step 7’s gap-higher open. “Bitcoin extends gains to +5% on the day and reclaims $115,000. Ethereum is now up +11% on the day and is 4% away from pre-liquidation levels seen on October 10th,” the analyst added via X on late Sunday.
Today, the Bitcoin and financial markets will be watching the administration’s communications cadence shifting from escalation to stabilization, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent doing the media rounds to frame risks, policy intent, and the negotiation path.
Notably, this is not unprecedented: Bessent has repeatedly used live TV to pour oil on troubled waters during tariff flare-ups, a pattern documented across months of interviews and official transcripts, and consistent with Kobeissi’s “after the Monday open… [Bessent] appears on live TV and reassures investors.” The point for traders is not the theatrics; it is the systematic sequence of message-induced flows that tends to follow.
The bottom line for this week is to let the tariff playbook dictate the rhythm. As The Kobeissi Letter put it, 2025 is a market where “Headlines and posts are now able to move trillions of dollars of market cap in a matter of minutes,” and where “the ability to remain objective and capitalize on emotional swings in the market is alpha in 2025.” Bitcoin’s structural bull drivers didn’t vanish in Friday’s flush, but the path from here will be written by policy posts.
