Bitcoin Tumbles 7%, Stocks Tumble as Trump Signals on Fed Election

Crypto Reporter

Shalini Nagarajan

Crypto Reporter

Shalini Nagarajan

Since part of the group

January 2024

About the author

Shalini is a crypto reporter who provides in-depth reports on daily developments and regulatory changes in the cryptocurrency sector.

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Last Updated:

January 30, 2026

Bitcoin slid 7% to about $82,000 as Asian markets opened for mixed trading, with President Donald Trump approving a bipartisan deal to decide who to choose to lead the Federal Reserve.

The crypto movement came with a wave of forced wind. CoinGlass data shows $1.75B in liquidity over the past 24 hours, with long positions at $1.65B and shorts at $105.63M, with 276,308 traders taking off.

Bitcoin dominated the damage on the heat map, tied with BTC at $826.63M in liquidation in 24 hours, while Ether followed with $428.48M. XRP and Solana were the biggest hit with $72.35M and $70.34M respectively.

Market overview

Bitcoin: $81,935, down 7% Ether: $2,737, down 7.6% XRP: $1.75, down 7% Total crypto market cap: $2.88 trillion, down 5.9%.

Risk appetite softens as futures slide through the markets

Stocks moved flat. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan fell 0.2%, S&P 500 e-mini futures fell 0.4% and Nasdaq e-mini futures fell 0.5%.

Traders on Wall Street took a cautious tone, with shares falling after soft earnings from Microsoft. The S&P 500 was down 0.1% and the Nasdaq Composite was down 0.7%.

Microsoft fell 10 percent on Thursday, wiping more than $350 billion off its market value, and its cloud business failed to impress. Meta gained 10% as its AI investments raised advertising targets and supported a strong first-quarter forecast. Apple estimated revenue growth of up to 16% in the March quarter, helped by iPhone demand and a revival in China.

Megacap moves add to the volatile market sentiment

In Japan, the Nikkei 225 was flat after data showed Tokyo core consumer prices rose 2.0 percent in January from a year earlier. The dollar index rose 0.3% to 96.441 after Trump said he would announce his pick to replace Fed Chairman Jerome Powell on Friday.

In US megacaps, Tesla fell 3.5% after more than doubling capital spending to record levels. Technology lagged across the S&P 500's sector board, while communications services outperformed the meta rally and IBM added to a mixed tone after a fourth-quarter beat lifted its shares 5%.

For crypto traders, the liquidity split tells the positioning story. Longs accounted for the bulk of the losses over the past 24 hours, and the imbalance between long and short liquidity kept the market on a steady march as macro headlines continued to threaten appetite.