August is entering economic history as a significant turning point in the restriction of international trade. The United States has already imposed 35% tariffs on Canada, and starting August 7, additional major global economies—including the European Union—will be affected.

Global equity and cryptocurrency markets are hovering around July highs. While stock markets are likely to respond to the growing restrictions on global trade—or a potential return to globalization if Trump changes the course of his policy—the situation may be quite different for crypto.

Crypto Unaffected by Tariffs

As confirmed by the latest BITmarkets study, cryptocurrency markets remain largely independent of traditional economic regulations such as government trade and fiscal policies or central bank monetary strategies. Cryptocurrencies, led by Bitcoin, exhibit similar traits to investment gold, even though Bitcoin has recently decoupled from gold in terms of price correlation. A study by Standard Chartered Bank also shows that Bitcoin is more closely correlated with the Nasdaq index than with gold. For this reason, investors may view Bitcoin similarly to major tech stocks.

According to Standard Chartered, the current correlation between Bitcoin and the Nasdaq index is approximately 0.5, compared to 0.8 at the beginning of the year. In other words, the strong alignment between crypto and tech stocks that prevailed during the recent halt in globalization is gradually weakening.

The Long-Term Globalization Trend Is Changing

Crypto, although created and developed at the height of globalization, is now—as the golden era of a unified global economy appears to be ending—demonstrating resilience unmatched by other assets. One of the reasons is undoubtedly the fact that cryptocurrencies exist, in part, precisely because they do not recognize cross-border barriers.

Bitcoin Market Capitalization 2011–2025