Shares of Bitcoin mining companies rose sharply on Monday, recovering from losses sustained during Friday’s flash crash that analysts attributed to US President Donald Trump’s apparent misunderstanding of new Chinese export controls.
Bitfarms (BITF) and Cipher Mining (CIFR) led the rally, each posting double-digit gains. Hut 8 Mining (HUT), IREN (IREN) and MARA Holdings (MARA) also climbed more than 4%, while Core Scientific (CORZ) and Riot Blockchain (RIOT) traded broadly higher at the start of the session.
The rebound followed a steep sell-off on Friday after Trump announced plans to impose 100% tariffs on Chinese imports, stoking fears of an escalating trade war. The president’s comments, however, were later revealed to be based on a misunderstanding of China’s new export measures. Trump subsequently walked back his remarks over the weekend.
In a follow-up post on Truth Social, Trump wrote: “Don’t worry about China, it will all be fine!” adding, “Highly respected President Xi just had a bad moment.”
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent later clarified that the proposed 100% tariffs on China “don’t have to happen.”
“This confirms our view that President Trump misinterpreted export controls announced on October 10th,” market commentator The Kobeissi Letter wrote, referring to China’s expansion of export restrictions on rare earth minerals for defense and semiconductor industries.
Related: $19B crypto market crash: Was it leverage, China tariffs or both?
Crypto market volatility hits record levels
While Friday’s sell-off in crypto-related stocks was steep, the turbulence in digital assets themselves was far more severe.
In dollar terms, Friday’s flash crash marked the largest liquidation event in crypto history — surpassing even the FTX collapse — with roughly $19 billion in leveraged positions wiped out. Bitcoin (BTC) proved relatively resilient compared to altcoins, which saw steeper losses from peak to trough.
The sell-off was so intense that Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek called for regulators to investigate exchanges’ handling of the event. Marszalek questioned whether some platforms slowed down, mispriced assets or failed to maintain adequate compliance controls during the crash.
Roughly half of all liquidations occurred on Hyperliquid, a decentralized perpetual futures exchange, where about $10.3 billion in positions were erased. Bybit and Binance also reported significant liquidations.
Binance faced additional scrutiny amid reports that several token prices briefly fell to zero. The exchange later said the anomaly was caused by a user interface display bug affecting certain trading pairs. Separately, Binance was linked to an exploit that caused Ethena’s synthetic dollar, USDe, to lose its dollar peg during the same period.
Guy Young, founder of USDe issuer Ethena Labs, later clarified that the depeg was unrelated to the USDe minting or redemption process and was instead an isolated issue on Binance:
“The severe price discrepancy was isolated to a single venue, which referenced the oracle index on its own orderbook, not the deepest pool of liquidity, and was facing deposit and withdrawal issues during the event, which did not allow market makers to close the loop.”
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