“I, as President of the United States of America, will be, effective immediately, raising the 10% Worldwide Tariff”

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• Bybit x Block Scholes: “2026: It's Different This Time?”

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Market Snapshot: Overnight Moves

Daily Updates:

• After nearly three weeks of consolidation between $65K and $70K, BTC briefly slipped below its lower bound in early Asia trade, falling to $64,300 (-4.8% over the past 24 hours) before rebounding slightly back above $66K. 

• Last Friday, in a 6-3 vote, the US Supreme Court ruled most of President Trump’s signature tariffs illegal, arguing that the President had exceeded his authorities by invoking a 1997 IEEPA law to impose reciprocal tariffs. 
• The decision invalidated his April 2 Liberation Day tariffs which put levies of 10-50% on most nations across the globe, as well as tariffs he had imposed on Canada, Mexico and China to address fentanyl trafficking. 
• The ruling from the Court does not include sector-specific tariffs imposed by Trump, such as those on steel, aluminum and other industries and does not address the extent to which importers and businesses who have already paid the tariffs are entitled to refunds — leaving it to a lower court to settle. According to Bloomberg, if fully allowed, refunds could total as much as $170B. 

• Hours after the ruling, President Trump told reporters that he’d sign a new order imposing a 10% global levy using different legal tools. 
• “The Supreme Court did not overrule tariffs, they merely overruled a particular use of IEEPA tariffs” Trump told reporters. He added, “Now I’m going to go in a different direction, probably the direction that I should have gone the first time.”
• He has indeed wasted little time since that message to reporters — in a Truth Social post on Saturday, he wrote “I, as President of the United States of America, will be, effective immediately, raising the 10% Worldwide Tariff on Countries, many of which have been ‘ripping’ the U.S. off for decades, without retribution (until I came along!), to the fully allowed, and legally tested, 15% level”, i.e., he raised the global 10% tariff to 15%. 
• That new baseline rate was imposed under Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act, which allows a US president to impose tariffs for 150 days without congressional approval.

• Senior officials in the Trump administration said yesterday that the court ruling will not unravel previously negotiated trade deals made with US partners, such as deals with China, the EU, Japan and South Korea. 
• US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said on CBS’s Face the Nation “We want them to understand these deals are going to be good deals. We’re going to stand by them. We expect our partners to stand by them”.
• Also speaking yesterday on both CNN and Fox News, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the US is in talks with its foreign trading partners “and they like the tariff deals … So you know, they’re not going to be changed.” 
• He also said that the new tariffs are temporary — “We’ll see what Congress does, but the 122 is likely a five-month bridge during which studies on Section 232 tariffs and Section 301s are done. So this is more of a bridge than a permanent facility.”

• US equities bounced in Friday’s session after the verdict, with the S&P 500 adding 0.7%. The yield on US treasuries rose across the curve slightly, with the 10-year yield rising 3bps and the 30-year yield jumping 6bps to 4.75%. 
• According to the Budget Lab, “the tariffs as of February 20th, 2026, following the SCOTUS decision, would raise more than $1.2T over ten years”, though this is roughly half the revenue that would have been generated if the IEEPA tariffs had been fully upheld by the courts. 
• Macro data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis on Friday showed the US economy grew by less than all forecasts in Q4 2025, with the federal government shutdown subtracting 1 percentage point from GDP. 
• Inflation-adjusted gross domestic product increased an annualised 1.4%, following a 4.4% increase in Q3 2025. Over the course of the year, the economy expanded a still solid 2.2%. 

• The SEC has issued new staff guidance allowing broker-dealers to apply a “2% haircut” to proprietary positions in certain stablecoins, clarifying how these holdings may be treated under customer protection rules and related capital buffers.
• Commissioner Hester Peirce said clearer stablecoin usage could enable broker-dealers to support a wider range of activity tied to tokenised securities and other crypto assets.

• Tether has announced it will discontinue support for CNH₮, citing low demand and limited sustained community adoption relative to its other stablecoin products.
• The transition will happen in two stages: new CNH₮ issuance will stop immediately (no more tokens will be minted), and redemptions will remain available for one year, after which Tether will end redemption support, with a reminder notice to follow closer to the deadline.
• Tether framed the decision as part of a broader effort to prioritise resources toward stablecoins and infrastructure with strong organic usage, including core liquidity and tokenisation initiatives.

• Nasdaq-listed bitcoin miner, Bitdeer Technologies (BTDR) has sold its entire bitcoin holding after selling its remaining 943 BT3C in a single week. The company also sold the 189.8 BTC it mined during the same period.
• The move follows a $325M convertible notes offering and a $43.5M equity raise, suggesting the liquidation may be aimed at boosting cash as it expands data centers and pivots toward AI.

• BNP Paribas Asset Management has issued a tokenised share class of a French‑domiciled money market fund on the Ethereum blockchain, using a permissioned structure that limits access to authorised investors. 
• The move is part of BNP Paribas’ broader effort to explore how public blockchain technology can support fund tokenisation while maintaining compliance, investor protection and operational resilience.
• The intra-group pilot brought together its asset management arm, Securities Services, and CIB’s AssetFoundry platform to test the full fund lifecycle, from issuance to transfer and blockchain connectivity, within a regulated framework. 

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