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The market for tokenized financial instruments, or real-world assets (RWAs), could reach $18.9 trillion by 2033 as the technology’s growth is nearing a “tipping point,” according to a joint report on Monday by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) by payments-focused digital asset infrastructure firm Ripple.

That would mean an average 53% compound annual growth rate (CAGR), taking the middle ground between the report’s conservative scenario of $12 trillion in tokenized assets in the next eight years and a more optimistic $23.4 trillion projection.

Tokenization is the process of using blockchain rails to record ownership and move assets—securities, commodities, real estate. It’s a red-hot sector in crypto, with several global traditional financial firms pursuing tokenization to achieve efficiency gains, faster and cheaper settlements and around-the-clock transactions. JPMorgan’s Kinexys platform has already processed more than $1.5 trillion in tokenized transactions, with over $2 billion in daily volume. BlackRock’s tokenized U.S. dollar money market fund (BUIDL), issued with tokenization firm Securitize, nears $2 billion in assets under management and is increasingly being used in decentralized finance (DeFi).

“[The] technology is ready, regulation is evolving, and foundational use cases are in the market,” said Martijn Siebrand, Digital Assets Program Manager at ABN AMRO, in the report. The report highlighted tokenized government bonds, U.S. Treasuries, as an early success, allowing corporate treasurers seamlessly shift idle cash into tokenized short-term government bonds from digital wallets without any intermediaries, managing liquidity in real time and around the clock.

Private credit is another sector drawing attention, opening access to traditionally opaque and illiquid markets while offering investors clearer pricing and fractional ownership. Similarly, carbon markets are flagged as fertile ground, where blockchain-based registries could enhance transparency and traceability of emissions credits.

Key challenges still linger

Despite the growth, the report identified five key barriers for broader adoption: fragmented infrastructure, limited interoperability across platforms, uneven regulatory progress, inconsistent custody frameworks, and lack of smart contract standardization. Most tokenized assets today settle in isolation, with off-chain cash legs limiting efficiency gains. Tokenized asset markets struggle to unlock secondary liquidity without shared delivery-versus-payment (DvP) standards.

Regulatory clarity varies significantly by region. Switzerland, the EU, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates have developed comprehensive legal frameworks for tokenized securities and infrastructure, while major markets like India and China remain restrictive or undefined. This uneven progress complicates cross-border operations and forces firms to tailor infrastructure market-by-market.

Despite these headwinds, early adopters are expanding fast. The report identifies three phases of tokenization: low-risk adoption of familiar instruments like bonds and funds; expansion into complex products such as private credit and real estate; and full market transformation, including illiquid assets like infrastructure and private equity. Most firms are currently in the first or second phase, with scalability hinging on regulatory alignment and infrastructure maturity.

Cost is becoming less of a constraint for firms, the report said. Focused tokenization projects can now launch for under $2 million, while end-to-end integrations—covering issuance, custody, compliance, and trading—can cost up to $100 million for large institutions.

Tokenization can unlock meaningful savings for processes such as bond issuances, real estate fund tokenization and collateral management, driving further growth, the report noted.

However, without industry-wide coordinated action, the same silos and fragmentation tokenization seeks to eliminate could reemerge in digital form, said in the report Jorgen Ouaknine, global head of innovation and digital assets at Euroclear, a global financial market infrastructure provider.

Pierre Rochard, who calls himself a “bitcoin maximalist OG,” first discovered Bitcoin in 2012 while studying at UT Austin. With interests in Austrian economics and open-source software, he was “captivated” by bitcoin as the intersection of both. He became an early thought leader, co-founding the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute to house foundational writings and cypherpunk philosophy.

Across roles at BitPay, Kraken, and most recently Riot Platforms (RIOT), his work has spanned bitcoin infrastructure and advocacy. At Riot, he led responses to environmental criticisms, including a viral parody video that “put the critics on the defensive” and reframed the debate around mining and value creation.

Pierre Rochard is a speaker at Consensus 2025, in Toronto, May 14-16. Get your pass here.

“Critics think mining is wasteful because they don’t believe bitcoin has value,” Rochard said. “But it’s about monetary sovereignty — the ability to control your own money.”

Now, with The Bitcoin Bond Company, he is taking on the next frontier: unlocking bitcoin for fixed-income investors.

Unlike Michael Saylor’s long-only strategy, Rochard wants to build “bankruptcy-remote, bitcoin-only structures” with clear life-cycles and risk-tranching. The idea is to make Bitcoin more palatable to traditional credit allocators.

His goal? Acquire $1 trillion in bitcoin over the next 21 years — market conditions permitting.

On the price cycle, Rochard believes the four-year halving model is losing relevance for price prediction purposes. “Bitcoin’s CAGR is now tied to interest rates,” he said, noting its shift toward becoming a global macro asset. “Higher Fed rates pull capital out of Bitcoin — that’s what slows adoption.”

While education remains a major hurdle, he’s optimistic. “Ten years ago, this idea was laughed off. Today, Bitcoin-backed credit products are inevitable.”

At Consensus 2025, Pierre is focused on accelerating that education, especially among institutions looking to diversify beyond real estate and equities.

Rochard was also clear-eyed about the risks and hurdles in bitcoin adoption. “The biggest challenge is education,” he emphasized. “Most investors have never seen a fixed-income product backed purely by bitcoin. They’re used to real estate or corporate debt — this is a new asset class for them.”

When asked about concerns like low transaction fees or empty blocks in 2025, Rochard pushed back. “People worry about low fees, but that assumes a static system. If there’s ever an attack or censorship, fees skyrocket — and miners spin up. It’s anti-fragile by design.”

Ultimately, Rochard’s pitch is simple: “Bitcoin is no longer a fringe experiment. It’s a core monetary technology — and it’s time the credit markets caught up.”

Disclaimer: Parts of this article were generated with the assistance from AI tools and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and adherence to our standards. For more information, see CoinDesk’s full AI Policy.

John-Paul Thorbjornsen, a former Australian Air Force pilot turned crypto entrepreneur, has spent recent weeks promoting his new crypto wallet, “Vultisig.” Built on THORChain — a blockchain he founded to allow crypto swaps without intermediaries — the wallet’s main selling point is that it’s harder to hack than similar apps.

Recently, Vultisig — along with the THORChain network itself — has seen a spike in activity, but security experts have traced the growth to a troubling source: North Korea’s Lazarus hacking group.

Following February’s $1.4 billion hack of crypto exchange Bybit — the largest cyber heist in history — THORChain emerged as central to North Korea’s laundering operations. Researchers have tracked nearly $1.2 billion — or 85%— of the stolen funds through the network, which has become the Kim regime’s primary tool for moving crypto between blockchains.

Unlike some other blockchain services, THORChain’s operators have refused to block transactions linked to the Bybit heist, despite requests from the FBI and other government agencies. THORChain wallets like Asgardex and Vultisig — tools that most people use to transact on the network — haven’t budged, either.

According to estimates from blockchain security researchers who spoke to CoinDesk, THORChain’s major wallet developers and validators — many publicly identified and based in jurisdictions with strict anti-money-laundering regulations, including the U.S. — have earned over $12 million in fees connected to the heist.

Thorbjornsen, known publicly as JP Thor, insists he is no longer involved in THORChain’s daily operations yet remains its most visible advocate. “The protocol keeps running and swapping despite chaos,” he told CoinDesk. “It’s doing great, actually.”

The U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has previously sanctioned blockchain services used in connection with money laundering, such as the mixer app Tornado Cash (which has since been delisted after a court ruling) and Bitzlato, an exchange. Prosecutors have also charged operators behind similar platforms.

For legal experts and the crypto community, whether THORChain — a layer-1 blockchain — should be treated differently than these other services revives a fundamental debate faced by virtually all crypto platforms: Is the network truly decentralized?

Critics argue it isn’t — at least in comparison to popular blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum, which have earned less scrutiny for facilitating illicit transactions. THORChain’s supporters “claim it’s decentralized when convenient, yet they’re profiting from this [Bybit hack],” said blockchain security researcher Taylor Monahan. “It’s a really bad look.”

THORChain’s transaction fees — particularly those earned by its wallet apps, which are maintained by small developer teams — further complicate its defense. According to a former U.S. Treasury Department official, “Anybody making money on fees related to the movement of hacked funds that have already been publicly attributed to Lazarus and North Korea potentially has an OFAC issue.”

Even some of THORChain’s most vocal supporters have grown concerned. “When the huge majority of your flows are stolen funds from North Korea for the biggest money heist in human history, it will become a national security issue,” cautioned a THORChain developer known as “TCB” on X. “[T]his isn’t a game anymore.”

Biggest hack in history

February’s hack of Bybit, a major Dubai-based crypto exchange, was large even by the standards of the Lazarus group — the elite North Korean cyber unit behind most of the largest crypto heists of the past decade.

The hack took place after Bybit’s founder was tricked into interacting with a website that Lazarus had compromised. The mistake granted the hackers access to some of Bybit’s primary Ethereum wallets. They stole $1.4 billion worth of ether (ETH) tokens from the exchange.

North Korea’s launderers, well-practiced after years of big-money crypto heists, immediately began splitting their record-breaking haul across a series of fresh crypto wallets — the first step in a complex journey designed to convert dirty crypto into clean cash.

“DPRK uses advanced technical capabilities to launder cryptocurrency,” explained Andrew Fierman, the head of national security intelligence at Chainalysis. After moving the funds “through an extensive number of intermediary wallets,” the launderers use “cross-chain bridges in order to move the stolen funds across various different assets, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tron, Solana and others.”

THORChain proved essential to the bridging stage, serving as a go-between for swapping tokens across blockchains — often repeatedly, to throw investigators off their trail.

“Before ThorChain existed, there was no way to swap from Ethereum to Bitcoin without getting frozen,” explained Monahan, a security researcher at MetaMask.

Centralized swap services — including crypto exchanges like Coinbase and Binance — require users to register their accounts and risk having illicit funds seized. Most decentralized services, meanwhile, lack the liquidity to support transactions on the scale of the Lazarus group.

Put on notice

On the day after the Bybit hack, THORChain’s daily swap volume exceeded $529 million — its biggest trading day ever, according to data from DeFiLlama. Volumes continued climbing for days afterward, generating millions of dollars in fees for THORChain’s validators, liquidity providers and wallet services.

On February 27, the FBI circulated a list of DPRK-linked blockchain addresses and urged “private sector entities including RPC node operators, exchanges, bridges, blockchain analytics firms, DeFi services, and other virtual asset service providers to block transactions with or derived from [them].”

By this point, many of the other crypto tools used by North Korea’s launderers had already begun blocking heist-linked activity.

Tether, the largest stablecoin operator, eventually froze $9 million linked to the heist, and Mantle, a layer-2 blockchain connected to Ethereum, froze $41 million more. One platform — a decentralized exchange operated by the company OKX — paused its services altogether.

For a moment, THORChain seemed like it might follow suit. In response to the FBI’s notice, a group of THORChain validators coordinated to halt Ethereum swaps on the protocol — a move intended to slow the outflow of illicit funds. But the pause lasted just 30 minutes before it was rolled back following community pushback.

“There is no proof, nor can there be, that any signed and propagated transaction is from a specific geographical location,” Thorbjornsen told CoinDesk, arguing that any links between THORChain and North Korea are “alleged” since the network’s users are not forced to register themselves.

The pause reversal proved to be a breaking point for some in the THORChain community. “Effective immediately, I will no longer be contributing to THORChain,” the protocol’s lead developer, known as “Pluto,” wrote in an X post.

Decentralization theater?

Thorbjornsen and others maintain that THORChain should be treated as a decentralized protocol like Bitcoin or Ethereum, neither of which blocked transactions following the Bybit heist.

They point to its community of more than 100 validators — computers that verify transactions — as evidence that no single entity controls the system.

THORChain’s governance model relies on these validators who stake the network’s native RUNE token to participate in consensus and earn rewards. In theory, major protocol decisions require approval from a supermajority of these validators, creating a distributed power structure resistant to centralized control.

Critics, however, argue the network is not nearly as decentralized as claimed. In January, a single developer paused the network during a liquidity crisis — an action that should have required validator consensus if the system were more decentralized.

When THORChain was involved in previous North Korean laundering operations, “we were told there was nothing they could do about the illicit funds,” said Monahan. “The entire time, JP had a single private key that had control over the entire system.”

Thorbjornsen concedes the chain was paused by an administrative keyholder at a moment when THORChain was facing an “existential” threat. However, Thorbjornsen said the pause was initiated by a keyholder with the pseudonym “Leena.”

Thorbjornsen created the Leena account early in THORChain’s development and initially used it to hide his real identity. He now says the Leena account is no longer solely controlled by him, and someone else paused the chain in accordance with acceptable security procedures.

For Thorbjornsen, the debate over who controlled the admin key misses the larger point.

“In the first couple years of Bitcoin existing, you could have easily made the case that Bitcoin was completely centralized,” he told CoinDesk, pointing to an instance in 2010 where Satoshi upgraded the original blockchain to fix a major bug.

“Decentralization is earned, and it’s earned by years of being in the arena and proving it,” Thorbjornsen said. “All of these things like the pause and the unpause … this is all part of the journey of decentralization.”

Business as usual

On March 1, THORChain’s biggest day of trading following the Bybit heist, the network recorded over $1 billion in swaps, more than it typically processes in an entire month.

The activity was a boon for THORChain’s infrastructure providers — wallet services and validators who take a cut of each transaction on the network.

According to blockchain forensics firm Chainalysis, THORChain node operators earned at least $12 million in fees connected to the Bybit heist. Chainalysis called its estimate “conservative.”

According to legal experts, these fees are what could ultimately get THORChain’s operators into trouble. A former U.S. Treasury Department official warned in an interview with CoinDesk that “a lot of this just comes down to the question of who’s making money: Is it a concentrated set of people, and is it relatively knowable that [the funds] are from bad actors?”

Wallet apps like Vultisig and Asgardex have earned special scrutiny from legal and security experts, since “frontend” applications used to interact with blockchains are generally considered more centralized than blockchains themselves.

Asgardex, one of the more popular THORChain wallets, earned $1 million from Bybit-linked transactions, according to Monahan. “The reason why you use Asgardex” as opposed to other THORChain wallets “is because you don’t want tracking — you don’t want filtering or anything,” said Thorbjornsen, who helped develop the program.

Thorbjornsen says he no longer has an operational or financial stake in Asgardex, which is open-source and can technically be re-programmed by its users to operate without fees. However, he has recently actively promoted VultiSig, his new hack-resistant THORChain wallet.

On March 20, Thorbjornsen boasted in an X post that more people than ever were using the app: “Vultisig swaps have collected $200k in revenue so far!” ZachXBT, a crypto sleuth known for investigating North Korea’s cyber operations, responded by pointing out that “a good chunk of that revenue is being generated from the Bybit hack.”

“Vultisig is not a chain,” ZachXBT said. “[T]hey operate a centralized interface for users to interact with protocols for a fee.”

On April 16, Vultisig is launching its official crypto token: VULT. The token will be distributed for free to some of the wallet’s most loyal users.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said the market could see another 20% drop, but that the current drawdown is a buying opportunity in the long term as the current situation doesn’t pose systematic risk.

“I see it more as a buying opportunity than a selling opportunity, but that doesn’t mean we can’t go down further,” Fink said during an appearance at the Economic Club of New York on Monday.

He noted that inflationary pressure is higher than market participants expect and that many already believe the U.S. to be in a recession. As a result, he does not anticipate the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates this year.

Last month, Fink published a letter to shareholders, warning about Bitcoin’s (BTC) threat to the U.S. dollar, which could weaken if Americans believe the cryptocurrency to be a safer asset than the dollar.

Markets, including the crypto market, have been in turmoil since U.S. President Donald Trump announced a host of tariffs on goods imported to the U.S. BTC is currently trading 5% lower over the past five days and 11% lower in the past month. Stocks were hit even worse with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq down 13% and 15%, respectively.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is warning investors about the potential of rising prices and further slowing of the U.S. economy as a result of U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff policy.

“The recent tariffs will likely increase inflation and are causing many to consider a greater probability of a recession,” Dimon warned in his annual letter to shareholders. “Whether or not the menu of tariffs causes a recession remains in question, but it will slow down growth.”

“Whatever you think of the legitimate reasons for the newly announced tariffs – and, of course, there are some – or the long-term effect, good or bad, there are likely to be important short-term effects,” he said, noting that price increases will not only affect imported goods but even domestic prices.

Global markets, including crypto markets have been in freefall since Sunday in anticipation of Trump’s most recent tariff announcement on Monday. Bitcoin (BTC), fell below $79,000 to its lowest point since November. It is currently trading flat over the past 24 hours at $78,235. The CoinDesk 20, which tracks the 20 largest crypto assets by market capitalization, is down more than 10% today and nearly 20% over the past month.

Dimon said that he is all for Trump’s “America First” foreign policy, but that it can’t turn into “America alone.”

“If the Western world’s military and economic alliances were to fragment, America itself would inevitably weaken over time,” he warned.

It’s been a wild ninety minutes in markets, with the Nasdaq swinging from about a 5% loss to a 5% gain and then returning to flat in very quick order on a story — later denied by the White House — that President Trump was considering a ninety-day delay in the implementation of his tariff regime for all countries except China.

“Fake news,” said White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt in response to the delay rumor.

The swing touched cryptos as well, with bitcoin (BTC) rising from the $74,400 to above $80,000 before retreating back to $79,000, still lower by 4.3% over the past 24 hours. Ether (ETH) remains lower by more than 11%, while XRP is down 9.3%.

Amid the ongoing market panic, there are some green shoots though, with European Union Commissioner Ursula von der Leyen saying, “Europe is ready to negotiate with the U.S.,” including offering zero-for zero tariffs on industrial goods.

President Trump, meanwhile, said, “Countries from all over the world are talking to us,” and claimed Japan is sending a “top team” to negotiate.

Stablecoins continue growing into a pillar of both the cryptocurrency world and the global financial system. The market has already surpassed $235 billion, showcasing that people have faith in the future of these assets.

Currently, two USD-backed stablecoins (USDT and USDC) have about 90% of the market. The rest of the top-10, including USDe and PYUSD, are all dollar-denominated. Euro-based stablecoins have little market share by comparison. Why is that?

There are many discussions around regulation, interoperability, and integration with TradFi. However, the single most important factor is liquidity. Without deep and sustainable liquidity, no stablecoin can gain mass traction, and no amount of regulatory clarity will change that.

What’s the Issue With Non-USD Stablecoins?

Let’s take the Euro as an example. EUR-backed stablecoins have existed for years at this point, yet they remain barely used. Mainly that’s because of liquidity challenges. That’s what ultimately determines whether a stablecoin can become a widely used financial tool.

For years now, USD-backed stablecoins like USDT and USDC have been the dominant force in this landscape, acting as the primary source of liquidity in lending pools and trading pairs. USD-backed stablecoins have deep liquidity, high trading volumes, and extensive integration across CeFi/DeFi platforms.

In contrast, euro (and other non-USD) stablecoins suffer from a lack of market mechanisms that could sustain them. There simply aren’t enough trading pairs, users, and financial instruments built around them to create a proper liquidity ecosystem like what the USD stablecoins have.

One of the key reasons for this liquidity gap is that centralized market makers do not see enough financial incentive to provide liquidity for euro stablecoins. It simply isn’t profitable enough for them. So they prioritize other assets, leaving EUR-backed stablecoins on the backfoot.

This isn’t just a matter of preferences — it’s a more fundamental issue that’s economic in nature. If market makers can’t make a decent return on providing liquidity for these assets, they won’t allocate capital towards them.

So, how can this be changed?

Is Regulation the Key or Just a Side Factor?

An argument can be made that if other jurisdictions get ahead in terms of establishing clear-cut rules, non-USD stablecoins will become a lot more attractive. The introduction of MiCA regulations in the EU, for example, has paved the way for compliant EUR-backed stablecoins such as EURC, turning them into an increasingly viable alternative to consider when integrating with TradFi.

To some extent, I agree. As various jurisdictions worldwide keep moving towards better regulation of digital assets, we can very well expect more stablecoins pegged to local currencies to start cropping up. In Asia, the Middle East, Latin America — regions that would be inclined to use such assets to improve their financial stability. Besides which, it would also help them lower the dependency on the U.S. dollar.

We actually have supporting examples here, like Singapore’s XSGD or Switzerland’s XCHF. Hong Kong also launched an HKD-pegged stablecoin in December 2024. The trend seems clear.

However, regulation alone is not the deciding factor. EUR-backed stablecoins existed before MiCA came along. And, it’s still unclear whether the framework will ultimately help or hinder their adoption in the long run. MiCA could act as a kind of “restriction” on USD-backed stablecoins in Europe. Potentially, this gives euro stablecoins an unfair advantage rather than making them genuinely competitive on their own merits.

And at the end of the day, regulation cannot solve the more fundamental issue of liquidity. Without it, no regulatory framework can make a stablecoin viable enough for broad use. So, the question is: how can we create liquidity for non-USD stablecoins?

Addressing Liquidity Constraints

To put things into perspective, the market capitalization of USDT and USDC stand at $141 billion and $56 billion, respectively. By comparison, euro-based stablecoins like EURC or EURS barely go above $100 million. The sheer gap is obvious, and it directly impacts their usability. That’s fewer trading pairs, fewer DeFi integrations, and ultimately, less incentive for traders and institutional players to adopt them. As a result, they can’t become mainstream assets.

A case could be made for the EURe, which I personally use a lot and find to be the most convenient euro stablecoin for real-world application. Even so, the broader non-USD stablecoin market still faces the same challenges: limited adoption, fewer integrations, and a long way to go before they can compete with dollar-backed counterparts.

One possible solution lies in developing more effective liquidity algorithms for non-USD stablecoins. Reliance on professional market makers has proven ineffective, so a new approach is necessary, with mechanisms that can ensure strong liquidity without relying entirely on those parties.

A more effective approach, to my mind, would be to first establish deep liquidity pools between USD and non-USD stablecoins. This is the most practical way to ensure smooth conversions, as it would directly address the core issue. But it requires refining automated market maker (AMM) algorithms to make liquidity provision more efficient and attractive for providers.

The Path to Viable Non-USD Stablecoins

What matters most is how much liquidity providers can earn. If the incentives are there, liquidity will improve, and adoption will naturally follow. This isn’t just about attracting more capital — it’s about restructuring liquidity provision in a way that ensures long-term, sustainable profits.

Without improvements to the infrastructure, euro stablecoins and their counterparts will continue to lag behind, despite their potential. Stablecoins are only as strong as their liquidity. The key is building models that make providing liquidity profitable — because once the financial incentives align, everything else will fall into place.

Looking ahead, I can see non-USD stablecoins gaining a competitive edge in specific use cases, such as cross-border remittances, on-chain forex trading, and decentralized lending. Businesses that operate globally but need to manage cash flows in multiple currencies could benefit from borrowing non-USD stablecoins while keeping their treasuries in USD.

Additionally, liquidity pools that facilitate stablecoin swaps between different fiat denominations could serve as stores of value, potentially laying the foundation for a more decentralized global financial system.

Its capital raising efforts likely on hold amid the market panic, Strategy (MSTR) did not add to its bitcoin (BTC) holdings last week.

Additionally, the company expects to report a net loss for the first quarter due to a $5.91 billion unrealized loss on its bitcoin holdings, according to a filing Monday morning. This follows the adoption of new accounting rules requiring crypto assets to be marked to market. A $1.69 billion tax benefit is expected to partially offset the loss.

Strategy raised a total of $7.69 billion during the quarter, $4.4 billion of that from common stock sales and the rest from preferred stock issuance. Most or all of those funds were used to purchase bitcoin at far higher prices than the current $77,000.

Indeed, the average purchase price on the company’s 528,185 BTC stack has risen to nearly $67,500, meaning the company is ahead only about 14% on its holdings.

MSTR shares are lower by 9% in early Monday action, now down by 10% year-to-date but still ahead 77% year-over-year.

Disclaimer: Parts of this article were generated with the assistance from AI tools and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and adherence to our standards. For more information, see CoinDesk’s full AI Policy.

Bitcoin mining stocks are taking it on the chin alongside broader equity markets as competition ramps up to an all-time high and traders panic-sell equities amid tariff-led uncertainties.

Most mining stocks fell more than 10% on Monday, adding to last week’s sell-off. MARA Holdings (MARA) fell nearly 11%, Riot Platforms (RIOT) slumped about 8%, and CleanSpark (CLSK) dropped 10% in early Monday U.S. trading. Other crypto-linked stocks, such as Michael Saylor’s Strategy (MSTR) and crypto exchange Coinbase (COIN), also slid more than 10%.

Read more: Strategy Treads Water on BTC Bet, While Metaplanet, Semler Reel From Heavy Losses
The sell-off comes as traders around the world panic-sell most asset classes, with equities hit the hardest. U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs added uncertainties to the market and a trade war with China added more concerns for the miners.

Currently, Chinese manufacturers hold the lion’s share of the market for the machines most miners use to mine for their block rewards. If the tariffs hold, they will likely make mining more expensive for those who are already navigating higher energy costs and lower profit margins following the recent halving that cut their rewards by half.

Adding to the pain, the Bitcoin network’s computing power — a measure of competition for the miners — hit a new all-time high of 1 zettahash per second (1 ZH/s) on Friday, according to data from Glassnode. The previous record was set on Jan. 31, when the network hit 975 exahashes per second (EH/s).

As the competition ramped up, the bitcoin price has fallen from the recent high of over $109,000 to $77,0000, pressuring mining revenue. Hashprice, a measure of daily income relative to hash power — has fallen to a record low $42.40, squeezing the miners even further.

Read more: Markets in Freefall: Is the Credit Market Forcing the Fed’s Hand?

CoinDesk Indices presents its daily market update, highlighting the performance of leaders and laggards in the CoinDesk 20 Index.

The CoinDesk 20 is currently trading at 2173.26, down 13.5% (-338.56) since 4 p.m. ET on Friday.

None of the 20 assets are trading higher.

Leaders: BTC (-8.4%) and ICP (-11.0%)

Laggards: LTC (-19.7%) and SUI (-18.5%).

The CoinDesk 20 is a broad-based index traded on multiple platforms in several regions globally.