It was a typical day in the cryptocurrency markets, until the world's two most influential men in tech and politics, Elon Musk and President Donald Trump, ignited a social-media firestorm.
By Thursday night, what began as heated tweets about Trump's "Big, Beautiful Bill" had turned into a very public brawl, with Musk unleashing a string of messages on X and Trump fighting back on Truth Social.
Musk's audience and prolific posting quickly surpassed Trump's, who, despite all his presidential pulpit, could not keep pace with the Tesla CEO's rapid-fire shots.
Social media was left agog over the drama, with one observer commenting, "This is honestly a wild amount of drama, if you remember we're running a country here."
But the backlash was not just online drama. As Musk called Trump ungrateful and even invoked the Epstein documents, Trump retaliated by vowing to pull government contracts from Musk's companies and calling him "crazy".
The impact was immediate: Tesla shares plunged 14%, erasing over $150 billion in market value, and the crypto market went into a tailspin. Bitcoin dropped below $101,000, Ethereum dropped 7%, and Dogecoin, long fueled by Musk tweets, dropped nearly 10% within a day.
On-chain data showed that more than $988 million in leveraged positions were liquidated over 24 hours, $888 million of which were long positions. Bybit and Binance suffered the most, with Bybit alone seeing $354 million in liquidations. Altcoins like Solana and meme tokens like DOGE and PEPE were also not spared the bloodbath, with DOGE holders particularly suffering as Musk's support evaporated.
CoinGlass liquidation heatmaps painted a vivid picture: clusters of forced liquidations stacked up at $105,900 and $100,600, showing how extremely leveraged longs were vaporized as prices fell lower. Twitter was ablaze with memes of the Musk–Trump feud and screenshots of traders' losses.
One viral post summed up the mood: "The Elon Musk vs Donald Trump drama has escalated to a full on war.". Trump is going to lose this one and it won't be particularly close." On-chain sentiment metrics like the Crypto Fear & Greed Index also tanked, reflecting a race from "greed" to "fear" as traders scrambled to close out positions.
The carnage also exposed deeper vulnerabilities in the market. Glassnode analytics pointed to long-term holders taking profit after Bitcoin's all-time high, with previous areas of accumulation becoming active selling zones.
Spot Bitcoin ETFs saw $278 million in outflows, and institutional momentum appeared to wane as even MicroStrategy's latest purchase was a portion of previous ones.
Meme coins, which had been riding retail euphoria, were the biggest losers. DOGE, PEPE, and Solana-based tokens all posted double-digit losses, their volatility fueled by Musk's shifting allegiances and Trump's capricious rhetoric.
As the dust settles, the questions linger: Will the feud still stoke volatility? Is this a bottom, or the dawn of a new era in which political theatre trumps fundamentals? With nearly a billion dollars in liquidations and sentiment shaken, the Trump–Musk saga is a jarring reminder that in crypto, a single tweet can vaporize fortunes overnight.
