Ethereum (ETH) and Solana (SOL) staged a recovery Monday evening after President Donald Trump extended his tariff pause to Canada, following a similar agreement with Mexico that eased fears of an escalating North American trade war.
The world’s second-largest crypto bounced back to $2,881 after plummeting to $2,135 during Asian trading hours, a drop that marked its steepest single-day decline since May 2021.
The 18% crash during manic Monday trading in the U.S. morning wiped out more than $600 million in Ethereum futures positions, Decrypt reported.
Meanwhile, Solana demonstrated greater resilience, climbing 13.5% to $216 from its intraday low of $190. Solana remains little changed at $218, data shows.
The recovery outpaced Ethereum's gains, showing SOL's growing strength in sectors such as meme-coin trading and decentralized finance. Trading volume for SOL swelled by 27% on the day, according to GeckoTerminal data.
"Strong performers this cycle, such as SOL and XRP, led the recovery, as AI-related tokens, which were among the worst performers yesterday, rebounded," Min Jung, an analyst at Presto Research, told Decrypt.
The pause on tariffs for Mexico and now Canada "provided an additional bid for SOL," Jung said.
The market turmoil kicked off after Trump threatened tariffs against America's largest trading partners, sparking fears of inflation and tighter monetary policy.
The sell-off from geopolitical tensions triggered over $2.2 billion in crypto derivatives liquidations, marking one of the worst in the industry’s history.
However, some observers such as Ben Zhou, CEO of Bybit, note that the figure could be underreported due to API limitations on exchange data.
ETH's recovery "initially lagged" but “saw a strong bounce,” moments after Eric Trump posted on X about the crypto, Jung noted.
“In my opinion, it’s a great time to add ETH,” Eric Trump said on the social media platform.
Notably, Trump removed "You can thank me later." as a second sentence, the post's editing history shows.
The statements from the president's son follow significant wallet transfers on Monday afternoon by World Liberty Finance, the decentralized finance project backed by the Trump family.
In synchronized transactions around 3 P.M. ET, World Liberty Fi's Gnosis Safe Proxy executed multiple transfers totaling approximately $60 million, with $55.69 million in Ethereum and $5 million in USDC.
The outflow transfers were tracked on Arkham, with most of those transfers directed to Coinbase Prime deposits. The largest single transfer was worth $28 million, according to the blockchain tracking platform.
Edited by Sebastian Sinclair